The 21st century civic university
It’s a bittersweet moment when one finds an idea one has been nurturing has already been developed by someone else. I felt this when doing some preparation for an event this week hosted by the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, called ‘Leading cities – place based leadership and the role of universities’.
On the basis, admittedly, of limited knowledge I have developed two opinions about links between universities and the towns, city or region they inhabit: first, these links tend to be limited and ad hoc; second, there is an inverse relationship between the academic standing of a university and its enthusiasm for such links. Indeed it almost seemed to me that (apart from high tech spin-offs) the elite Russell Group universities perceived anything but the most superficial local links as undermining their aspiration to be seen as leading edge global institutions.
This impression was in part confirmed by ‘Re-inventing the civic university’ an excellent pamphlet commissioned by NESTA and written by Professor John Goddard. He too bemoans both the weak links in most places and the tendency to assume that civic relationships are much more relevant to the ‘post 1992’ universities. However, Goddard’s pamphlet is also a very positive contribution to the debate, exploring the many different dimensions of university-city links and providing powerful case studies from Newcastle and Michigan showing what is possible when university leaderships commit to engagement.
John Goddard is also the joint author of the report which provides the basis for this week’s event: ‘researching and scoping a higher education and civic leadership development programme’. Predictably, perhaps, the report finds that one of the biggest barriers to better partnership is the complex and cumbersome management structure of universities (yes, even more complicated and opaque than local authorities). It is one thing, the authors say, to get vice chancellors and pro vice chancellors signed up to partnership, it is another entirely to make this concrete and meaningful at a faculty or departmental level.
My only quibble with the Leadership Foundation report is with its proposed development programme. This seems to be largely based on a fairly traditional model of training, away days and visits. Instead, I think the Foundation should develop an innovation group in which selected universities and cities sign up to focussing on the development of a particular aspect of civic partnership and then support, and learn from, each other through the innovation process. This approach is suited to an area like this in which there is a wide variety of areas to be addressed, for instance:
• The role of universities in civic leadership
• Strengthening the links between place and university applied research
• Initiatives to promote access and inclusion
• Links around business and product development (although this is already a well-trodden area)
• Academic and student civic volunteering
• Universities and local public sector innovation
As John Goddard argues, many of our most established universities were created by civic leaders who saw advanced learning as critical to their city’s future and the aspirations of its people. The old polytechnics used to be part of the local authority. But centralised assessment, subject silos, the globalisation of elite higher education and competition within the sector have tended to erode these links. Now is the time for the emergence of a new model for a 21st century civic university.
It’s a great idea. If only I’d had the gumption to do something about it when it occurred to me!
A funny thing happened on the way to inclusion
My amateurish meanderings around evolutionary psychology have provoked a limited, albeit high quality, response. So, in a desperate attempt to boost my numbers over the weekend I will revert to what has been a more popular topic; terrible jokes.
On Wednesday and Thursday I chaired the National Digital Inclusion conference. This was my third time and on each occasion we have managed to make the conference have a stronger activist feel. This year, ahead of the unveiling of an action plan by the Digital Inclusion Champion, Martha Lane Fox, we asked delegates to come up with twenty promises. The grand winner, judged by among others Shadow DCMS Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Prof Tanya Byron, was a commitment by Peabody and Southern housing associations to get all their sheltered housing residents on line.
But neither this and the other nineteen ideas, nor all the speeches and workshops, will be what is remembered from the two days. Oh no! The conference was held at Vinopolis, the wine museum and venue near London Bridge. And so it was incumbent on me to litter (which given its connotations of rubbish is the right word) the proceedings with puns. In ascending order of brilliance here they are:
‘ I do hope this conference will see the issue of inclusion approached with real claret – e’
‘ It’s workshop time. Let’s Rioja ‘nd roll’
‘ I want us to avoid jargon, speaking in terms that would appeal to white vin man’
‘ Sorry you had to queue in the cold to get in. A woman in a sequin jacket was moaning at me. I didn’t mind. I’m rather partial to a sparkling whine’
‘ We had hoped Lord Mandelson would join us today but he insisted if he had he would have required a special entrance for members of the House of Lords; the Peer door. It is a pity because our delegates from Paris would have enjoyed it for, as we all recall, the French adore Peer door.’
‘ I worry that we make too sharp a distinction between the on line and the off line. For those in areas with slow connections the feeling is of being semillon.’
I did ask the thousands of Tweeters and bloggers following the conference for their own ideas. But the only one who replied admitted his mind had gone blanc.
Maybe digital includers don’t drink wine, maybe it was the way I told them, or maybe (but this is preposterous) the jokes aren’t actually that funny. Anyhow, I may not have got many laughs at the conference, but I’m glad to let my readers begin their weekend with a smiling face. After all, not too have shared these comic treasures with you would have been very Chablis.
The ‘don’t trust the boss’ gene?
Another in my series ‘pop evolutionary psychology for scientific imbeciles’. Or as someone put it to me the other day ’the charming thing about your blog, Matthew, is that while other people use theirs to display their knowledge, you use yours to parade your ignorance’.
There is a lot of research out there on how we are shaped by social norms. Take for example Mark Earls’ book ‘Herd’ which shows how following the crowd explains most human behaviour. It isn’t a surprise we’re like this. After all, other species do the same. Birds flock, bees swarm, when one sheep starts running they all do.
But human beings seem to have another, opposite, instinct. There appears to be a part of the brain which responds to the message; ‘don’t trust the boss’. It’s the part which lights up when – during a meeting discussing a plan from central Government, the council or company head office – someone stands up and alleges that the truth isn’t being told, or the decision has already been made, or ‘the secret plan is…’. It’s the part that makes us susceptible to conspiracy theories, despite the tenuous nature of the evidence underpinning them.
The reasons most frequently offered for this suspicion of authority are political and sociological: It represents a loss of trust or legitimacy and it is connected to a long term decline in deference and tradition in society. We also know that attitudes to authority are to some extent innate, with people having a more or less ‘authoritarian’ personality.
When we are deciding whether to follow or to rebel we try to base our response on rational judgment. But, it is often impracticable for us to find out enough to make an evidence-based judgment (think of how many of us now feel about climate change science) and both the compliance and resistance instincts have a strong emotional power. But while we have the compliance response in common with the rest of the animal kingdom, the resistance/suspicion reaction seems uniquely human.
It could be argued that it is entirely a cultural phenomenon. Sociologists, like Anthony Giddens, argue that the decline in deference is a key characteristic of modernity. But doesn’t the attraction of ‘don’t trust the boss’ feel like it has a deeper, more visceral, basis?. Like many other ‘natural’ instincts it can lead to bad judgement, eccentricity or madness if we have an excess. Paranoia can be a pathological version of ‘don’t trust the boss’.
Could it be that the possession of a certain level of natural suspicion towards authority – albeit unevenly distributed through the population – has played a vital evolutionary role? After all, in the hundreds of thousands of years of our evolution – when there weren’t many human beings around and our future flourishing was far from certain – there must have been plenty of leaders who were mad and dangerous: the kind of person who would lead their tribe to disaster or say God had demanded a mass suicide pact. Has the survival and evolution of the species rested on our innate ability to be suspicious of authority?
Of course, it will be argued that at some times in recent human history – think of the Third Reich – human beings seem to have abandoned this instinct. True enough but – as the theory predicts - this has led to disaster and, also, this is why authoritarian regimes adopt totalitarian methods: they know any dissenting voice will be likely to strike an emotional chord.
Of course, I am not quite so stupid as not to know that the question of authority and obedience has been the subject of much brilliant analysis from historians, philosophers, social psychologists, sociologists and political scientists (Hobbes, Adorno, Diamond, Arendt, Milgram to name just a few different perspectives) but what about the genetic/evolutionary account? Can someone refer me to the book (or, even better, the easily digestible article) I need to read?
Will e-harmony.co kill the Conservative Party?
The day started with a seminar hosted by the RSA-based 2020 Public Services Trust focussing on social media and the ‘post bureaucratic age’. The ‘PBA’ is often talked about as the Conservatives’ big idea: the future lies in strengthening the capacity of individuals and communities to meet their own needs rather than relying on an ever clumsier and more overbearing central state.
Our speakers, one from ‘The Economist’, the other working for the Conservatives, told a compelling story about the strengths of the PBA idea. They then explained why the internet and social media facilitate collective action and invite the state to move from a paternalistic to an enabling way of working.
I chipped in with a question about the relationship between online and real world sociability. Given that online networking has eventually to be supplemented by face to face interaction to lead to sustained social action, how does it overcome the hard problems of voluntary organisation?
For example, if community groups start to take on responsibility for providing public services they will find it hard to maintain their spontaneity and responsiveness in the face of stifling rules of public accountability.
Then there is the simple but grim fact that the bad is more powerful than the good. I mean by this that difficult, aggressive, dull activists drive away creative people quickly and permanently (bright people have lots of alternative ways of spending their time), yet it can take huge amounts of time and energy for a dynamic group to deal with someone who wants only to moan or disrupt. I call this powerful and depressing truth ‘the tragedy of the organisational commons’. Of course, the internet too is full of anti-social people but there it is much, much easier to ignore them.
The problem – I went on (and on) – is that we assume individual and collective empowerment go together when often they don’t. The television and the car have both provided people with huge opportunities and freedoms but their effect on civic life has probably been less benign. There may have been growth recently of people going to concerts, art galleries and lectures but this is ‘being alone in a crowd’. It is completely different to the hard labour and politics of working in groups, making decisions, dealing with differences.
As the internet makes it easier for people to get what they want from each other and the state, they may find there is even less reason to waste their time in the messy business of collective action.
The clever chap from the Conservative Party thought I was being far too gloomy. ‘The internet doesn’t just empower, it changes social norms’ he said. Look at internet dating. The technology is so clever and subtle that people have got over their hang-ups and are more than willing to admit they use the internet to find the perfect mate.
At which point I remembered something I have often heard from Tories: the main reason young people join the Conservative Association in affluent towns and suburbs is to find a future spouse.
So perhaps the rise of internet dating and the continued decline in Tory party membership (despite its greater success at the polls) are linked. By giving them the ability to find exactly the right person, dating sites enable the young and single to dispense with the clumsy sociability of the Conservative Association spring ball.
I was gratified that the most distinguished attendee at the seminar, Stephen Dorrell, concurred. The problem, he said, is that as the state becomes in many ways more powerful (partly as a result of the network effects of digital information), and as more people adopt a purely individualistic and transactional approach to meeting their needs, the collective institutions needed to hold decision makers to account atrophy.
Suddenly, the brave new world of the PBA was looking a little bit less bright and shiny.
The Peterborough principle
Another big day for the RSA. As well as another of our ever more dynamic new Fellows’ evenings, tonight sees the launch of our partnership with Peterborough City Council and Arts Council East.
If public agencies are to improve service outcomes in the difficult years ahead they will need to forge a different type of relationship with citizens. This is one of the assumptions behind the partnership. The project aims to develop a debate at many levels about the future for Peterborough and its residents, showing that the way people live and how they engage with decision makers is crucial to the health and prosperity of the city. As a reflection of this belief, the project has an ‘open source’ design with citizens able to make any input they wish as it unfolds.
Having arts and culture at the heart of the partnership will, we hope, be an important source of innovation. Socially engaged arts and culture can play a major role in breaking down social barriers, mobilising and enthusing people, and firing the collective imagination of the city.
The project will also engage with the shape and form of front line public services. For example, there is a programme to develop a recovery community for problem drug users. We are also seeking to build on a pilot project in Manchester to develop what we are calling ‘an area based curriculum’ through which schools and the community work together to foster a wider culture of learning.
The project aims will also draw on the RSA Fellowship and lecture programme to bring new perspectives on the choices facing the city.
Peterborough is a successful city in many ways and far from the most socially and economically deprived. However levels of trust, engagement and attachment to place are lower than average and problems like crime and drug use higher. These problems often get worse when population rises take place and the Peterborough population is set to grow by about 20,000 over the next decade.
Peterborough leaders share with the RSA the view that we need to cultivate a more ambitious model of citizenship – more engaged, more self-reliant, more pro-social – and that this needs to be done, in part, through the development of a stronger sense of identity and attachment. At its heart this project seeks to answer a question I have often posed before: what kind of people do we need to be to create the better future we want?
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