The Hopkins School of Education hosted their 15th International Conference on Higher Education Reform on Monday night. Higher education policy makers, leaders, professors and graduate students from around the globe gathered together to promote conversation on issues concerning university involvement within their communities.
Antigoni Papadimitriou, an assistant professor at the School of Education, was this year’s conference chair. She selected the Conference’s theme, Reinventing the Public Mission of Higher Education: Policies and Practice. The theme mirrors Papadimitriou’s work on leadership and community development.
Papadimitriou explained that the way in which a university can engage and support their communities is an important topic right now.
“Higher education institutions around the globe are charged with a public mission and often financed with public resources,” Papadimitriou wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “The missions are many and often in tension with one another; they connect higher education institutions to different communities and different formulations of the public good.”
The importance of universities supporting their communities was repeatedly highlighted throughout the duration of the Conference.
The Conference also called to address other issues regarding universities, such as universal access to education, maintaining high caliber education while also achieving equity, and whether or not universities should have a role in primary and secondary education.
Panelist Matthew Hartley, associate dean for academic affairs and professor at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, opened the session and discussed the themes that would be focused on during the Conference, including the university’s purpose as a democratic institutions and how they must uphold that status and mission.
The first keynote speaker was Pavel Zgaga from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Zgaga further spotlighted the overarching theme of the Conference with his talk on democratic citizenship as a purpose of higher education and also how the commodification of higher education has impacted democratic citizenship.
This focus, as reiterated throughout the Conference, highlighted how universities hold huge public responsibilities beyond serving their students, faculty and self interests.
According to Zgaga, this is because universities are hotbeds for societal change, with access to both capital and knowledge.
Hartley discussed how to address inequality within higher education.
He argued that there is a notion that the most selective universities, which often graduate successful students, tend to serve the elite.
He said that once this thought was exposed and admitted to, universities must question how inequality and access can be addressed.
One panel titled “Innovative Courses at Johns Hopkins University: Creating Links to Industry, Business, Community, and Real-World Cases,” mainly consisted of Hopkins professors, discussing the need for and successful outcomes of courses that are more centered toward “real-world” learning and application.
They also discussed how Hopkins can further pursue this type of learning.
Papadimitriou stated that the topics discussed during the Conference aligned with the University’s mission.
“Hosting this event at Hopkins will provide an opportunity to highlight what can happen when a world-class university invests in the neighborhoods that surround it,” Papadimitriou wrote.
She noted that this was a good opportunity for the University to make efforts to better the Baltimore community.
“Convening international scholars at Hopkins to discuss the university’s public mission will enhance the prestige of the School of Education, the Institute for Education Policy and the Division of Public Safety Leadership (PSL) and will fulfill their mission and vision, corporately and individually,” Papadimitriou wrote.
Other issues discussed during the Conference included how institutions can create a powerful partnership with the community around them.
Panelists also questioned how to measure the progression of these developments and the difference that is actually being made.
Christopher Morphew, professor and dean of the School of Education, acknowledged that until recently, universities have not tried to connect with their surrounding communities.
According to Morphew, while sometimes universities support their communities with the intention of giving back, often they do it from a place of selfishness.
“Is Baltimore a better place because of Hopkins?” Morphew asked. “I think for most of our history you could say that wasn’t the case.”
Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The News-Letter.