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Foto: Mats van Soolingen
international

Understanding is the purpose of higher education

Max Rozenburg,
20 maart 2016 - 10:57

As the new dean of the Amsterdam University College (AUC), Murray Pratt aims to promote individualised education, a strong international focus and a tight partnership between the management and students. ‘The purpose of higher education is to expand learning opportunities and horizons on a very personal level.’

Murray Pratt’s office is empty. It’s been a month since the Scottish humanities scholar with a specialism in French language and culture took his offi ce as AUC’s new dean, but apparently a month isn’t enough time for his desk to become cluttered with papers. Nor does it seem enough time for Pratt to have hung pictures on the wall or to have placed the usual office trinkets on his shelves. His filing cabinet is also still (largely) empty. He could easily walk out of his office with all of his belongings in his pockets and it would be like he never worked there. But as empty as Murray Pratt’s office might be, his vision for education, or rather, his approach to education, is overloaded: ‘To have a vision is to be too rigid — an “approach” better mirrors the flexibility that is necessary in higher education’.

‘For higher education to really succeed, it should always have an international focus’

What do you believe the purpose of higher education to be?
‘There is more to it than just knowledge: there is understanding. Knowledge does not exist independently of the people that learn. I think it is fair to say that the purpose of higher education is to expand learning opportunities and horizons on a very personal level. It could be argued that real, pure knowledge only exists in the realm of the natural sciences, but understanding also exists in the social sciences and the humanities. These disciplines can extrapolate from what we know already, take these trends and project them forward. This is not something that can be converted into the algorithms that serve big businesses or corporate politics. But for us, individuals that are living through rapidly changing societies, it is important to explore the dangers of what we are doing and to discover the growing buds that we can nurture. Harnessing creativity and analysis is central to the humanities and social sciences — this trains us to think outside the box. It inculcates a spirit of enquiry that comes into play when faced with challenges that are not yet identifi ed by science or society. To me, this is understanding — not knowledge — and serves as the fundamental purpose of higher education.’

 

What are the aspects of education that can optimise one’s understanding?
‘Whatever the discipline studied, context is key. Context informs the decisions that are taken regarding how knowledge is used. I think this is one of the reasons that an interdisciplinary enquiry in academia is so valuable. Concretely, this means that students should be able to shape their own learning trajectory. At AUC we aid this by having individualised curriculum pathways that students can shape for themselves. A student can pick any course that he or she feels aids his or her understanding. But what would happen if we were to ask students what they’d like to learn during the course? I think it would force them to think about what they want and need to learn. I would be really interested in working with the AUC community to explore not only what we teach, but also why we teach what we teach. I would like to pilot this suggestion to see if it is viable.’

Foto: Mats van Soolingen
Murray Pratt is interested in cultural differences

Individualised education — noted. What else?
‘For higher education to really succeed, it should always have an international focus. This is for a number of reasons. First of all it helps you to learn to ask how applicable what you’re learning is globally — to explore any competing types of knowledge. For example, Western medicine is very different from Chinese medicine. Not to say that one is right and one is wrong, but to say that there is a lot to learn from looking at different approaches to the same topic. Secondly, on a more personal level, student learning really takes off when they are able to evaluate the value of their discipline in a different cultural context. It promotes an intellectual and personal interest in cultural differences and counters any assumption that there is only one right way of doing things. Lastly, diversity in the student population creates a strong commitment to plurality, difference and equity of opportunity. It stimulates students to open up to a diversity of views and values.’

 

Murray Pratt has put his money where his mouth is, and big words need big deeds. At his previous position as Dean of Humanities at Nottingham Trent University in the United Kingdom, he built bridges between students and civic partners by creating strong ties between the university and local cultural initiatives. He has extensively promoted online learning environments and actively encouraged online collaboration between students from all over the world. When he worked as head of European Studies at University of Technology in Sidney, he introduced a programme that allowed students to learn a language, explore the corresponding culture and gave them the opportunity to study their discipline in that culture — effectively promoting the internationalisation of education.

 

Couldn’t it be argued that the internationalisation of education creates the risk of students being out of touch with local reality?
‘I think students can be ambassadors of the values they represent in a local context as well, whether this is because they study, do internships, or generally engage with the city. Students engage with communities, neighbourhoods and schools in lots of ways and can demonstrate their key values there. Students also have the agility to operate as pop-up ambassadors. The AUC initiative Right2Education, which teaches refugees Dutch, is a great example of students finding a way to intervene in one of the big political events of our time while defending the values that they stand for — all of this in a very local context. I think this is an excellent demonstration that students, far from being out of touch, can take a hands-on role in the city’s commitment to widening participation, building cohesion and creating opportunity, and is something that needs to be encouraged and promoted.’

‘Whatever the discipline studied, context is key’

How do you think students should be represented in the institutional organisation of their university? Are student councils enough?
‘I think there needs to be a partnership between the management and students. There is a balance to be struck between making sure that, as an institution, a university is coherent and sustainable, while allowing for the student voice to be heard. There are regulatory processes that need to be obeyed, but there is definitely a role to be played by students within these processes. I think students need to make sure that they have good representatives in these structures, but there is also a responsibility for the management to engage students.


At AUC we recently had a discussion about our regulatory structure that demonstrated the partnership that I think is important. The student voice has played a helpful part in the discussion, and AUC-management aided the process by explaining the importance of the decision and providing all the relevant facts to the student body so they have an informed view. On top of that I think it is important to get students involved in their learning — which might take the shape I described earlier, but can also come in different forms. Student participation then happens formally, but informally too — through discussion and creating a strong sense of community.’