Rethinking the terms by which universities operate

AUSTRALIA

In the last week of March, international education professionals across the Asia-Pacific region gathered in Delhi for the annual conference of the Asia-Pacific Association for International Education (APAIE).

The conference brought together a large group of dedicated international education experts committed to global mobility for students, the benefits of international student recruitment and partnership, and collaboration between global universities, governments and other organisations.

At a time when the term ‘globalist’ seems to be going out of fashion, this was truly a gathering of the converted determined to ply their trade in the face of political headwinds.

Diminishing ‘social licence’

At the same time, many delegates were simultaneously grappling with the challenge in the tertiary education sector of diminishing ‘social licence’. Over the last year, Australian higher education has become increasingly concerned about the lack of social licence.

From the over-reliance on international students for financial sustainability to the poor results of student experience surveys on the quality of university education, there is an argument – reflected in both political circles and the general public – that universities are working at odds with the core reasons why they receive funding as public institutions.

The tertiary sector is now embroiled in debates about how to regain lost ground and re-establish public and governmental support afresh.

These concerns are obviously not without foundation. As the international education sector is all too aware, the need to diversify universities is acute, and we must find ways to reduce the dependence of our institutions on much larger numbers of students from particular countries.

In light of limited resourcing for core teaching and research costs as well as the constraints on recruiting more domestic students, it is understandable that universities have sought to make up the shortfall through more international fee-paying students.

However, that has come at the cost of reputational and negative public perceptions, the terms of which have been slipping through our fingers.

The international recruitment strategy of the Australian tertiary sector has ratcheted up the debate on universities’ social licence.

How does the sector justify the public funding we receive if we are perceived to be losing sight of the core business of educating domestic students? And, in an increasingly hostile political environment, how should universities position themselves with respect to these criticisms?

In part, the answer involves redefining the proposition and engaging publicly with the question of what social licence means and how it should be measured.

Winning back hearts and minds

When not working in international education, my academic research is focused on the development, use and morphology of political concepts. From this scholarly perspective, to put it bluntly, social licence as a concept is at risk of becoming a trope. So widespread is its undefined usage in the sector that the meaning of the concept almost becomes more elusive the more the term is used.

Terminology matters in conceptual analysis, but that does not mean that we all have to agree on definitions. The words we use are not singular or definitive descriptors that defy different interpretations. Therefore, if we want to mount arguments about concepts, then we need to be clear what we mean in a space where concepts have different interpretations and meanings.

The loose use of political terminology can lead to the terms themselves becoming impotent beyond academic circles or limited in their applicability to the issues that they seek to address. Concepts matter, but, in order to be useful, they need to be defined amongst the multiplicity of competing interpretations that each concept might denote.

Therefore, when those in the higher education sector refer to social licence, we are grappling with an amorphous, ill-defined set of activities, processes and meanings. We might say that we know it when we see it, but that is not a particularly helpful insight if a sector is trying to regain something that it understands itself to have lost.

Political parties and the general public need to be convinced. If the sector feels besieged by assaults on its self-perception, then winning back lost credibility cannot take place solely through defensive responses to government or public misconception.

Rather, we need to be clearer about what social licence means for the tertiary sector and engage with misconceptions about how it should be measured. We need to win back hearts and minds through engagement rather than defensive posturing.

At this point universities and the broader international education sector need to be on the front foot. Social licence – a term derived primarily from business and management literatures (that is, the social licence to operate) – is mainly focused on the justification or legitimacy of businesses, often in extractive industries, to seek a metaphorical ‘licence’ to conduct their business from the communities which are affected by their activities.

There is no need for us to reinvent the wheel here – there is substantial academic literature in this space – but the concept has emerged and often been deployed in somewhat transactional terms. That is, it invokes some kind of ‘deal’ struck between businesses and the communities impacted by their operations (see the analysis by Studymove here).

But what is most interesting in the emergence of the term social licence in relation to modern universities is the entity from which such a licence is thought to be granted.

In the business literature, it is the affected community, often articulated through, for example, the need to grant ‘free, prior and informed consent’ (FPIC) to the businesses operating in their midst. Again, there is an entire debate around whether such conceptualisations are effective and-or appropriate, but it is traditionally conceived in terms of ‘affectedness’ at a local level.

The social licence debate in higher education has been much less focused on localities and affectedness. Perhaps if it were, we might hear much more about the efforts of many universities to work with local communities to achieve objectives that are defined by the communities themselves.

It might well be the case that universities need to tell that story better in terms of their contribution to society, but that is not what the social licence debate in the tertiary sector in Australia focuses on. Rather, its concern, target and victim seem to be international students.

A ‘statist imaginary’

International education is partly culpable here because it has often been content to focus its defences more on the financial contribution that international students make to the economy.

Significant as that contribution is, it is not something that is going to win over hearts and minds … even if it does resonate with state treasurers. Global social licence is not harnessed by focusing on the domestic economic benefits of international students (even when they are substantial).

Rather, the current debate is trapped in a ‘statist imaginary’, as if legitimacy is only granted by the ‘nation’ or government.

To talk of social licence at this level is to fall into the thrall of the idea that if only governments understood us better, then there might be better funding arrangements for universities or that the sector might receive more positive attention from national media, thereby casting us on a more positive footing in public debate.

But, as the recent Studymove research shows, in a content analysis of Australian media material focused on international education over more than a decade, less than 10% of articles focused on the positive contribution that international students make to Australia in terms of their social (rather than economic) value and benefit or the welcome that international students receive.

The relentless churn of negativity demands a different kind of response – one that articulates much more positive messages around international student contributions and the benefits to domestic students of a global perspective.

Despite the merits of arguments about regaining public and government trust in more traditional terms, I think the sector is missing a trick in articulating the benefits of international education.

To put it bluntly, the debate about social licence is stuck in a nationalist and statist imaginary and, for those of us who work in international education, it is a debate we can’t win unless we approach the task of changing the terms of the debate head on. Unless we do so, we are the villains of the piece rather than potential positive contributors.

Changing the terms of our social licence

What might social licence mean if it is placed in a global context? Certainly, it means amplifying all of the global work that is occurring in the sector, such as the enormous efforts that are taking place in international networks around climate change, public health and sustainable development.

There is undoubtedly a piece of work around the research and education activities in our universities to bring these concerns to light and address their implications. But what is pivotal is that the impacts of these global activities are experienced locally.

The task then is not antithetical to the nationalist-statist imaginary of social licence; rather, it brings to light the fact that global challenges cannot be addressed by distinct nations or societies in isolation from one another.

If governments want or purport to be significant and influential actors in our region, then our universities have a key role to play, and social licence cannot be defined solely in nationalistic terms.

For universities, our willingness to open up our campuses to those in our regions who do not have the same access to education that we can offer, becomes critical. In this respect, offering scholarships for the less wealthy in our region becomes the global social licence equivalent of attempts to widen participation within our domestic recruitment.

Global social licence necessitates a willingness to create opportunities for others in our region to access our world-class education on terms which reflect the constraints some of our regional partners experience.

Global social licence for universities in powerful countries derives from our willingness to work with partner institutions on their terms. It demands humility, openness and the capacity to listen to the voices of the region. Such a global social licence could change the way in which Australians think about international education.

Lest this be depicted as an act of one-sided magnanimity, we need to be clear that universities would benefit from partnering with the next generation of regional and global thought leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, governments … and, yes, university leaders.

If the terms on which universities are seen to be socially useful and productive are to be liberated from the statist-nationalist imaginary, then it demands that we are addressing the issues that are not constrained within individual societies. We are not ‘closed’ societies, however much the current political climate might encourage and reward chauvinism and xenophobia.

Societies cannot afford to be closed, and neither can their universities because of the need to tackle common challenges that transcend borders and the importance of sharing knowledge in doing so.

Challenges to the existing terms of the debate on social licence invoke the possibility of the concept being reimagined in global terms that can help to rebuild the standing of the university sector by connecting global concerns with local impacts.

Professor Adrian Little is pro vice-chancellor (international) and professor of political theory in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

This article is a commentary. Commentary articles are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of University World News.

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