Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Higher Education for the Public Good. Number 1, 2005 (original) (raw)

Introduction: Reflections on higher education and the public good

T here is always a potential contribution that higher education can make to the public good. In the twenty-first century specific concerns that require our attention are sustainability and global warming, human mobility and migration and peculiarly contemporary diseases such as AIDS. These can be seen as contemporary manifestations of protean and oft-recurring social and natural ills such as war and conflict, food insecurity and religious and ideological rivalries -phenomena to which higher education applies its collective mind and know-how. The greater the technological advances we make, for example in health provision and communications technology, the greater the frustration that we cannot do more to make the world a better place. Despite the enormous potential of higher education as an institution to contribute to the public good, it does not deliver on this potential, as Saleem Badat, the vice chancellor of Rhodes University, observes:

Decoding the Public Good of Higher Education

This study analyzed 217 descriptions of "higher education for the public good" that were provided by participants in two national programs that focused on the public role and responsibilities of higher education. Both programs were created and administered by the National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good at the University of Michigan. Four independent content analyses were conducted on the 217 descriptions, which yielded five main themes and nineteen subthemes of "higher education for the public good. " Additionally, several overarching foci emerged that cut across many of the thematic areas. This article concludes with a discussion of important implications for public policy, institutional practices, community relations, research, curricular and cocurricular offerings to students, and the choices and quality of relationships institutions engage in with other social entities.

11.Higher Education and Society

Institutions of higher education, and the system of which they are a part, face a host of unprecedented challenges from forces in society that affect and are influenced by these very institutions and their communities of learners and educators. Among these forces are sweeping demographic changes, shrinking state budgets, revolutionary advances in information and telecommunication technologies, globalization, competition from new educational providers, market pressures to shape educational and scholarly practices toward profit-driven ends, and increasing demands and pressures for fundamental changes in public policy and public accountability relative to higher education's role in addressing pressing issues of communities and the society at large. Anyone of these challenges would be significant on their own, but collectively they increase the complexity and difficulty for higher education to sustain or advance the fundamental work of serving the public good.

Curriculum, Higher Education, and the Public Good

Faced with the complexity of current and future global challenges, higher education has the social responsibility to advance our understanding of multifaceted issues, which involve social, economic, scientific and cultural dimensions and our ability to respond to them. It should lead society in generating global knowledge to address global challenges, inter alia food security, climate change, water management, intercultural dialogue, renewable energy and public health.

The contributions of higher education to society: a conceptual approach

Studies in Higher Education, 2023

Drawing on various disciplinary and scholarly approaches to the multiple roles of higher education in society, this paper offers a new conceptualisation of the non-economic contributions of higher education. The conceptual model identifies two basic dimensions in higher education's contributions to society. The first, axiological dimension pertains to the objects of higher education: what higher education does, what is in the centre of its activities. This includes three key elements: knowledge/skills (basic and applied knowledge, generic and particular skills), norms and values (social, cultural, professional, civic) and social value (social statuses). The second, praxeological dimension pertains to the internal dynamics of higher education: what higher education does with the object, the processes, practices, activities. This entails three: transmission, transformation and creation. The resulting model combines the two dimensions (axiological and praxeological), identifying nine key domains of the contributions of higher education to society. This conceptualisation both brings together the three major components of higher education's role and attends to its internal dynamics. It illuminates the intrinsic value of teaching, learning and research and the inherent transformative potentials of higher education for individuals and for societies. It embraces actual and potential contributions of higher education to society. It is applicable at both individual and collective levels. It works in the scales of group, institution, local, national and global.