The university is dead COVID19 killed it

it’s quite a shocking slide isn’t it

the university is dead covered 19

killed it it’s not just a bit shocking

it’s a bit offensive

especially as over 2 million people have

so far actually lost their lives in this

terrible pandemic

and that’s only going to get worse

i’ll let that sit there for you a moment

and yet back in march when we first

entered lockdown

that’s the message that we were getting

in higher education the university is

dead

and as the saying goes nature abhors a

vacuum

there was a kind of gleeful rush into

our sector

by edtech by software vendors by people

who

have an agenda and want to tell us that

you don’t need universities anymore

google university people can learn

online

research can be done remotely students

don’t want to come to campus

ai will run universities from now on

well i’m here to tell you to misquote

the famous american author mark twain

the death of the university is greatly

exaggerated now of course

there’s always going to be folk who want

to say

for their own reasons that something

like a university is dead

unfortunately this is not a new problem

actually this

predates covet we’ve been fighting this

in education for some time

with the rise of populist governments

around the world from the uk

the usa brazil india russia

there’s an anti-knowledge movement there

are people who are saying we

we don’t trust people who have

intelligence that have degrees we don’t

need them what we need is people to make

money and we need to do that quickly

google university for example short you

don’t need to do a full degree just come

in do something quickly let me just

disabuse you of that myth google

university not a university

right i have nothing against google i

use it every day like i’m sure most of

you but

google is a company it exists for one

reason only

to make money it’s no more a university

than

trump’s failed bogus university wasn’t

in its own right

so all of these rumors started going

around when we entered lockdown

and a lot of us in education felt

particularly nervous because we’ve been

hearing this for some time we’ve been

getting this anti-university feeling

and we’ve been told by industry by

governments that we’re not producing

the right kind of student we need more

people to make more money

university degrees are too esoteric you

live in your ivory towers you’re not

doing what you need to do

now you might say i’d say this because

i’m a as you’ve heard

an english literature graduate i come

from a an art world

i’m a poet what does he know the real

world well actually when i graduated a

long time ago

i graduated with a degree in english

literature and learn and language

and i then entered the workforce i

wanted business

i was in business for six years and i

started on the shop floor

in a retail and i went in at four

o’clock in the morning

and i unloaded lorries and i filled

shelves and by the time i left and

decided to go back

to do my post graduate studies at

university i worked for a

board of directors at one of the uk’s

biggest retail

companies none of whom had a university

degree

because it wasn’t necessary though so i

have nothing against industry

but i entered university like so many of

us in this

room and in the sector in which we work

because i have a passion for the purpose

of what a university does those of you

that have had the

misfortune or pleasure or whatever you’d

like to call it of hearing me speak or

reading my articles before will know

i have some real problems with words

like job ready graduates

the purpose of the university is at

stake here and guess what

we are not there to create job ready

graduates

the purpose of a university is to create

graduates who are ready for life

i was lucky when i went to university i

was able to pick the subject i wanted to

study

i was surrounded by people doing every

subject you can imagine

now that focus is getting narrower and

narrower

there is a top-down emphasis

particularly from government and

industry

that we should only teach stem science

technology

engineering maths and why because

that’ll make money

but the reality is that universities

have been around for over a thousand

years

university of oxford university of paris

bologna in italy salamanca and spain

these universities have been around for

so long because they’re the cultural

hearts of our society

it saddens me when i start the new

academic year and a

group of 18 year olds sit in front of me

and i’m giving them a welcome speech as

a registrar university

and i ask them why have you come what

are you looking forward to studying

and i hear a few of those 18 year olds

pipe up with i want to be the next

millionaire i want to make a

million.com industry there’s nothing

wrong with that but

it saddens me because the pressures that

they’re under

and that the the pressures that their

family and society put on them

that what their degree equals is money

at the end of the day

now fortunately there are a few of us in

this university world

who see a bigger picture just this week

for example warring bevington

the former vice chancellor of the

university of adelaide gave a very dire

warning

about why universities exist and what

we’re here for

and the reason i’m giving this talk

tonight is very similar to what warren

said earlier that week

universities are being pushed from

pillar to post industry wants this

government wants that we’re being told

that we must produce

graduates to fill specialized technical

roles so even if you don’t like my

emotive approach i’ve got a practical

financial reason why that

doesn’t make sense

graduates who now leave our universities

won’t have one job for life

as an example i turned 50 recently so

far i’ve had three different careers

i started in business then i was an

academic

and then i ran universities

graduates leaving now also will be doing

jobs that we don’t even know about yet

they don’t have names for them they may

not even exist

so the idea that we train students in

very narrow specialist technical roles

doesn’t make any financial sense i argue

actually that that is industry’s role

that’s part of lifelong learning it’s

after all industry that make the money

from these graduates later on these

technical skills are very short-lived

if we teach them to students now at 18

they’ll be out of date in two or three

years time

and that’s not what a university should

be doing

now there’s another reason why the

university is dead should be shocking

and that’s what students tell us

ourselves and i’m really glad to report

this because this comes from surveys in

the us

in canada in the uae in the uk and in

australia

students themselves are telling us they

want to get back on campus

you know if a university degree was

simply about letters on a piece of paper

then fine just stay at home students can

stay in this

in their bedroom in their pajamas one

eye on the ipad watching the lecturer

probably the other eye on their

playstation at the end of that we’ll

give them a degree like a receipt

there you go that’s transactional

education that’s not transformational

education that’s not why most of us

entered universities the reality of

course is

that the campus and the university is so

much more than the sum of its parts

why do students want to come back why do

those of us that work

enjoy being on campus why did we enjoy

being students all of us that had that

opportunity the amazing opportunity to

go to university ourselves

because we met people we engaged with

people we debated with people we argued

with people

we met people from different backgrounds

different races

different colors different genders

different sexualities different

behaviors

different languages we learned on campus

about ourselves we fell in and out of

love with knowledge

and with each other and all of that was

about the journey of life that

university does

and that can’t be done in a bedroom

and that’s another argument why we must

resist this very narrow focus on simply

producing graduates

in a mill churning out more and more

stem subject

so that we can fulfill industries needs

we’ve got to resist that

think of all the amazing achievements in

poetry in music and art in the united

arab emirates alone and then take that

wider around the world if we only

produce

graduates in engineering and in specific

areas of accountancy

or business where are our poets where

are our musicians who is going to be on

the stage of our theaters

universities of course have played this

role for centuries

and they’ll continue to play this role

as long as we make sure we fight

for the purpose of the university and

why it exists in the first place

a university is the hub of its community

you know i remember when i came into

higher education after leaving business

25 years ago i can remember similar

things not quite as dramatic as that but

i was told

oh the library’s dead don’t need

libraries anymore you know we’ve got the

internet

libraries we’ve got just click on a

button

they couldn’t be more wrong if you look

at the great universities now around the

world

whatever country you go to from china to

canada you’ll find a library

at the very heart of every successful

university

sure there may not be as many books

there’s now a virtual library

full of databases and journals all

online all available

but there’s still a library some of us

like me in

my dotage still read books but that’s

not the only thing libraries do they’re

event centers they’re cafes they’re

learning commons they’re i.t spaces

they’re the beating heart of a

university so don’t listen

to the doom mongers who will tell you

the university is dead

i kind of started with this very

upsetting shocking message and i want to

end with a kind of clarion call

because all of us who are involved in

education whether you work in the sector

whether you invest in the sector whether

you’ve been just a student yourself and

you remember

how beneficial that was to you we have a

fight on our hands

those people who want to get rid of

universities haven’t gone away

over this summer i was very privileged

to share a conference platform with

michael ignatieff the very famous

philosopher academic

and politician who is the rector of the

central european university

they were recently exiled from budapest

in hungary

and had to move the entire university to

vienna because of the

hungarian government’s dislike of free

speech on campus

that’s very worrying it should concern

all of us all of us involved in

university should be worried that there

is this movement

to get rid of what we do to shorten

degrees to tell students

you don’t need to go to university to

study french or history or classics or

music you just need to do this because

it’ll make that much money

that’s not what i want our kids to go to

university for and that’s not the

message i want them to hear

so the fight now is to make sure that

those of us in universities

explain and convey and disseminate all

the reasons why universities are so

powerful

and we couldn’t have a better one right

now when it comes to covet

the one thing that will get us out of

where we are and the terrible tragedies

that we’re all facing

will be vaccines and where are vaccines

developed

not by big pharma not by industry by

universities

my own university oxford has its own

vaccine there are many others

melbourne in australia toronto and

canada many of the great american

universities

universities like khalifa here in the

united arab emirates all

using their knowledge to help us achieve

vaccines that will get us out of this

why do they do it they do it because

that’s where science leads us

it doesn’t make money for them it’s

about the purpose of a university

so having given you all of that and left

you with this rather dramatic message

i don’t want you to have nightmares the

university isn’t dead

we’re doing our tedx talk here right now

i’m sure there are many other tedx talks

at

similar universities around the world

even in the midst of this pandemic

proving why those of us who love and

work in universities

will continue to do so but be on your

guard

don’t fall asleep at the wheel people

will always come and try and find a way

to stop

free speech and progress from happening

for lots of reasons

i’m just very glad i’m in a room full of

people who believe in what i believe

and see the purpose of universities

thank you

you