A keynote speech delivered to the Widening Participation Conference 2012 'Discourses of Inclusion in Higher Education' 24-25 April 2012 www.open.ac.uk/disourses-of-inclusion

1. Centre for Higher Education
and Equity Research (CHEER)
Imagining the Inclusive
University of the Future
Professor Louise Morley
University of Sussex, UK
(http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cheer/).
26 April, 2012

2. The University of the Past
•Elitism
•Exclusion
•Inequalities
26 April, 2012

3. The University of Today
• Diversified
• Liquified
• Expanded
• Globalised
• Borderless/ Edgeless
• Marketised
• Technologised
• Neo-liberalised
• Privatised? 26 April, 2012

4. Turbulence and Torpor
Caught between:
 Archaism
 Hyper-modernisation
Negotiating:
 Nostalgia
 Frenzy
 Inertia
Tensions between:
 Desire
 Desiccation
 Distributive justice 26 April, 2012

5. Do These Discourses Excite
and Delight You?
 Quality Assurance
 Excellence
 Knowledge Economy
 Innovation and Enterprise
 Knowledge Transfer
 Teaching and Learning
 Lifelong Learning
 Employability
 Globalisation
 Internationalisation
 Civic Engagement
 Digitisation
 Economic Impact
 League Tables 26 April, 2012

6. Futurology
Are current HE policy discourses:
Limiting or generating creative
thinking about the future of
universities?
Commensurate with aspirations/
desires of students/ staff?
Reducing universities to delivery
agencies for government-decreed
outcomes? (Young, 2004)
26 April, 2012

7. Technology or Ideology?
• Quality is frequently invoked
when equality is raised.
• Is equality invoked in quality
discourses?
• Top Universities in League
Tables have lowest numbers of
women professors.
UK = 20%
Oxford = 9.4%
26 April, 2012

8. Whose Imaginary?
• Neo-liberalism/ austerity rather
than academic imaginaries or
social movements?
• Who/what is currently informing
policy? (Ball and Exley, 2009)
• What new vocabularies can be
marshalled to consider the
morphology of the university of
the future?
26 April, 2012

9. What Type of Future?
•Probable
•Possible
•Desirable
(Appadurai, 2010)
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10. Imagining the Future
26 April, 2012

11. Dystopian Futures and Cultures of
Closure
• Callousness of prestige
• Decline in academic freedom
• Employees permanently temporary
• Job training, not education
• Teacherless classrooms
• Increased political, cultural and
economic assault
• Corporatisation/ academic-capitalist
values
• Countercultures and opposition
crushed.
26 April, 2012
(Bousquet, 2008)

12. The Edgeless University (Bradwell,
2009)
• Open Access Publishing
• Flexible learning outside the
university
• Social media
• Progressive Austerity (Reeves, 2009)
• Strategic technological investment
• New providers
• Collaborative research/ open
research communities
• Universities as partners, not sole
providers of learning, research
• Engaging stakeholders in course
design
• New forms of accreditation.
26 April, 2012

13. Absences and Silences
• Learning Landscapes/ Aesthetics/
Spatial Justice/ (Lambert, 2010; Neary, 2010)
• Affective Domain (Hey, 2009, 2011)
• Environment and Sustainability
(Sterling, 2004)
• Global North/ South Power
Geometries and Cognitive Justice
(Robinson, 2009; Santos, 2007)
• Equalities and Intersectionality of
Social Identities (Morley et al, 2010)
26 April, 2012

14. Equalities and Identities
26 April, 2012

15. Desiring Higher Education
• Aligning personal aspirations with
needs of economy
(Appadurai, 2003; Morley et al. 2010; Walkerdine, 2003,
2011).
Globally: 1960 - 13 million
2005 - 137.8 million
2025 - 262 million?
(UNESCO, 2009).
• Multiversities (Fallis, 2007)
or
• Multiple providers (Ball, 2008).
26 April, 2012

16. Global Expansion
Asia
China enrolment is now 20%
(Marginson et al., 2011)
India (world’s third largest HE
system) plans 15% by 2012
Sub-Saharan Africa
8.7% annual expansion
5.1% for the world as a whole.
Regional Variations in Participation
Iceland 65.6%
Austria 60.7% (UNESCO, 2009)
Tanzania 1% (DFID, 2008)
26 April, 2012

17. Toxic Correlations/ Access and
Social Identities
• 4% of UK poorer young people
enter higher education.
(David et al, 2009; Hills Report, 2009).
• 5% of this group enter UK’s top 7
universities (HESA, 2010).
• More black young men in prison in
UK and US than in HE.
• Attainment gap in UK HE highest
between black and white students
(Ruebain, 2012).
• Universities = hereditary domain
of financially advantaged (Gopal,
2010).
26 April, 2012

18. Why Does This Matter?
The university
• generates social, educational
and cultural opportunities
• plays a major role in social
mobility
• produces workers for other
influential institutions.
(Holmwood, 2011)
26 April, 2012

19. Reproducing Power and Privilege?
Graduates from elite universities
control:
the media
politics
the civil service
the arts
the City
law
medicine
big business
the armed forces
the judiciary
think tanks
(Monbiot, 2010)
26 April, 2012

20. Closing the Gender Gap?
• Global Gender Parity Index of 1.08
(UNESCO, 2009).
• The number of male students globally
quadrupled from 17.7 to 75.1 million
between 1970-2007.
• The number of female students rose
sixfold from 10.8 to 77.4 million.
• UK ranked 16 the Global Gender Gap
Index (13 in 2008)
(World Economic Forum, 2011).
In UK, women are:
• 57.1% of students
• 42.6% of academic staff
• 20% of professoriate
• 13% of Vice-Chancellors (ECU, 2009).
26 April, 2012

21. Inclusion = Representational Space
• Gender = access, smart economics,
disadvantage and remediation.
• Women’s increased access =
feminisation.
• Gender not intersected with other
structures of inequality.
• HE products and processes = gender
neutral.
• Power and privilege = under-
theorisation.
• Redistributive measures = social
engineering.
• Equity / Affirmative Action = threat to
26 April, 2012
excellence.

22. Gender Mainstreaming?
• Sexual harassment (Morley, 2011,
NUS, 2010);
• Gender insensitive pedagogy
(Welch, 2006);
• Women and Technology (Clegg,
2011);
• Promotion, professional
development and tenure (Acker,
2009; Knights and Richards, 2003);
• Knowledge production and
dissemination (Hughes, 2002);
• Curricula and subject choices
(Morley et al, 2006).
• Inequalities and gender
mainstreaming (Morley, 2010; Rees,
2006). 26 April, 2012

23. Gender…
 is a demographic variable (noun), not
something that is in continual production
(verb).
 continues to be relayed via everyday
practices that elude quality audits.
 is ignored when women suffer
discrimination/under-representation.
 is amplified in crisis form when women are
‘over-represented’.
 inequalities resistant to
hypermodernisation forces?
26 April, 2012

24. Sociology of Absences
(De Sousa Santos)
26 April, 2012

25. Widening Participation in Higher
Education in Ghana and Tanzania
Measuring:
• Sociological variables of gender, age,
socio-economic status (SES)
In Relation to:
• Educational Outcomes: access,
retention and achievement.
In Relation to:
• 4 Programmes of Study in each HEI.
• 2 Public and 2 private HEIs.
• Intersectionality
(Morley et al. 2010 http://www.sussex.ac.uk/wphegt
26 April, 2012

26. Equity Scorecard: Access to Level 200 on 4
Programmes at a Public University in Tanzania
According to Age, Gender and Socio Economic Status
% of Students on the Programme
Mature
Programme Women Women Poor
Low Age 30 and
Women and low 30 or Mature
SES or over Low
SES over Women
SES
B. Commerce 32.41 8.59 1.13 0.16 0.32 0.0 0.0
LLB. Law 56.18 13.48 0.0 0.0 5.06 0.0 0.0
B.Sc.
25.05 11.65 1.36 0.0 1.36 1.17 0.0
Engineering
B. Science with
11.20 28.00 4.80 1.6 0.80 0.0 0.0
Education
26 April, 2012

27. Equity Scorecard: Access to Level 200 on 4
Programmes at a Public University in Ghana
According to Age, Gender and Socio Economic Status
(SES)
% of Students on the Programme
Mature Women
Programme Age 30 Women Poor
Low and and
Women or 30 Mature
SES Low low
over or over Women
SES SES
B.Commerce 29.92 1.66 5.82 0.00 1.11 0.28 0.00
B.
Management 47.06 2.94 6.30 0.00 1.68 3.36 0.00
Studies
B.Education
36.36 8.08 65.66 8.08 2.02 21.21 2.02
(Primary)
B.Sc.
30.77 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Optometry
26 April, 2012

28. Steep Social Gradients
• Opportunity hording by
privileged social groups?
• Middle class capture of
affirmative action?
• Are we now educating
‘doctors' daughters rather
than doctors' sons’?
(Williams/ Eagleton 2008)
26 April, 2012

29. ‘Now’ (Inclusive) Universities Built on
Yesterday’s (Exclusive) Foundations
Hyper-modernisation of: Archaism of:
• Liquified globalisation • Male dominance of
leadership
• Entrepreneurial, corporate,
commercialised universities • Gender inequalities
and feminisation fears
• Digitisation
• Unequal participation
• Turbo-charged consuming, rates for different
multitasking students. social groups.
26 April, 2012

30. The (Inclusive) University of the
Future Needs to...
• Recover critical knowledge and be a
think tank and policy driver.
• Discover new conceptual grammars to
include equalities, identities and
affective domains.
• Consider the collective/ public as well
as the private benefits of knowledge/
HE.
• Include more accountability on social
inequalities.
• Contribute to wealth/ opportunity
distribution as well as to wealth
creation.
26 April, 2012

31. CHEER
ESRC Seminar Series:
‘Imagining the University of the
Future’
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cheer/esrcseminars
Special issue of Contemporary Social
Science (Volume 6:2, 2011) entitled:
‘Challenge, Change or Crisis in Global
Higher Education?’
26 April, 2012