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