Fractie SAM on LinkedIn: University council Update | July 11, 2024💙 In the 6th and last… (2024)

ARE WE MISSING THE WOODS FOR THE TREES?All educational institutions seem to be working towards promoting their national and global rankings in one way or the other. An array of indices is looked into for awarding ranks, such as students to teacher ratio, number of international students, number of international faculty members, grants brought in by faculty, number of publications churned out by the faculty, patents filed, PhDs graduated etc. But, the students’ satisfaction and their well-being do not seem to figure while evaluating the institutions for ranking. When a new faculty member joins an institution, even before they are mentored for their new role, it is emphasized that they start taking research students, write grant proposals and set their eyes on upward movement. In the process, the losers are the students and the teaching/learning ecosystem. Aren’t we doing a great disservice to our younger generation by literally dis-incentivizing any interaction the new faculty would have with the students? No wonder, many students feel lost and take extreme steps.The students in many government institutions are from a varied background of the society, but even now the faculty members in these institutions are from a very narrow cross-section. In many engineering departments of old IITs, the number of women faculty members and faculty members from marginalized groups are very few. Many of the faculty members come into the profession straight after PhD. They are neither mentored for their roles nor are they sensitized about the paramount importance of interacting with students. Undue attention is given to numbers while the faculty are being hired/promoted: how many PhD students are graduated by a faculty? How many papers a faculty has published? What are the citation numbers, h-index, i-10 index etc.? How much of money a faculty has brought in in the form of grants? In this process centered only on metrics, the casualty is students’ well-being.It is true that it is not easy to quantify the quality of faculty interactions with students and also the quality of teaching. If we do pose questions in open fora getting ideas for quantifying these, we will be able to find a tangible methodology. It is important for people at the helm of education sector to ponder over these issues so that the damage perpetrated on the student community is contained and reversed in the future.

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It is not faculty governance- it is co-governance. For too long, boards, administrators, and even student governance bodies have abdicated co-governing. Faculty are critical at universities, but no single group should co-govern unchecked. It results in lack of strategic and operational balance in an institution.

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Please consider submitting a paper to our special issue, "Educating for Societal Transitions", in the peer-reviewed journal Higher Education Research & Development (HERD). How is higher education evolving to catalyse societal transitions in times of complexity and change? Share your scholarly insights and innovations. Full details on the call for papers here https://lnkd.in/evPjqYu8This special issue explores innovations in higher education that engage with societal transitions. We welcome scholarly contributions that engage with practices and theories that address the challenges of navigating complexity and change in these uncertain times. This call emphasises that universities cannot work in isolation but must engage collaboratively with other sectors of society. Importantly, it underscores a broader commitment to societal futures that goes beyond economic concerns, challenging the notion that the purpose of university education is to meet industry needs. What are the creative seeds of change emerging in higher education that challenge traditional university boundaries, foster partnerships with external stakeholders, and adopt a longer-term perspective?Timeline: Full Submission 30 June 2024Round 1 reviews returned: August 2024*Revisions completed: 15 November 2024Articles finalised: March 2025Copy-editing period: April–May 2024Anticipated publication date: Issue 5 2025*All authors considered for the special issue will be asked to review one other Special Issue article that aligns with their area of expertise.Giedre Kligyte Alex Baumber Susie Pratt Steven MarshallBinBin Jiang Pearce Carissa Champlin Éva Kalmár Steven Flipse David Abbink Deborah Forster Sake Zijlstra Liesbeth Noordegraaf-Eelens Bregje F. Van Eekelen Arwin Van Buuren Nikki Brand Maarten Frens Wilma Oosthoek Nina Bohm Iris van der Tuin Mascha van der Voort Klaasjan Visscher Irene Visscher-Voerman Nienke Nieveen Julia Wittmayer Derk Loorbach

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A recent trend among some politicians and university managers, in the era of fee-paying, has been to urge that students be viewed as ‘customers’ who have purchased an educational package. Yet changes to the system of university funding, which remain controversial, should not be taken too far in terms of eroding or undermining students’ attitudes to learning. After all, they are purchasing an educational programme– not a guaranteed degree. Academically, the student- customers are not ‘always right’. They do not always get top marks. They are expected to work hard for their degrees.And, in return, they expect high-quality courses and individually tailored feedback for their efforts.Tutors of doctoral students for their part offer a mixture of personal encouragement and intellectual criticism. They give credit for the technical presentation and historical content of all works submitted (draft chapters, reports and so forth), whether they (the tutors) personally agree with the arguments or otherwise. It is a professional but also a deeply personal process. At heart, the exchanges between tutors and research students constitute a dialogue between two thinking individuals, which generates camaraderie of mutual effort.Money can’t buy the experience of historical understanding. Instead, researchers gain expertise by well-sustained effort, supported by apt encouragement and criticism from their tutors and often from fellow students as well. There is a further critical dimension to the research students’ commitment which also needs frank acknowledgement. They have no guarantee of certainty of outcome. The great expansion of access to academic life since the 1960s has allowed many more people access to advanced research– and to the sheer joy and passion it can generate. Yet there is an attendant risk of raising expectations which cannot be guaranteed, particularly in terms of jobs at the end of the research journey. In 1969, the number of history doctorates awarded in the UK was no more than 20.Since then, there has been a veritable explosion of activity. In 2015 the comparable number was 545. Successful research historians with a doctorate are therefore entering a world of competition and precariousness.216p 2022University of London Presshttps://lnkd.in/gFku4PrZ

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Adopting a digital platform purpose-built for faculty affairs has many advantages. So many, in fact, that Elizabeth City State University is still discovering new ones.Read this essential case study to learn how Interfolio helped ECSU modernize processes and capture the full scope of their work–enabling this innovative HBCU to drive strategic alignment and demonstrate their institution’s impact.Read Now:https://lnkd.in/gwX74dfM

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At the request of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science we are conducting a study together with & Oberon Onderzoek en Advies on the content of institutional plans of Dutch #HigherEd institutions. Our colleagues Harry De Boer & Frans Kaiser are working on this super interesting project that aims to make better use of institutional plans and gain insight into the trends, developments and themes that universities focus on. These trends and developments are compared with the #policy themes of the 🇳🇱 Ministry and contribute to the dialogue on higher education policy. https://lnkd.in/ekUguSJj

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KEYNOTE. Equity in Higher Education? Yes we can!Equity in higher education is a pressing issue warranting concerted attention and action. This keynote seeks to elucidate the current state of inequity in higher education, examining the structural, systemic factors that perpetuate disparities. We draw on higher-education data, highlighting the disparities across socioeconomic and racial lines. Importantly, our approach empirically rejects deficit and colorblind ideologies which ignore or oversimplify the complexities of systemic inequity. Instead, we argue that confronting these issues directly and honestly is not only possible but necessary. We propose innovative strategies and policy recommendations that acknowledge and value diversity, are underpinned by recent research, and are inspired by successful case studies from around the globe. These strategies aim to foster inclusivity, improve access, and enhance outcomes for all students. Emphasizing the need for institutional commitment, faculty engagement, and curricular transformation, we offer a robust blueprint for change. This presentation underscores the pivotal role of higher education institutions in advancing equity by actively acknowledging and addressing systemic disparities.https://lnkd.in/eSDRR4Vn

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Michael Wesley’s book Mind of the Nation was something of a pleasant surprise for me, directly addressing the contested place universities have in Australia’s socio-cultural landscape. I wrote my honours thesis about the changing purpose of Australian universities and I’ve since been fascinated by how discourses of purpose can constrain or direct universities activities. Mind of a Nation asks some substantial questions about the role universities play in our society, locating them at tension points on political matters from economic goal-setting to freedom of speech. Are universities too commercialized? Do they adequately provide value? Are they inclusive and adequately funded?Wesley suggests that the Australian public holds three distinct attitudes towards universities: agnosticism, aspiration, and antagonism. Wesley illustrates these paradoxes across themes of money, value, loyalty, integrity, ambition, and privilege, examining the tensions and conflicts within Australian society's expectations of universities.For me one line of exploration stood out from the Privilege chapter: dimensions of institutional diversity are guided by policy settings that come from government. A focus on relative performance metrics like international rankings and rankings of QILT results encourages vertical differentiation. The review of provider categories in 2019 was an opportunity to address this. However, the new categories still do not horizontally differentiate between kinds of universities. If all a student’s study options are categorically the same, then the distinction becomes “which one is the best?”.A more helpful sector structure would be one where providers are differentiated by mission, scale, focus, format, and other institutional factors other than aggregated scores which place them along a continuum from ‘good’ to ‘bad’. Then, the student is guided to make a selection that best aligns with the goals they have for their study.Getting that horizontal rather than vertical differentiation should be a policy goal if we’re serious about tertiary education (i.e. including vocational education) supporting a future society that is highly diversified, productive, equitable, and adaptable. The Accord Final Report discusses a revamping of the institutional compacts, which is promising, but does so in the context of government’s role in centralised planning.Betting the house on one model of provider that is imposed from on high is a risky strategy. Horizontal diversification should be embedded in tertiary education policy as a necessity.MIND OF THE NATION, MICHAEL WESLEY, 2023, LA TROBE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 256 PP

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Higher Education World IT’S A PRESTIGE THING Fostering a culture where new forms of higher education provision can thrive has long been an ambition of policymakers in the UK. Despite all the talk, however, the challenge remains just as daunting for those looking to get something different off the ground. This is particularly the case if both your name and your methods are alien in a sector dominated by prestige and tradition. Three years in, interdisciplinary campus struggles to make nameLondon Interdisciplinary School has geared its courses around tackling real-world challenges, but some students seem reluctant to step outside the traditional higher education sectorThe London Interdisciplinary School launched three years ago with grand plans to offer a single course that draws on several subjects and is geared towards addressing “real-world challenges”. Three years after the London Interdisciplinary School (LIS) opened its doors tostudents, its dean, Carl Gombrich, describes its curriculum as“radical but simple”.The institution offers only asingle course – Interdisciplinary Problems and Methods, which draws onskills from such diverse fields asEnglish literature, mathematics, neuroscience and political science tostudy “real-world challenges”, including sustainability and the ethics ofartificial intelligence, holding that across-disciplinary approach isneeded to prepare students totackle multifaceted global issues. https://www.lis.ac.uk/

Dare I say that the professoriate's scholastic work and grants factors little into the average high school student's decision where to attend. Nor is it the number of tenured faculty at an institution. It's normally the cost, availability of the program of interest, proximity to home, institutional reputation, etc. Increasingly, it's the career pathway opportunities.Yet tenure normally weights scholarship higher than teaching or service (at least at research universities). Creative teaching, innovative course design, introduction of technology is often *discouraged* because it distracts from the tenure process and counts little toward the triumvirate. Ironically, some of my best faculty over the years were adjuncts, non-tenure-track instructors, and grad students. Many of the FT faculty in my travels could care less about teaching in large lecture halls filled with lower division students. I clearly remember talking to my disengaged Econ faculty member exactly one time for a total of 5 minutes over the course of a semester. (Because it was an assembly line.)No wonder HE is reeling from public backlash regarding sclerotic norms.

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