Reinventing Liberal Higher Education Open University Partnership conference

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Reinventing Liberal Higher EducationOpen
University Partnership conference

• Professor Sir David Watson
• 3 March 2008

Centre for Higher Education Studies
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Outline

• What does HE do? Create capital.
• For whom? The student estate.
• How? Metaphors for learning and teaching in the
  modern university.
• Reinventing liberal HE. The significance of
  the arts and humanities

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Types of intellectual capital

• Human capital (Becker)
• Social capital (Putnam)
• Creative capital (Florida)
• Identity capital (Coté)
• Mental capital (HMG)
• Capital capital

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Analysing intellectual capital

• Mode of production
• Values
• Performance indicators
• Objectives
• Trust and mutuality

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Human capital

• Individual agent
• Economic rationality
• Education duration/qualifications
• Individuality income/productivity
• Calculative trust

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Social capital

• Networks and relationships
• Shared norms and values
• Mutual obligation/civic engagement
• Quality of life
• Normative trust

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Creative capital

• Clusters of creative people
• Diversity and tolerance
• Low entry barriers
• Rates of innovation
• Affective trust

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The US class structure, 1900-1999
Source Florida 2002
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Teaching, learning and the student estate
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Percentage change in enrolments by subject area,
1996/7 to 2005/06
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UK HE student numbers by mode and level, 1979 -
2005
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Percentage of young full-time first degree
entrants from Socio-Economic Classification
classes 4, 5, 6 and 7, 2005/06
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Frand, the information age mind-set (2000)

• Computers arent technology
• Internet better than TV
• Reality no longer real
• Doing rather than knowing
• Nintendo over Logic
• Multitasking way of life
• Typing rather than handwriting
• Staying connected
• Zero tolerance for delays
• Consumer/Creator blurring

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Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
(Simon Schuster 1998).

• Students these days are, in general, nice. I
  choose the word carefully. They are not
  particularly moral or noble. Such niceness is a
  facet of democratic character when times are
  good. Neither war nor tyranny nor want has
  hardened them or made demands upon them. The
  wounds and rivalries caused by class distinction
  have disappeared along with any strong sense of
  class..Students these days are pleasant,
  friendly and if not great-souled, at least not
  particularly mean-spirited. Their primary
  preoccupation is themselves, understood in the
  narrowest sense (82-83).

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Learning teaching metaphors

• Games
• Craft
• Conversation

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W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis,
(Jonathan Cape, 1975)

• Winning is overcoming obstacles to reach a
  goal, but the value in winning is only as great
  as the goal itself..So we arrive at the
  startling conclusion that true competition is
  identical with true cooperation.In true
  competition no person is defeated (111).

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Richard Sennett, Respect the formation of
character in an age of inequality, (Allen Lane,
2003.)

• Part of what makes both men rare performers is
  that they have achieved mutuality many musicians
  have the cooperative impulse, but few manage to
  translate it into sound. Even more is this true
  of social life an enormous gap exists between
  wanting to act well toward others and doing
  so..I argue that in social life as in art,
  mutuality requires expressive work. It must be
  enacted, performed (59).

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Richard Sennett, The culture of the new
capitalism, (Yale U. Press, 2006.)

• A person can use the words correct or right in
  describing how well something is done only if he
  or she believes in an objective standard outside
  his or her own desires, indeed outside the sphere
  of rewards from others. Getting something right,
  even though it may get you nothing, is the spirit
  of true craftsmanship (195).

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Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (Allen Lane 2008)

• The modern era is often described as a skills
  economy, but what eaxctly is a skill? The
  generic answer is that skill is a trained
  practice (37).
• Embodied knowledge is a currently fashionable
  phrase in the social sciences, but thinking like
  a craftsman is more than a state of mind it has
  a sharp social edge (44).
• To do good work means to be curious about, to
  investigate and to learn from ambiguity (48).

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William Miller, Conversation a history of a
declining art, (Yale U Press, 2006).

• Quotes Michael Oakshott Conversation is an
  unrehearsed intellectual adventure, as with
  gambling, its significance lies neither in
  winning or losing, but in wagering.

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Academic membership the deal

• Honesty (inc. scientific procedure)
• Reciprocity
• Manners
• Self-motivation
• Discipline
• Respect for the environment
• Collective agreement

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Ed Husain, The Islamist (Penguin, 2007)

• I loved my time at university. My understanding
  of my subject had hitherto been blinkered by the
  arguments of Mawdudi, Qutb and Nabhani that
  history was a conflict between Islam and the rest
  of the world. But I was determined to open up my
  worldview and slowly, independently, question
  some of the concepts and tenets I had once held
  dear (156-7).
• Another of my tutors was Professor John Tosh,
  author of The Pursuit of History. His lectures
  caused me to question my approach to history.
  One thing history was not was an idle
  intellectual pastime. Professor Tosh argued that
  the past created the present, and that the past
  was open to multiple interpretations. What
  seemed like blasphemy at first slowly began to
  make sense (159).

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Is this the reinvention of liberal HE?

• Soft citizenship
• Values
• Worked examples
• Dearing on breadth (recommendation 16)
• The Harvard core
• The Melbourne model
• The Russell Groups balanced meal

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Sources of liberal revival

• Breadth as well as depth
• The ethical turn
• Student mutuality
• Civil society before the state
• Professional formation at the second cycle

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Contexts for learning teaching

• Research and scholarship
• Employability and professional formation
• Instrumental and liberal values
• Academic careers

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The role of the arts and humanities

• In several of these respects, it is arguable that
  the arts and humanities have already arrived.
  The research and teaching agenda for these
  perennially popular subjects are inextricably
  inter-twined. As Cary Nelson and Stephen Watt
  declare in their Academic Keywords a Devils
  Dictionary for Higher Education, research and
  writing together produce the contemporary
  intelligibility of the humanities (Nelson and
  Watt, 1999 221).
• Watson, Managing Civic and Community Engagement,
  p. 100

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Discussion
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