Centre for Higher Education
and Equity Research (CHEER)
Imagining the (Quality)
University of the Future
Professor Louise Morley
University of Sussex, UK
(http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cheer/).
28 June, 2016
The University of the Past
•Elitism
•Exclusion
•Inequalities
28 June, 2016
The University of Today
• Diversified
• Liquified
• Expanded
• Globalised
• Borderless/ Edgeless
• Marketised
• Technologised
• Neo-liberalised
• Privatised
• Quality Assured
28 June, 2016
Turbulence and Torpor
Caught between:
 Archaism
 Hyper-modernisation
Negotiating:
 Nostalgia
 Frenzy
 Inertia
Tensions between:
 Desire
 Desiccation
 Distributive justice
28 June, 2016
Futurology
Are current policy discourses on
quality:
Limiting or generating creative
thinking about the future of
universities?
Commensurate with aspirations/
desires of students/ staff?
Reducing universities to delivery
agencies for government-decreed
outcomes? (Young, 2004)
28 June, 2016
Whose Imaginary?
• Neo-liberalism/ austerity rather
than academic imaginaries or
social movements?
• Who/what is currently informing
policy? (Ball and Exley, 2009)
• What new vocabularies can be
marshalled to consider the
morphology of the university of
the future?
28 June, 2016
Policy Drivers For Quality
• Recession, selectivity and
austerity
• Academic managerialism
• Certainty and exactitude
• Consumer empowerment
• Marketisation
• Enhancing productivity
• Allocation of funding
• Maintaining/ enhancing
standards
28 June, 2016
Impact on Higher Education
• League Tables/ Prestige Economy
• Changing Social Relations
• Changing Pedagogical Relations
• Changing Priorities
• Changing Professional Identities
• Differential Funding
• The Affective Domain
• Managed Productivity
• Increased Workloads
(see Morley, 2003, 2011)
28 June, 2016
Quality as Text?
What signs of quality
are valued?
Does quality
assurance measure
the factors that
students value?
Is quality about textual
representation?
28 June, 2016
Technology or Ideology?
• Quality is frequently invoked
when equality is raised.
• Is equality invoked in quality
discourses?
• Top Universities in League
Tables have lowest numbers of
women professors.
UK = 20%
Oxford = 9.4%
28 June, 2016
Policy Closures
• Are there separate policy
trajectories for quality and equality?
• Is quality a disembodied/ socially
decontextualised discourse?
• Is quality associated with elitism
and exclusionary practices?
• Is difference conceptualised as
disparagement e.g. ‘non-traditional
students’?
28 June, 2016
Students as Consumers?
• ‘Student voice’/ democracy/
empowerment = consumption
practices and service-level
agreements?
• Criteria for best practices = the
intellectual field, or client
satisfaction?
• Are quality discourses culturally
specific?
28 June, 2016
Global Expansion
Globally:
1960 - 13 million
2005 - 137.8 million
2025 - 262 million?
(UNESCO, 2009).
Asia
 China enrolment is now 20% (Marginson et
al., 2011)
 India (world’s third largest HE system) plans
15% by 2012
Sub-Saharan Africa
 8.7% annual expansion
 5.1% for the world as a whole.
Regional Variations in Participation
 Iceland 65.6%
 Austria 60.7% (UNESCO, 2009)
 Tanzania 1% (DFID, 2008)
28 June, 2016
Closing the Gender Gap?
• Global Gender Parity Index of 1.08
(UNESCO, 2009).
• The number of male students globally
quadrupled from 17.7 to 75.1 million
between 1970-2007.
• The number of female students rose
sixfold from 10.8 to 77.4 million.
In UK, women are:
• 57.1% of students
• 42.6% of academic staff
• 20% of professoriate
• 13% of Vice-Chancellors (ECU, 2009).
28 June, 2016
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).
• More black young men in prison in
UK and US than in HE.
• Universities = hereditary domain
of financially advantaged
(Gopal, 2010).
• Social disadvantage escaping the
gaze of the audit culture.
28 June, 2016
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)
28 June, 2016
Sociology of Absences
(De Sousa Santos)
28 June, 2016
Widening Participation in Higher
Education in Ghana and Tanzania
Measuring:
• Sociological variables of gender, age,
socio-economic status (SES)
In Relation to:
• Educational Outcomes: access,
retention and achievement.
In Relation to:
• 4 Programmes of Study in each HEI.
• 2 Public and 2 private HEIs.
• Intersectionality
(Morley et al. 2010 http://www.sussex.ac.uk/wphegt
28 June, 2016
Equity Scorecard: Access to Level 200 on 4
Programmes at a Public University in Tanzania
According to Age, Gender and Socio Economic Status
% of Students on the Programme
Women
Low
SES
Age 30
or over
Mature
and
Low
SES
B. Commerce
32.41
8.59
1.13
0.16
0.32
0.0
0.0
LLB. Law
56.18
13.48
0.0
0.0
5.06
0.0
0.0
25.05
11.65
1.36
0.0
1.36
1.17
0.0
11.20
28.00
4.80
1.6
0.80
0.0
0.0
Programme
B.Sc.
Engineering
B. Science with
Education
Women
and low
SES
Women
30 or
over
Poor
Mature
Women
28 June, 2016
Equity Scorecard: Access to Level 200 on 4
Programmes at a Public University in Ghana
According to Age, Gender and Socio Economic Status
(SES)
% of Students on the Programme
Women
Low
SES
Age 30
or
over
Mature
and
Low
SES
Women
and
low
SES
Women
30
or over
Poor
Mature
Women
B.Commerce
29.92
1.66
5.82
0.00
1.11
0.28
0.00
B.
Management
Studies
47.06
2.94
6.30
0.00
1.68
3.36
0.00
B.Education
(Primary)
36.36
8.08
65.66
8.08
2.02
21.21
2.02
B.Sc.
Optometry
30.77
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
Programme
28 June, 2016
‘Now’ Universities Built on
Yesterday’s Foundations
Hyper-modernisation
• Liquified globalisation
Archaism
 Constructions of the
‘ideal’ student/ experience
• Measurement of quality and
standards
 Male domination of
leadership
• Students as consumers
 Unequal participation
practices
28 June, 2016
Accountability or Accountancy?
For some, quality assurance:
For others, quality assurance:
• has transformative potential
• is democratising
• challenges elitism, mystification
and academic solipsism
• facilitates organisational
development
• modernises/ revitalises archaic
public services
• makes the professions more
responsive to clients/consumers
• drives up standards
• provides new paradigms for
reflection
• is unstable, unreliable and
undesirable
• suppresses critical knowledge
• is irritating and time-hungry forms
of new managerialist ‘noise’
(Deem et al., 2004)
• contributes to a compliance culture
and command economy
• creates potential for
misrecognition and inequalities
• is about suspicion and mistrust
• involves a form of symbolic
violence
28 June, 2016
The (Quality) University of the Future
Needs to...
• Recover critical knowledge and be
a think tank and policy driver.
• Find new conceptual grammars for
theorising quality that incorporate
understanding of equalities.
• Include more accountability on
social inequalities in quality audits.
• Contribute to wealth/ opportunity
distribution as well as to wealth
creation.
28 June, 2016
CHEER
ESRC Seminar Series:
‘Imagining the University of the
Future’
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cheer/esrcseminars
Special issue of Contemporary Social
Science (Volume 6:2, 2011) entitled:
‘Challenge, Change or Crisis in Global
Higher Education?’
28 June, 2016