It is difficult to imagine a future that is humane, decent, and sustainable without marked changes in the substance and process of education at all levels, beginning with university. David Orr(2018)
In my next series of blogs, I want to bring out some of the compelling arguments for transformative change in the education provided by our universities. Much of what I want to say is eloquently portrayed in a recent book( featured in an earlier blog) by three Australian academics in their book published last December: TRANSFORMING UNIVERSITIES IN THE MIDST OF A GLOBAL CRISIS:A University for the Common Good.
“Universities are facing serious problems. Including well before the onset of COVID-19.There are a growing number of provocative book titles appearing like The university in ruins; Whackademia? Zombies in the Academy; Living death in higher education ; Knowledge for sale; The Neoliberal takeover of higher education ; Bullshit Towers and many others. Alongside this is the rise of critical university studies. All of which signifies that the university academy is increasingly concerned -even troubled- with its own fate.
In Beyond Education: Radical Studying for Another World Eli Meyerhoff (2019 ) examines just how well baked the crisis in university narratives has become. Despite its popularity, the crisis frame further entrenches liberal capitalist modernity as the dominant and enduring paradigm that serves to bolster universities as normalised sites of knowledge accumulation that are in crisis rather than, of the crisis. In this book. The authors of the book argue persuasively that such an approach closes the spaces in which the contemporary university might be reimagined otherwise.”
The purpose of this blog and others that follow is to situate universities as of the crisis – and as such a fundamental governance crisis which we need to tackle at scale and urgently. A university’s priorities must embrace the growing impacts of human induced climate change, including rising sea levels, land surface heat and ocean temperatures, all of which threaten life and livelihoods around the world. Especially in those places least responsible for global greenhouse gas emissions. Such climate change represents the continuity of environmental disruption that has occurred since European colonisation of Africa, Asia, the Americas and in Australia. Ecological destruction remains the historical legacy that continues to drive the expansion of fossil fuel extractivism and the privileging of economic development and mining interests over indigenous land rights on a massive scale. According to these authors these dynamics are a vivid reminder of the colonial shadow that defines the neoliberal Academy across the globe.
In recent decades Universities have grown to expand student numbers so that UK universities like Nottingham celebrate its campuses in Malaysia and China which bring its student population to 40,000 or more. And notwithstanding the presence of more international students on campuses across the world, universities have in many respects retained their Anglocentric and western cultural dominance but continue to marginalise the importance of indigenous knowledge and culture from the global south.
Many observers argue that universities have a particular responsibility to respond to the existential crisis of climate change and loss of biodiversity. A responsibility to engage in deep and reflective consideration of what universities are for; the interests they serve and the prospect they may hold for ecological survival. In recent decades, universities have begun to lean into this space in ways not dissimilar to other large institutions and organisations, including government departments and private corporations. They have, for example, introduced numerous “climate smart” and “sustainability initiatives” , established sustainability committees in training programmes in structured green buildings and community gardens, and embedded sustainability topics across curriculum. The impetus to demonstrate performance in this arena itself is often seen as a green marketing opportunity- which can reinforce new forms of instrumentality and support for more ambitious growth in support of the neoliberal ideology.
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