Universities – it’s about asking the hard questions

January 23, 2012 by · 15 Comments
Filed under: Public policy, The RSA 

I am speaking on Wednesday about innovation in higher education. I thought I might lay out my speech outline today to see if I can grab some useful feedback from readers ahead of the event.

On one level it is odd to imply there is an issue with innovation in HE. Universities are by their nature hotbeds of new thinking.  Whether it is UCL opening a new campus in East London, Newcastle’s work on becoming a truly civic institution or Northampton’s decision (working with the RSA) to become ‘a leader in social innovation’, every university can point not only to their best teaching and research but also to significant changes in the ways they work. Furthermore, while the requirement under the Research Assessment Exercise that departments show ‘impact’ from their work has been roundly criticised in some academic circles, my impression is that it is opening up new debates and helping those who have always argued for faculty to engage more fully with the world outside academe.

And yet, while this is to be welcomed, it is also arguably the case that most HE innovation is both incremental and largely constrained by the core assumptions and business models of the sector. Truly ‘social innovation’ involves more fundamental questioning, indeed the starting point for this kind of step change is recognition that key aspects of the current system are increasingly problematic.

I plan to suggest four big challenges which could form the starting point for a more radical process of questioning and – subsequently – innovation. In summary these are:

The essence of the student offer: as Stefan Collini has pointed out, there is fundamental tension between the idea of students as learners (which implies they defer to teachers) and students as customers (which implies their preferences are sovereign). Also, some aspects of the student offer may become less powerful (eg course content in a world of free on-line access to some of the best courses in the world) while others become more important (most obviously, the securing of employment).  In the US rising fees in the best universities have been accompanied by escalating investment in things like sports, catering and recreation facilities – is that how we want the taxpayers’ subsidy to fees being channelled in England?

The relationship between universities and their localities: reading a presentation by Newcastle’s  John Goddard – one of our leading advocates  for the civic university – I came across this quotation from Gerard Delanty ‘The great significance of the university is that it can be the most important site of connectivity in the knowledge society…and…a key institution for the formation of cultural and technological citizenship…and…for reviving the decline of the public sphere’. Yet, generally only a fraction of the capacity that universities could bring to the places they inhabit is explicitly tapped.

The nature of universities: according to John Goddard’s research, local public agencies (like councils) often find the authority structure of universities opaque and diffuse; this is a barrier to collaboration. While the relative autonomy of faculty from the university administration is a virtue, and the tendency of academics to view the hierarchy of their discipline as more important than the hierarchy of university leadership is inevitable, it still leaves the problem for universities of how – as institutions – to mobilise to meet shared challenges and pursue overarching objectives.

The core business model: HE is expensive and like all labour intensive industries its costs comparative to the rest of the economy are continuing to rise.  Part of this lies in the complex nature of a university combining the characteristics of a knowledge business (research), a large scale service provider (undergraduate teaching), and a wider public purpose in relation to human development and social capacity. With, among other things, a competitive market, the constant demands for greater efficiency and the growth of international private teaching universities using sophisticated distance learning methods, universities may increasingly need to question their core business model.

Any views on whether these are the right issues to provoke a deeper, broader approach to innovation are most welcome.

 

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Decision Time

September 29, 2009 by · 8 Comments
Filed under: Social brain, The RSA 

No sooner do I finally get my article about human nature and political values published in Prospect than a key piece of research cited in the piece gets challenged. A study undertaken in New Zealand has questioned the conclusions of the work of Benjamin Libet, conclusions which had become the cornerstone of how we have come to think about the workings of our brain.

Put simply, Libet’s research, which has been repeated and refined by other neuroscientists, seemed to show that the part of the subject’s brain associated with a physical action, for example, pressing a button, showed activity significantly earlier (a few tenths of a second) than the subject became aware of making the decision to act. This research seemed to show that the idea of conscious choice is often an illusion. Whilst we do make conscious decisions which involve forward planning, our day to day actions are automatic. The sense we have of making conscious choices reflect the deep seated need of human beings to make meaning, but it is an illusion. As Robert Heinlen put it ‘man is not a rational animal but a rationalising one’.

But now research by Judy Trevena and Jeff Miller, neuroscientists based in Otago, has questioned Libet’s work.  Their research involved replicating Libet’s experiment but with an important modification. While Libet asked his subjects to press buttons, the New Zealand team allowed subjects to choose whether or not to press. Trevena and Miller then found that the brain activity identified by Libet (so called Readiness Potential) occurred after the subjects had been prompted and before they were aware of making a choice – whether or not they then decided to press the botton.  In other words, it is not that the automatic brain ‘decides’ to act before the conscious brain but that it creates a readiness to act which only gets turned into action by conscious intervention.  Furthermore ,Trevena and Miller claim to show that the brain activity specifically associated with ‘deciding’ to act takes place after the conscious awareness of that decision.

Unsurprisingly, the New Zealand study is causing waves in the neuroscience community. Those who have always been sceptical about Libet are seizing on the new research, while others who claim to have undertaken experiments reinforcing Libet’s conclusions are questioning Trevena ands Miller’s methodology.

Although it can all get quite technical, this is a fascinating debate with social and philosophical as well as scientific ramifications. We are exploring whether we can host a debate here at the RSA. Indeed, if someone would just give us a few tens of thousands of pounds we would love to modernise an old RSA tradition and work with neuroscientists at UCL to replicate the research with a live video link to a Great Room audience.

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