Changing Higher Education for Good

INTRODUCTION

This chapter is an introduction to the book explaining its purpose, why it was written, and the process of research followed. It is organised within a framework that arises from analysis of the data in subsequent chapters that relates to equity in higher education and the leadership of innovation and technology to bring about transformation and change. The framework itself includes five themes of: equity and inclusion and the moves to democratise higher education globally, approaches to innovation in the sector, approaches to using technology to support transformation with a particular emphasis on the emergence of generative AI, approaches to strategy and leadership that are making transformation possible, and the policy changes underway.

This book has been written in partnership with global leaders of higher education and those that are actively engaged in its change and transformation. It has been written at a time of great change in demand, practices, leadership, technology application and thoughts about the future of our sector. It has also been written when a particular period of renewed policy development and consideration has been activated and debated in many parts of the world.

The policy development that is most relevant to the location of some of its contributors in Australia, has seen government-led efforts to develop a new Universities Accord across members of the sector. Similar re-examinations of sector policy and futures, of operating models, and means of funding research and learning have been in the background in the US, UK, Singapore and New Zealand and other countries relevant as a backdrop to this book.

At the same time, the book has been written at a time of great significance in terms of both demand and supply-side issues impacting the sector globally. Supply-side issues have been dominated by the recovering from financial shocks and modes of operation that so many global universities are still experiencing in the aftermath of a global pandemic and during global geo-political turmoil. The impacts on pipelines of international and domestic student fee revenue are playing out slightly differently in various countries but each within a perfect storm of cost of living rises and public funding pressures. These arise from budget repair, during a global recession, and interruption to supply chains from ongoing geo-political events, in a period of heightening climate change adaptation.

The supply-side issues are also being impacted internally by universities globally having challenges of staff morale and workloads, leadership adjustments to change and transformation, and fitness for purpose of legacy assets and infrastructure all impacted by recent events. And the issues of academic integrity and technological change in the supply-side is newly transformed by the November 2022 global emergence of generative AI at scale. That is adding to the pressures at the intersection of post-lockdown staff and student populations grappling with issues of working from home, returning to work, and hybrid working practices, with severe cost of living pressures particularly for students.

The culture of higher education institutions is in a state of flux and we are poorly equipped with knowledge and skills to bring stability to this culture. The joy or otherwise of working in universities right now in pursuing goals in high performance environments built on aggregate personal success, is in need of renewed imagination

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These supply-side issues are profound and have dominated the response of leaders and many in the sector to the point of obscuring a broader appreciation, understanding or focus on how the demand-side of higher education is changing even more profoundly. Those demand-side changes include possible long-term disruptions to demand for degree level education. They certainly extend to revised and raised expectations about student engagement and experience and an increasing frustration within the population of learners that leadership and practice in customer experience and technology is not keeping up with that found in the other products and services they experience from other sectors.

Demand-side issues for learning are being exacerbated by employers developing ever more sophisticated views about skills needs and the extent to which these are met by traditional university offerings, with their associated learning styles, curricula and business models. The extent to which employers are changing their expectations of graduates and future workforces, and looking more broadly than to universities for where those skills may come from, is growing as a gap, at a time when universities and their leaders are least well equipped to close it.

The population of learners is changing its size, shape and characteristics at a faster rate than ever before. Lifelong learning, for populations starting to decline globally through falling birth rates, and skills needs and their continuous change, are outstripping the ability and capacity for providers to keep up.

The demand-side is being impacted by the implications on future skills needs and the nature of work through the emergence of technological advances in general and generative AI in particular, which we are not close to beginning to understand as yet.

But the over-riding global trend is one of the need for different skills and greater social cohesion in our populations of the future. We urgently require a transformation in the democratisation of post-secondary education to take it away from being the preserve of the few. We increasingly understand the need to allow the large and growing numbers of underrepresented groups of students and lifelong learners, in developing parts of the world, to catch up with the smaller numbers of exclusive learners that benefited disproportionately from higher education in elite universities, up until recently.

This striving for equity is becoming a dominant feature of demand-side challenges to tertiary education globally and is the driving force for the vision of change behind many policy changes including the Australian Universities Accord. This combination, as a perfect storm of supply and demandside issues, creates a need for us to change higher education for good.

Seeking to do so, as observed above, has been delineated into five dominant themes through the analysis of this book, in which almost 50 jointly authored sections, written in partnership with global leaders, have provided a rich picture of the journey we are on. The five themes that emerged are as follows:

This book follows an earlier volume arising from the first 50 episodes with global leaders and others on the HEDx podcast. That podcast is entitled The Higher Education Experience

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and the book from the first 50 interviews and sections written with interview guests was entitled The New Leadership Agenda

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This book has arisen from the second set of 50 interviews that began in June 2022 and were finalised at the end of 2023. The interviews and commentaries on them are all publicly available, along with the first 50, on the HEDx podcast published on Apple and Spotify platforms. They are widely accessed, and listened to by higher education leaders, practitioners, support providers and policy makers around the world, and commented on in social media. Collecting them together here in a book is possible from op-eds written from each interview with the guests who have become co-authors, at the time of the interviews. Those op-eds from the time, have been collected, revised and summarised within those five themes by prominent collaborators and authors of introduction and summaries of the sections within each chapter.

The New Leadership Agenda was a natural break point in this broader curation of interviews coming at the conclusion of the challenges and interruptions that arose from pandemic changes to work and study practices and lockdowns. As a first book, it largely collected the thoughts and responses of leaders in managing through the pandemic and allowing business continuity and change at the most challenging time for the sector in decades. It culminated in an interview, section and part of that first book, which felt like a natural segue to this second volume. That had been the interview with and coauthored piece with Michael Crow as President of Arizona State University.

ASU has been a pioneer in pursuing inclusive and supported experiences to students that allow access to be improved in global higher education and for technology and innovation to support strategies in doing so. In many ways the ASU story became the inspiration for this second book of more detailed insights into the work of EdPlus and Cintana at ASU and of other global providers of technologically-enabled inclusive higher education.

Having that focus when such a significant review of Australian higher education was being embarked upon in the form of the Universities Accord, give a backdrop for this book. The mission and purpose of changing higher education for good has been the declared goal of HEDx since its formation in 2020. That has become such a priority for the global community, and for policy change in Australia, and in the background to these 50 interviews and the writings that followed them, providing a clear purpose to the writing of this book.

As we approached the end of 2023, and the end of the Universities Accord Review stage, the scene was perfectly set to curate and summarise the learnings from 100 episodes of HEDx and two books co-authored with global leaders and innovators from 7 countries in 5 continents. As such, this book offers a collection of views and commentary from global leaders on the goal of using technological innovation and new strategies and business models to achieve greater equity in higher education and influence the policy that makes that possible. It does this by surfacing and sharing best practices and ideas.

What is clear from the book is that this work has much to offer where we currently are, and even more to offer as an ongoing and continuous process for the journey of change ahead of us. This issue will be addressed in the conclusion chapter of the book but for now we will traverse through the themes of equity, innovation, technology, strategy, and policy, in turn. We will reflect with global leaders on this series of interconnected issues that make up an exciting and critically important agenda.

As Mary Stuart says in her foreword to this book, there are even wider issues that provide context to our universities now in terms of climate change, environmental degradation, geo-political change and the issues of populism. All are impacting the place of science and knowledge and our search for knowledge and a better ability to recognise and interpret what is truth. These specific contextual issues are taken as much of the reason why we need democratisation of higher education and of knowledge and learning. We need it to better solve scientific problems and to have an educated workforce and population that can work together to understand and apply those solutions. As such, this book’s importance extends beyond the needs of staff and students and our institutions of higher education. They relate ultimately to the needs of us all and of the future of the planet.

1

Bagshaw, A. (2023). Higher Imagination: A Future for Universities. Sydney: Longueville

2

HEDx: the higher education experience, podcast available on Apple podcasts at

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/hedx/id1531275586

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Betts.M., 2023, The New Leadership Agenda, Routledge, London

Chapter 1.

HOW DO WE DEMOCRATISE TERTIARY EDUCATION TO MAKE IT AVAILABLE FOR ALL?

a) Introduction - by Professor Paul Harpur, University of Queensland

The notion that the tertiary education sector exists to benefit all in the community underpins the sections in this chapter. Creating a tertiary education sector which benefits everyone in the community requires including segments in society who are not equally included at present. This process involves a reimagining of how equity issues align with the purpose of the sector, the missions of individual universities and how all individuals and activities in the sector must align with this focus on the notion of equitable access for all.

Regulatory interventions impact upon how equity issues are aligned with the purpose of the sector. How the tertiary education sector responds to equity issues has attracted mixed regulatory responses across the globe. Illustratively, in the United States, the 2023 United States Supreme Court judgment in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College

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unsettled affirmative action programs and defunding of diversity measures in some state jurisdictions has further politicised this area in higher education as stated in An act relating to higher education; amending s. 1001.706

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, Florida State and An act relating to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at public institutions of higher education

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. In contrast to the United States where the regulatory landscape is curtailing diversity measures, the Australian regulatory landscape is requiring and encouraging the higher education sector to do more to increase diversity in student and staff populations.

Some of the regulatory pressures upon Australian universities come from broader societal developments. For example, the October 2023 release of the Disability Royal Commission Report emphasises the need for disability leadership and co-design on all disability measures and refers to failures to make adjustments for students with a disability as educational neglect

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The importance of diversity is reflected in how the Australian Universities Accord process has been established and is operating. In May 2022, Australia’s Federal elections returned a new Government. Less than 2 months later, the new Federal Education Minister, Jason Clare MP

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, delivered his Reset, Rebuild and Reform speech at the Universities Australia Conference. Part of this reset, the Minister announced, was the Universities Accord process. The Minister explained that through the Universities Accord, he wanted to create a country where a person’s chances in life are not dependant on their postcode, their parents, or the colour of their skin. The Minister echoed the Prime Minister, who seeks to open the doors of opportunity wider. Accordingly, expanding the tertiary sector to include is a core principle of the current Government’s reform agenda.

Diversity featured prominently in the Universities Accord Terms of Reference

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, in the Universities Accord Discussion Paper and the Ministerial Reference Group which advised the Government—which included the author

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,

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. The subsequent Australian Universities Accord Interim Report contains 12 packages of so called, ‘spikey’ ideas for consideration, many of which also address increasing access and diversity. As well as five recommendations for priority action, all of which expands the tertiary education sector to more Australians

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. The Universities Accord process has resulted in a diversity reform agenda before the final report has even been finalised. In his National Press Club Speech, launching the Australian Universities Accord Interim Report, the Minister for Education, Jason Clare MP

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, committed to implementing the 5 priority actions. In response to these 5 priority actions, the following actions have been taken at the time of writing:

1. The establishment of new study hubs was recommended. The Government has commenced establishing up to 20 additional Regional University Study Hubs, and up to 14 new Suburban University Study Hubs, to increase the ability of rural and under-privileged cohorts to access university education

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2. The Interim Report recommended abolishing the 50% fail rule. The Australian Government provides students financial support for their university studies, unless they fail more than 50% of their subjects in a year. This was disproportionately impacting upon students from disadvantaged backgrounds. On 3 August 2023 the Higher Education Support Amendment (Response to the Australian Universities Accord Interim Report) Bill 2023 (Cth)

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was read into Parliament a first time. This Bill has now abolished the 50% rule.

3. This bill would also expand the demand driven system to all Indigenous students. The Interim Report recommended that the demand driven system should not be limited to Indigenous students in regional and remote areas, but should instead include all Indigenous students.

4. The fourth priority action concerned funding certainty during the Universities Accord reform agenda. The Government has committed to extend the Higher Education Contribution Guarantee for another two years to provide funding certainty to universities as the Accord process rolls out, providing that universities invest any funding remaining from their grant each year on increasing access to tertiary education, on activities such as enabling courses and extra academic and learning support for students from poor backgrounds, from the regions, and other under-represented groups.

5. The final priority action concerned improving university governance, including with respect to universities as good employers, student safety and representation university governing councils, senates and trusts. To advance this agenda, a working group was established in August 2023 and has briefed the September 2023 meeting of Australia’s education ministers on the establishment of a standalone, independent National Student Ombudsman

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Reforming university governing councils, senates and trusts will require amendments to the enactments which enable and govern universities. University governing instruments already include commitments to extend the benefits of tertiary education to all in the community. Illustratively, the University of Melbourne Act 2009 (VIC)

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s 5(e), (f) and (g) and the Monash University Act 2009 (VIC)

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s 5(e), (f) and (g) requires the university to serve the local and international community, advance Indigenous rights, and provide programs and services in a way that reflects principles of equity and social justice. The reforms to university-enabling statutes to advance the Universities Accord process could foreseeably include expanded social justice obligations on all universities. Obligations which are often now appearing in university strategic commitments—such as the University of Queensland’s (2023) Queensland Commitment.

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b) Leading a university in the business of hope – with Professor Paul LeBlanc, President of Southern New Hampshire University

Institutions in all sectors, including higher education, are shaped by, and in the image of their leaders. What leaders bring with them from childhood experiences and family backgrounds often frame their values, ambitions, and priorities, which can in turn shape their leadership goals, philosophies, and employer choices.

Many universities treasure excellence above all else, especially within one’s discipline. As expert cultures, status and advancement usually go to the smartest person in the room, so leaders naturally reward and try to model that kind of intellectual brilliance themselves.

However, at a time when students are struggling—with emotional well-being, with inequities, with climate anxiety, and often with attacks on their very being (especially if LGBTQ or a student of colour)—intellectual brilliance as a value is increasingly giving way to, or at least making room for: emotional intelligence, relationship, and new definitions of both student, and institutional, success. As such, our sector is increasingly looking for leaders with other values, skills, and ambitions to rethink our universities for the fraught time in which we find ourselves.

We are faced with new and evolving expectations from stakeholders, whether a more diverse student body, employers hiring our graduates, Government entities providing funding, or people who work for us and want to have more impact on the world.

Many of the institutions that today dominate traditional rankings would not show up in a ranking that instead focused on economic mobility, graduation rates of low-income students, workplace readiness of graduates, and the degree to which their lives were transformed.

The graduates of the Ivy League, Group of Eight or Russell Group, high achieving and privileged when they arrive on campus, leave it … well, high achieving and privileged. That is the work of excellence perhaps, but not of transformation and equity and social justice.

In tertiary education, we are in the business of providing hope. And more of our institutions and leaders are embracing this mission. Raising hopes that can’t be fulfilled could be more harmful than not raising them in the first place.

The student enticed by a scholarship, to commence studies in a program at an institution that doesn’t fit with their needs, might suffer more non-completion harm than if they enrolled with a more appropriate program and institution, or not commenced study at all.

The first-generation student who works to gain acceptance to an elite university and then faces daily signals that say, you do not belong, has far better options than they know. We should measure those that complete rather than those that enrol in study programs to have a fair perspective of how equitable our sector is.

The number of non-completions in higher education and their skew towards disadvantaged groups is not going to be solved by more scholarships from a well-endowed institution, into a program of study unfit for purpose, or a culture that does not treat them like they matter.

One of our greatest challenges is to not only overcome inequitable enrolment but even more inequitable rates of graduation. The way to do this is to prioritise and personalise support to diverse students, as is argued in a recent book. Students First

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demonstrates that a major impediment to delivering fulfilled hope, is an education model and system based on time. With time fixed and non-negotiable, and learning variable and uncertain.

Time is a reflection of privilege: to have it, to control it, and to squander it is not a luxury afforded to low-income learners. The time-based system of organising and delivering higher education into credit hours, terms, and semesters has a history based on rewarding teachers for work and calculating retirement pension entitlements.

It was a system never designed for, and therefore ill-suited to, the needs of both employers needing graduates with skills and competence, and of students with varied and continuously changing access to time.

We have built our models of curriculum design, employment, pedagogy, enrolment, registration, and graduation rules around that time-based model. It undoubtedly suits our legacy systems of organising a university.

There is scant and decreasing evidence of it suiting increasing numbers of more diverse students. It disadvantages underrepresented students. The paradigm of competency-based education (CBE) flips the switch on what we value, how we deliver it, and how the student’s that we put first, will succeed.

If we fix the competencies that our students are required to gain and demonstrate and vary the time at which and over which they achieve it (giving them much needed flexibility), they become unstuck. They can complete at much greater rates, particularly those from disadvantaged and time-poor backgrounds. They can go faster and slower as life circumstances demand.

The current approach of fixing time and varying competence is not suitable for providing the required skills of employment and underlies much of the skills gap increasingly evident in graduate recruitment.

The aviation student and pilot that completed their 3-year degree on time, with A grades in most subjects, but that can’t land planes well, has a skills gap. And the doctor that,