We hear a lot these days about declining standards in education, especially in universities, much of it posed by the incursion of artificial intelligence-type tools such as ChatGPT which encourage students to take shortcuts in writing essays.
A professor at Corfu’s Ionian University recently received a bibliography in which the student had listed 15 books which she claimed to have read: none of them exists, but all are listed on an AI facility which she used.
Students at prestigious universities such as Harvard, Columbia and Oxford are complaining that the prescribed books on their courses are too long, and summaries are required. These students are not illiterate, but the skill of how to read a book seems to have been diminished by the claims of social media on their attention span.
But at the other extreme, the alarming news is that the rector (or president) of the Ionian University, Andreas Floros, has decided to introduce severe restrictions on the university library’s physical space and access to its books. The main library building, housing about 110,000 books plus other research and archive material, is to be converted into classrooms and a “multipurpose space”, while the position of head of the library is to be abolished.
READ MORE
In effect, this means the closure of the existing library in its present life, and a withdrawal of a facility traditionally regarded as the heart of any university – a repository of learning and a stimulus to intellectual growth and diversification.
At present, the reading room of the main library offers only 125 spaces, which is already considered inadequate for the 5,000 students.
Students are actively collecting signatures for a petition requesting the rector to at least amend his decision. Eleni Grui, writing in the Athens journal Efsyn (Efimerida ton Syntakton) argues that this development “highlights the risk for the university and for all Greek academic libraries”. She points out that such libraries “are not potential multi-spaces with a supermarket culture – not a privilege but a right.”
Certainly the Ionian University is experiencing the same plight as many similar institutions worldwide, regardless of their status: the compulsion to modernise and to meet the needs of young people when AI and social media demand their attention and refocus their mental energies
Floros was a breath of fresh air when he became head of this provincial university, which was founded only in 1984: he was the first to be elected by his peers, where previously the position was filled by political appointment. He started to make connections with outside, non-academic bodies, which surprised many of his more traditional colleagues. Moreover, he set up new departments: where there were six at the time of his appointment, there are now 12, encompassing not only Corfu but the other Ionian islands of Zakynthos, Cephalonia and Lefkada, and introducing subjects such as tourism, food science and technology.
Floros’s own academic background is in the areas of algorithms and digital technology. The first sign of the increasing emphasis on digital studies was Floros’s decision to rename the department of history as “department of history and digital humanities”, a move which left many, including some of its professors, bewildered. Floros explained the change as necessary to revive falling enrolments.
I have lectured, as a guest, in several faculties of this university, especially the students of librarianship, who had never before encountered an author with experience of archives – they had been learning in a vacuum with little awareness of what they might face in “real” life – what the books and archives in their custody might be used for. Now, on graduation they may be leaving a university which does not even have a library they would recognise.
The Ionian University ranks at 22 in the list of 25 Greek universities, and one can understand its anxiety to raise its profile and its academic rating. Floros himself points to the fact that many of the professors are artists and performers, whose work enhances the university’s profile as a creative institution, but that these are not taken into consideration when assessing a college’s standards.
Certainly the Ionian University is experiencing the same plight as many similar institutions worldwide, regardless of their status: the compulsion to modernise and to meet the needs of young people when AI and social media demand their attention and refocus their mental energies. “Digital studies” and algorithms may well be a way forward in fostering and directing young talent and in promoting scholarship. But to drastically curtail the university library and to replace it with “digital” services which make the act of reading books redundant does not seem the solution.
I had planned to donate my own library to the Ionian University, including many rare volumes on Greek literature not at present on its shelves. The offer included the archives of the Durrell School and Library of Corfu, which I have run here since 2002, and which could provide research material for several PhD students. This offer is no longer on the table, since it now seems that there would be nowhere to accommodate it.
