Category: Community

  • Reclaiming the academic community: why universities need more than metrics

    Reclaiming the academic community: why universities need more than metrics

    by Sigurður Kristinsson

    For decades, talk of “the academic community” has flowed easily through mission statements, strategy documents, and speeches from university leadership. Yet few stop to consider what this community is or why it matters. As universities increasingly orient themselves toward markets, rankings, and performance metrics, the gap between the ideal of academic community and the lived reality of academic work has widened. But this drift is not merely unfortunate; it threatens the very values that justify the existence of universities in the first place.

    This blog explores why academic community is essential to higher education, how contemporary systems undermine it, and what a renewed vision of academic life might require.

    The word “community” can be used in two different senses. One is descriptive: communities are simply networks of people connected by place, shared interests or regular interaction. From this sociological standpoint, academic communities consist of overlapping groups (faculty, students, administrators, service professionals) brought together by institutional roles, disciplinary identities, or digital networks, perhaps experiencing a sense of belonging, solidarity, and shared purpose.

    But in debates about the purpose and future of universities, “community” is often used in a normative sense: an ideal of how academics ought to relate to one another. In Humboldtian (1810) spirit, contemporary advocates like Fitzpatrick (2021, 2024) and Bennett (1998, 2003) envision academic community as a moral and intellectual culture grounded in shared purpose, generosity, intellectual hospitality, mutual respect, and the collective pursuit of knowledge. From this philosophical perspective, community is not just a cluster of networks to be analyzed empirically but a normative vision of how scholarly life becomes meaningful. This aspirational view stands in stark contrast to the conditions shaping many universities today.

    For several decades, developments in universities around the world have been hostile to academic community. While the precise mechanisms vary, academics report strikingly similar pressures: managerial oversight, performance auditing, intensifying competition, and the steady erosion of collegial structures and shared governance. Five threats to academic community are particularly worrisome:

    Organisational (not occupational) professionalism

    In her analysis of how managerial logic has co-opted the language of professionalism to justify top-down control in public institutions, Julia Evetts (2003, 2009, 2011) introduced a distinction between occupational and organisational professionalism. Occupational professionalism in academia implies membership in a self-governing community of experts committed to serving society through knowledge. Today, however, universities increasingly define professionalism in organisational terms: compliance with targets, performance indicators, and standardised procedures. The result is a hybrid system: academics retain some autonomy, but it is overshadowed by bureaucratic accountability structures that fragment communal relationships and discourage collective responsibility (Siekkinen et al, 2020).

    Managerialism

    Managerialism prizes measurable production outputs, standardized procedures, and vertical decision-making. As Metz (2017) argues, these mechanisms degrade communal relationships among academics as well as between them and managers, students, and wider society: decisions are imposed without consultation; bonus systems reward narrow indicators rather than communal priorities; and bureaucratic layers reduce opportunities for collegial dialogue. Managerialism replaces trust with surveillance and collegial judgment with quantification.

    Individualism

    The rise of competition – over publications, grants, rankings, and prestige – has amplified what Bennett (2003) called “insistent individualism.” Colleagues become rivals or useful instruments. Achievements become personal currency. In such settings, it is easy to see oneself not as part of a community pursuing shared goods but as an isolated producer of measurable outputs. This ethos erodes the solidarity and relationality necessary for any robust academic culture.

    Retreat from academic citizenship

    Academic citizenship refers to the contributions – committee work, mentoring, governance, public engagement – that sustain universities beyond research and teaching. Yet because these activities are difficult to measure and often unrewarded, they are increasingly neglected (Macfarlane, 2005; Feldt et al, 2024). This neglect fragments institutions and weakens the norms of shared responsibility that should hold academic life together.

    Troubled collegiality

    Collegiality includes participatory and collective decision-making, a presumption of shared values, absence of hierarchy, supportiveness, a shared commitment to a common good, trust beyond a typical workplace, and professional autonomy. It has long been central to academic identity but has become contested. Some experience collegial labor as invisible and unevenly distributed; others see managerial attempts to measure collegiality as just another way of disciplining staff. Efforts to quantify collegiality may correct some injustices but also risk instrumentalizing it, turning a relational ideal into a bureaucratic category (Craig et al, 2025; Fleming and Harley, 2024; Gavin et al, 2023).

    Across all these pressures, a common thread emerges: the forces shaping contemporary academia weaken the relationships required for intellectual work to flourish.

    If community is eroding, why should we care? The answer lies in the link between community and the values that higher education claims to serve. A helpful framework comes from value theory, which distinguishes between instrumental, constitutive, and intrinsic goods.

    Community as instrumentally valuable

    Academic community helps produce the outcomes universities care about: research breakthroughs, learning, intellectual development, and democratic engagement. Collaboration makes research stronger. Peer support helps people grow. Shared norms encourage integrity, rigor, and creativity. Without community, academic values become harder to realize.

    Community as constitutive of academic values

    In many cases, community is not merely a helpful means but a necessary constituent. Scientific knowledge, as philosophers of science like Merton (1979) and Longino (1990) have long emphasized, is inherently social: it requires communal critique, peer review, and collective norms to distinguish knowledge from error. Learning, too, is fundamentally relational, as Vygotsky (1978) and Dewey (1916) argued. You cannot have science or education without community.

    Community as intrinsically valuable

    Beyond producing useful outcomes, community enriches human life. Belonging, shared purpose, and intellectual companionship are deeply fulfilling. Academic community offers a sense of identity, meaning, and solidarity that transcends individual achievement (Metz, 2017). In this sense, community contributes directly to human flourishing.

    Several examples show how academic values depend on community in practice:

    Debates about educational values

    The pursuit of academic values requires reflection on their meaning. Interpretive arguments about values like autonomy, virtue, or justice in education contribute to conversations that presuppose the collective norms of academic community (Nussbaum, 2010; Ebels-Duggan, 2015). These debates require shared standards of reasoning, openness to critique, and a shared commitment to better understanding.

    Scientific knowledge and academic freedom

    No individual can produce knowledge alone. Scientific communities ensure that discoveries are evaluated, replicated, and integrated into a larger body of understanding. Likewise, academic freedom is not a personal privilege but a communal norm that protects open inquiry (Calhoun, 2009; Frímannsson et al, 2022). It depends on solidarity among scholars.

    Teaching as communal practice

    Education flourishes in relational settings. Classrooms become communities in which teachers and students jointly pursue understanding. Weithman (2015) describes this as “academic friendship” – a form of companionship that expands imagination, fosters intellectual virtues, and shapes future citizens.

    Across these cases, community is not optional; it is essential to academic values.

    Given its importance, how might universities cultivate stronger academic communities?

    Structural reform

    Universities should try to resist the dominance of market logic. Sector-wide policy changes could help rebalance priorities. Hiring, promotion, and reward systems should value teaching, service, mentorship, and public engagement rather than focusing exclusively on quantifiable research metrics. Without structural support, cultural change will be difficult.

    Cultural renewal

    A healthier academic culture requires a different mindset—one that foregrounds generosity, relationality, and shared purpose. In Generous Thinking, Fitzpatrick (2021) argues that building real community requires humility, conversation, listening, and collaboration. Community cannot be mandated; it must be practised.

    This requires academics to challenge competitive individualism, share work equitably, strengthen trust and dialogue, and reimagine collegiality as a lived practice rather than a managerial tool. Most importantly, it requires us to recognize ourselves as fundamentally relational beings whose professional purpose is intertwined with others.

    A moral case for academic community

    Academic community is not only epistemically valuable; it is morally significant. Relational moral theories argue that human flourishing depends on identity and solidarity. We become the moral human beings we are through our communal relationships (Metz, 2021).

    Applying this to academia reveals that collegiality is grounded in shared identity and shared ends. Since the moral obligations created by academic relationships remain professional, collegial community does not require intrusive intimacy. Far from suppressing dissent or professional autonomy, solidarity requires defending academic freedom and academic values generally.

    A relational understanding of morality thus implies that the ideal of academic community promises not only a more fulfilling and coherent sense of occupational purpose, but also a way of relating to others that is more satisfying morally than the current environment individualistic competition.

    Universities today face an existential challenge. In the rush to satisfy markets, rankings, and managerial demands, they risk undermining the very relationships that make academic life meaningful. Academic community is not a nostalgic ideal; it is the cornerstone of learning, knowledge, virtue, and human flourishing.

    If higher education is to reclaim a sense of purpose, it must begin by cultivating the social and moral conditions in which genuine community can grow. This requires structural reforms, cultural renewal, and a shared commitment to relational values. Without such efforts, universities will continue drifting toward fragmentation, losing sight of the goods they exist to protect.

    Rebuilding academic community is not merely desirable. It is necessary – for the integrity of scholarship, for the flourishing of those who work within universities, and for the public good that higher education is meant to serve.

    Sigurður Kristinsson is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Akureyri, Iceland. His research applies moral and political philosophy in various contexts of professional practice, increasingly intersecting with the philosophy of higher education with emphasis on the social and democratic role of universities.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

    An international learned society, concerned with supporting research and researchers into Higher Education

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  • She Reimagined Dolls for Her daughter — and Defied Stereotypes About Indigenous Women – The 74

    She Reimagined Dolls for Her daughter — and Defied Stereotypes About Indigenous Women – The 74


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    When Cara Romero’s daughter was 11, she became interested in dolls. Romero, who is an enrolled member of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe in Southern California, began to think about doll culture more deeply and what it can convey to the next generation. 

    Romero’s husband grew up collecting G.I. Joes, and her mother-in-law had her own Victorian-style porcelain doll collection. For Romero, though, her daughter’s doll phase reminded her of the Native American dolls she grew up seeing at truck stops along I-40.

    The dolls were often dressed in plastic pony beads and fake buckskin that parroted the Native American Halloween costumes she knew all too well as dehumanizing stereotypes. So Romero, who is a photographer and artist, set out to create a series of photos that broke down these tropes.

    Each photograph in the “First American Doll” series features a life-sized doll box that she designed and crafted, where she poses the women with objects that represent their families, traditions and unique stories. 

    She wanted her daughter to be proud of her heritage. “I come from a community where women are allowed to have a voice, allowed to be really strong,” she said. “So [I was] wanting to pass down good self esteem and a strong sense of self and identity,” she said. “That’s what we aim to do as moms.”

    She started the series with artist and powwow dancer Wakeah Jhane, who is of Kiowa, Comanche and Blackfeet descent. While the Plains Tribes that she is from are the models for stereotypical dolls and costumes, Romero’s photograph captures her intricate buckskin regalia, which was made by her family. Also on display are her moccasins and a fan.

    “You can see the stark contrast between what she’s wearing and the Halloween costumes that people portray Plains people as,” she said. “I really wanted to kind of own it and be like, “You guys even have this wrong.’” 

    She has since published nine photographs for the series, the most recent featuring Fawn Douglas, an artist, activist and enrolled member of the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe, who is posed with handcrafted baskets and a gourd rattle made by her family. The box is bordered by a Las Vegas playing card motif. 

    Cara Romero (Getty Images)

    The current day symbolism and high fashion lighting communicates that these women are also contemporary, Romero said. “When artwork, and specifically photography, is devoid of modern context, it does something psychologically, it perpetuates [this idea] that we’re gone and only living in history.”  

    Naming each of the pieces after the models was also meant to humanize Indigenous women in a way that they weren’t in historical photos. “A lot of times in the ethnographic photographs, they didn’t even say their name,” she said. “We don’t know who they were.”

    Some of the photographs from the series are currently traveling the country as part of Romero’s first solo museum exhibition, titled: “Panûpünüwügai (Living Light).” They will be on display next at the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona starting in February.

    This story was originally reported by Jessica Kutz of The 19th. Meet Jessica and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.


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  • How One California School Came Together to Pack 20,000 Meals for the Holidays – The 74

    How One California School Came Together to Pack 20,000 Meals for the Holidays – The 74

    When Vevian Nguyen heard the strike of a gong echo for the 10th time, signaling that 10,000 meals had been made, her school cafeteria erupted in applause, and she knew her gloves and hairnet were staying on.

    “Every time we hit the gong, it felt like a little pat on the back, like, ‘Oh, you did something good,’” Vevian said. “Now you can keep doing it.” 

    Within an hour, Vevian and more than 200 students at Laguna Creek High School, a school in the Elk Grove Unified School District in Sacramento County, packed more than 10,000 meals to be donated during the holidays, exceeding their goal for the night. But Vevian, who is a junior and president of Laguna Creek High’s service-oriented Interact Club, said she wasn’t there to simply check off her service hour requirements. 

    “We want to be involved in our community, which is having to be able to know that you’ve helped a family or at least just one person out there,” the 16-year-old said. “And, I feel like that helps your character, it builds who you are and where you stand within your school and your community.”

    The October food-preparing night was part of an international initiative called Rise Against Hunger, which is run by a coalition of student groups such as the National Honor Society and the Rotary International Club. This was Laguna Creek’s second Rise Against Hunger. During the holidays, their 20,000 meals will reach families in Vietnam that were affected by major floods and landslides this year. 

    Sandi Peterson, a positive behavior intervention support administrator and adviser for the National Honor Society, had helped Vevian prepare for the event throughout the school year. At weekly club meetings, students created infographics and posters, spread the word on social media, and promoted their goal of packing 10,000 meals to every classroom on campus. It was a student-led collaboration and a clear, ambitious objective, Peterson said, that drove hundreds of students to sign up, show up, and lock in. 

    “Not one student was on their phone; they were all talking to each other, chatting, laughing. Once we heard the 10,000 gong, it was this huge celebration, and then it started moving so fast,” Peterson said. “We were having to hit the gong for 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 (more) all at the same time. These kids, in less than two hours, assembled 20,000 meals.” 

    Like most schools in California, Laguna Creek has struggled to recover from high rates of chronic absenteeism after the pandemic’s school closures. Many of those students across the state also report a persistent feeling of loneliness and detachment from their school communities. For Cynthia Dettner, an instructor and supervising teacher for the Interact Club at Laguna Creek High, the night of meal-packing also showcased a rare school connectedness among students. 

    “After the Covid years, where students were often isolated, watching all of these students laugh and smile and build their own character by reaching out to help others, it’s a gift,” Dettner said. “It’s a joy to see them come together and befriend each other.” 

    On each side of a cafeteria table, students sporting red hairnets and plastic gloves measured and assembled nutritionally balanced portions of dried rice, vegetable protein, vitamin packets, dried tofu and protein additives into pre-labeled bags. They then rotated each bag to teams of students who stapled, heat-sealed, and counted each package to be ready for distribution worldwide. 

    “It looks almost like a Hallmark movie where you see the cookie factory in progress,” Dettner said. “It’s all kinds of hands and smiles working together, they’re all engaged and involved, and that lifts the community.”

    Students plan to pack more than 40,000 meals next year for families in need. (Sandi Peterson)

    Although Peterson had spent the year raising sponsorship funds for the event, she said the students who packed the meals soon took ownership of the initiative. 

    “Within two weeks, I had students come up to me and say, ‘Ms. Peterson, maybe if we go around and start collecting money on our own, we could do another one in a couple months,’” Peterson said. “So, now they’re trying to tag-team and do 40,000 meals in our next school year. The ticket to longevity is I know that the kids will always show up.”

    Vevian grew up in a low-income family, and after watching friends and family members struggle financially in recent months, she said she’s felt more compelled to help others. Laguna Creek’s new holiday ritual has further motivated her year-round commitment to community service. 

    “To contain the attributes of a leader, I learned that you have to actually step up and use your voice and really hold yourself accountable,” Vevian said. “If you just make one impact, it can slowly build that momentum for the rest of everyone else to stand behind you.”


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  • LGBTQ+ Rural Teens Find More Support Online Than in Their Communities – The 74

    LGBTQ+ Rural Teens Find More Support Online Than in Their Communities – The 74


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    New research has found that rural LGBTQ+ teens experience significant challenges in their communities and turn to the internet for support.

    The research from Hopelab and the Born This Way Foundation looked at what more than 1,200 LGBTQ+ teens faced and compared the experiences of those in rural communities with those of teens in suburban and urban communities. The research found that rural teens are more likely to give and receive support through their online communities and friends than via their in-person relationships.

    “The rural young people we’re seeing were reporting having a lot less support in their homes, in their communities, and their schools,” Mike Parent, a principal researcher at Hopelab, said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “They weren’t doing too well in terms of feeling supported in the places they were living, though they were feeling supported online.”

    However, the research found that rural LGBTQ+ teens had the same sense of pride in who they were as suburban and urban teens.

    “The parallel, interesting finding was that we didn’t see differences in their internal sense of pride, which you might kind of expect if they feel all less supported,” he said. “What was surprising, in a very good way, was that indication of resilience or being able to feel a strong sense of their internal selves despite this kind of harsh environment they might be in.”

    Researchers recruited young people between the ages of 15 and 24 who identified as LGBTQ+ through targeted ads on social media. After surveying the respondents during August and September of last year, the researchers also followed up some of the surveys with interviews, Parent said.

    According to the study, rural teens were more likely than their urban and suburban counterparts to find support online. Of the rural respondents, 56% of rural young people reported receiving support from others online several times a month compared to 51% of urban and suburban respondents, and 76% reported giving support online, compared to 70% of urban and suburban respondents.

    Conversely, only 28% of rural respondents reported feeling supported by their schools, compared to 49% of urban and suburban respondents, the study found, and 13% of rural respondents felt supported by their communities, compared to 35% of urban and suburban respondents.

    Rural LGBTQ+ young people are significantly more likely to suffer mental health issues because of the lack of support where they live, researchers said. Rural LGBTQ+ young people were more likely to meet the threshold for depression (57% compared to 45%), and more likely to report less flourishing than their suburban/urban counterparts (43% to 52%).

    The study found that those LGBTQ+ young people who received support from those they lived with, regardless of where they live, are more likely to report flourishing (50% compared to 35%) and less likely to meet the threshold for depression (52% compared to 63%).

    One respondent said the impact of lack of support impacted every aspect of their lives.

    “Not being able to be who you truly are around the people that you love most or the communities that you’re in is going to make somebody depressed or give them mental issues,” they said in survey interviews, according to Hopelab. “Because if you can’t be who you are around the people that you love most and people who surround you, you’re not gonna be able to feel the best about your well-being.”

    Respondents said connecting with those online communities saved their lives.

    “Throughout my entire life, I have been bullied relentlessly. However, when I’m online, I find that it is easier to make friends… I met my best friend through role play [games],” one teen told researchers. “Without it, I wouldn’t be here today. So, in the long run, it’s the friendships I’ve made online that have kept me alive all these years.”

    Having support in rural areas, especially, can provide rural LGBTQ+ teens with a feeling of belonging, researchers said.

    “Our findings highlight the urgent need for safe, affirming in-person spaces and the importance of including young people in shaping the solutions,” Claudia-Santi F. Fernandes, vice president of research and evaluation at Born This Way Foundation, said in a statement. “If we want to improve outcomes, especially for LGBTQ+ young people in rural communities, their voices–and scientific evidence–must guide the work.”

    Parent said the survey respondents stressed the importance of having safe spaces for LGBTQ+ young people to gather in their own communities.

    “I think most of the participants recognize that you can’t do a lot to change your family if they’re not supportive,” he said. “What they were saying was that finding ways for schools to be supportive and for communities to be supportive in terms of physical spaces (that allowed them) to express themselves safely (and) having places where they can gather and feel safe, uh, were really important to them.”

    Hopelab seeks to address mental health in young people through evidence-based innovation, according to its organizers. The Born This Way Foundation was co-founded by Lady Gaga and her mother, West Virginia native Cynthia Bisset Germanotta.

    The organization is focused on ending bullying and building up communities, while using research, programming, grants, and partnerships to engage young people and connect them to mental health resources, according to the foundation’s website.

    This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.


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  • Embed! How to save the civic agenda

    Embed! How to save the civic agenda

    The Civic University Commission was interesting, rigorous, and almost perfectly timed.

    Coming off the back of Brexit, on the heels of Covid, and foreshadowing a putative levelling up agenda, it gave shape to things universities had always done and permission to discuss more openly the things they had always wished to do.

    The civic university agreements were sometimes a fresh coat of paint on already ongoing work but undoubtedly provided new momentum to an old idea. There has been significant debate on how to define civic, the National Civic Impact Accelerator (NCIA) happens to have a very good framework, but this is less important than the interest that was generated which made the debate worth having.

    The civic movement – and whether it is a movement is also debatable – has given an intellectual hinterland to a set of disparate activities. It is the wrapper through which anything can be presented as being civic. The research project in the heritage centre, the outreach programmes with school, and employing people, are no longer just things universities do but they are part of a grander civic mission.

    It can also all feel a bit hollow. The shell of the strategies break open to reveal a kind of saccharine sweetness of advertisement and gross value added appraisals that tell the world what a university is doing, but tell us very little about what has been done differently thanks to their renewed civic approach.

    Commissioning

    The test of whether a civic approach is working can’t be whether a university is doing things that are labelled civic. Every single university that employs anyone locally, or puts students in the NHS, or does any kind of access scheme in their local area, is doing something civic. Universities have to geographically exist somewhere (mostly) and therefore they are lashed to the mast of their places.

    Recent work by NCIA talks about civic capitals. These are the deep internal resources that allow civic work to happen:

    Civic capitals are resources that exist in an organisation that enable it and the individuals who work within it to achieve their civic goals. They include day-to-day resources such as the budgets that pay for staff time and activities, and the resources such as skills and knowledge that are built up over time and that individuals and teams draw on to do their work.

    This is not the same as how these resources might be structured. As the UPP Foundation note in their recent report emerging from a series of roundtables with sector leaders:

    Participants highlighted that the civic role doesn’t fall under typical funding or strategic pillars, and has in the past been prone to being seen as a ‘nice-to-have’ extra, rather than a necessary function of the university, making it vulnerable to cuts in times of financial pressure. With the Government’s renewed attention on civic purpose, universities should embrace the chance to re-embed this ambition into their work and future-proof it for the coming decades.

    Put together, the fundamental weakness at the heart of the civic agenda is that at the point it becomes separate from other business in the university it becomes vulnerable. It becomes far too easy to cut or quietly put away.

    Incentives

    The people I speak to across the sector give a sense that programmes of work are being scaled back and posts that were once devoted to civic work are being quietly not filled. Last week’s report from the National Civic Impact Accelerator appears to agree with these conclusions.

    Aside from the roles that are distinctly labelled as civic there is definite pressure on activities that are civic in and of themselves. It is much harder for universities to be good employers, or run significant school interventions, or co-build research projects, when there is such acute financial pressure facing the sector.

    Outside of anything that universities can do to maintain their civic work there are a set of incentives that militate against their ambitions. Their primary financial incentive is to recruit students whose fees are uncapped above any consideration for the local labour market or local recruitment cold spots. Their major research incentives are about quality, their university environment, and impact – but impact does not have to be in their places. And while the access regime is tilting toward school engagement the business of raising educational standards is expensive, difficult, and often gets comparatively few students through the door.

    The secretary of state has called for universities to “to shape and deliver the economic and social change that is needed across skills, research and innovation,” but this is hard to do with a range of incentives working against them doing things in skills, research, and innovation.

    Give up?

    The fatal risk in all of this is not that universities stop doing civic work. Every university, to a lesser or greater extent, is civic. The risk is that universities try to salami slice their civic activity in the same way they might other funding pots. The widespread harm would potentially fatally damage the whole civic project.

    The work of being civic should be everyone’s business but aside from finances and national incentives there are substantive barriers.

    The main one is that civic work, done properly, is a long-term endeavour. Improving school attainment, or deploying research for local impact, or shared capital ambitions, and the litany of things which actually improve the economic fortunes of a place and the people that live in it take years, sometimes decades, not months. The things that actually move the dial on civic impact will often live well beyond the tenure of any one vice chancellor.

    The problem is that it is often the case that investing in long-term civic capacity comes at a distinct short-term cost. Universities could do more to support school improvement, there are lots of examples universities who are, but often this will come from the same funding pot used for bursaries for current students. Embedded research projects which meet a local need require deep listening, trust, and expertise that cannot easily be built over a single REF cycle.

    The irony is that being civic is usually used as a proxy for being “nice” but to do it properly means making some very hard decisions. The most crucial is whether the greatest civic impact is achieved through the cumulation of small wins within an institution or through the longer-term, less immediately rewarding, and very difficult, capacity building out in the town or city.

    Put bluntly, every pound spent on the students of today is a pound not spent on the students of tomorrow.

    Embed

    A strategy, no matter how well thought out and how popular, is not the same as doing civic work well. There is no lack of excellent ideas. There are significant and ambitious pieces of work with widespread support on getting in, getting on, and getting out of higher education. There are universities like LJMU that have thought deeply about the needs of their local businesses and places and built new partnerships and programmes off the back of their analysis.

    The impact of civicness is sometimes achieved through the big-bang initiatives but more often civic impact is mundane. For example, the University of Derby is doing a lot of excellent things – but crucially civic is one of their key organisational purposes. It is not this fluffy sense of doing good but a series of embedded work packages with targets, staff, and a shared responsibility throughout the organisation for doing civic good.

    This means not a dramatic moment of civic leadership but the slow tedious grind of looking at every single activity through a civic lens and supporting and rewarding staff members who do so. Analysing not just how many students can be recruited but how recruitment would have to change to support more local students into university. Targeting not only research income but how much research funding is redistributed to civic, business, and education partners. Engaging not only in on campus developments but considering how the university estate should be shared, expanded, or condensed, to meet the needs of a place.

    The prize

    The government has not lost sight of the civic agenda and while it might no longer be called levelling up the idea that universities should make their places better is embedded in every major education and research strategy, missive, and ministerial statement. The government may not save universities on their own terms but they may save places where universities are key to their economic success.

    The tragedy would be that just as a constellation of industrial strategies, new modes of qualifications, and new research funds become available, the sector steps away from the civic strategy. It may save some short-term income but in the long-term it would close doors to future income, harm the prospects of a place, and make everything a university does with their partners that much harder.

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  • We need to recognise the importance of maintenance too

    We need to recognise the importance of maintenance too

    The most obvious way that a university expresses what it values is what it chooses to pay for.

    At an institution level this might be about which kinds of jobs in which kinds of areas are funded. At a more personal level value is made clear by how people get in and get on in an institution.

    Promotion

    In reviewing promotion criteria of a number of universities, where it is not behind a login of some kind, one theme comes out time and time again. Promotion isn’t solely based on being consistently good at one thing. Promotion is about being able to be good at lots of things at once.

    Whether this is the hope that academics can be good researchers, teachers, and administrators all at once. The desire to find managers that can manage people as well as projects. And the forever quest for professional services that have innovative approaches of some kind.

    It isn’t fair to single out specific institutions as this is a sector wide phenomena but consider some of the language in the follow promotion criteria:

    • For a Grade 7 Assistant Professor “Evidence will be required of the ability to innovate and plan, and to execute plans competently”
    • For a Grade 9 lecturer role “Contributes to the planning, design and development of objectives and material, identifying areas for improvement and innovation.”
    • For a Grade 6 professional services role “You are involved in decisions that have an ongoing impact beyond your immediate team”
    • The job evaluation criteria for professional service staff “Will the role holder play an active part of any networks (connecting regularly with groups outside their team)? If so, please outline what these networks are, whether the role holder would be expected to establish the network, and the input they are expected to have”

    The thread between these criteria is the implication that doing a defined job to an agreed standard isn’t enough. Promotions, particularly to high grades, depend on creating new practices, integrating with other teams, and making an impact beyond the confines of a role. It is the things which aren’t in the job description, because the nature of innovation means they cannot be, that are as valuable as the actual job description.

    Innovation may be the goal but it comes at a cost.

    Consistency

    Every promotion criteria is a choice on what an institution values. The consistent message is that value is not purely about executing a single role consistently well. The choice that many universities have made is that there is value in working vertically, developing new practice within a role, and working horizontally, developing and sharing expertise across teams and departments.

    This choice means that there is less emphasis on maintenance and delivery. The slow grind of keeping the place running and doing a set of discreet things well over and over again.

    The result of this choice is that roles where there is less autonomy may be at a disadvantage. This is not to say there is not a role for innovation in all jobs but that innovation is structurally easier in some jobs than others. Take for example the jobs which are purely focussed on creating and interpreting new knowledge. In a previous role as a senior policy advisor I had great latitude to pursue institutional projects, look into problems and suggest new ways of working, and as a bonus my boss was the Vice Chancellor. It would have been an enormous failure of mine to have not been innovative.

    Conversely, the people our institutions rely on that work on the reception desks, maintain buildings, clean the offices, and do the things that actually make the entire place stay open clearly have less freedom to innovate in their work. They are managed on their ability to deliver a distinct service but promotion is often dependent on being able to move beyond maintaining performance. There therefore opens a gap in the possibility of getting promoted between those who work primarily in maintaining the institution and those who think about what the institution might do. This does not seem like an ideal incentive for institutions that rely on lots of people turning up, doing a defined role well, and being motivated to do so.

    Innovation for the sake of it

    The underpinning assumption is that innovation for its own sake is a good thing. There is even a league table for the most innovative universities in the world.

    This is because the university bureaucracy demands feeding with new ideas. It is a more machine. It needs more papers, more ideas, more meetings, more service innovation, more approaches, more evaluation, and ultimately more with less. The current more is innovating in service delivery with less resource to do it. It is rare to see a university with few ideas. It is much more common to see an institution with too few people to deliver them.

    The prizing of the new is tempting because it’s interesting but it’s a tool for a limited set of purposes. Innovation is the tool through which new ideas, services, processes, and products can emerge. Maintenance, the kind of reusing, fixing, and keeping things consistent, is the tool to ensure the good keeps going. They both have their place but one is not more inherently valuable than the other.

    In their influential essay on the topic Andrew Russell and Lee Vinsel write that:

    Entire societies have come to talk about innovation as if it were an inherently desirable value, like love, fraternity, courage, beauty, dignity, or responsibility. Innovation-speak worships at the altar of change, but it rarely asks who benefits, to what end? A focus on maintenance provides opportunities to ask questions about what we really want out of technologies. What do we really care about? What kind of society do we want to live in? Will this help get us there?

    To believe entirely in innovation as an unalloyed good is to fundamentally believe that newness is better. It is by extension a surrender of agency to say the promise of the future is better than the material of the present. Once the innovation happens more maintenance is needed. Once innovation overtakes maintenance, leaving no capacity to keep the new thing working,  the realm of innovation for innovation sake is entered.

    However, the alternative is not to go entirely the other way and focus on consolidation. As Russell and Vinsel point out in their own country

    What a shame it would be if American society matured to the point where the shallowness of the innovation concept became clear, but the most prominent response was an equally superficial fascination with golf balls, refrigerators, and remote controls.

    It is a question of balance and in a multi-layered bureaucracy like a university it requires balance across numerous domains.

    At a human level, there should be clear progression pathways for people that want to be experts and keeping things going. The reward does not have to be management responsibility (why make people who are good at delivering do less delivery?) but recognition of their domain specialisms.

    Culturally, it is about language that reflects the shared contribution of skills toward a common goal. And institutionally, it is a question of how maintenance becomes a key strategy component, and is therefore recognised. For example, the extent to which sustainability strategies are built on innovative idea vs the extent to which they are about keeping the old going.

    Our institutions depend on the people that literally keep the lights on, the machines working, and the services delivered. Let’s let the maintainers maintain and reward them for doing so. Let’s also keep innovating, maybe just not on everything all of the time.

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  • My Goodbye to Trent University – THE STUDENT LIFE BLOG

    My Goodbye to Trent University – THE STUDENT LIFE BLOG

    Photos and written by Amy Bridges

                This post is not only my goodbye to the 2021-2022 year but my goodbye to the blog and Trent University. The winter semester was my last semester of my B.A. which also means it was my last semester at Trent University. My experience at Trent University has been a long hard journey.

                I knew that my decision to go to university was going to change my life but I did not realize how much. Choosing Trent University was one of the best decisions of my life. While at Trent I was able to find my passion and gain the confidence to follow it, meet people who have made a huge impact on my life and was even able to gain experiences I wouldn’t have anywhere else.  

                In my four years at Trent, I have changed majors, went on an archaeological dig, gained experience working in a museum, worked for a professor and for 2 other departments in the university, moved apartments, had one of the worst seizures of my life, dealt with a pandemic, and was accepted to a Masters program. It has been a rollercoaster of an experience but I would not have traded it in for anything. These last four years have been challenging but the most rewarding.

    Even though I have been finished classes and set to graduate for a couple of weeks now I am still conflicted about leaving Trent. I am excited to be finished and I am proud of what I have accomplished, but I am sad that it means I will be leaving Trent and that I won’t be seeing the same people every week. Moving onto U of T for my Masters is going to be an exciting next step but terrifying at the same time.

                As I struggle with saying goodbye to Trent, I am also saying goodbye to this blog. This will be my last post on The Student Life Blog. I have been writing for the blog for 3 out of the 4 years I have been at Trent. I will be handing off the blog to another writer and in September you will be able to continue your journey at Trent with them. I am sure they will love this blog as much as I have over the past 3 years and I look forward to seeing where this blog goes in the future. Thank you for reading!

    Colour outside the lines,

    Amy Bridges 

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  • Find joy in the small things – THE STUDENT LIFE BLOG

    Find joy in the small things – THE STUDENT LIFE BLOG

    Photos and written by Amy Bridges

                   If the pandemic has taught me anything its that you need to find joy in the small things. These last couple of years have been hard and unforgiving and it has been hard to find joy amongst the mess. I have had to teach myself to find joy in the small things so that I don’t completely lose my mind. Since it has been a long journey to get here, I’m going to give you a list of some of the small things I have learned to appreciate a little more.

    Treats

                   I have learned to get excited and to enjoy even the small treats like a cupcake or a special drink. I have found that a bad day can get better with a cupcake or currently because I haven’t had them all winter a bowl of berries! They aren’t much in the grand scheme of things but doing a happy dance because I have a small bowl of strawberries has made a big difference in my day. I have also found that there are non-food treats that I have gotten excited about that again are small but make the day a little brighter. One being a new water bottle, or a new book. They are small but have a large impact!

    Music

                   The last couple of years music has been a great outlet. I have been using music to help curb my mood. When I’m having a bad day, I blare a song I know I can’t help but move to and it helps to boost my mood. Sometimes its only a little bit but that little bit helps.

    A small luxury

                   The most recent small joy I have found is in bath bombs. Normally I only take a 45-minute bath which again isn’t that long in the grand scheme of things but it is enough. I have found a great local business BombzRUs who makes fantastic bath bombs and the colours and smells that come from them are just wonderful. The 45-minutes I spend just enjoying the colourful sparkly water is just what I needed to make the day better or to set myself up for a good sleep for the next day.

    Sunrises

                   Since I work at 8am and I take transit I leave the house at 7am. I am not a morning person but I have had to learn how to be. Recently there has been one upside to getting up and leaving the house by 7am and that is the sunrises. The only way I would have been able to see them is if I was up early. So, I will take the small joy of a beautiful sunrise since I have to be up early anyways.

    While I am sure there are more these are currently the small joys that I have been focusing on while I try to minimize the impacts of rough days.

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