It is self-evident that COVID has disrupted Australian higher education in 2020. But the recent turmoil should not overshadow the longer history of social and economic forces driving change for the sector. Australian universities have been facing a whole range of existential challenges since the beginning of the 21st century.
More and more, global rankings and international student income encourage competition between universities. This impels a shift in the political rhetoric around the purpose of higher education – taking us away from being responsible for broad social benefit, towards delivering private benefit to individuals. The resulting operating models fundamentally affect universities’ relationships with civil society, and not for the better.
Many Australian universities have recognised this, and have seen the possibility for a different future. As public institutions, funded with public money for the purpose of public good, we can and do deliver benefit to communities and society more broadly. We strengthen democracy and civic engagement, drive progress that brings improvements to people’s lives while interrogating past narratives about what ‘progress’ means and who benefits. We hold up a mirror to society and apply a more objective, analytical gaze to the forces that shape our culture.
Doing this means taking an active hand in shaping our sector’s future. We must consciously fight against the tide that directs us towards a private enterprise-led, zero-sum game centred on funding cuts and a narrow interpretation of the post graduate job market, to the exclusion of other important considerations.
2020: The year of pivoting rapidly
In 2020, we have come to a turning point. How can universities support communities and prioritise community needs in the face of current challenges? Beyond this, what can universities do to make education equitable in the near future? What can we do for the people starting their adulthood in a recession, and for those who will make up our workforce at a time when the impact of the climate crisis will hit hardest?
And how does this happen when the very definition of a university in Australia is in dispute?
Responding to big issues or complex problems requires connecting people across sectors and disciplines, using the range of experience and expertise towards collective problem solving.
Our Vice-Chancellor, Attila Brungs, reflected on the role of universities recently in an interview with Assoc. Professor Tamson Pietsch as part of The New Social Contract podcast developed at UTS by Impact Studios. He said:
We have to use our existing knowledge to actually engage with society for two reasons. One - because we’ve a lot of knowledge that can help society through challenges it’s facing. But two - to listen to society in ways we’ve never listened to before.
Unless we listen and engage in a very different way than we’ve done in the past, we’ll be providing solutions to problems no one really cares about, and that is a complete waste of time, money and resources at a period of history when we cannot afford to do that.
I think there’s a complete shift, particularly in the post-COVID world, on how we engage with society in different ways to solve the problems that they need now.
We also try to measure what social benefit we have right across the university and hold everything to account against that, because even in the good times - and these are far from the good times - you can’t do everything. You have to make a choice. Do I do this education or do I do that? Do I work at this community group or do I support that government policy? To make those choices, you need a framework that comes back to, at its essence, measuring how much broad social impact you can have.
Our current higher education situation means many things, but primarily it requires us to reimagine what a university is and what its primary relationship is to broader society. Now is the time for action. We have the opportunity to reimagine our societies – to act to bring about a different world.
The university is a public institution that exists for social good. Universities should see themselves as key drivers and agents of change.
Institutions of trust
We are also lucky to occupy a position of relatively rare trust. Universities fared comparatively well, in a context of declining levels of trust in other institutions.
But it is still true that the university model of learning and engagement can prioritise certain types of knowledge – and types of people – above others. We need to transform this if we are going to truly serve society.
We cannot afford to lose this moment. We need to become champions of the unique role that universities can play in society and carve out a new model for our universities based on partnership and reciprocity. We can no longer reply so heavily on global rankings. We have to find ways to demonstrate our broader social impact. And we need to shift university culture to get there. The launch in 2021 of the Australian Carnegie Community Engagement Classification will be one way to support internal cultural change across participating institutions.
As we head to the end of a tumultuous and, for many around the world, tragic year. I still feel positive that we can get there. I see evidence of this around me every day.
COVID-19 has demonstrated that the creation of new knowledge for a social purpose, has the capacity to transform us, and in doing so bring about a new social license for universities.