In 2020 we've come to a turning point. How can universities support communities and prioritise community needs in the face of the challenges that we now have?
The current century has seen universities face a range of existential challenges. Global rankings and international student income have driven competition between universities. Meanwhile political rhetoric around the purpose of higher education has shifted away from delivering broad social benefit towards a much narrower purpose, the private benefit to individuals – maybe by extension to the industries into which we send these individuals.
But that is not the space where universities can do their best work.
‘As public institutions funded with public money for the purpose of public good, we are a reservoir of resources for communities,’ says Verity Firth, Executive Director of Social Justice at UTS.
‘If we make that purpose explicit and build it in to our strategies, operation and character, we can develop the kind of trust relationship with citizens that make us an asset for everyone.’
Given the political context in which we exist, demonstrating the value of this kind of engagement is paramount to ensuring both its longevity and efficacy.
Reaching the gold standard for university-community engagement
The Centre for Social Justice & Inclusion recently hosted an event, Engagement Endangered, as part of our Future of Education series. The webinar was recorded and is available to watch, along with a transcript.
The US-based Carnegie Foundation has established the recognised gold standard for university-community engagement. Australia is the most recent country to pilot its framework as a means of measuring and evaluating university-community engagement here.
UTS joined the Australian pilot two years ago, as the co-lead in the project along with Charles Sturt University. Last month we submitted our final application to the pilot.
‘The principles of the Carnegie framework are the how, the why, with whom, where, and when of teaching, learning and scholarship. It is about fostering practices that build robust partnerships,’ says Dr Mathew Johnson, President, Albion College, which hosts the Carnegie Foundation in the US.
‘It’s about working in ways which prepare educated engaged citizens, strengthen democratic values and civic responsibility, address critical societal issues, and contribute to the public good through reciprocal and mutually beneficial partnerships between universities and communities.’
Carnegie outlines the next stage for universities. It embraces a model that is outwardly focused, that promotes partnerships of a generation of knowledge, and applies that knowledge and resources in the public and private sectors to address critical social issues, and a broader contribution to public good.
‘The commitment to social justice in Australian institutions is ahead of where most US institutions are, but the Carnegie framework is a way of improving universities’ role in the community and measuring impact,’, says Mathew.
Why does community engagement matter?
At the Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion, we believe that universities have a meaningful role to play in shaping society. Never has that seemed as pressing as right now, facing the rebuilding of a post-COVID world, along with opportunity to seize a moment to accelerate change towards a more equal, sustainable and just society.
What does that look like? In the first week of the pandemic, for example, we had over 50 academics from across the university volunteer their time to work with the state and federal governments, along with community groups, to tackle the challenges of COVID.
Early in the pandemic, UTS – like other universities – put in place student support packages to support those hard hit in our community. As part of this, the Centre for Social Justice & Inclusion developed a Community Ambassador program, where students in need of financial support are given positions as corporate volunteers to go out and work with community and not-for-profit organisations – many of which have lost a lot of their volunteer workforce at the very time when they are most needed.
Similarly, we set up a digital mentoring partnership program in our local area, Glebe. As corporate volunteers, students are partnered with elderly residents at risk of isolation and lack of access to services during the pandemic. The students assist them in digital literacy and online services, while building relationships that benefit both mentors and mentees.
Our vision is to build this kind of program into UTS’s crisis response infrastructure, so that we are using our power as an institution to directly benefit society, and answering a community need.
Measuring our success
These are fantastic examples of the university moving its focus to the outside world. But embracing true community engagement really requires a fundamental shift in the locus of knowledge – from which power is derived in our sector – from the academic sphere to community spheres. We need to embrace new ways of knowing, of embodying knowledge.
‘Engagement is challenging. It is more than just reaching out to different community groups. It is more than just equipping our students with critical skills,’ says Verity.
‘We need to do this so that we can continue to build better solutions, to tackle problems which the community and government regard as the most urgent, and to work on what is most important to the people who make up our society. Having the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification will help us ensure that our efforts are demonstrable, measurable and scalable.’