Policy paper on the future of Higher Education Preamble The European Students’ Union has existed since 1982 to promote the educational, social, economic and cultural interests of students at the European level, and towards all relevant organisations and institutions. ESU currently has 49 member organisations from 38 countries and represents in excess of 11 million students across the continent. Introduction This policy paper starts from a set of principles, grouped under the divisions of democratic society & active citizens, Economy, Business Life and Labour Market, personal development and academic socialisation, which are considered to be the four perspectives which together make up the raison d’etre of Higher Education systems. Throughout the paper, our vision of the future is based on the transversal values that education is a public good and responsibility, accessible to all and conducive to diversity. During the last decade European students have seen their education and social situation being influenced in different ways. Although the creation of the EHEA, the promotion of mobility and quality assurance are underway the problems of higher education will not come to an end at 2010. In considering the possible future developments in HE we see concrete and significant effects on students, which require us to reaffirm our principles in this light.
Development as a responsible, active citizen within a democratic society
We call for an education which is a force for democracy and active citizenship. In order to maintain and develop democracy, active citizenship and emancipation of individuals, education remains of key importance. Education allows citizens to be more sensitive to the democratic spirit and better skilled for participation in democratic processes in institutions. Besides education should function as an important force for the establishment of democracy and the resistance to undemocratic forces in society. In many of the ‘new democracies’ in Eastern Europe, students have been in the front line for the battle against dictatorships and oppression of the people. ESU determinedly believes that it is important to maintain the political and social benefits of education in the future in order to promote the democratic spirit and to spread the influence of democracy in all levels of society. An important threat for education as a force for democracy and active citizenship is the neglecting of this function. The current political discourse in Europe has changed radically the public thinking on higher education. ESU strongly believes that this way of thinking on higher education is a threat and that education should be safeguarded as a cornerstone of democracy for the future generations.”
We call for an democratic Higher Education Area free of discrimination
ESU promotes the democratisation of HE, so that everyone will be able to access and succeed in HE regardless of his background. Access to HE should be based on ability to learn and not the ability to pay. ESU strongly believes that all discrimination is equally objectionable. ESU considers education and HE in particular as to be the main instrument of emancipation instead of education being the system of reproduction of the existing inequalities and discriminations in society. Access is not simply providing entry to HE but also about completing studies. Drop-out rates are still a huge problem in the European Higher Education Area, which should be tackled. In 1966, the United Nations, in the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights states that “Higher education shall be made equally accessible to all, […], in particular by the progressive introduction of free education” (article 13). ESU, thereby following a UN covenant yet ratified by 152 states, considers that higher education, should be accessible to all, indifferently of race, gender, culture or socio-economic background and this can only be achieved by progressively introducing, in the long run, free education throughout Europe.
We call for a HE system free of corruption
Corruption is still a problem that occurs at all levels of HE institutions, teachers, researchers, students and staff. Combating corruption should always be a priority since this goes against the academic spirit, which is the raison d’être for HEI. Corruption is especially prevalent within an environment where the academic profession is not adequately supported within a social and/or financial framework. “The danger of corruption is strengthened by the transformation of the university into a mass provider of higher education, a conglomerate of many disciplines, institutes and Research & Development centres where responsibilities refer to divergent purposes, personal and collective”. The moral principles which makes the academic spirit crucial for HE, but also for society an entity should be educated at all levels of education. ESU believes that HEI can never tolerate any compromises of these moral principles for personal benefit.
Economy, Business Life and Labour Market
We affirm that education is not as a tool for profit In recent years, Europe has witnessed a shift in the debate from HE seen as a public good to a private good, a product that can be used for making profit. Reforms that attempt to replace academic values by commercial considerations, social concerns and purposes by personal interests, and long term needs by short-term demands can never expect the support of ESU. The core academic values and social purposes are so important that they cannot be traded off in favour of markets. ESU supports a future in which HE is a public good, which focuses on the personal needs of the student as well as the demands of society. This is why ESU strongly opposes commitments in the education sector into the GATS treaty or any comparable agreement. ESU is committed to increasing sustainable possibilities for cross-border education, but stresses that a trade regime is not appropriate to address educational issues. Although higher education is proven to be a strong force for the economy, this subordinated effect may never become the main purpose for higher education. Education has an intrinsic value, which makes it essential for the whole society even if it wouldn’t promote the economy.
We call for knowledge to be used to serve society
Competition in the field of knowledge development and application necessarily implies that new information is hidden from competitors, at least partly and temporarily, and thus hinders the fruitful free exchange and development of knowledge. ESU stresses that knowledge should be used to serve societal aims and that the spirit of cooperation should guide the development of knowledge and innovation. In this respect, ESU stresses the importance of basic research and research purely for the sake of knowledge. These are of public interest and should not be jeopardised by the trend of increasing competitiveness in higher education. It is important that HEIs keep ethical considerations in mind, in terms of the subject matter, beneficiaries, commercial exploitation and the publication of results. Above all, it is important that such activities be in line with the aims and purposes of higher education, so that they do not pervert or damage the role of higher education in society. Furthermore, accessibility and cooperation must build a basis for all considerations made by HEIs in terms of intellectual property.
We call on educational systems to be conducive to lifelong learning
The relentless drive forward of globalization continues to confront the citizens of Europe with a shift towards a more unsecured labour market and the loss of less academically based jobs. Education should help these people to adapt to such changes by teaching them the competences to integrate people into the labour market. ESU sees education as a tool for promoting social mobility by the means of combating and preventing unemployment not only for the youth, but for all citizens. This means that the Higher education systems should improve the equity and access for those groups who, due to educational disadvantages caused by personal, social, cultural or economic circumstances, need particular support to fulfil their educational potential, such as people with low basic skills, early school leavers, the long-term unemployed, older people, gender, migrants, and people with disabilities. ESU will fully support a future in which everybody can improve their skills in a Lifelong learning perspective.
We call for education to be used a tool to facilitate social mobility
Education has traditionally been a tool for social mobility, but this tool faces serious problems in most of the higher education systems. However, this benefit has often been withheld from the masses due to the fact that people from lower social-economic backgrounds still face disproportionate obstacles to enter HE. Additional to this a disproportional number of the citizens of lower social-economic backgrounds are migrants. Statistics show that people with a post-secondary qualification have better chances to get a well-paid job. This makes education a potential tool for people to break away from poverty. In the vision of ESU the emancipator function of HE is extremely important in the fight against poverty. Thus we demand more attention in the future to the problem of disproportional participation of people from lower social-economic background and migrants. Instead of only focusing on excellence HE should focus on accessibility and retention rates because enlightened societies can never tolerate obstacles for groups and individuals in the struggle against poverty. Emancipation We call for a sensible link between HE & Business Although there are many reasons for people to engage in HE, one of the most important ones is to improve the probability to vertical mobility within society. HE is of crucial importance for business to find enough highly skilled people. In the future this role of HE will only increase since many jobs are moving away to other regions of the world. But we cannot create a knowledge-based society with lacking funds so there is an increasing need for more funds in almost all European countries. ESU judges HE as a public responsibility which should be funded adequately by public money and calls upon our ministers to make higher education also a priority when it comes to the public budget. However, the demand for alternative funding is continuously growing. When discussing alternative financing of higher education it should be remembered that there is no value free money, that every financing source implies interests and effects on the task and meaning of education. By no mean and for no reason academic freedom and basic research should be jeopardized when searching for new sources. Special attention should be given to the distribution of money between academic disciplines and different types of HEIs, not neglecting the ones that are of less commercial value. ESU accepts only alternative Sources of funds that do not imply negative consequences mentioned above. ESU sees the increasing of the relationship between HE and business, but stresses that the nature of this relationship needs a continuous critical attention from the stakeholders in order to preserve the teaching content from being externally influenced. This relationship should be organized in such a way that the benefits go to students. It is a future challenge to establish such balanced links between HE, the surrounding world and business in which the academic freedom and social purposes of HE aren’t neglected
We call for HE to contribute to balanced regional development
Globalisation is one of the key drivers of change in Higher Education. It forces higher education institutions to look beyond the borders of their hometown and to facilitate the enrolment of students from abroad. The harmonization of higher education systems should allow students the liberty to choose from a large amount of academic institutions. ESU recognises that research as well as teaching can play an important role in facilitating and stimulating regional economic development. Knowledge transfer has an important impact for local small and medium sized enterprises and can help increasing to the quantity and quality of the available jobs. Furthermore research and innovations can solve local problems with for example the environment or the economy. But this doesn’t mean that education should only focus on local community. ESU fully supports a future in which both internationalization and balanced regional development are characteristics of the Higher Education system and is convinced of the possibility to combine these features. Furthermore ESU believes that there should be a harmony between regional development and internationalisation and therefore encourages countries within the EHEA to foster an unselfish attitude towards brain mobility and to focus on social coherence and sustainability, rather than brain gain. Brain drain can be a serious threat to the development of regions and countries around the world and is thus unacceptable in the eyes of ESU. Personal Development In recent years, the role of individual benefit within the HE sphere has been the focus of increased attention. Rather than as a good for all of society, education has been portrayed as more of a good for the individual. Ensuing rationales, such as that of cost sharing, have in turn encouraged policy makers to frame the discussion on the private benefit of education in purely economical language, thus decreasing the policy emphasis on the intangible, unquantifiable personal benefits of the HE system.
We call for HEIs to continue to be considered as a breeding ground for social and cultural values
ESU firmly believes that the human right to education can only be exercised in full in terms of a holistic education, and feels that rather than be marginalized, social, cultural and ethical values can become the centre of our Higher Education systems, and ensure that it educates fully formed individuals and not just capable workers.
We call for HE as a tool for critical reflection on established wisdom
ESU believes that it is part of HE’s role in democracy to enable individuals to challenge established wisdom. Encouragement of critical thinking will lead to better science and improved knowledge. If HE does not promote evidence based dialogue and the search for the truth it is embedding the status quo in knowledge. It is of crucial importance for the progression of society to reflect on the status quo and to get rid of undesirable characteristics.
We call for the principle of cooperation to be taught by practice in institutions
The traditional spirit of cooperation in European HEIs can best be described as one whereby the teacher is there not for the sake of the student, both have their justification in the service of scholarship. The ever increasing division of labour means that imbuing a spirit of cooperation in each and every student becomes more and more important. This spirit should be found in learning pedagogies, campus environment as well as throughout the various levels of HEI governance. A true cooperative learning environment means that students should be able to work with each other as well as with all members of the academic and administrative community of their HEI on a basis of mutual respect. ESU believes that this concept is also compatible with some of the alternative methods for receiving instruction, such as e-learning, or highly specialised degrees, and therefore advocates that this concept continue to be considered a foundation of educational systems and reflected throughout them. Seen in this light, cooperative governance of institutions is more than a tool for transparency or democracy, but a reflection of this principle at the highest levels of decision-making within an HEI. Thus, ESU sees the debate over collegial vs. streamlined management as involving much more than concepts of efficiency, but as affecting the ideological foundations on which our HEI are built. The challenge, which ESU invites our policy makers to challenge over the next decade, is how to best combine efficiency and cooperation so as not to compromise the developmental process currently offered by our institutions.
We call for mobility to be used as tool for personal development
Student mobility is arguably one of the largest drivers of change in Higher Education in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Within the European Union, by far the largest action for community cooperation in the field of education has been within the field of mobility, through landmark programmes such as Erasmus and Tempus. Within the wider Europe, the now maturing Bologna Process aims to create a European Higher Education Area in which students should be able to move freely between countries and institutions. However, despite years of action in the field, only a vanishing small percentage of students today are actually mobile, and many of the more significant examples of mobility have involved developing countries being robbed of their best people, who left for better lives in more developed regions. Thus, at its best, mobility is a manifestation of personal independence, a tool for exchange of cultures and the personification of unlimited opportunity for the individual. At its worst, it is a tool used by rich countries to gather more highly skilled workforce from developing countries. This form of brain gain with highly negative effects for the outgoing countries is unacceptable. ESU calls for a more constructive attitude of balanced mobility in a global context and rejects any form of brain drain. Despite the efforts made, Europe is far from becoming an area where free mobility is the norm not the exception, and at least for the foreseeable future, the various funding programmes and their design will continue to be the main driver of mobility. This gives policy makers a unique opportunity to affect mobility trends and promote balanced mobility through appropriate design of the various programmes. Furthermore, ESU calls on governments to enhance their support for their own commitments by increasing the funding available to make students mobile. Academic Socialisation One of the main roles of higher education is to educate people academically and socialise them into the academia. The cornerstone of any HEI is to create analytical and innovative skilled people, who are capable to carry out research and benefit to the development of the society.
Student participation as a prerequisite to achieve democracy in Higher Education
The stakeholder principle recognises that although all actors within the HE system work towards the same goal, they do so from radically different perspectives and life experiences. This has been the basis for the development of collegial governance including representation from all stakeholders. In recent years, this model of governance has come increasingly under threat, and there is currently no reason to believe that this trend will not continue. Within a number of countries, and particularly within certain levels of European governing bodies, stakeholders are increasingly squeezed out in preference for civil servants, experts or professional managers. Within certain countries, we have seen a situation where financial burdens are being increased, whilst at the same time representation is being cut, effectively, an assault on student rights coming from two separate fronts. ESU fully supports efforts to make Higher Education systems more efficient and effective, however it also points out that actions that threaten the raison d’etre of our educational systems do not make them more efficient, they transform them into a totally new and not necessarily desirable entity. Only involving students in governance ensures that a higher education system will truly be reflective of their needs and views as an integral status group within HE as well as society, and an HE system not reflective of these, is not an HE system at all.
A meaningful interpretation of the knowledge triangle – teaching, research and innovation
One of the cardinal purposes of the university has always been “the transformation of information into knowledge and of abstraction into facts”, through the taking of risks (experimentation) and the operation of doubt. This was previously thought to embodied in the nexus of teaching and research. However, experience has shown that when left alone, these principles alone can lead to mere reproduction of existing knowledge. Thus, ESU welcomes the concept of the knowledge triangle, which adds innovation to the dynamic, ensuring that the process of education remains constantly forward looking. However, ESU cautions that the knowledge triangle can only work as an equilateral triangle where each corner is equidistant from the others and of equal importance. The concept of the knowledge triangle can be developed into powerful in the coming years, but only if the involvement of the stakeholders who will make it happen ventures beyond the token.
An educational environment conducive to quality
The past years have seen great bounds made in the improvement of quality assurance procedures in institutions, with the help of commitment made by both stakeholders and governments. The challenge for the coming years is to move beyond the prescriptive procedures towards the full development of a quality enhancement culture at all levels of each institution, which in its ideal type, would render procedures obsolete. Furthermore, an increased emphasis will need to be made onto the social dimension in relation to quality. Even an institution operating at the very highest levels of academic quality will fail in its educational mission if students are unable to enjoy the social conditions and an environment of diversity which allow them to practice as students. Thus, elements such as income level of students, housing conditions and even social life are important parts of quality insofar as they affect academic performance. An important part of this will be to move towards the collection of comparative data on the social condition of students across Europe.
HEIs as free space
Academic freedom has led to breakthroughs in science, arts and culture. Political freedom has led to the growth of grassroots movements, which have moved entire countries towards democracy. Over the next decades this principle will become increasingly contested. The plague of religious and political extremism continues to grip our societies, and will continue to tempt authorities to limit free expression as a reaction. Within academic spheres, increased pressure to make HE even more relevant to society means that academic freedoms will be encroached to achieve political agendas, such as shifting studies towards perspectives required by the labour market. Conclusion In considering the future of Higher Education, ESU firmly believes that any technique, which attempts to predict the future is fundamentally flawed. Thus, scenario—building projects that essentially project the future as a choice between a limited number of options based upon the analysis of a few individuals. While it is undeniable that certain trends will have significantly more effect than others on HE, it is equally true that unforeseen trends can emerge as well as that current trends can have unexpected effects. Even the process of postulating a desirable future has severe limitations, due to the fact that a future ideal proposed today might have no relevance in the time it is considered for. Thus, ESU believes that any process of consideration of the future should be based on an exercise of identifying the values and principles, which constitute the ‘good’ of Higher Education, and ensuring that they remain reflected in systems as they develop. This paper has considered the future from this approach. Our vision for a Higher Education in the next decade is fundamentally based upon the human right to education, in particular by the progressive introduction of free education as mentioned in the Pact of New York. As declared by and reaffirmed on countless occasions by state leaders throughout the globe, education, including Higher Education must remain an invaluable, unassailable right, applied universally without any distinction on ethnicity, colour, gender, belief, socio-economic origin or other character
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