ABSTRACT
The author compares two experiences of his education. First, his experience of a taught MSc course in Human Ecology; second, his current work on a PhD by research to which he have tried to bring Human Ecological insights. The focus of the authors present work, being channelled through the contemporary PhD experience, has felt less like the interwoven creativity of the crafting way of life and, though he have tried to resist it, more like that of the split existence. Higher education in the UK is currently being cemented into this paradigm, contends Sterling, and he feels there is a need to rebalance the education system so that intrinsic values of human development are given more consideration, at the expense of its present instrumental focus on the use of humans to support economic growth. The Irish academics appear to be condemning the arrival of market values to a previously sacrosanct sphere of higher education.
