The University of Bliss is a dystopian campus novel set ten years in the future and we join this terrifying new world just as new Vice-Chancellor Gladys Nirvana is about to take up her position at The University of Bliss, or UOB (pronounced YOB) as it is known to its students.
In the political climate of 2035, any academic endeavour is strongly discouraged, with the one poor scholar who managed to publish a book being demoted to Head Trolley Pusher on the university’s very own train. As the management seek higher salaries, fewer pesky academics and more bureaucracy, can the last of the humanities lecturers save higher education from itself? Focussing on Harry Blink, the poor poet who hasn’t published any poetry in years, we meet a range of Deans, Pro-Vice Chancellors and Professors whose sole aim is to disassociate higher education from any notion of learning, instead rewarding those lecturers who spend time on their Lego creativity and awaiting the visit of the Weeping Aubergine / Eggplant from the Light of Idaho. Sounds both surreal and scary? Well, it is.
I managed to read this book in one day, which is a good thing, and at times it made me laugh out loud and other times nod in sad recognition. Yes, it is a bit broad at times perhaps, and certainly you can feel the author’s frustration with the current higher education climate, but anyone working in the Humanities will recognise the tropes that this novel satirises, such as compulsory attendance at events during Staff Wellbeing Weeks instead of doing any research, 87% of students receiving first class honours degrees and the Creative Writing programmes being viewed with deep suspicion and loathing by those in charge.
Stannard uses to great effect the dystopian device of keeping the near future near enough for us to recognise many of the directives and initiatives but extrapolating them just far enough for the reader to think: yes, actually, that could well happen. We only have to consider the changes the last decade has seen in higher education, the way league table position and awards are trumpeted at open days whilst redundancy policies are rife, leaving a shrivelled team of lecturers to work forty or fifty hours a week to keep up. And, heaven forfend, should there be a fall in the league table, a fall in the NSS, a fall in the REF, the blame is placed firmly back at those same lecturers’ doors – why aren’t they doing more in terms of outreach, pedagogy, knowledge exchange, public visibility, reflection? The move towards obsessions over lanyards and a consideration of whether robotic dogs might do a better (and of course cheaper) job of teaching students than actual people doesn’t actually seem so ridiculous.
But I would stress that this is not just a book for those working in humanities in HEIs across the UK, this doesn’t just speak to that handful of Creative Writing academics who get asked ‘Yes, but what are you employability statisitics like?’ It is for anyone who values education, who values culture, who considers the world their children or grandchildren are going to inherit in terms of learning, philosophy, literature and art. It is a highly readable novel, biting, funny and fast paced, but at the same time, do take a pause every now and then to consider the world Stannard is creating – how close do you think we’re getting to that now?
Kim Wiltshire is a writer and academic, Reader and Programme Leader for Creative Writing at Edge Hill University. She writes scripts, short stories and was a British Academy Innovation Fellowship researching ways of embedding arts into healthcare settings during 2022 and 2023.
