'International Perspectives in Higher Education is an opportune title at this critical and tumultuous time for universities.
There has never been a time in the UK when universities have been under such pressure – from fiscal constraints, from governments and from public opinion – to modify the ways in which they work. The same pressures seem to be experienced world-wide. So it is crucial that universities do not lose sight of their core purposes, or succumb to pressures in ways that compromise their integrity as academic institutions and as leaders of intellectual thought and debate.
Into this arena I have drawn an array of international writers - giving them only the broadest of areas about which to write, relying on their expertise and interests to provide material relevant to the theme. The reader will not be disappointed with the result, which is varied, creative and yet driven towards an array of shared goals.
In the Introduction, I look at the challenges and opportunities faced by HE today, identifying and interrogating some of the ‘awful -isations and -isms’ of the sector’s current plight: globalisation, marketisation, managerialism and so on. But the real question is: what to do to counter the negative effects of these?
The first part of the book pleads for a return to more ethical values. My own first chapter deconstructs the ethical life of modern universities: the perils and the responses. I find a retreat from ‘old’ religious ethics of the traditional university into the dubious ethics of business and politics.
Dr Carolle Kerry and I have together pursued the theme into the hoary old chestnut of academic freedom, arguing strongly against the more radical statements of some would-be unaccountable academics. But while we acknowledge that universities as employment institutions have a right to expect congruity and conformity of behaviour by staff with respect to moral and ethical behaviour towards students, for example; I also want to make that same morality extend to the treatment of university staff by the nascent Human Resource departments which spring up everywhere and which seem often to be run by people with dubious credentials in, and understanding of, academia. The book shows how this has gradually eroded the academic management of modern universities in favour of an impersonal, money-driven business approach which counts the cost of everything but is losing the value of learning and scholarship in the process.
Though universities may have lost the monopoly of religious foundations, Tom Sherwood, a noted university chaplain from Canada, argues that students still need spirituality to guide their lives and their decisions. This new spirituality is often multi-faith, and in some respects is evolving. Far from diminishing their calls on the chaplaincy, today’s students are increasingly aware of the spiritual in everyday life.
Having established the need for universities to lay ethical foundations for their students, staff and society in general, the book goes on to look specifically at management and leadership in the modern HE institution. Muriel Robinson opens the debate with an unusually candid assessment of the management decisions she has had to make in her own university college, and explores the reasoning that underpins these decisions. Terfot Ngwana (a Cameroonian working in the UK) and Fengshu Liu (with backgrounds in Hong Kong and Norway) examine the positives and negatives of globalisation – the underlying cause, as many see it, of the modern negative trends in university management. Kent Löfgren, from Sweden, traces the changes that the European Union has engineered in HE across not just European countries, but for those HE providers who want to sell their courses and services within the EU community. He argues the case for increased staff training in order to meet the requirements of the Bologna Agreement and gives a step-by-step guide to the pioneering work carried through in his own University of Malmö.
From the USA Gordon Kingsley draws these management themes together by talking about the management of learning as evidenced in his UK ‘outpost’ of the University of Evansville. Here, Kingsley and his staff have created a hands-on experience of British life and culture to bring the curriculum alive for American students. This innovative approach to American education, sited in an English village, makes for fascinating reading. But, more than that, it reinforces a message of this volume: that it is student who lies at the heart of the education process.
The third section of the book pursues Kinglsey’s theme and deals with learning and teaching. Christina Hughes and Malcolm Tight re-visit their debate about the realities of the Learning Society. They claim that the ‘myth’ of the learning society secured allegiance from academics, but the more recent manifestation of the knowledge economy has failed to do so. They suggest that ‘whilst the learning society caught the imagination of many in the academy…the knowledge economy lacks a concern with the traditionally excluded. It speaks to a discrete audience of policy entrepreneurs…’
The globe-trotting Paul Bacsich interrogates that other 21st century myth – that ‘the computer rules OK’. In a wide-ranging and engaging journey he finds that, as a learning tool, e-learning has had successes and set-backs. Bacsich comes out strongly in praise of librarians who have adapted to the new media; but he warns that, while the superficialities of change may seem fast-flowing, real innovation often gets left behind.
What students need, suggests Rosie LeCornu from an Australian perspective, is to be able to understand that the learning they do in the university is relevant to the practical employment for which they are being trained. So a book that started from the importance of providing an ethical context for learning comes full circle to a conviction to place the students’ needs (not profit, sales or business growth) at the core of the university (those other elements might follow).
In a somewhat disturbing postscript to the text, I rehearse the messages of the international team, and then set out to interview a recent graduate with a view to establishing the extent to which their visions inter-link. The result (and he is careful to stress that this is not research, merely a random interview) is that little of the ideals of the academic practitioners comes across to the rank-and-file undergrad.
If that is true, then it leaves us with even more questions than the book started with. International Perspectives on Higher Education is an engaging, readable, and above all challenging, narrative.' - Trevor Kerry
Trevor Kerry is Visiting Professor at Bishop Grosseteste University College, UK and the author of our new book International Perspectives on Higher Education. Until recently he was Professor of Education Leadership at the Centre for Educational Research and Development at Lincoln University, UK, and is the university's first Emeritus Professor. He has worked in primary, secondary, further and higher education, as well as teacher education. He has been a Senior General Advisor with a Local Authority and an Ofsted Inspector. He was Professor of Education at the College of Teachers (UK), where he was also Senior Vice-President and Journal Editor. You can read more about his book by visiting our website.
Jenny Tighe
