Theorising the state of 'democracy' through the prism of 'quality' in higher education

This thesis is a search for hope. Its genesis lies in my despair over the parlous state of Australian ‘democracy’ and the apparent decaying of the will of ‘we the people’ to provoke effective and ethical responses to issues that matter. In a peaceful polity for example, how have we allowed incarceration of children seeking asylum from terror? How then will we assist whole peoples soon to be displaced by rising sea levels? The impetus to act feels diminished, even for humanity’s own existential climatic conditions, even where there is personal interest. In my former Australian university workplace, I witnessed passive resistance but rarely saw proactive action to reframe policies, such as quality assurance, by those who perceived them as harmful. My own re-framing and mobilising efforts as a senior manager in a faculty were also largely ineffectual. Giroux’s (2004) call for “a new language for politics, for analysing where it can take place, and what it means to mobilize alliances…to reclaim…hope in dark times” (para. 15), informs development of my project to thus view ‘democracy’ through the prism of the politics of ‘quality’ in higher education. To do this, I search for and generate theoretical and conceptual resources to both better understand political passivity and mobilize effective ethical action. Hannah Arendt’s conceptualisation that the human condition suffers from a lack of balance, and her theories of action and judging as potentially restorative faculties, provide a generative foundation for both themes. I synthesise these theories and, taking a cue from Aristotle’s theory of ‘invention’, ‘invent’ and contribute a new ontological conceptualisation and discourse of effective ethical political action. I propose it is not only a right of all higher education constituents to engage in this action, but for a number of reasons, that it is an imperative. Through a small collection of historical and contemporary examples of inspiring action by higher education actors, I bring the concept to life and inductively further develop it into an aspirational, but demonstrably valid, standard of action. Against this standard I subject the actions of those involved in the development of the Australian Commonwealth Government’s Advancing Quality in Higher Education policy ‘assemblage’ to a critical analysis. The analysis reveals a significant gap between the standard and reality, despite a few hopeful instances. My findings are congruent with Arendt’s diagnosis that ‘action’ is largely missing from the contemporary human condition which contributes to political passivity in the face of existential and other crises. I develop and contribute new terminology to describe the dynamics I find and propose a new framework that juxtaposes Arendt’s theories, my own new conceptualisations and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, through which to understand passivity and promote an ‘encompassing’ educative project. Utilising all the resources I gather and generate, I illustrate a hopeful and demonstrably plausible vision for a radical reconceptualistaion of the higher education field in Australia as a vibrant, ethically active leader in civil society encompassing principles up to and including, the anima mundi, the soul of the world.