On 3 February 1931, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake shook New Zealand’s Hawke’s Bay region, causing extensive damage to the town of Napier. Reconstruction benefited from being immediate, using integrative decision-making processes and striking a balance between continuity and change. There was also a significant uplift of the land around the city, which is now an Art Deco attraction that marks the period of its rebuild. Today, in a time of economic crisis for New Zealand, Christchurch is the one NZ city experiencing a rise in population and consumer confidence as it reaps the benefits of a strong recovery period after the similarly devastating earthquakes of 2011.
On her visit to UTS last week, Dr Ann Kirschner suggested that higher education is having its “Napier moment.” External forces such as COVID-19, Generative AI and international student caps may continue to disrupt and cause damage, but the only way you can truly rebuild is by looking internally. What needs to shift to steady ourselves and what can we do to adapt on this new land?
A sense of urgency
It’s fair to say that universities are not renowned for being fast-acting. Kirschner suggests we need to increase the clock speed at which we do things in higher education. Developing a program across a five-year span might create something great, but if you start with something that’s good within a year, it can improve the student experience here and now.
From content delivery to learning architecture
We need to teach our students to learn. Kirschner describes the ability to acquire new knowledge, adapt, unlearn and relearn as “superpowers”. Her recollection on being thrust into the world of the National Football League (which she knew nothing about) made me reflect on my own experience of pivoting from the travel industry to curating a learning and teaching website, which is not what I studied or had prior experience in. That curiosity – being open to starting again and learning new things – needs to be inherent in what we deliver to students.
Rebuilding public trust through public engagement
For all the experience and great work happening within disciplines, the general public doesn’t have strong insights into what universities actually do. A lack of communication and understanding in external audiences equals a lack of trust, particularly when negative press is the core means of this broader understanding. Breaking beyond the institution walls and allowing exposure and clarity to the outside world is crucial, whether that be through podcasts, newspaper articles or blog posts that can be shared on social media.
Smart curriculum design
There’s no crystal ball to show the future of higher education for universities – even industry can’t predict what we should be setting students up for in the next five years. The rapid rate of change means we need to be more nimble and adaptive to what’s happening in the job market.
Kirschner reflected on her experiences of the inability of internships to scale up well; one solution to this is to change the curriculum to ensure that all students have exposure to problem-based learning. This strategy of integrating career connections into curriculum has been adopted by CUNY (City University of New York).
Innovation grounded in values
Kirschner prefaced the next point by saying this is where she gets “all mushy about what universities do”. Innovation is important, but it needs to be grounded in humanistic values. A diverse range of perspectives are required to deal holistically with our challenges, as the solutions are not merely technical. Keeping up to date with the best ways of using and integrating GenAI is “going to require the full breadth of human knowledge and wisdom”.
Kirschner also asked how we might create value at every level of university, right until the end (noting that not all students get to the end). She believes that “there’s got to be a clear sense of what students have acquired, what skills they’ve gotten, how those skills translate into the workplace.”
A time to rebuild
Tremors from the aftershocks of these disruptions to higher education will continue. While leading through this uncertainty can be exhausting, you can adopt new ways and small steps to develop your courses and connect with your students. This can only happen if we stop being distracted by the external forces and changes that are beyond our control. Kirschner asked us to consider the opportunities this rebuild will offer and closed her presentation with the observation: “It’s an exciting time, with enormous promise for our students and for our institutions.”