New directions for universities?

Questions about what universities are for may not seem particularly pressing! They are important, however, for universities impact significantly on individuals and societies worldwide, and the nature of that impact matters for the well-being of individuals and societies.

Universities do influence millions. That includes their students, of which in the UK alone there are something over two million. ¹ Universities also have a wider impact through research, the provision of cultural facilities, their contribution to the economy and the values and visions they embody and pass on.

What it means to be a university is not a definitively decided matter. It has been, and is, a matter of debate and negotiation. Theologians have long been involved. Perhaps best known is Cardinal Newman who sought to create a Catholic university in Ireland in the nineteenth century and wrote the classic The Idea of a University. He is not alone; Mike Higton refers to Friedrich Schleiermacher contributing an ‘unsolicited response’ when views were sought concerning a new university being planned for Berlin. ² Theologians today continue to engage with what it means to be a university.

They do so at a time when government policies in England and elsewhere see universities as having rather narrow functions. In England, policy documents suggest universities are primarily to serve the economy and, through widening participation and fair access, facilitate social mobility.

Those emphases can be seen in the main documents shaping the policy framework for universities in England at the time of writing; the Browne report, ³ the 2011 White Paper ⁴ and, more recently, a Green Paper. ⁵ While each gives a nod to bigger understandings of what universities are for, their emphasis is on the economy and social mobility, with the Green Paper also emphasizing improving teaching.

The bigger vision appears in Browne in comments such as one which appears right at the beginning of the report: ‘Higher education … helps create the knowledge, skills and values that underpin a civilised society.’ ⁶ The White Paper Executive Summary affirms ‘higher education has a value in itself’, ⁷ makes a similar statement in the Introduction ⁸ and begins a section on ‘employer engagement’ with ‘higher education is a good thing in itself’. ⁹ The Green Paper is very thin on any such comments, though it does refer to ‘the broader benefits to society of having a highly educated population’ in justifying why ‘the government intervenes in higher education’. ¹⁰ In all three documents such sentiments are not developed; the major emphases are on universities serving the economy and enabling social mobility.

When it comes to funding universities, the move has been from a block grant to institutions to a more individualistic approach in which individual students are given loans with which to purchase the course of their choice; a shift from a corporate to an individualistic model. This shift is intended to introduce more competition into the sector. Universities will have to compete for fee-paying students. That competition will drive up standards, it is claimed, especially as new providers enter the market.

Against that policy background, this article explores what Anglican theologians have said recently about universities and reflects on current policy in the light of that Anglican theological thinking. It arises from a research project at the University of Winchester looking at what it means to be an Anglican university, hence an Anglican perspective being explored here. Work is also being done in the area by theologians of other traditions, including Catholics such as Gavin D’Costa. ¹¹ The national Free Churches Group has also recently written a paper on the Free Churches and higher education. ¹²

There is no sympathy for the individualistic, competitive approach to funding in what the theologians write. There is, however, some support among them for the policy goals of serving the economy and facilitating social mobility, along with setting them alongside other goals, which the theologians tend to argue are more fundamental. Similar guarded support is at least implicit in a statement expressing Anglican thinking about higher education which appears on the Church of England website. ¹³ Biggar says he finds it appropriate ‘that government should ask universities to serve economic goals and to prepare their students for the labour market’. ¹⁴ He also says universities should be about other ‘goods’, including helping ‘to form individuals and citizens in certain virtues – virtues that are not just intellectual, but are also social and political’. ¹⁵

Likewise, Rowan Williams and Mike Higton affirm the importance of social mobility and widening participation. Higton argues that a Christian concern for the ‘poor and excluded’ will lead to support for such policies. ¹⁶ In the same paper he advocates universities fostering widening participation, including engaging with ‘people from communities and contexts that have tended to be the victims of the existing ideas and practices of our society’, so that universities might more effectively face issues about the public good. Williams makes a similar point. One of his key themes is that universities are for the creating of citizens, a role universities will fulfil more effectively if they are open to as wide a range of people as possible, including members of the community around them ‘for general intellectual debate about common hopes and values’. ¹⁷ Again, there is support for the policy, but Williams and Higton set that in the context of bigger understandings of what universities are for.

As will be seen, what the theologians want to stress is that universities should fundamentally be about the public good, the well-being of individuals and society, including in a democratic order. There is a high level of agreement about this among British Anglican theologians writing on universities.

Williams expressed his view on universities and citizenship in the Times Higher Education in April 2014. He wrote: ‘The most important bit of “impact” any university course can have is to help people become intelligent citizens.’ ¹⁸

That is not a new theme for Williams. He developed it in the lecture ‘What is a University?’. ¹⁹ There he traced the involvement of universities in preparing people for public life. This was once the preparation of an elite ‘governing class’. However, as democracy spreads, ‘every student becomes potentially someone with significant political views and capacities in the democratic system, someone with responsibilities to vote and participate in whatever way is appropriate in the governing of … society.’ A healthy democracy needs citizens who will participate in a responsible way in supporting and shaping society. Part of the work of the university is contributing to the good of society by producing the citizens society needs, citizens who have learned ‘what it is to exercise thoughtful responsibility’ as Williams puts it. ²⁰ Thus universities will facilitate ‘public intelligence’, Williams later argued, ‘equipping potentially every citizen with the intelligence that is needed for public life to be healthy, diverse and constructive, with ways of handling and ways of overcoming toxic conflict’. ²¹ Universities are to help students become graduates who will engage intelligently with the issues the world faces for the sake of the good of society.

David Ford also writes about the citizen-creating role of universities. He argues the world faces specific and difficult challenges. He identifies two in particular. One is ‘complex, multi-faceted and overwhelming change’. The other is the environmental crisis; the possibility of ‘environmental disaster brought about by human agency, as in the destruction of species, pollution and climate change’. ²² Universities need to help society face such issues, including by helping students become graduates equipped and willing to face complex issues for the sake of the good; ‘wise people committed to the common good’, as Ford puts it. ²³ The word ‘wise’ there is important. Ford emphasizes that universities are to help students grow in wisdom.

Ford sees the role of universities in connection with the public good as being about more than forming students as citizens, however. Universities are to use their disciplines, learning and wisdom to imagine what good futures might look like and how they can be worked for, including by universities. As Ford puts it, universities are to face the challenge of ‘how to teach, study and research in responsibility towards the long-term flourishing of our world’. ²⁴

Such work needs to happen mindful of the diversity of society, including their being diverse views about what is good. Dan Hardy considered this in the mid-1990s. He writes: ‘The major issue confronting us is whether it is possible to have a new vision of what public life is really all about – a new vision of the common good and the purpose of society. Is it actually possible within the increasing diversity of interests one finds among people in the western hemisphere, to derive or develop a new society, or a new vision of society, where some kinds of universal values will still inform a highly diverse social life?’ ²⁵ Hardy answers his question by saying: ‘I do not think that the increasing diversity of life in the western hemisphere necessarily requires a loss of national unity and the conception of a stable society. It does, however, make the formation of a society into a task.’ ²⁶ Hardy argues universities have a role to play in executing that task. While he sees grounds to criticize an elitist view which portrays universities as being about ‘finding the best for society’, ²⁷ he also suggests policies which do not support universities in playing their part in shaping a good society are not in ‘the best interest of society’. ²⁸

For Higton, the view that universities are to be about the good of society is fundamental. He approaches the matter not so much from the perspective of the needs of society but from a theological understanding of what constitutes true learning. Higton considers universities in the light of the eucharistic liturgy in Anglican Common Worship. He argues that the Eucharist is a context for learning about things as they are, which involves seeing them in relation to God and ‘the fulfilment that God has for God’s creatures’. ²⁹ That fulfilment is the good of the kingdom to which God is leading humankind. Higton argues that all learning should be similarly ordered, towards the good. Learning is not, he says, as Newman argued, an end in itself, but needs to be directed ‘to the formation of the flourishing life of all God’s people together … towards the common good’, towards ‘shalom’. ³⁰ He also argues that if universities are not so ordered they may come to serve the vicious and violent; an oppressive state for example. ³¹

The fundamental points the theologians make are about universities seeking the public good by envisaging what good futures might look like, working for them and trying to form graduates into good citizens, who will face the challenges society faces in a way that contributes to the common good. There are perhaps other things theologians would add if asked to create a comprehensive list of what universities are for, such as that they are for the pursuit of truth, which, perhaps surprisingly, tends to be implicit rather than explicit in most of their writings.

The theologians are not alone in making such comments. Contemporary writers such as Jon Nixon and Stefan Collini make similar points from different perspectives. Nixon argues there is a need for society to rediscover the idea of the public good and sees universities as fundamental to that, for higher education ‘exists to ask what constitutes the public good’. ³² His views on how higher education does that are very similar to those of the theologians: ‘First, it provides a dedicated space within which to debate what constitutes the public good; second, it supports the development of an educated public with the capabilities and dispositions necessary to contribute to that debate.’ ³³ In What Are Universities For? Collini has a chapter on ‘Universities and the Public Good’. With a central theme that ‘universities provide a home for attempts to extend and deepen human understanding’, ³⁴ rather than simply to help people get jobs, Collini quotes Thorstein Veblen to argue that universities are places where ‘the community’s highest aspirations and ideals’ are to be cultivated and cared for. ³⁵

Such ideas are hardly new. They appear, among other places, in government- inspired documents of the mid to late twentieth century. The Robbins report said universities are for ‘the transmission of a common culture and common standards of citizenship’. ³⁶ The Dearing report said universities are ‘to inspire and enable individuals to develop their capabilities to the highest potential levels’, including so that they ‘can contribute effectively to society’, and universities are ‘to play a major role in shaping a democratic, civilised, inclusive society’. ³⁷

The theologians are not being idiosyncratic in what they say, therefore. Neither are they in the realm of the unimportant. How society deals with change, difference, environmental issues and other major challenges matters. Equally, forming people as responsible citizens is a vital matter in days when, as Ruth Fox comments, there is widespread disengagement from the political processes, including ever fewer younger people even voting; ‘just 44 per cent of 18–24-year-olds voted at the 2010 general election’. ³⁸

Universities are for the seeking of the public good, and the work they do in that realm matters.

Clearly this is a different perspective from the main thrust of Browne and the White and Green Papers. What the theologians say does not deny the importance of supporting the economy, including by preparing people for work. Nor does it deny the importance of social mobility. Indeed, it provides grounds to support both. It does suggest the policy documents offer a very thin and inadequately individualistic view of what universities are for. The idea that universities are about wider and more public goods, which many commentators on the sector stress, and which is part of the tradition of what it means to be a university, is almost totally missing. It is also missing from the present funding arrangements and the rhetoric around them, which tend to emphasize the private good of education to individual students.

What it is believed universities are for will obviously affect what happens within them. For example, a corollary of the priorities the theologians, and others, suggest for universities is that they are not only places for training for a job, though they have long been and continue to be that, but they are also places where, in the normal day to day routine, questions of what is good are faced, whatever particular discipline is being followed. Some of the issues around that are now considered.

Higton in particular recognizes that facing questions about the good is not easy in a diverse society where there is not always agreement about what is good or about how to decide what is good. He says discussions about the good are ‘perhaps the most notoriously broken form of discourse in our societies’, with a tendency to see such questions as ‘lying in the realm of irrational private preference, rather than public discussion’. ³⁹ Yet such debate, argument even, needs to happen in a ‘serious, open, inclusive, and critical’ way, if society is to face the challenges it does and face them well. ⁴⁰ Higton argues universities should be one focus for such debate.

Ford makes similar points. He says universities need to be places where questions of ‘meaning, values, ethics and long-term commitments’ are faced. ⁴¹ He writes, ‘There are very few places in society where there is even an attempt to consider all these [meaning, values, etc.] together. Part of the value of universities to society is that they can be independent places of debate and deliberation about such matters in the interests of the long-term ethical and intellectual ecology of our civilization.’ ⁴²

Universities, however, need to be more than places for the debating of what is good, or for giving students the tools to debate such matters. They need to seek to live by what is good, by the ‘virtues’ in the language of the debate. Higton argues universities are, or approximate to being, such places, in that virtues such as honesty, integrity and patience are part of the academic life per se, needed if academic work is to be done well. ⁴³

He also says the learning which goes on in a university is ‘primarily a matter of formation in virtue’. ⁴⁴ It is about ‘shaping people for virtuous participation in (academic) communities’. ⁴⁵ University education thus becomes about seeking to form students in particular virtues, as particular sorts of people. In Higton’s case, it is initially the academic virtues he is referring to, though he does put that in the context of universities working for the common good. ⁴⁶ Williams makes similar comments in connection with the university’s work of creating citizens, arguing that it involves forming students in virtues such as ‘civility’, ‘intellectual humility’, ‘patience’ in conversation, ‘benevolence’ and ‘good will towards the common life’. ⁴⁷

Thus universities are not just places of debate about the good, but are seeking to form students into particular sorts of people: those who are formed in virtues both as part of academic life and for the good of society. How far that relates to what actually happens in universities, and how comfortable with such ideas many university staff might be, is worth testing. It is certainly a long way from the language of Browne and the White and Green Papers.

Some things the theologians say seem even further from the concerns of those documents, for some address the question of what place faith in God and learning to live well in a world where there is a God has, or should have, within the university. With the exception of Higton, they mainly make their comments in this area in connection with specifically Christian universities. Williams, for example, writes of Christian universities being places where people are free to discover and learn to live with ‘the rhythms and patterns of reality’, ⁴⁸ including as discerned through faith; to live as those created in the image of God. It is, he says ‘fatally unreasonable … to think that your life could be made independent of the providence of God and the mercy of God’ and how to relate to God is ‘that most comprehensive question about relation or relatedness, within which all the others find their place’. ⁴⁹

If that is the case, it seems proper to ask what place the revelation of God, and faith in God, should have in any university, not just a Christian foundation. Higton, while keen to affirm the value of what he calls ‘a secular and religiously plural university’, including because real learning can take place within it, still says that a university which ‘does not directly form people for worship and discipleship’ is limited, for ‘worship and discipleship are the deepest, fullest forms that all true learning properly takes’. ⁵⁰ To be about learning at its deepest and fullest, universities need to deal with God.

The theologians remind us that the world faces many challenges and they offer views of what universities are for against that background and in the light of theological understandings. They see the world in much bigger terms than current policy documents. Bringing the work of the theologians and the policy documents together illustrates the fact that there may be more to life and, indeed, education, than the policy documents suggest. There may be a God. There certainly are questions to be faced about what is good, how society decides what is good and how to live well in a complex world. If universities fail to prepare people for living in such a world, they fail badly.