Imagining the Inclusive
University of the Future
Professor Louise Morley
University of Sussex, UK
(http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cheer/).
18 April, 2020

•
•
•
18 April, 2020

•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
18 April, 2020

Caught between:
 Archaism
 Hyper-modernisation
Negotiating:
 Nostalgia
 Frenzy
 Inertia
Tensions between:
 Desire
 Desiccation
 Distributive justice
18 April, 2020

 Quality Assurance
 Excellence
 Knowledge Economy
 Innovation and Enterprise
 Knowledge Transfer
 Teaching and Learning
 Lifelong Learning
 Employability
 Globalisation
 Internationalisation
 Civic Engagement
 Digitisation
 Economic Impact
 League Tables
18 April, 2020

Are current HE policy discourses:
 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)
18 April, 2020

• 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%
18 April, 2020

• 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?
18 April, 2020

•
•
•
(Appadurai, 2010)
18 April, 2020

18 April, 2020

Dystopian Futures and Cultures of
Closure
• Callousness of prestige
•
Decline in academic freedom
• Employees permanently temporary
•
Job training, not education
• Teacherless classrooms
•
Increased political, cultural and economic assault
•
Corporatisation/ academic-capitalist values
• Countercultures and opposition crushed.
18 April, 2020
(Bousquet, 2008)

(Bradwell,
2009)
•
Open Access Publishing
• Flexible learning outside the university
• Social media
• Progressive Austerity
(Reeves, 2009)
• Strategic technological investment
• 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.
18 April, 2020

Absences and Silences
• Learning Landscapes/ Aesthetics/
Spatial Justice/
(Lambert, 2010; Neary, 2010)
• Affective Domain
(Hey, 2009, 2011)
• Environment and Sustainability
(Sterling, 2004)
• Global North/ South Power
Geometries and Cognitive Justice
(Robinson, 2009; Santos, 2007)
• Equalities and Intersectionality of
Social Identities
(Morley et al, 2010)
18 April, 2020

18 April, 2020

Desiring Higher Education
• Aligning personal aspirations with needs of economy
(Appadurai, 2003; Morley et al. 2010; Walkerdine, 2003,
2011).
Globally: 1960 - 13 million
2005 - 137.8 million
2025 - 262 million?
(UNESCO, 2009).
• Multiversities (Fallis, 2007) or
• Multiple providers
(Ball, 2008).
18 April, 2020

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)
18 April, 2020

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.
• Attainment gap in UK HE highest between black and white students
(
Ruebain, 2012).
• Universities = hereditary domain of financially advantaged
(Gopal,
2010).
18 April, 2020

The university
• generates social, educational and cultural opportunities
• plays a major role in social mobility
• produces workers for other influential institutions.
(Holmwood, 2011)
18 April, 2020

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)
18 April, 2020

•
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.
• UK ranked 16 the Global Gender Gap
Index (13 in 2008)
(World Economic Forum, 2011).
In UK, women are:
•
57.1% of students
• 42.6% of academic staff
• 20% of professoriate
•
13% of Vice-Chancellors
(ECU, 2009).
18 April, 2020

•
Gender = access, smart economics, disadvantage and remediation.
• Women’s increased access = feminisation.
• Gender not intersected with other structures of inequality.
• HE products and processes = gender neutral.
•
Power and privilege = undertheorisation.
•
Redistributive measures = social engineering.
• Equity / Affirmative Action = threat to excellence.
18 April, 2020

• Sexual harassment
(Morley, 2011,
NUS, 2010);
• Gender insensitive pedagogy
(Welch, 2006);
• Women and Technology (Clegg,
2011);
• Promotion, professional development and tenure
(Acker,
2009; Knights and Richards, 2003);
• Knowledge production and dissemination
(Hughes, 2002);
• Curricula and subject choices
(Morley et al, 2006).
• Inequalities and gender mainstreaming (Morley, 2010; Rees,
2006).
18 April, 2020

 is a demographic variable (noun), not something that is in continual production
(verb).
 continues to be relayed via everyday practices that elude quality audits.
 is ignored when women suffer discrimination/under-representation.
 is amplified in crisis form when women are
‘over-represented’.
 inequalities resistant to hypermodernisation forces?
18 April, 2020

(De Sousa Santos)
18 April, 2020

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
18 April, 2020

Equity Scorecard: Access to Level 200 on 4
Programmes at a Public University in Tanzania
According to Age, Gender and Socio Economic Status
Programme
Women
Low
SES
% of Students on the Programme
Age 30 or over
Mature and
Low
SES
Women and low
SES
Women
30 or over
Poor
Mature
Women
B. Commerce 32.41 8.59 1.13 0.16 0.32 0.0 0.0
LLB. Law 56.18 13.48 0.0
B.Sc.
Engineering
B. Science with
Education
25.05
11.20
11.65
28.00
1.36
4.80
0.0
0.0
1.6
5.06
1.36
0.80
0.0
1.17
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
18 April, 2020

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
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)
B.Sc.
Optometry
36.36
30.77
8.08
0.00
65.66
0.00
8.08
0.00
2.02
0.00
21.21
0.00
2.02
0.00
18 April, 2020

• Opportunity hording by privileged social groups?
• Middle class capture of affirmative action?
• Are we now educating
‘doctors' daughters rather than doctors' sons’?
(Williams/ Eagleton 2008)
18 April, 2020

‘Now’ (Inclusive) Universities Built on
Yesterday’s (Exclusive) Foundations
Hyper-modernisation of:
• Liquified globalisation
• Entrepreneurial, corporate, commercialised universities
• Digitisation
• Turbo-charged consuming, multitasking students.
Archaism of:
• Male dominance of leadership
• Gender inequalities and feminisation fears
• Unequal participation rates for different social groups.
18 April, 2020

The (Inclusive) 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 and affective domains.
•
Consider the collective/ public as well as the private benefits of knowledge/
HE.
•
Include more accountability on social inequalities.
• Contribute to wealth/ opportunity distribution as well as to wealth creation.
18 April, 2020

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?’
18 April, 2020