Book Launch

BOOK LAUNCH: Transforming University Education – A manifesto

Date: Thursday, 24 September 2020 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Location: Zoom webinar

Speaker(s):

Event Materials

This event is now archived and we are pleased to provide the following event media and assets, along with the original event overview.

View the transcript

What is a university degree for? What can it offer to students? Is it only about getting a job? How can we measure the quality of an undergraduate degree? In his newly published book, Paul Ashwin shows how, around the world, economic arguments have come to dominate our thinking about the purpose and nature of university education. He argues that we have lost a sense of the educational purposes of an undergraduate degree and the ways in which going to university can transform students’ lives. The book challenges a series of myths related to the purposes, educational processes, and quality of an undergraduate education and argues that these myths have fuelled the current misunderstanding of the educational aspects of higher education. The book explores what is needed to reinvigorate our understanding of a university education.

This book launch will offer an overview of the book’s argument and feature responses from three leading commentators on higher education research, policy and practice.

“In a noisy world filled with a cacophony of sound bites, Paul Ashwin challenges the merits of the current narrative that higher education is failing to provide what students and society need to thrive in uncertain times. His incisive, reasoned analysis is both critical of certain institutional practices while persuasively explaining what the contemporary university needs to do to realize its overarching educational purposes.” – George D. Kuh, Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus of Higher Education, Indiana University, USA

Professor Paul Ashwin

Paul Ashwin is Professor of Higher Education, Lancaster University. He played a key role in creating CGHE, was a CGHE Deputy Director and led the Centre’s Graduate Experiences of Employability and Knowledge project.

Professor Jenni Case

Jennifer Case is Professor and Head of the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech in the USA. Prior to her appointment in this post she was a Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Cape Town, where she retains an honorary appointment.

Professor Simon Marginson

Simon Marginson is Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, founding Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), Joint Editor-in-Chief of Higher Education, and a Professorial Associate with the University of Melbourne. Simon’s research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, the global science system, higher education in East Asia, the contributions of higher education, and higher education and social inequality. Simon led CGHE’s project 8 which investigated the public good role of higher education in ten countries. The project found that while a broad notion of public good has been largely emptied out of policy in the English-speaking countries, where economic definitions of individualised pecuniary value are dominant, recognition of the broader individual and collective outcomes of higher education continues in different ways in other jurisdictions including France, Finland, South Korea and China. The study in England discovered however that despite the narrow economic framing used by Westminster policy makers, both higher education practitioners and policy professionals believe that higher education makes a large and multiple contribution to both national and global public goods.

Debbie McVitty

As Wonkhe’s editor, Debbie has oversight of Wonkhe’s daily insight, debate and analysis of higher education policy. Debbie has previously worked in policy and communications roles at Universities UK, the University of Bedfordshire, and the National Union of Students. She holds a DPhil in English literature from the University of Oxford and a Masters in research in higher education policy, evaluation and enhancement from Lancaster University. Debbie is interested in bringing to light new and less-represented perspectives to inform policy and practice in higher education.