Re-creating universities for ‘beyond the stable state’: from ‘Dearingesque’ systematic control to post-Dearing systemic learning and inquiry

This paper considers the limitations (excluding funding) of the UK Dearing Report and likely influences of what might be considered ‘Dearingesque proposals’, increasingly invoked throughout the world as ‘solutions’ to the challenges of ‘the learning society’. It is concerned with emphases of the report on structural solutions to complex problems that are by no means structural in nature. The tendency is to ‘order the mess’, through increased standardisation, specification of outcomes and centralised control. Implementation of ‘Dearingesque proposals’ are likely to ossify traditional academic status hierarchies, subject boundaries, and the normative criteria by which teaching and learning quality and research tend to be judged. This trend will work against academics, and professional groups who recognise the need to build capacity for ‘second-order change’ and for new kinds of social learning in an essentially ‘unstable state’. It will also discourage the engagement of diversity.It is argued that innovation, development and partnership can only come from systemic learning and inquiry from ‘within the mess’. Working with, rather than controlling, this epistemological diversity and richness could lead to the visualisation and enactment of alternative epistemological and ethical positions by government, employers and academics, working in partnership. Systemic learning and inquiry could lead to new understandings of ‘responsiveness’ and quality in higher education for the millennium, that could enhance the capacity of society to work with and learn from challenges of complexity, change and systemicity. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.