In the midst of technological, political and economic disruption to UK higher education, Dr Claire Taylor (Vice Principal, St Mary's University College, Twickenham) makes an SOS call.
The market for futures thinking, predictions and provocative scenarios with regards to higher education has proliferated over recent years. There has been a marked rise in the publication of articles, papers, and blogs all designed to disrupt traditional notions of UK higher education (HE), often by employing colourful metaphorical devices to shock, challenge and provoke the reader.
In 2009 PA Consulting’s report ‘Escaping the Red Queen Effect’ quickly became a classic in certain circles. For me, at the time, it was a very influential, memorable and thought provoking report. Using the imagery of the Red Queen from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, and what Alice found there it painted a world where you had to run faster to keep up. In HE terms this world was quickly becoming impossible to inhabit and so the report encouraged us to do things differently, not just more frenetically. Further metaphors ensued with the report suggesting different models of university which could achieve the ‘difference’ needed, including ‘The Amazon University’ which exploits the potential of technology-enhanced process and course delivery options; ‘The Learning Hotel’ which would host co-operative, collaborative and co-production learning and research activity; or ‘The Umbrella University’, a holding structure for a group of separately managed learning providers and knowledge transfer organisations. More recently, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) warned us that ‘An Avalanche is Coming’ (2012) in a report that used the language of suffering, tension and threat in relation to current global economic, political and societal challenges and how they impact upon higher education. And then came the latest report from the UK International Unit and Leadership Foundation for Higher Education (LFHE) ‘Horizon Scanning’ (2013) authored by the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education and containing predictions for what higher education may look like in 2020. This report was relatively restrained in its use of provocative imagery and contained some useful, evidence-based insights in to what may be in store for global higher education. However, its epilogue did remind the reader that disruptive political change is an unpredictable force in itself.
Whilst painting different scenarios and employing varying metaphorical devices, such reports have one thing in common. They are designed to provoke a reaction and to get the sector talking and debating about the future of higher education in the UK and beyond. And to be fair, they generally do this effectively. Indeed, such publications are covered well by the press and are increasingly trailed and promoted via social media.
But I am worried. Worried because there is something missing in all reports such as these; a common factor that is at best side-lined, and at worst buried and obliterated, by a narrative dominated by intellectual provocations, the notions of disruptive systems and technologies and the cataclysmic effects of dysfunctional global economies. Whilst we focus upon avoiding avalanches, running away from the Red Queen and scanning the horizon; and whilst we may embrace the notion of political, technological and economic ‘disruption’ as the norm, we must also issue an SOS as we are in grave danger of missing what must form the heart and soul of any higher education learning experience - indeed what must be at the very epicentre of all that we do:
- learning and teaching in community;
- valuing people;
- a relational outlook.