Lifelong Learning, Entrepreneurship and Social Development:

1. Lifelong Learning, Entrepreneurship and Social Development: The Role of Higher Education.

2. Chevening Scholars,British Embassy, Cairo • In the economic, political and social circumstances of the early 21st century, it is necessary for us to re-think the role and purpose of the university and of higher education. • Indeed, the current economic and financial crisis makes such a re-assessment an urgent one. • First, let us re-consider briefly the role of the modern University as it emerged from the models laid down by: • Wilhelm von Humboldt with the establishment of the University of Berlin in 1809. • John Henry Newman with his celebrated statement on The Idea of a University Education in 1873.

3. W. von Humboldt • Humboldt’s university model was characterized by the unity of teaching and research. • It was to be ‘a special feature of the higher scientific establishments that they treated science as a problem which is never completely solved and therefore engaged in constant research.’ • The university was also to be an establishment of general education, an alma mater that taught all the sciences and did not concentrate on occupational training.

4. J. H. Newman • Newman’s university model was also drawn from the ancient designation of a Studium Generale or School of Universal Learning. • ‘It {the University}…is a school of knowledge of every kind, consisting of teachers and learners from every quarter. …a University seems to be in its essence, a place for the communication and circulation of thought, by means of personal intercourse, through a wide extent of country.’

5. Humboldt & Newman • As is well known, there were in practice important differences between the two models, but the emphasis of both was on the fundamental role of the university in the: • Intellectual and moral development of an élite. • Unification of teaching, research and scholarship. • International exchange of scholarship and learning.

6. Higher Education • Bearing this in mind, I propose to consider the current role of the university, or more broadly higher education, from three linked perspectives. • These are: • Knowledge and Learning Societies. • Entrepreneurship and Higher Education. • Social Development and Higher Education. • And to pose some questions for our later discussion.

7. Higher Education • I shall draw briefly on three important documents: • Towards Knowledge Societies, UNESCO World Report, Paris, 2005. • Entrepreneurship and Higher Education (ed.) J. Potter, OECD, Paris, 2008. • Higher Education: New Challenges and Emerging and Emerging Roles for Human and Social Development, GUNI:3, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2008.

8. What is a Knowledge Society? • Given currency by Peter Drucker (1969). • A knowledge society is one that is nurtured by its diversity and by its capacities. This last developed further through Amartya Sen’s theory of development as freedom through capability (2001). • Higher education is a crucial framework for this. What matters, it is said is ‘learning how to learn’, given the radical changes in traditional patterns of knowledge production, diffusion and application and the new opportunities created by ICTs. • Is the knowledge society limited to the information society?

9. What is a Knowledge Society? • Knowledge societies should be based on knowledge-sharing by all, rather than on its partition. To what extent is this in practice happening? • We must recognize that there is a market for knowledge and for intellectual property. But, what are the dangers of an excessive commodification of knowledge? • It is claimed that knowledge societies provide a new approach to relevant development for the countries of the South. Is this true and what examples are there?

10. Learning Societies & Lifelong Learning • Given currency by Robert Hutchins (1968) and by Torsten Husén (1974) and (1986). • A learning society is one in which the old limits on where and when organized knowledge could be acquired no longer apply. • The link with the concept of a knowledge society is clear, as the Faure Report, UNESCO, (1972) and the Delors Report, UNESCO, (1996) both emphasized. What practical impact have these reports made?

11. Lifelong Learning & Higher Education • Over the past 50 years higher education, modelled for the most part on the European university, has experienced a tremendous growth in student numbers-described as the massification of higher education. • Yet access by adults to higher education remains very uneven. • Structural resistance comes from labour market constraints. The individual and social costs of lifelong training increase with age, while the expected returns decrease. • There is also the continuing use of degrees and diplomas by employers to screen labour market candidates.

12. Lifelong Learning and Higher Education • However, demographic trends in developed countries do encourage lifelong learning and the validation of experience. • This has led to a proliferation of potential places for learning and training e.g. private provision and an increased emphasis on non-formal and informal education. • This provides many opportunities for higher education to become an integral part of the practice of life-long learning. There is no longer a single organizational model. This raises questions of quality, of relevance and of capacity. • How should higher education institutions respond?

13. Entrepreneurship & Higher Education • One way is through a greater engagement with entrepreneurship. This is part of the human capital function of higher education. The OECD has identified three major reasons for this: • The increasing importance of knowledge and of knowledge transfer in economic growth. • New forms of innovation and of partnership networks to which HEIs and their resources are key. Potential partners, both business and social, recognize this. • The increasing competition for resources, especially given the increasing constraints on public budgets, aggravated by the current financial crisis. This does not mean the exclusion of public partnerships or the end of publicly-funded HE.

14. Social Development & Higher Education • A second way is through engagement with social development. This is part of the social capital function of higher education. For example, entrepreneurshipcan include opportunities for social entrepreneurship: defined as: ‘ a business with primarily social objectives whose surpluses are re-invested for that purpose.’ • Again, the ‘for-all’ imperative also encourages public policy to ensure that individuals, groups and communities are not in practice excluded from lifelong learning opportunities, including higher education. • There is also the fundamental question of the part played by higher education in the relations of knowledge and power that determine the potential for human and social development and capability.

15. Questions & Potential • It is argued that institutions of higher education are well-placed to influence social, political and economic change because of their comparative advantages within knowledge and learning societies. Higher education has flourished since Humboldt and Newman because of its capacity to adapt to economic and societal needs. • However, its current capacity to take on such responsibility and to become the motors of significant economic and social progress is as often doubted. The conditions in which higher education institutions operate varies dramatically in Europe, let alone across the globe; again this is aggravated by the current world-wide financial crisis.

16. Questions & Potential • This in turn raises questions of fundamental cultural mission, of governance, leadership, organization, management and finance, and about the growing relationship with the private and corporate sectors. • This will depend on stakeholders capacity to communicate and to be flexible, to draw upon different forms of knowledge. • The aim should be for higher education to be the intellectual forum for debate and dialogue on human and social development. • In short, what are the ethical dimensions of the future relationship between higher education and society? • Is a common vision for global higher education possible?

17. Questions & Potential • This will be the aspiration of UNESCO’s forthcoming World Conference on Higher Education entitled ‘The New Dynamics of Higher Education and Research for Societal Change and Development.’ (Paris,5-8 July, 2009). • It is an aspiration that, perhaps surprisingly, retains the fundamentals of the idea of a university as envisaged by von Humboldt and by Newman: no longer for an élite certainly, but still an international forum for the development and exchange of knowledge in support of human capacity and understanding.

18. Further References • Delors, J. (1996) Learning: The treasure within, UNESCO International Commission on Education for the 21st Century, Paris. • Drucker, P. F. (1969) The Age of Discontinuity: Guidelines to our changing society, Heinemann, London. • Faure,E et al. (1972)Learning to Be: The world of education, today and tomorrow, Paris & London, UNESCO/Harrap. • Husén, T. (1974) The Learning Society, Methuen, London Husén,. • Husén, T. (1986) The Learning Society Revisited , Pergamon, Oxford. • Hutchins, R. (1968) The Learning Society, Penguin,Harmandsworth. • Sen, A. K. (2001) Development as Freedom, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York.  

19. Thank You! • W. J. Morgan • john.morgan@nottingham.ac.ukwww.nottingham.ac.uk/education/centres/uccer