WEEKEND READING: Calling for a bold new vision for higher education
Join HEPI for a webinar on Thursday 29 January from 1.30pm to 2.30pm examining the findings of Student Working Lives (HEPI Report 195), a landmark study on how paid work is reshaping the student experience in UK higher education amid rising living costs and inadequate maintenance support. View our speakers and sign up here.
This guest blog was kindly authored by Dr Adrian Gonzalez, Senior Lecturer in Sustainability at the University of York, and Richard Heller, Emeritus Professor of Public Health, University of Manchester UK and of Medicine, University of Newcastle Australia.
Background
Globally, humanity is grappling with a set of interconnected and intractable wicked problems, from the accelerating climate crisis to widening inequality. These are proving difficult to resolve, and higher educational institutions are needed to respond to them and advance solutions.
Yet, at the same time, higher education around the world is facing its own structural problems that limit the sector’s ability to respond to societal issues. Our thesis is that a major transformation of higher education is required to allow the sector to respond. We identify the major challenges, offer one set of solutions, and call for interest in further discussion about how to transform higher education for the future.
Climate hypocrisy
Despite the current climate crisis, it features little in most universities’ education and research programmes. There are barriers to embedding sustainability into higher education degrees, including disciplinary conflicts over the meaning of sustainability and major institutional barriers. There is also work on greening university campuses, in some cases stimulated by student activists, although care needs to be taken that this does not become another form of higher education greenwashing. Buildings, travel by staff and students (including student field trips), as well as by international students, have a high carbon footprint. Currently, there is no requirement or standardised way of measuring or reporting universities’ carbon footprint. The response by the sector to this threat can therefore be characterised as tinkering rather than undertaking the transformation required to reflect the global climate emergency.
Knowledge inequity
There are global, regional, national and socioeconomic inequities in access to university education, under-representation of populations in the creation of knowledge and global inequity in research publications, as well as silence or tokenism in educational decolonisation agendas. The commodification of knowledge and the commercialisation of the higher education sector hinder attempts to reduce inequity. The higher education system needs to transform to be more open and responsive to societal needs, offering the opportunity to increase knowledge equity. This will create opportunities and have long-term effects on reducing the problems caused by, between and within, national inequalities.
Governance and management
Employment precarity and casualised teaching and research work have risen across the international higher education sector. Excessive managerialism reduces academic autonomy. Gender pay gaps remain, and there is a general failure of the market-driven business model. Financial sustainability is lacking and requires overseas student fees to plug funding gaps across many higher education national contexts, while global needs for access to higher education are ignored in favour of those who can pay fees. Funding from fossil fuel and wider petrochemical companies that strengthen climate obstruction are also still embedded within global HE, including through different research funding avenues.
Research
As universities have commodified education; academic publishers have commodified the publication of research. A small number of powerful publishers dominate the field and make large profits by charging high fees for library subscriptions, or to authors in article processing charges, while using volunteer academics as reviewers and editors. This is perpetuated by a system which requires academics to ‘publish or perish’ and prioritises the citation of research in ‘high impact’ journals for academic advancement, often in Global North journals written in English. Publish or perish has also helped drive an acceleration in the quantity of articles published, arguably, in some cases, at the expense of quality. While prestige and academic advancement favour research over education within universities (promotion opportunities for those on an academic teaching pathway are fraught with challenges), research funding is precarious and inadequate. Funding for research on climate change is inadequate and inequitable.
A distributed model of education
The first step is to acknowledge these problems. There is a need to develop ideas and advocate for a transformation of higher education, and we call on others to join us in developing and working through ideas and potential solutions to help facilitate a progressive learning culture and practice which addresses these major issues.
The use of a distributed model of education has the potential to address many of the problems outlined. Large campuses are replaced by local hubs, which can be physical or virtual. Education would be largely online and utilises open educational resources, research involves under-represented populations, and publication focuses on Diamond Open Access journals, which are community-driven, academic-led, and academic-owned. The carbon footprint of higher education would be drastically reduced, leadership distributed (hence managerialism reduced), and academic autonomy increased. Collaborative development and sharing of open educational resources reduces the drive to the commodification of education, and open publishing reduces the power of commercial publishers. These various initiatives will increase knowledge equity. The distributed model is consistent with societal moves towards decentralisation of the internet (Web3.0 and 4.0) and federated IT infrastructures (such as the Fediverse for open social media). Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) may offer support. The adoption of such a model would encourage new locally driven academic environments and research initiatives responsive to societal needs.
Calling for ideas and interest
This is one set of ideas, but there must be others, large and small, global and local. For example, there are alternative options to increasing student fees, such as a progressive graduate tax, that would offer a fairer and more sustainable financial model. A recent book, Stories of hope – reimagining education, demonstrates that universities contain many committed educators who report exciting educational innovations. Please express your interest in joining in a discussion about how we can tackle these challenges in a robust and transformational way. If you might be interested, please complete this short form and we will be in touch with further details.
Comments
Jonathan Alltimes says:
Undergraduates studying science, engineering, or medicines require laboratories, workshops, and field, which is most students. The distributed model of knowledge is not going to work for these students. The zone of interest for sustainability and public health is 1) potable water and sewage treatment; 2) climate driven epidemics and vaccines; 3) product design, waste disposal and recycling; 4) hygiene and antibiotics; 5) climate change adaptations and skills; and 6) pollution control. The local climate issue for York and Manchester is the function of the universities in planning for extreme weather events, such as flood mitigation. The UK lacks engineers, technicians and tradespeople. Can the universities coordinate with further education and employers?
Reply
Replies
Richard Heller says:
Thanks, Jonathan. Agree, some educational processes require physical not online settings, hence we say in the blog that in the distributed model ‘Large campuses are replaced by local hubs, which can be physical or virtual.’ Local hubs should encourage collaboration with other local actors. Also, agree that universities have much more to contribute on climate (we have accused them of ‘climate hypocrisy’) , and you identify a great list of work to do and a collaborative way forward.
Reply
Kevin J Brazant says:
This is a timely and thoughtful contribution, particularly in recognising that higher education is being asked to respond to multiple ‘wicked problems’ while itself operating under structural strain. One risk in moments like this is moving too quickly to redesign without first creating the conditions for collective sense-making — especially where questions of equity, climate responsibility, governance and knowledge production are deeply entangled. Distributed and decentralised models raise important possibilities, but their success will likely depend less on architecture alone and more on how institutions cultivate trust, restraint, and shared judgement under pressure. I’d welcome further dialogue that explores not just what we change in higher education, but how we create the space to think well when stakes are high.
Reply
Richard Heller says:
Thank you, Kevin, for your thoughtful comments. Educational designers such as you will be critical in making sure that any transformation meets the criteria that you so clearly identify. Whether universities are able to ‘cultivate trust, restraint, and shared judgement under pressure’ will be a real test! I agree, creating space to think, while everyone is so busy, is really important – but difficult. That is why the HEPI blogs are so valuable in putting out ideas for consideration and debate. I hope you might be stimulated to access the form in our blog and join in future discussions.
Reply
Add comment