Be excellent

If you take a look at any university website you will find one thing: excellence. Not excellence itself, of course – most university websites fall well short of that mark – but the profession of, or pursuit of, ‘excellence’.

What does that word mean? Excellence is an abstract concept – both aspirational and ill-defined. I think the most we can say about it is that it implies some degree of measurement: this thing is better than most other things like it – it is excellent. Yet the concept of excellence is pervasive in academia. Almost every academic institution, society or funding body uses the word in a motto or slogan, the Royal Society of Chemistry included. It feels like a cliche to point out that if we are all excellent, then none of us are. Perhaps then the quest for excellence is meaningless.

So is the pursuit of excellence harmless? Unfortunately, I don’t think so. While most will consider the concept inoffensive rhetoric, there’s a growing group of voices pointing out that it is much more harmful than we realise, particularly for education.