policy & reform
campusreview.com.au
United we stand
A framework for critically
engaged universities.
By Verity Firth
U
niversities at the beginning of the 21st century face
an existential challenge. Do they fully embrace the
competitive path spurred on by global rankings and driven
by international student income? A path that shifts the costs and
benefits of higher education to those individuals who derive private
benefit from it? Or do they forge a different future, building a trust
relationship with the public based on their role as custodians of a
knowledge infrastructure accessible to all?
Professor Glyn Davis argued in a recent speech to the UPP
Foundation in London that universities globally are facing a “rising
tide of hostility” akin to the hostility shown by Henry VIII when he
dismantled the monasteries in the 16th century. Henry claimed
monasteries were elite and wealthy institutions that lacked
relevance to the lives of ordinary people – arguments that sound
eerily familiar to anyone following the political debate around
funding for higher education.
The late 20th and early 21st centuries are not a great era for
those of us who believe in public institutions. Abuses of trust have
eroded public confidence in institutions such as the Church and
government, and yet as UTS academic Tamson Pietsch points
out: “When the big ruptures come upon us – sicknesses, death,
unemployment or desperation – it is to institutions that we still
invariably turn, both for practical help and for more existential forms
of consolation.”
Despite the decline of overall trust, universities have fared better
than other public institutions. Although this trust trajectory is on a
downward trend.
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It’s clear that it is time for a new vision of what the university is
and who it is for. Although the global terrain of higher education is
inevitably “changed by the high tech, information-based knowledge
economy, the more localised, public good function of the university
must not be lost in the fray” (Rhoads and Ilano, 2014).
For despite all the talk of the private benefit, universities are still
public institutions, funded with public money for the purpose of
producing public benefit. They educate the next generation, and
serve as hot houses of new knowledge through their research.
They play a critical role in tackling some of the 21st century’s
wicked problems – the dislocating impacts of globalisation on local
economies, the ever-growing threat of climate change, and the
emergence of political and religious extremism being just a few
examples. Universities provide research and intellectual rigour to
inform public debate and drive public policy.
However, in order for universities not to go the same way as
Henry VIII’s monasteries, the tackling of public problems must
be done in a ‘critically engaged’ way. Gone are the days of the
ivory tower. Universities need to have collaborative, generational,
interdependent relationships both internally, across disciplines and,
most importantly, with those outside the university.
The public institution should be like a backbone – a pillar – it
should seek to collaborate and influence, but not to own solutions.
And despite an increasingly (and worthy) global focus, universities
still have a role to play locally, in the communities in which they
are placed, helping to deliver the benefits that should flow to
a neighbourhood on the doorstep of a large publicly funded
education institution.
Economic inclusion strategies and engaged community
partnerships are all part of what it is to be a modern, engaged
and impactful institution. During a recent visit to the US, I saw the
concept of the ‘anchor institution’ first hand at the University of
Pennsylvania. Penn is located in the heart of West Philadelphia,
one of the most economically depressed areas in an already
depressed city and state. In the 1950s and ’60s, Penn played a
negative role in its community, dislocating many poor, mostly