VIRTUAL EVENT: Do contemporary societies need universities?

Though official policy in the United Kingdom and the United States is to widen post-secondary participation, most policymakers have lost faith in the benefits of generic bachelor’s degrees. 

Comparing the Conservative Party’s support for further education to the Biden Administration’s focus on community colleges, Christopher Newfield will argue in this webinar that both governments are preparing students for mid-skill, middle-income jobs that have been largely offshored or made precarious. 

The remedy is not to increase focus on individual, monetary effects but to reduce it: governments should develop proper industrial strategies while funding universities to generate public, common, collective goods alongside private goods. 

Christopher will use racial equality as his example of a collective good. Contemporary societies will better respond to a higher education sector that fully redefines its social effects for the wider public.

Speaker

• Christopher Newfield, Independent Social Research Foundation and University of California 

Links

• Centre for Global Higher Education
• Department of Education, Practice and Society