The "prison IS university" metaphor - a review

It's a while since I heard this metaphor cited, but it
has had real currency in British English in the late
20th Century.

Based, loosely, upon the observation that people who
got caught, say, botching a shoplifting job, or put in
the frame and wrongly imprisoned in the days before
the Police bothered with rigorous forensics, tended
to leave prison with a range of criminal skills enabling
them to hotwire vehicles, forge keys and pry 10 types
of window jamb, along with the cynicism associated
with longer-term convicts gaining degrees by way of
the various correspondence courses on offer, in the
name of rehabilitation, I thought it may be worth giving
the model of Higher Education in the UK a review to
evaluate whether this metaphor really still fits.

My feeling is that it doesn't, any more, and is simply
misleading, particularly where younger, impressionable
convicts are concerned.

Certainly it had the more weight in the days when the
UK HE sector boasted Polytechnics and both redbrick
and traditional Universities.

The Polytechnics were founded as an offshoot of the
network of Technical colleges which offered vocational
skills on a day-release or full-time basis, often involving
intensive study curricula along more continental lines
such as those exemplified by the French and German
Diploma qualifications, whereby students turned up in
the morning, first thing, and spent most of the day in
lectures, labs and practical sessions.

This was even then in stark contrast to the virtually
empty schedules offered by Universities, relying on
students being self-directed and spending their time
reading subjects, with perhaps a few hours of lectures
and tutorials a week--as per Oxbridge, a typical literature
schedule being about 10 hours per week of contact
time over three 8 week terms--hardly six weeks a year
at the standard baseline of a 40-hour office week.

As, however, science and technology funding has got
less and less and all kinds of universities have tended
towards media, administration, business and law, the
intensive practical learning aspect of Higher Education
has fallen by the wayside.

Let's face it too, most graduates from Universities are
not running co-ordinated profitable teams within a year
of leaving--although I gather from various critical articles
from representatives of employers in the media that it's
entirely possible literacy and numeracy levels are truly
comparable; but, otherwise, as Higher Education has
fallen out of favour with the more working classes, if only
because they have grave reservations about how to repay
the debts it will incur - debts which 15 years ago would
buy you a house - even the aspirational aspects of the
reverse psychology embodied by the metaphoric framework
lack any real resonance.

In short, it is time to reflect on the vocational nature of
hands-on social learning in the UK prison sector, and
pare back the comparison to that of technical colleges
and/or trade apprentice****ps as neither the overcrowded
conditions nor the social demographic nor the types of
drug use nor the kinds of learning which occur are any
longer truly comparable.

It was, however, a good metaphor in its day.

G DAEB
COPYRIGHT (C) 2008 SIPSTON
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