To New York, first, to attend a British Council meeting promoting increased cooperation between British and U.S. universities. Then, on to Washington to attend the first meeting of the ACE Blue Ribbon Panel on Global Engagement. Both meetings were undoubtedly worthwhile, not only for their ability to give participants a clear view of the issues now facing higher education but also because they showed the extent to which higher-education systems on both sides of the Atlantic are under stress.
Take finance. Whether it is the seismic shock that has just hit the U.K. as government spending cuts have been translated into what could be up to an 80 percent cut to the core teaching grant with the consequent need to revamp the system of student support, or the financial pressures on so many U.S. universities, exacerbated by rumbustious state legislatures keen to emphasize productivity. Or take the rising tide of regulation, most especially around student teaching expectations. In the U.K., the Quality Assurance Agency is actually proposing to enforce national standards in academic qualifications. This is on top of reams of information, advice, and guidance that already come from government agencies. In the United States, state legislatures are intent on examining rates of return on public investment which are likely to lead to some very similar outcomes (see, in particular, the remarkable piece by Stephanie Simon and Stephanie Banchero in TheWall Street Journal on the 23rd of October which shows attempts to audit individual staff members for their net financial contribution to the university. Or take student access where again there are very similar issues (although the U.S. is a salutary reminder that it is imperative to be very careful about prioritizing part-time students who often have low completion rates). Or take the rise of nonprofits where the current issues in the U.S. should act as a warning to the U.K. government. Or, finally, take visa issues. On both sides of the pond, governments have clamped down on student and staff visas with sometimes deleterious effects on our ability to operate as truly global universities.
And yet … what was also apparent from both meetings was not just a sense of challenge but also a sense of renewed idealism about the sector. In the face of all the difficulties, participants understood that universities were a vital building block of a global civil society and a global citizenry. They understood the need for more cooperation, so as to form a community of communities which could sometimes act outside the traditional bounds of sovereignty. And they understood the need to recast their institutions to take these roles into account, as in Lou Anna Kimsey Simon’s visionary recasting of the land grant university as a “world grant” university founded on the values of co-creation and co-prosperity (see “Affirming the Morrill Act for a Twenty-first-century Global Society”) or John Sexton’s notion of a global networked university.
So in very challenging times, what I got out of these two meeting was not just hope but real propositions for how to change how we think about what universities can be which can inspire us to make renewed efforts to light the way ahead.
