Starting with why: What are universities for?

Professor Tansy JessopUSW Senior Management Conference on L&T

@tansyjtweets28 November 2016

Session outline

1. Reflections on the Market and HE2. Individual reflective activity3. Diamond Nine Activity4. Visualising different purposes5. Perspectives on the purpose of HE6. So what is the purpose of Higher Education?

Why go to university?

Is it worth it when for the price you can get…

• 108,000 Freddos @25p each• 98 Freddos per day

• 6,293 Big Mac Meals @£4.29• 5.7 burgers a day

A new mini-cooper Clubman S Automatic

“An unprecedented barrage of game-changing policy developments”

““We have lost a golden age that we did not realise we had”

“Nothing makes sense”

Of course, too many people go to university now, don’t they? I mean, what is the point?”So, with one eye on the departure board, I found myself launching into a robust defence of UK higher education. …benefits.. for the individual student, for the nation and for global humanity. I tried to paint the bigger picture of education as a public good… Quite rightly, they were concerned with the level of tuition fees, student living costs and the prospects of employment upon graduation.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/its-time-go-back-basics-demonstrate-benefits-higher-education

So what is the market doing to our vision of HE and pedagogy?

1. Narrows the focus to measurable outputs (DLHE, NSS, TEF, PTES, PRES, CRM, KPIs).

2. Constructs students as consumers

3. Reduces playful, risky, thought-provoking, relational, deliciously quirky teaching and learning

4. The language of audit, standards, and metrics is dominant.

Back to basics

Let’s explore our conceptions of what university is for…

a) In an individual exerciseb) In a ‘Diamond Nine’c) Through Art

Activity 1: Postcards from the Edge

Choose a picture that you are drawn to. Don’t think too much about it.

Jottings

1. Why did you choose the picture?

2. How does the picture relate to the benefits university has given to your life?

3. What does the picture speak to about your hopes and dreams for 21st century graduates?

4. What shadows do you imagine for USW in 2016, which link to the picture?

Talk to someone – not a usual suspect

• Chat about the picture and your thoughts

• Swap over after five minutes.

Activity 2: Diamond Nine

• In groups, open your envelope.

• It contains statements about the purpose of HE

• Agree a hierarchy of nine in clumpy bits

• Discard, amend, reach consensus

Consensus building

• Let’s look at the top categories (this may be messy!)

Personal growth

Citizenship

Social justice and

transformation

Economy and jobs

Character and moral virtue

Knowledge and

intellectual growth

Creativity

Activity 3: World Café Art

• Choose a table with the educational purpose that most interests you, or you want to explore most.

• What would learning and teaching look like in a world where this purpose was dominant?

• Draw an image or metaphor (which may be an animal,

plant, machine etc.) which represents this purpose as the central driver of Learning and Teaching.

Show and Tell

• Choose a spokesperson to share your drawing

• Tell the group what it represents, and why you chose the image/metaphor

• How has thinking visually influenced your thinking about this purpose in HE?

What is an educated person?

It means respecting the miracle of life, being empowered in the use of language, and responding sensitively to the aesthetic. Being truly educated means putting learning in historical perspective, understanding groups and institutions, having reverence for the natural world, and affirming the dignity of work. And, above all, being an educated person means being guided by values and beliefs and connecting the lessons of the classroom to the realities of life.

(Boyer 1995)

Quinlan’s Virtues

A new model (Barnett and Coate 2005)

• Knowing is about content• Acting is about becoming a

historian, actor, psychologist, or philosopher• Being is about

understanding yourself, orienting yourself and relating your knowledge and action to the world

Knowing

Being

Acting

Reframing Barnett and Coate 2005

• What is about content• How is about becoming a

historian, actor, psychologist, or philosopher• Why is about

understanding yourself, orienting yourself and relating your knowledge and action to the world

What

Why

How

So what are universities for?

References

Barnett, R. and Coate, K. 2005. Engaging the Curriculum in Higher Education. SRHE

Boyer, E. 1995. What is an Educated Person?

Collini, S. 2012. What are Universities for? London: Penguin Books.

Mann, S. J. 2008. Study, Power and the University. Maidenhead, Open University Press.

Quinlan, K. 2014. Developing student character through disciplinary curricula: an analysis of UK QAA subject benchmark statements, Studies in Higher Education. 41(6) 1041-54.

Times Higher Education Supplement (various)