"The Porous University"

This is a post about a conference I did not attend, whose presentations I did not read, which was held in a different country about whose internal education policies and political dynamics I know almost nothing. Though I have been to a different meeting at that host institution, the University of Highlands and Islands in Scotland. I will also be using a supporting example that refers to the practices of a religion about which I know next to nothing, and which I will probably get wrong in some fundamental way. And I will also throw in a quote that may or may not be accurate. I am still deciding to whom I should attribute that quote.

All that aside, I just read a reference to a symposium held this month in Inverness on the topic of the "porous university." I think I might know what they intended there, but the phrase got me thinking about what it might mean to me. So very often we think about colleges and universities as separate from "the real world"--we refer to life before and after college as happening "outside," as in "what will people think of this outside?" Or "How can we use this outside, in the real world?" Or "What can you do with this in the real world?" We are constantly aware that the university is a total institution (that sounds like the sociological term--I might check on that), with clearly marked boundaries between the town and the campus, where the rules governing behavior and practice are different. However, as much as we want to think of our institutions as preparing students for the outside world, or the real world, whichever it is, or as insulating them from that real world, we are also part of the real world. And the borders between us are more porous than we like to think. (Or, for some, not as porous as they wish they were.)

Some of this is about politics and protests: in which real-world concerns bleed into our territory, in ways that often surprise administrators. Protests at Middlebury College in Vermont over a talk by Charles Murray, or several at the University of California at Berkeley (which should not have been a surprise), or my favorites, the ones held at my alma mater, Oberlin College, about a bunch of things. These kinds of protests, not to diminish or dismiss them, are part of being a student, though--they are often students' first attempts to influence policies at their institutions or in their communities, and as such they are also learning opportunities. And the ones occurring in the US are much tamer than what occurred in the 1960s, or what happens elsewhere now.

There are other important ways in which the question of porous boundaries matters, though. What students learn, and how relevant it is to their needs and aspirations, is a crucial question. Are we teaching what students need to know? Often the answer turns out to be no: not just in terms of job skills they (and employers) need, but also the kind of critical thinking and citizenship skills needed for the healthy functioning of a democracy. (Why else would politicians, and Silicon Valley magnates, be questioning the need for government to fund higher education? Why else do we have an anti-intellectual President?) The need for increased communication and connections across the border is clear.

Then there is access: most Americans could get access to some institutions (community colleges and many four-year institutions usually have open admissions policies, assuming you have enough money to pay for your courses, or can qualify for financial aid), but we don't make it easy to understand how to gain that access. The equivalent would not occur in the health care sector. It would be like finding out you are sick, and then going to hospital on your own and trying to figure out which of those many rooms holds the treatment or the expertise for what ails you. Universities are in our midst, but how do we get inside and really make use of them?

And there is the question of money, as I mentioned in passing a couple of paragraphs above. The idea of the university as a self-contained entity might be comforting for those on the inside--believing we are creating safe spaces for those we admit (and employ). But it also allows those on the outside to think of us as separate, or to not think about us at all. More and more, the neoliberal notion that if something has value, it should pay for itself has come to pervade every aspect of American society. If colleges and universities don't make the case that they are not only in it for themselves, no one else will make the case for us. Higher ed institutions were established, at least in the US, to promote the economic development and well-being of the society (or the town where the college was located), and it was this widespread access to education in the 19th and 20th centuries that led to the rapid expansion of the United States as an industrial and commercial powerhouse. But so many people have forgotten this, and have come to embrace the idea that their success has to do with their own hard work, and nothing to do with the social and educational context in which they live. Even when the evidence is in plain sight.

But maybe part of the problem is with the universities. The more elite and closed and bounded we are, the less people feel connected to us. Maybe we have become something like the rare books librarian who works hard to restore and preserve the collections in his charge. When asked about the readers who want to see these books, he replies, "Yes, it's a shame we have to let them, isn't it?"

Once a friend of mine invited me to come with her to visit her Hindu temple. I was worried we would be going to a service, and I wouldn't know how to act. But once we were inside, I saw something very different: groups of people gathered in different areas, some engaged in rituals, some sitting on the floor eating, others in conversation. People greeted us warmly. There was no clear demarcation between the formal sacred space and the informal space. (Okay, I found out later that there is in fact an inner chamber where only the priests are allowed. But that sort of ruins my point.) My point is that maybe this is a better model for a university: a welcoming place with fuzzier, more porous boundaries between students and institution, institution and community, and institution and the "real world" of work. I hope someone at that conference talked about something like this.