Imagining the
University
of the Future
Professor Louise Morley
Centre for Higher Education and
Equity Research (CHEER)
University of Sussex, UK
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/education/cheer
The University of the Past
•Elitism
•Exclusion
•Inequalities
The University of Today
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•
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Liquified
Expanded
Globalised
Borderless/ Edgeless
Marketised/ Corporatised
Technologised
Neo-liberalised
Privatised
Openly Accessible (MOOCs,
journals)
• Culture wars e.g. privileging
science, number and economic
returns over the social.
Turbulence and Torpor
Caught between:
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Archaism
Hyper-modernisation
Negotiating:
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Nostalgia
Frenzy
Inertia
Tensions between:
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Desire
Desiccation
Distributive justice
Shifting Values, Geographies and
Constituencies
• Competitive Global Knowledge/
Prestige Economy
• Commodification of Knowledge - For
whom/ what/ how?
• Legitimate/ illegitimate academic
inquiry (Butler, 2006)
• Economics Imperialism (Allais, 2012)
• Access/ Entitlement
• Asian Century
• Universities as Sites of Marketization
and Resistance
Do The Dominant Discourses
Excite and Delight You?
 Excellence
 Knowledge Economy
 Innovation and Enterprise
 Knowledge Transfer
 Teaching and Learning
 Widening Participation
 Lifelong Learning
 Employability
 Globalisation
 Internationalisation
 Digitisation
 Economic Impact
 Quality Assurance
 League Tables
Futurology/ Alternativity
• Are current policy discourses:
Limiting/ generating creative
thinking about the future of
universities?
Commensurate with
aspirations/ desires of
students/ staff/ public?
Reducing universities to
delivery agencies for
government-decreed
outcomes? (Young, 2004)
Whose Imaginary?
• Who/what is currently informing
policy? (Ball and Exley, 2009)
• Neo-liberalism/ austerity rather
than academic imaginaries or
social movements?
• What new vocabularies can be
marshalled to consider the
morphology of the university of
the future?
• ‘We inherit the future, not just
the past’ (Barad, 2010: 257).
The University of Today
The Knowledge Economy: From
Industrial Capitalism to
Information/Knowledge Capitalism
• Emphasises the importance of knowledge in
creating:
 economic growth
 global competitiveness
• Recognises that information and knowledge
are:
 highly mobile
 can be globally marketed
• Driven by the Network Society (Castells,
1996)
• Promotes dominance of economic theories in
education (Robertson, 2010)
• Drives expansion and widening participation
in HE
(See Drucker, 1993, Peters, 2010; Porter, 1990)
The Prestige Economy: Comparative
Competitivism
Global League Tables
(Shanghai Jiao Tong, QS, Times Higher)
• Competitive measurement of the quality
of universities
• Global comparison, bench-marking and
ranking
• Aspirational framework
• New language/ tools to advance the
idea of a ‘global’ university
• Visibility of universities to each other/
consumers/ funders
• Information for employers/ students as
consumers
• What is not being measured? E.g.
gender equality, diversity and social
inclusion (Groves, 2013).
Toxic Correlations/ Access and
Social Identities
• 4% of UK poorer young people
enter higher education
(David et al, 2009; Hills Report, 2009).
• 5% of this group enter UK’s
top 7 universities (HESA, 2010).
• Universities = hereditary
domain of financially
advantaged (Gopal, 2010).
• Opportunity hording by
privileged social groups?
(Morley, 2012)
Reproducing Power and Privilege?
Graduates from elite universities
control:
the media
politics
the civil service
the arts
the City
law
medicine
big business
the armed forces
the judiciary
think tanks
(Monbiot, 2010)
Snapshot Statistics: Women ViceChancellors (Rectors)
Gendered Knowledge Economy?
(Walby, 2011)
Women less likely to be:
Journal editors/cited in top-rated
journals (Tight, 2008).
Principal investigators
(EC, 2011).
On research boards
Awarded large grants (Croatia
largest gender gap in EU at 23%).
Awarded research prizes
(Nikiforova, 2011).
Keynote conference speakers
(Schroeder et al., 2013).
Ideal Student/ Learning Landscapes
• Students = technologically oriented
(Morris, 2011).
• Sacred/ profane knowledge.
• ‘Just-in-case’, ‘Just-in-time’, ‘wiki’
knowledge (Brabazon, 2007).
• Students as Consumers or
Producers? (Neary, 2013)
• University = literary in structure.
• Tectonic relationship between
ideal / imagined students and new
constituencies?
The University of the Future?
The Edgeless University (Bradwell, 2009)
• Open Access Publishing
• Flexible learning outside the
university
• Social media
• Progressive Austerity (Reeves,
2009)
• New providers
• Collaborative research/ open
research communities
• Universities as partners, not
sole providers of learning,
research
• Engaging stakeholders in
course design
• New forms of accreditation.
University of The Future: Dystopian
Cultures of Closure (Bousquet, 2008)
• Callousness of prestige
• Decline in academic freedom
• Employees permanently temporary
• Job training, not education
• Teacherless classrooms
• Increased political, cultural and
economic assault
• Corporatisation/ academiccapitalist values
• Countercultures and opposition
crushed.
Resistance/ Imaging Alternative
Universities
• Tent City University/ Bank of
Ideas, London, Occupy
Movement, UK
(dreaming another world awake)
• Unitierra, Mexico
(de-schooling, community
projects)
• UNILA (University of Latin
American Integration), Brazil.
(state finance for LA issues)
• QUEST University, Canada
(private, inquiry-based, block
teaching, no departments).
‘Now’ Universities Built on
Yesterday’s Foundations
Hyper-modernisation/ Velocities
of:
• Knowledge = new capital.
• Liquified globalisation
• Entrepreneurial, corporate,
competiive, commercialised
universities
• Digitisation
Archaism of:
• Male dominance of leadership/
knowledge production
• Unequal participation rates for
different social groups
• Constructions of the ‘ideal’
student
• HE as a private, positional
good.
The University of the Future Needs
to...
• Recover critical knowledge and be
a think tank and policy driver.
• Discover new conceptual
grammars to include equalities,
identities, sustainability.
• Reflect on changing learning
landscapes.
• Challenge the dominance of
economic outcomes over the social
purposes and processes of higher
education.
• Contribute to wealth/ opportunity
distribution as well as to wealth
creation.
Follow Up?
• ESRC Seminar Series:
‘Imagining the University of the
Future’
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cheer/esrcse
minars
• Special issue of Contemporary Social
Science (6:2) 2011: ‘Challenge,
Change or Crisis in Global Higher
Education?’
• Morley, L. (2011) Imagining the
University of the Future. In, Barnett,
R. (ed) The Future University: Ideas
and Possibilities. London: Taylor and
Francis: 26-35.
28 June, 2016