I read a very interesting article from the Guardian yesterday entitled: What are Universities for?
And this, coupled with my thoughts from Friday's blog, made me think about the purpose of higher education, and more importantly that higher education means many different things to many different people.
The definitions in the article stretch from a 'common search for truth' through to the 4 principles of 'instruction in skills, promotion of the general powers of the mind, advancement of learning, and the transmission of a common culture and common standards of citizenship'
Now I'm reminded at this point of a slide I saw a few weeks ago at the student retention framework launch that was to remind those present as to the reason students go to university across the sector, with the 4 main groups being academics, toe dippers, option openers and the largest group of next steppers.
Therefore I guess the question I want to pose in this post is which group do you think you as a student fits into, or is there another one, and does this impact upon what you believe the purpose of higher education is?
I guess I should also answer this by saying that I was always an option opener, and that I never really had a profession in mind by new that having a degree would open doors for me. I'm not sure if this comes across in my belief about higher education, where I think it is a place for learning new skills across the board, whether that be academically, but also valuable (both personally and societally) life and transferable skills, such as citizenship, time management and living with other types of people.
What does everyone else think?
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
I think everyone has different motivations during their entire student life cycle, mine certainly changed from a toe-dipper to academic/ step with option opener being somewhere in the middle! although it saddens me to say I think the last government has turned HE into a place where in order to gain a job you need a qualification now, I think this will continue but hopefully the sector will take a leap out of Uni of Brighton’s book and focus on ensuring graduates come out with the 'common search for truth'. universities need to keep their integrity during such a turbulent time! x
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