VC’s corner
campusreview.com.au
Professor Jim Nyland. Photo: ACU
UNIVERSITIES FOR STUDENTS
OR CITIZENS?
What is a civic university?
It’s time to reappraise the civic
role of the modern university.
By Professor Jim Nyland
T
here exists a long and renowned
history of ‘civic universities’ in the
Anglosphere, and they are often
compared and contrasted with the ‘ancient’
universities, sometimes seen as the
repositories of tradition with their rituals, old
buildings and formal codes of dress and
behaviour. These are unique cultures, very
different from modern corporations, let
alone globalised digital businesses.
The ancient universities looked inwards,
both in their fortress-like medieval college
buildings and in general with regard to the
intellectual realm inside the walls. Such
universities evoke a picture of timelessness,
tradition and age-old customs for faculty
members as well as the general public,
which contrasts markedly with the leading
role they often play in world university
rankings and in research right across the
academic spectrum.
The civic universities were by contrast
founded ‘for the people’ and with the
belief that local industries and trade would
benefit along with local and regional life
and culture.
Since the founding era of such universities
at the turn of the 20th century, universities
have changed enormously. Many are in fact
now mega corporations, and some are truly
global institutions in terms of research and
teaching. Increasingly they are regulated
and funded by government, and over recent
times they have been increasingly monetised,
subject to financial pressures to generate
income and funds.
20
This has changed how universities
behave and how they view themselves,
and it forces consideration of just how
the origins and defining purposes of such
universities, alongside the many variants
of ‘modern’ universities, are relevant to
modern conditions.
In the modern era, the civic role of the
university is not separable from the wider
questions of engagement, since the notion
of the ‘civic’ has itself transmogrified partially
into the difficult-to-define notion of ‘the
community’. That there was a wide belief in
the original community-relevant purposes
of the university cannot be denied, but the
content and meaning of both universities and
communities have shifted considerably. How
can we define this relationship today?
Furthermore, how can we define and
develop a curriculum which will be directly
relevant to the great and demanding
questions and challenges of the day which
are existentially central to our future existence,
such as climate change, global poverty
and exclusion?
These are pressing issues, especially since
the universities have largely given up the
task of delivering adult liberal education and
extramural studies.
There persists, however, a fundamental
human need for knowledge and a social
and communal need for intellectual life, for
which universities are still uniquely equipped
to respond. Professional scholarship
must in these conditions look beyond the
academy to an engagement which is truly
modern. It must address the crucial issues
and simultaneously educate the learners to
be able to confront the difficult questions,
rather than (potentially) turning them into
‘snowflakes’ who are incapable of facing a
threat to their unchallenged selves and ideas.
In many ways, and for many universities,
it seems certain that the civic role is alive
and well. In her recent keynote address to
the Universities Australia conference held
earlier this year Professor Mary Stuart, vice-
chancellor of Lincoln University in the UK,
reported that “many universities were able to
articulate activities that clearly had an impact
on the local area and people”, highlighting
her 21st Century Lab, which was created in
her university city, as but one example.
People are often rightly proud of their
local university, and this is a worldwide
phenomenon. On the other hand, there
undoubtedly exists a well of ignorance about
universities locally and otherwise and many
people do not know what higher education
does for local life and the community.
Quite how a university should benefit
society and the community is a problem that
has yet to be satisfactorily resolved.
While it is difficult to establish categoric
functions and activities for universities apropos
their civic roles and responsibilities, it is clear
that public funding and subsidies carry certain
obligations and expectations. What is more
clear is that few universities have a strategic
approach to the needs and population in their
area regarding civic activity.
Far from being a strategic ‘third’ activity
complementing teaching and research, the
civic purpose of universities is unclear and
often of only secondary importance in the
hierarchy of functions headed by research
and teaching fee-generating students.
There is a further yet related difficulty with
the notion of civic purpose. What exactly does
this mean? Whose purposes are legitimately
acknowledged when a publicly funded and
endowed, yet private, independent and
autonomous institution declares its primary
tasks as international excellence in research,
scholarship and entrepreneurial development
of its business studies faculty?
Given the charitable status and civic origins
of most universities, are we not entitled to ask
for more to be achieved in the civic realm?
Could there be greater support for
government signalling the central significance
of higher education for all in many
communities which are literally dispossessed
and poverty stricken, some of which are
within a stone’s throw of the often grand civic
university campuses?
Could there be local representation on
university governing bodies and committees,
and could a shared and collaborative model