Universities must harness their new-found agility to build a new relationship with society

The list of things that we are told are badly wrong with our universities seems very, very long.

Universities are teaching too many students. I’ve heard that we’d be better off if we channeled more young people straight into work and returned to the days of elite higher education.

But at the same time, universities are also too elitist, failing to reflect the diversity of the communities they serve, and failing to support social mobility.

Universities are teaching the wrong subjects. It is claimed that too many students are apparently doing “useless” degrees which don’t benefit the individual, or the economy.

Universities are using the wrong delivery methods, fetishizing an old fashioned ideal of a three or four year residential degree and inefficiently inflating costs.

Universities are carrying out too much self-indulgent research, conducted by out-of-touch academics in ivory towers and shared only in obscure journals that no one reads.

Universities are providing confusing and contradictory advice on major public issues – such as the coronavirus pandemic. How many times have you heard that university experts can not be trusted?

Universities are in hock to business – accepting money with too many strings attached and compromising academic freedom.

But at the same time, they’re not close enough to business, failing to properly connect with companies for the good of the knowledge economy.

Universities are failing the next generation of academic talent – casualizing their workforce and propagating unrealistic and unsustainable career paths for the next generation.

Universities are exploiting international students, treating them merely as cash cows and favouring their admission ahead of home-grown talent.

Universities are too deeply mired in the culture war. According to one prominent western world leader, universities are in the business of “radical left indoctrination, not education”.

Universities are old fashioned, slow to adapt and change, set in their ancient ways.

And, I’m hearing more and more, that universities – or at least some of them - deserve to fail.

I never cease to be astounded by the number of politicians and newspaper columnists in the West who say – once their own children have graduated from elite schools, of course – that we have simply too many universities.

Much of this criticism, I’m sure we can all agree, is deeply, deeply unfair.

Indeed, much of it comes from political forces in various parts of the world that perhaps have an interest in undermining critical thinking. There are many world leaders not at all keen on institutions whose raison d’etre is to seek after truth, to question received wisdom, to deploy facts, research, evidence and to act as society’s critic and as society’s conscience.

But some of the criticisms, I think we have to admit, are fair. Or at least come from a more reasonable place. I don’t think anyone could argue, for example, that the universities usually lauded as the world’s greatest are doing enough to ensure that they are properly inclusive.

Few could also claim that universities are doing all in their power to nurture and develop the next generation of academic talent, providing stable and secure career paths.

But whatever the rights and wrongs of the long, long list of criticisms so often now thrown at universities, one thing is clear: despite their almost unimaginable capacity to help make our world a better place, universities in many corners of the world have an image problem.

Universities’ immense public good is simply not (in some countries more than others) as widely understood or as appreciated as it deserves to be. As indeed it needs to be.

This is deeply unfair and frustrating particularly because the current global health and economic crisis we are facing seems to so obviously, so unequivocally, illustrate the extraordinary deep and wide positive impact universities have on the world.

From the international teams of biomedical scientists racing against time to develop tests, treatments and vaccines to tackle the pandemic, to the social scientists helping us to understand and mitigate the profound socio-economic fall-out of the crisis, to the arts and humanities scholars bringing vital critical thinking and communications skills to help us all imagine a different future for humanity itself: there is quite evidently no doubt that universities have an absolutely fundamental role in freeing the world from this terrible pandemic and its devastating effects.

And they will play a vital part in the world’s recovery from this crisis while at the same time managing internal crises of their own: the pandemic has shaken universities to their core: shutting laboratories; locking down campuses; halting the global flow of talent; forcing the world’s students on-line; and, for many, causing extreme, possibly existential, financial distress.

The resilience and innovation and spirit that many universities across the globe have demonstrated already in this crisis has been extraordinary – and inspirational.

So we need to tap into that amazing spirit of resilience and innovation.

Yes, we need to take a hard look at what we do, and ask what can be done better. What must change. Plenty should. We need to unite as a global sector, share our experiences across borders, understand our common goals, and learn from the best practice we see right across the world: in the global north and the global south.

But we also need to connect with the communities who fail to see the value of universities. We need to shout about our achievements, we must celebrate our unique ability to make the world a better place, and we need to be relentless in giving this message to our political paymasters and especially the wider public.

We need to renegotiate and refresh our compact with society.

In preparing for the 2020 Times Higher Education World Academic Summit we asked many friends and stakeholders across the world to address the question: is this a new dawn for higher education?

I was really stuck by one comment from Kate Eichhorn, a professor at the New School in New York. She said that she had real optimism that the global crisis meant that “universities have realised for the first time that they don’t have to move slowly. That they can actually solve problems quickly.”

She said that universities had discovered a “new found agility”.

I know that the global higher education sector can harness this newly discovered agility, can capitalise on the outstanding spirit of resilience and innovation that has already been demonstrated, and can ensure that there is a bright, optimistic and inspirational new dawn for global higher education.

All content from the THE World Academic Summit is available on THE's on-line event platform for the rest of 2020. Register.