WHAT IS WWIT?
What Would It Take is a public-facing investigation into the contemporary crisis of UK Higher Education based out of the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. We understand this crisis to be comprised of four key political and economic pressures: new managerialism and privatisation, new security regimes, political conflict, and populism. Together, these interconnected challenges threaten the public value, purpose and mission of Higher Education as an organising feature of our society. Considering the diminishing status of Higher Education as a publicly-funded good and right, we aim to foster a public conversation on the desired role of HE as we move forward into new political territory that is increasingly shaped by political, ecological, social and economic crises.
WWIT is the UK branch of a larger three year ESRC funded project titled Universities and Crisis that comparatively assesses empirical data on recent shifts in the Higher Education sector in Turkey, South Africa, Hungary and the UK. Broadly, these conjoined case studies aim to capture how the public role of Higher Education is changing in response to new national and global political movements and pressures.
This website represents a living archive of the investigation and is regularly updated to showcase the latest analysis, work-in-progress, and events comprising this study.
WHAT IS OUR APPROACH?
Distinct from traditional academic approaches, WWIT adopts an advocacy-research frame and methodology. The underlying assumption driving this method is that Higher Education in the UK is fundamentally in crisis, and therefore in need of a set of significant instiutional and policy shifts in order to deliver on its promised public value. However, despite the burgeoning body of literature on the failing UK university (annotated bib link), the full extent, character and social meaning of this crisis is still to be documented. Perhaps most importantly, there is no consensus, nor existing instrument to capture said hypothetical consensus, on what the public role and mission of higher education is or should be as we face new global challenges of authoritarianism, economic recession, an increasingly automised labour market, and diminishing democracy.
Therefore, this study is underpinned by three interlinked questions that aim to understand what is happening to us, why, and where we want to go from here.
1. What is the crisis of Higher Education and what are the sociopolitical and economic implications into the future?
2. What should the public role of Higher Education be and who should decide?
3. What would it take to align UK Higher Education with this vision?
WHO ARE WE?
The Universities & Crisis project is comprised of a transnational team of academics primarily based out of the University of Cambridge, the University of Toronto and Monash University. This interdisciplinary team has a diverse background including the sociology of education, political sociology, and critical youth studies.
WWIT is run by Dr. Lakshmi Bose, a Research Associate based out of the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge.