Welcome to Reconcile Digest #3. I’m so glad you’re here.

This one is for:

the educators
the educated
everyone else in society that is impacted by the choices institutions make.

The benefits of higher education are often framed in economic terms: employability, productivity, and measurable outcomes.

A lecturer who volunteered to speak with pupils at a local secondary school - the ﬁrst question the pupils asked of her was:

‘Do you earn loads of money? How much do you earn?’

Today’s research digest is on the paper ‘Universities, the Public Good and Professional Education in the UK’, which questions if it could be about more: capability & freedom. The reflection questions at the end are also particularly good today!

full access to today’s reference + questions for reflection

What would it look like if universities measured their impact through care, equity, and collective wellbeing, rather than economic return?
If knowledge generation is meant to serve the public good, how do we make sure it reaches the ‘public’ it’s meant for?
This paper was written in 2013. What societal + cultural changes do you think need to be considered if we were to rewrite this paper in 2025?
After speaking to a friend about this research, the cost of living crisis/fight to afford daily living came up - a reality for many. How does this impact the idea of the university being ‘public good’?