Why don’t we follow the agreements that we’ve signed? When it comes to higher education, it seems like these ambitions have been flushed, writes Elisabeth Gehrke.
In uneasy times when success in society has come to be defined by metric values such as the amount of jobs that are out there, it can be easy to forget the broader reaching commitments that our nations have made. These broader reaching commitments are the foundation for our development. This applies to for instance many of our human rights but the commitment I want to talk about is the one made by the EHEA in London 2007:
“We share the societal aspiration that the student body entering, participating in and completing higher education at all levels should reflect the diversity of our populations”
This sentence reflects the goal for the so-called social dimension. Sadly few countries or European institutions can truly say they are working towards this commitment. There is an alarming lack of the tools and strategies being used to reach the common goals. The countries with national action plans, that address in a concrete way how the student body will become more diverse, are few and far between. Instead many countries across Europe have been actively working against this goal. They have been doing this by raising tuition fees or even proposing cuts to the very student support systems that are instrumental to reaching our target.
Europe has to take a comprehensive view on the social dimension of higher education. If this were already the case it would become painfully obvious that the current cuts being made or proposed in the system are entirely detrimental to reaching our target. We have to be able to take action on the goals we set. We have to be better; we should be aiming towards actually reaching our goals instead of at best not damaging them.
Education is one of the best solutions we have for dealing with social inequality. But if education is going to be the silver bullet we want it to be, our student population cannot be as homogenous as it is now. It is not just about those who are outside of education. Our isolated environment is damaging also to those of us who are still in the system. We unwittingly become bearers of the very inequality we are against. How can we learn critical skills if we are cannot even be critical of our own environment?
There are tools out there and the goal is achievable. Just locally here in Lund we can se examples such as the Student Ambassadors, the Studentombud and the pedagogical support that help us move towards out goal. It is not an insurmountable or fluffy ambition even though it sometimes can seem that way. Of course it takes hard work on all levels of our education system but some things are just worth fighting for.
