A clarion call for civic re-engagement by universities

Ellen Hazelkorn is a NAFSA Senior Fellow and has contributed an essay to NAFSA’s International Education in a Time of Global Disruption report. The following is an edited critique of John Hudzik’s contribution in the same report on the need to connect the benefits of internationalisation to the community while balancing attention to the local and the global.

John Hudzik’s appeal for civic re-engagement is a call to arms for higher education. His message about civic engagement asks universities to rethink their role and responsibilities to the cities and regions in which they are located and to underpin democratic values and active citizenship. This is an especially timely declaration as recent polls in the United States show how support for higher education is becoming more ideologically and politically partisan.

Education and geography, as well as race, ethnicity and gender, are key factors contributing to people’s viewpoints. In the 2016 US election, only nine out of 49 counties with public flagship universities favoured Donald Trump over Hilary Clinton. These polarities were amplified in the 2018 midterm and are evident also in early polling for 2020, with the greatest tension between college-educated white women and non-college-educated white men.

Education level was also decisive in the United Kingdom’s Brexit vote; 15 of 20 local authority areas with the lowest level of educational attainment voted to leave the European Union, while all 20 with the highest levels voted to remain.

The mobility divide

Mobility is another factor influencing people’s opinions. People who are less likely to have moved around the United States or have had international experience are more likely to be concerned about internationalisation. Urban-rural divisions are evident in the UK and in other countries experiencing a populist backlash against elitism, globalisation and internationalisation.

Public higher education is the life-blood of any nation – providing education and training for personal and societal success and an ‘anchor tenant’ residing at the heart of the research-innovation ecosystem. Yet, despite these benefits, education has become a dividing line.

The recent decision to reduce state funding for Alaska’s university system by a massive and unprecedented US$130 million cut should serve, as Kevin Carey (2019) notes in the Chronicle of Higher Education, as a warning of ‘future disaster’.

States such as Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, Oklahoma and now Alaska are making cuts of more than 35%, thereby putting ideology above self-interest.

So, while we may think student and faculty mobility and study abroad programmes are important, their importance primarily benefits the higher education community.

In favour of public engagement

Because societies’ challenges are so complex, they necessitate a well-informed, engaged and internationalised citizenry. Higher education has a responsibility in broadening and deepening its engagement with its various communities to help equip people of all abilities with the necessary knowledge, motivation and sense of societal responsibility to actively help resolve these problems for themselves and future generations.

Over the centuries, universities have served society well. Hudzik’s article challenges the higher education community to recommit to the values of public service and social, cultural and economic engagement.

Ellen Hazelkorn is partner of BH Associates education consultants. She is also professor emeritus and director of the Higher Education Policy Research Unit at Dublin Institute of Technology in Ireland and joint editor of Policy Reviews in Higher Education. Hazelkorn also serves as international co-investigator of the Centre for Global Higher Education in London and research fellow of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, USA.

The opinions expressed by the Senior Fellows are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of NAFSA: Association of International Educators. NAFSA’s International Education in a Time of Global Disruption report is available free to non-members here.