Making the university relevant: Reflections on a modern myth

Over the next few months, I will deliver more than a dozen Future of Education workshops at universities across India. These workshops aid institutional transformations through a collaborative conversation inside and across campuses. This is an excellent opportunity for me to have serious and engaged exchanges with academic leaders shaping the future of perhaps a quarter of the world's STEM workforce. The privilege humbles me - I couldn't ask for a better opportunity to learn and have an impact!

However, I know that global anti-university claims will shape our conversations. In the West, middle-class dreams are collapsing, and the great liberal promise of a university education unlocking the gates of prosperity is debunked. There is doom and gloom everywhere: Silicon Valley stars and influencers regularly berate university education as an overpriced indulgence that condemns unsuspecting aspirants to a lifetime of debt and self-doubt. The media pundits posit that the future is moving faster than higher education is managing to catch up. Therefore, it is best to 'unbundle' higher education and sprinkle it over a lifetime. The privilege of the university-educated is intolerable to those who find themselves on the wrong side (think Brexit) and to the populist politicians who suddenly find themselves in ascendance.

The irrelevance of college may not be the story being told in India. Colleges are still being built there, and the politicians, even the populists, speak approvingly of university education. Leading foreign universities opening campuses in India is the key talking point in the Indian higher education sector right now. But the underlying question of relevance remains: Engineering seats are empty, graduates are sitting unemployed, and universities are even failing in their main social function as a sorting out mechanism for the privileged. University leaders in India feel more secure than their Western counterparts and pin their hopes on India's millennium baby boom. Still, the peak in the college-age population may have already arrived.

The myth and the anti-myth

In this context, whether one should still think of university education is an open question. More people indeed attend university, and employers insist on candidates having college degrees more than ever, but such questions are raised repeatedly. Usually, tighter job markets meant easier entry into the workforce and less need for a university degree. On the contrary, university education becomes popular when entry-level jobs are hard to come by. The promise of degrees has been the politicians' panacea, a handy way to keep the middle-class dream alive through the boom-and-bust cycle of the modern economy.

However, in some ways, that does not explain what's happening now. The entry-level job market is not the easiest right now (with some exceptions, such as in Australia). Automation, rising complexity of available jobs, increasing regulation due to consumer awareness and environmental challenges mean that an entry-level worker needs to be better educated.

But the media narrative somewhat de-emphasises the challenge of entering the workforce, constructing in its place an anti-myth - the glories of the gig economy! The fact that the true winners of Uber were people with cars and people with spare rooms benefit more from AirBnB gets left out of the conversation. For most people, the gig economy means the precarious existence of Deliveroo, often less-than-minimum-wage jobs.

But instead of highlighting these challenges and making a new case for university education, most of us are arguing about the end of it. Silicon Valley celebrities regularly question the value of college and celebrate a drop-out culture; boot camps and ed-tech providers, boosted by an unlimited supply of private money, promise instant nirvana; the here-and-now lifestyle of consumerist culture makes the demands of university life seem pointless. Since we measure wisdom by the amount of money one has, the opinions of Peter Thiel and the Paypal gang count for more than philosophers and scientists long dead. Certain to lose the argument, academic leaders try to run away from it - arguing that higher education has intrinsic value that can't be measured in economic terms (while charging real money for tuition fees) - and, therefore, lose the argument doubly over.

Making university relevant again

Despite all the cynicism, one could argue that a broad education is indispensable during great technological and economic change. The lesson from history is clear: More people need broad interdisciplinary education to participate productively in the modern economy. More and more people need higher education to deal with the stresses and demands of globalised life. Self-awareness, the ability to reflect, analyse information critically, and engage respectfully and meaningfully in conversations with strangers - all demand better higher education. The university education was designed for all this: Why are we not discussing it again?

The answer I wish to provide in my workshops is that institutional leaders often lose sight of these things. In search of relevance, they try to meet the businesses halfway and talk about industry-ready talent. But Higher Education and businesses have different trajectories, with the former being an effort focused on long-term and fundamental change. At the same time, the latter often lives from quarter-end to quarter-end, speculatively. The institutions can't catch up with businesses: They must lead the way. The universities should aspire to create clusters of expertise, as all successful universities have done.

This is a frightening prospect for most university leaders. The creeping managerialism in the sector has led to a profound lack of appetite for anything aspirational. Therefore, the sector has sunk into what's easy - becoming a social sorting machine through ranking and winning grants. Most universities wouldn't know how to lead the conversation, relegated as they are at the back benches of new thinking by the influence of social media.

To lead, serve

The only way this leadership can be achieved is by rediscovering the purpose of the university: To bring together a community of learners committed to thinking and discovering. A university has two unique things: A community of hopefuls (not yet corrupted by the cynicism of our speculator economy) and time! The combination of hope-fuelled intelligence and safe time created what we celebrate as a modern economy, yet we seem to forget that. We forget this because we value the research papers and too little the spirit of inquiry, community and solidarity that a university makes happen.

For a university, then, to lead is to serve. To rethink the university as a place of connection and discovery and to be serious about values and conversations. This is not to undermine the challenges the university leaders face: The commercial demand, the demands of political correctness, the inexorable need for scale to do anything meaningfully, and the rapid obsolescence of technologies and ways of doing things. Each challenge must be met on its own terms for a university to remain relevant. But this must start with engaging in the debate, not running away from it, and recognising that the university's resources are not limited to its land, buildings and professors but can be, and must be, augmented by its students' capacity to think and create.