Research and education – in collaboration with the wider community?
Column
The question that the co-operation discussion is largely about is how we carry out the self-described main tasks and with what incentives, writes Deputy Vice Rector Mattias Martinson. Photo: Mikael Wallerstedt
The debate on the interacation of higher education institutions with the wider community has taken on increasing importance. Our research and programmes must be conducted in such a way that they benefit society. But what does this actually mean?
In recent decades, the debate on the interaction of higher education institutions with the wider community has taken on increasing importance. The Higher Education Act clearly states that the two main tasks of higher education institutions, research and education, include “collaboration for mutual exchanges with the surrounding community, as well as ensuring that the knowledge and expertise found at the higher education institution bring benefit to society.” In this sense, there are no ‘third-steam activities’ alongside research and education. It is our research and programmes that must be conducted in such a way that they benefit society.
But what does this actually mean? In one sense, the answer is obvious: we conduct research to learn more about our world, and based on this knowledge we construct programmes that equip students with the skills to work in a variety of important positions in society. Could this be more mutually and socially beneficial?
It is possible that this is not the right question to ask, since whatever one thinks about it, there is much to suggest that the legislator’s emphasis on exchanges with the surrounding community is not primarily connected to our fundamental tasks. What we do is, in some ways, self-evident and completely uncontroversial in terms of its benefit to society. The question at the heart of the collaboration debate is instead largely about how we perform the self-described main tasks and the motivations behind them.
Today, we often talk about challenge-driven research and education, which entails emphasising some specific and complex societal challenge, for example increasing residential segregation. In that case, challenge-driven research is research that recognises the need for collaboration between researchers from many different disciplines with a bearing on residential segregation, as well as between researchers and important actors outside the University with specific expertise on residential segregation and its effects. Such research naturally takes on a different character from research that remains more strictly within a scholarly discipline and its related questions. Above all, it aims to produce knowledge that can solve societal problems in a more direct sense.
When the legislator specifies our tasks by emphasising collaboration for the benefit of society, it is likely not in order to force us away from our disciplinary homes and our special skills, but instead aiming to drive a trend in which we are more likely to look beyond our scholarly traditions and the ways we have traditionally formulated our research tasks. In short, they want to influence how we do what we are supposed to do – for example, to get us started on the big challenges facing society.
there is a lot we can do in academia to become more socially relevant without losing our identity
If you follow this debate about collaboration from a distance, there is a risk of becoming cynical – and perhaps with some justification. On the one hand, politicians say that research is free, but on the other hand they do a lot to steer research to make it useful in the short term for a particular purpose. However, if you follow the debate a little more closely, you will also see that there is a lot we can do in academia to become more socially relevant without losing our identity.
One clear example would be to become better at valuing collaborative qualifications, so that it really pays off to continue working seriously on research results after they have been published, not least in collaboration with actors outside academia. It is not always simply for idealistic reasons that researchers opt out of the opportunity to collaborate; often collaboration is a really bad choice if you want to progress in your research career. So, if we can stimulate a broader debate on valuing collaboration, we may eventually discover that collaboration can benefit the quality of both research and education.
Mattias Martinson
Deputy Vice Rector of Humanities and Social Sciences