CHERII Seminar: What is the purpose of higher education?

The Centre for Higher Education Research, Innovation and Impact (CHERII) invites you to our last seminar for 2019 which focuses on: What is the purpose of higher education?

Presentation by guest speaker Professor Rachel Brooks from the University College London, followed by a roundtable discussion for HDR students.

WHAT DO STUDENTS UNDERSTAND AS THE PURPOSE OF HIGHER EDUCATION?

IMPLICATIONS FOR STAFF, POLICYMAKERS AND SOCIETY AT LARGE

Assumptions are often made within the academic literature and by some social commentators that students have come to understand the purpose of higher education in increasingly instrumental terms. This is often linked to processes of marketisation and neo-liberalisation across the Global North. It is also associated with the establishment, in 2010, of the European Higher Education Area, which is argued to have brought about the refiguration of European universities around an Anglo-American model (Slaughter and Cantwell, 2012).

This presentation draws on a series of 54 focus groups conducted with a total of 295 students in six European countries (Denmark, England, Germany, Ireland, Poland and Spain). It shows how understandings of the purpose of higher education are more nuanced than much of the extant literature suggests and vary by both nationstate and higher education institution. The implications of these understandings for higher education policymakers, practitioners and society are explored.