Category: Value

  • 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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  • So you’ve been accused of harbouring “Mickey Mouse” courses at your institution…now what?

    So you’ve been accused of harbouring “Mickey Mouse” courses at your institution…now what?

    Margaret Hodge’s 2003 speech to the Institute of Public Policy Research on “achieving excellence and equality in post-16 education” tells us that even under New Labour policy announcements on higher education were “long-awaited.”

    The speech illustrates how then, as now, the government was grappling with questions of growing and massifying participation while retaining the sector’s global competitiveness; promoting specialisation and collaboration; boosting quality and civic engagement.

    Hodge had taken to the stage to explain the government’s plans for driving up HE participation to at least 50 per cent of young people and signal the themes of its forthcoming higher education strategy – but warned that doing so via “stacking up numbers on Mickey Mouse courses” was “not acceptable.”

    Hodge’s usage shows that she – or her speechwriter – assumed that the meaning of the term “Mickey Mouse course” was widely understood. But as DK has explored elsewhere on the site, Mickey Mouse’s meanings when applied to higher education have shifted and evolved according to cultural context.

    What has remained consistent, however, is the assumption that there is a chunk of HE provision that all right-thinking people can see obviously shouldn’t “count” as HE – because it’s unserious, or too popular, or on a topic that’s not traditionally been seen as academic or, in the recent analysis from the Taxpayer’s Alliance, ideologically suspect.

    Let’s imagine you’re a university press officer looking at a message on your phone or a note in your email inbox requesting that you explain succinctly by 3pm today why it’s entirely sane and reasonable to offer courses in e-gaming, fashion, filmmaking, tourism, mental health, gender identity, outdoor learning, climate change, sports or any one of a long tail of stuff the proverbial man on the Clapham omnibus wouldn’t see the point of. What’s your strategy?

    Make it go away

    Back in 2003, the BBC reports that Margaret Hodge swiftly felt the sharp end of university leaders’ tongues, who apparently said her remarks were “offensive” and “ill-informed.” It’s hard to imagine a government minister getting such short shrift from the sector today – while some of the issues might look similar, the political landscape has changed enormously.

    Even so, Option One, the dismissive approach, is seductive. There are several flavours of dismissive available: you could point out that higher education institutions hold their own degree awarding powers, are responsible for their own quality and academic standards, and curriculum, and that ergo, any course provided by a legitimate HE provider is de facto itself legitimate. Or you could question the motives of the questioner and suggest that the framing is a political act designed to discredit universities and higher education by those who wish the sector ill. The moral high ground feels pretty good, and has the advantage of refusing to concede the principle of the question, but it doesn’t necessarily contribute to public understanding of contemporary higher education.

    A whole bunch of institutions approached for comment simply did not respond – possibly because they were asked to do so during the Christmas break but it may also have been because they refused to dignify the question with a response, an approach that might be characterised as Option One (b).

    De-escalate

    The institutions who chose to respond to the Telegraph when confronted with the evidence amassed by the Taxpayers’ Alliance seem to have in the main gone for Option Two: explain and clarify – and try to wedge in a plug for the institution.

    Thus the University of Cumbria’s spokesperson explains that its MA in outdoor experiential learning is “designed for those passionate about transforming education, inspiring sustainability, and reshaping how we engage with experience in learning” – and notes that the university is in the top ten for graduate destinations. The University of Nottingham’s spokesperson points out that its workplace health and wellbeing course is postgraduate level, and therefore not taxpayer funded – and says the course encourages “a rigorous scientific approach that fulfils and exceeds legal requirements to support organisational performance and effectiveness and enhance worker productivity.”

    There are absolutely merits to this approach – essentially it smothers the reputational fire with approved corporate narratives. When the Telegraph comes to call during the Christmas break you probably don’t lob your scanty communications resources at anything other than de-escalation. This, arguably, is not the moment to start a media scrap and find yourself inadvertently the “face” of the Mickey Mouse debate. Experience shows that that sort of thing can haunt your institution for ages and goodness knows everyone’s got enough to worry about without that.

    Engage in the debate

    But we should give at least a decent bit of consideration to Option 3: full-throated defence offered in language that people recognise as meaningful. That means more or less grudgingly accepting the premise that it’s hard for everyone to see why some lucky, lucky students get to study something as fun and creative and glamorous as fashion or “the outdoors” or identity or filmmaking. It involves painting a succinct picture of what these subjects achieve for students, and industries, not in big picture stats but in human terms, in stories.

    I have two children, one in a state primary which, like many, have invested in a forest school. When my son was in reception he got to learn outdoors once a week; since then it’s been once a term at most. I can’t believe I’m the only parent of an active kid that is troubled by how little time the system affords kids to learn in and about nature.

    Or, not to make this all about my kids, but being a parent computer games are a pretty big feature of my life. I can see how gaming can offer opportunities for my kids to problem solve and develop tactical and situational awareness, but I want to be sure they are safe when they do that – thanks, e-games courses.

    Or, I’m a middle aged woman who sometimes struggles to find clothes that feel right for my professional and personal identity. Or I’m someone who wants to understand why the gender identity “debate” has become so toxic and what my orientation to it should be. Or I’m worried that my efforts to put my rubbish in the right bins isn’t going to deliver on that net zero target and is that even a useful target anyway?

    OK, my preoccupations are very obviously filtered through the lens of middle-class London liberal. I’m not suggesting I’m a typical Telegraph reader – but I’m using my own sense of what the existence of these courses might mean for me to illustrate the point that lots of them touch people’s everyday concerns in ways that could be surfaced more powerfully.

    The “Mickey Mouse” accusation runs deeper than notions of social irrelevance, however – inherent in the proposition that something is “Mickey Mouse” is calling into question whether these are subjects and courses that deserve to be part of the thing we call higher education. And that’s a much harder challenge to defend because doing so may feel like to do so requires a referral back to expertise, or knowledge that is inaccessible to the common reader and therefore will struggle to “cut through” in any media response.

    Outside the realm of quality and standards regulation the question of why something is a legitimate source of higher education study speaks to the range of conceptions of higher education value. Is it worthwhile because there is labour market demand for it, because it is sufficiently complex to constitute a structured body of knowledge that merits deep intellectual engagement, because the resourcing required to study it is only accessible in higher education contexts, because of its wider social relevance or some thrilling combination of all these? And how on earth do you capture all that in a media quote?

    I’ve been puzzling over this all week, and have come to the conclusion that there can’t be a silver bullet on how to defend the HE-ness of any given course, especially when the framing of the scepticism is so multi-faceted. One person’s useful market labour skills is another person’s intellectual lack of rigour. There’s no easy “win” available for this argument – but there might be a position to take that feels authentic and worthwhile that is rooted in the course’s own conception of itself and its meaning and value set within the wider institutional framework of mission and purpose.

    Latent to salient

    It’s not, I think, that institutions and their staff have no sense of why their courses are meaningful as higher education, but that this knowledge is so deeply embedded in the structures and cultures of the institution as to be almost entirely latent and unarticulated. Yet to be able to capture any of this pithily and in the teeth of a sceptical line of questioning that knowledge needs to be explicit and intentionally surfaced.

    Any institution will have a stock of anecdotes, insight and ideas about why their courses matter, in human terms. This knowledge isn’t always held in comms teams, who are not always linked closely with the nuts and bolts of the academic endeavour . It’s not an easy ask, but I’d argue that it’s worth comms teams spending some real time in some of the university’s less “mainstream” course offerings, putting forward the sorts of the challenges around value that a hostile media outlet or think tank might present and understanding the nuances of the answers before working them into something media-friendly. Don’t just talk to the programme leaders, ask to audit the classes. Direct experience trumps course marketing brochure every time.

    Because when it comes to that unexpected phone call or email asking for the justification for these woke, un-rigorous, pointless degrees, and deciding how best to respond, it’s great to at least have the option to explain why these courses are not merely legitimate higher education provision, they are essential for the furtherance of human flourishing.

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  • Higher Education Inquirer : College Financial Aid: How It Really Works

    Higher Education Inquirer : College Financial Aid: How It Really Works

    Crucial Insights: Understanding College Financial Aid Dynamics

    (00:02:56) Variety of College Financial Assistance Options
    (    00:05:18) Scholarships: Balancing Merit and Financial Need
    (    00:10:00) Student Selection Strategies in College Admissions
    (    00:21:40) Financial Aid Strategy at Competitive vs. Smaller Schools
    (    00:26:29) Major-based Financial Aid Allocation in Colleges

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  • ShareWell Offers Free Mental Health Support to University Students Nationwide

    ShareWell Offers Free Mental Health Support to University Students Nationwide

    ShareWell—the first peer-to-peer mental health support platform—is now offering free, unlimited memberships to all university students across the U.S.

    With 70% of college students reporting mental health challenges, ShareWell aims to fill critical gaps in care by providing live, virtual peer-led support groups on topics like anxiety, depression, academic pressure, and life transitions. Students can join as many sessions as they want—completely free—by signing up with their university email at www.sharewellnow.com.

    It’s a simple way to access community support during what can be some of the most overwhelming years of life.

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  • Ignore the noise – university is overwhelmingly worth it for most

    Ignore the noise – university is overwhelmingly worth it for most

    New data from UCAS shows the number of 18 year old applications to undergraduate courses for autumn 2025 continues to climb, including from young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

    The slight dip in the rate of applications can be explained in part by changes around how students engage with the application cycle. Year-on-year we see decision making happening later in the admissions cycle. There is a clear disconnect between the discourse around universities and the demand for them, where the long-term trend is up.

    Universities have long been used as political currency, despite being a core part of young people’s aspirations in the UK. It is not uncommon to hear influential politicians and commentators argue against the value of a degree, even though they generally have degrees themselves. If the government has its sights set on sparking economic growth and creating opportunity across society, encouraging more people to go to university is the answer, with jobs requiring higher education expected to see the most growth in the next ten years, according to analysis from Skills England.

    There has been a tremendous amount of progress in helping people from a wider range of backgrounds go to university in recent years, and this is reflected in new UCAS data. Applications from young people from areas with low participation in higher education is at its highest level in recent years. Not only does this afford thousands more young people opportunities that they might never otherwise have had, it also has huge economic benefits for them, and their communities.

    Reaping the rewards of participation

    However, there is much further to go. You are still about twice as likely to go to university if you are from the most affluent backgrounds, compared to the least affluent. This can’t be right, particularly as the data shows that the benefits of university are especially strong for people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

    Graduates who received free school meals earlier in life get a big earnings boost by going to university. On average, they’ll earn over a third more than non-graduates from the same background by the age of 31. And the benefits go beyond salary – universities play an important role in tackling economic inactivity and unemployment, one of the government’s key battles. Overall, graduates are far less likely to be claiming benefits, nearly three times less likely to be economically inactive, and over one and a half times more likely to be employed than non-graduates.

    The data shows that there is still a great deal of progress to be made in closing the regional participation gap. In London, 58 per cent of 18-year-olds applied to university; in the North East this was only 32 per cent. In Wales, the participation rate has been going backwards. This is a huge missed opportunity for the nation.

    If the government were to work with universities, colleges and schools to ensure all young people have the same educational opportunities, we’d see more people in work and more people able to adapt as the labour market changes around them, earning higher wages and filling the jobs being created in exciting new sectors of the economy.

    And, given that graduates are statistically more likely to enjoy better health, we’d probably have a healthier population too. In the UK we’re lucky to have exceptional universities in every region of the UK, and producing and attracting more graduates to these areas could significantly boost regional productivity.

    That’s not to say that everyone should want to, or needs to go to university to have a successful career or spark regional growth, but graduates’ skills make a vital contribution to local economies. Regions with high numbers of graduates perform better economically, and these benefits spillover to non-graduates. All eight growth-driving sectors identified by the government, including clean energy and the creative industries, are dependent on a bigger supply of graduates to expand. Last year, these industries reported having a 50 per cent higher proportion of graduates than in the UK workforce as a whole.

    The bottom line

    For the many young people who don’t know exactly what they want to do in life, going to university can be the difference between gaining skills and experience that will set them up for life or falling into economic inactivity. Despite what a great deal of headlines will tell you, universities are essential to young people’s prospects in this country, and the new application data shows that young people feel this too.

    As well as the huge economic benefits for wider society, university has huge appeal for individuals. It’s an opportunity to gain career skills, immerse yourself in a subject you enjoy and meet lifelong friends. And above all, thanks to the UK’s diverse offering of institutions and courses, including academic and vocational styles, it’s a realistic goal for most people. Perhaps, in a world where young people are being increasingly discouraged about the future ahead, university represents something more optimistic, and that’s why they continue to want to go there.

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