ON CAMPUS
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WHO BELONGS IN A COMMUNITY OR NATION?
These are not small matters for universities seeking to define and
refine their community. Who belongs within a community and how
that is to be determined is the stuff of modern politics. In societies
undergoing mass migration, the notion of community belonging,
usually within a national state or a religion, can be decisive in how
people are perceived and accepted or rejected. Who belongs in
the nation and who can be properly excluded becomes central
to politics of nationhood and identity. How these questions are
handled may be seen as the test of our humanity, and of our
democratic right to be what we feel we are and to maintain our
right to exclude those who do not belong.
But even though culture and community are deeply problematic,
we have not abandoned our sense of what community might
mean and how it might be relevant to learning. Community is one
of the longings of our century. It retains a powerful charge and
seems to offer a framework of meaning for modern university life.
WHAT BIG ISSUES DO COMMUNITIES FACE?
Knowledge gained inside and outside the classroom can engage
people and communities in new and meaningful ways. This has
been called ‘real knowledge’ and focuses on issues to do with
learning and knowledge in workplaces, communities and life
experience. It forces us, including universities, to engage with the
‘big issues’ – and we signal these below.
1
Poverty is still with us – globally and locally
Pope Francis reminds us that the ‘real’ world out there still
consists of millions who are without an adequate income to rear
their families, a world without dignity or education, without clean
water or adequate food and medicine, and whose share of world
wealth is diminishing. There is also a world out there where climate
change and pollution are far from improving. The arguments would
seem to be self-evident for devising a new university curriculum
that addresses these issues in a way that allows the sector to
respond to them meaningfully.
2
The marginalisation of young people
The rapid pace of social and economic change, the apparent
quickening of mass migration across large parts of the globe,
de-industrialisation, and the ‘hollowing out’ of many traditional
economies and communities have brought the growth of more
challenges to the neoliberal consensus in many societies, including
Australia’s. For many young people, this has put the future at risk.
Youth unemployment and marginalisation are problems for many
across the world.
3
The growth of digital technologies
In a society where knowledge has exploded, learning is being
transformed by the artefacts and apps of the information age.
Communication can be instantaneous, and reality becomes virtual.
Local communities can become marginalised and impoverished
by the almost instant switching of production to cheaper locations,
perhaps halfway across the globe.
4
Knowledge and learning relevant to life and work
The sheer power and availability of computerised automation
has shifted the nature of work and leisure so fundamentally that it
presents us with an existential challenge. Modern work, for many,
involves a lack of engagement in the task and even leisure and free
time may be occupied by ‘lazy’ and sometimes aimless pursuits.
The task facing universities is developing knowledge, skills
and a curriculum that can cope with the capacities and threats
that the machines we depend on present. These developments
must help us challenge the loss and separation of ourselves from
our communities.
5
Learning, the university and engagement
Ways of learning relevant to a community stress the
importance of common identity, shared values and a sense of
shared experience aimed at changing and conserving valued
traditions. The community, in a sense, may become the curriculum;
a belief can emerge in a large reservoir of talent and ability within
individuals and their communal experience that can be tapped and
released. The university can sponsor learning that revolves around
this growing and developing sense of awareness.
The modern university is expected to be many different and
contradictory things. It is expected to be an innovator in learning
and knowledge and collegial in its dealings with staff and partners,
yet competitive in an increasingly marketised and monetised
world. It’s expected to be caring in its concern for people, yet
entrepreneurial in its business. It’s expected to be both a public
institution and a private organisation and it is almost always both
local and international. Yet this