Melanie Walker and Monica McLean, University of Nottingham, UK melanie.walker@nottingham.ac.uk

1. Universities and the public good: capability formation and transformative professionals, BERA 2010 Melanie Walker and Monica McLean, University of Nottingham, UKmelanie.walker@nottingham.ac.uk

2. Outline • What will help to bring about a better society or a better world? (Tony Judt) • Research project: developing an original public-good professional education Index, 2008-2009 (ESRC/DfIDfunded); set in South Africa and widely applicable (potentially) • Public good: oriented to professional contributions to poverty reduction (What can universities do through professional education to foster such a professional ethic?) • Conceptual framework for a public good professional: capability expansion Plus ‘other regarding’ agency goals • Indexof four interlocking tables as an evaluation heuristic, for testing and public scrutiny

3. Capability approach • MahbubUlHaq - key purpose of (human) development is to enlarge people’s choices to lead good lives • Public-good professionalism is conceptualised both as expanding the capabilities of people living in poverty (which fits with the human development idea of the poor as active participants in development processes), and also expanding the professional capabilities of people who might make the choice to contribute professionally to equitable social improvements.

4. The relationship between comprehensive capabilities and professional capabilities and functionings POLITICAL (eg. Bill of Rights; Government policy) Individual biography conversions and autonomous agency Expand comprehensive capabilities through professional capabilities and functionings Social responsibility of universities and professional education Comprehensive capabilities for each person to have wellbeing and quality of life SOCIAL (eg. Welfare grants, service delivery, education, inclusive access to HE) Public good professionals improve lives of disadvantaged and reduce poverty by expanding people’s capabilities ECONOMIC Opportunities and inclusion Professional capabilities formation and values

5. The approach is used to evaluate well-being and to guide policy and action to remove ‘unfreedoms’ or obstacles which stand in the way of people being able to achieve quality of life and to choose a life they have reason to value, to be and to do in ways they value (Sen, 1999). • Robeyns (2003, p.7) describes capability-based well-being as people having the ‘effective opportunities to undertake actions and activities that they want to engage in and be whom they want to be’. Capability deprivation thus reduces well-being. • Agency in turn involves ‘what a person is free to do and achieve in pursuit of whatever goals or values he or she regards as important’ (Sen 1995, p.203). • The approach can evaluate both the opportunity or freedoms each person has for well-being and agency, as well as actual well-being and agency achievements.

6. Other-regarding agency goals • Capability = obligations to others (Sen, Nussbaum) • De Swaan et al and research on elites and social change • ‘Social consciousness’: • awareness of the interdependence among social groups in society – and, most relevantly, of the external effects of poverty upon the elites, which they may perceive either as threatening [eg crime] or as promising opportunities [eg labour power, clients for their services]; • they realize that as members of the elite they bear some responsibility for the conditions of the poor; • they believe that feasible and efficacious means of improving the lot of the poor exist or might be created. • We translate this into a three-dimensional model of other-regarding, socially conscious agency, having these elements: aware agents; responsible agents; activist agents.

7. Three basic attitudes to poverty among elites in a country: • complete indifference • concern based on perceived threat to their own well-being and the opportunities the poor present [as consumers, voters and so on], but remain inactive and resigned to inequalities • are concerned and confident about their ability to act to bring about change

8. The research project • Development Discourses: Higher Education and Poverty Reduction in South Africa’ project from July 2008-December 2009. • Aims were to explore (i) how professional education in South African universities might contribute to poverty reduction and social transformation; and (ii) the equity trajectory of universities and their role in addressing the challenges of poverty and human development needs of South Africa. • 3 South African universities; 5 professional departments • Informed by theory, research, qualitative data and dialogue

10. Professional Meta-functionings • Recognise the full dignity of every human being • Act for social transformation and to reduce injustice • Make sound, knowledgeable, thoughtful, imaginative professional judgements • Work/act with others to expand the comprehensive capabilities (‘fully human lives’) of people living in poverty.

12. Law at Fynbos University • The question: How do the elements of the Index play out in professional education sites? Here we have selected Law to illustrate how the Index can assist an evaluation of public-good professionalism, including the formation of other-regarding agency in a profession with social power and potential influence for transformation. • Interviews with students, lecturers, university managers, alumni, NGOs and professional bodies.

13. What we found • Reasonably encouraging narrative across professional capabilities, formation of professionals at Faculty and module (Legal Process) level, and University ethos. Some educational constraints (crowded 4 year curriculum, large classes, under-prepared students, specific pressures on poor students; lack of staff diversity) • But significant social constraints (repeated by all groups): • nature of the law • lack of political will for change • materialism • persistent racial prejudice

14. Public good professionalism precarious • Transformation somewhat haphazard as discourse and practices – but also evidence of aware, responsible activist agents (and potential for solidarity, rationality and reflective professionals). • Pessimism from nature of HE changes globally (‘logics’ of the market, managerialism, human capital) –professions prioritize self-interest over public good • Judge Mohamed Navsa, former chairperson of the South African Human Rights Commission - South Africa's legal practitioners ‘are losing their social consciences’.

15. Possibilities, professionals and the public good Index captures the three key elements of Sen’s idea of justice (2009): (i) a focus on accomplishments and capabilities in actual lives; (ii) a focus on obligations to vulnerable others; and, (iii) a focus on public reasoning in arriving at decisions regarding justice and social change.

16. Comparative assessments and pragmatic justice (Sen, 2009) • Not ‘perfect’ justice or ‘perfect’ public-good professional • thinking comparatively, that is, evaluating, local conditions, the proximity of socio-economic arrangements from feasible conditions of justice. In parallel, we can usefully think of public-good professional education comparatively. For example, a practical step would be for the Faculty to expand the Legal Process module so that it could be taken by all students, which would provide more exposure to the realities of working with disadvantaged communities. This would be a first step towards making students aware of the choices in working for transformation. • Index has the potential to be ‘critical, transgressive, transformative’ (Fournier, 2002, p. 192), its collaborative production can be seen as a ‘movement of hope’(Ibid.). It is not a blueprint for a perfect public-good professional education, but a space for imagining alternatives and for ‘public reasoning’ about public good professionals.