Comment: Still for the social good?

15th October 2010

Comment: Still for the social good?

Many of us in the sector recognise the innate social good of our universities and colleges. It’s what the EAUC Universities That Count programme is all about and it sets us apart from any other type of organisation. At least it used to.

In Lord Browne’s ironically titled report out yesterday ‘Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education, the recommendations include massive cuts to the teaching budget. The report recommends that Government funding should prioritise courses such as medicine and engineering ‘that are important to the wellbeing of our society and economy’ with teaching funding for the arts and humanities likely to be axed.

To quote Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust, ‘How can we create minds capable of innovation if [students] are unable to imagine a world different from the one in which we live now? History teaches contingency; it demonstrates that the world has been different and could and will be different again. Literature can teach us...empathy – how to picture ourselves inside another person’s head, life, experience –and how to see the world through a different lens.’ Economic growth and scientific and technological advances are necessary but not sufficient for a university. As Einstein famously said “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

This is all the more critical just at the time we need minds stimulated to work in new ways, to look at things differently, to think new thoughts and to envision a new and more sustainable future for our overcrowded and heating planet.

If we reduce education to this what hope is there for the planet? Universities and colleges reduce themselves damningly to being part of the problem not the solution which we really could and should be.

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