Summer School on Higher Education Research 2021: At a Glance

June 3–18, 2021, held remotely on Zoom

The year 2021 heralded the very first time for the Summer School on Theoretical and Conceptual Perspectives in Higher Education Research to be held entirely via remote conferencing. The School 2021 involved four webinars, about two hours each, and was open for everyone.

Given the limitations of the online format, the program was designed in a way to emphasize the Q&A ingredient so the participants could make out the utmost of their opportunities to interact with the School faculty. The registered participants were provided with resource kits (reading materials, question lists, etc.) to prepare for the webinars. As always, the School offered an immersive and invigorating agenda that interweaved exposures to a wide gamut of research perspectives at the intersection of higher education and other disciplinary realms.

In the first webinar, Prof. Jussi Välimaa (University of Jyvaskyla) focused on the history of European universities. The session discussed the key stages and principles of development of university education in Europe. Prof. Välimaa has proposed harnessing the concept of historical layers as a vehicle whereby we can categorize and analyze specific manifestations of continuity and change in history. This approach turns out to be a particular fit when it comes to historical perspectives in higher education (e.g., the medieval ideas of collegiality, later humanism, the emphasis on the value of scientific knowledge amid the changing relationships between universities and the state, and the massification of higher education in the 20^th century).

The second webinar, by Prof. Gaële Goastellec (University of Lausanne), presented a historical-sociological analysis of the concept of citizenship as related to the right to higher education. Over centuries, citizenship has been one of the key instruments of state control over access to higher education that has had the categorization of population into citizens and non-citizens at its very bedrock. The concept of citizenship enables considering territorial and temporal boundaries of social justice. The participants discussed various approaches to citizenship across national contexts and historical periods, the limitations of 'global citizenship,' the meaning and significance of 'merit,' including in relation to the refugee education. The frameworks set by the UNESCO Global Convention on Higher Education and the UN Universal Human Rights Convention were also analyzed.

During the third webinar, Prof. Simon Marginson (University of Oxford) shared a critique on the modern-day narratives surrounding the development of global science: global science as an open and flat network, an arena of global competition, a global market of university rankings and as a center–periphery hierarchy. According to Simon Marginson, none of these narratives provides a conclusive explanation of the dynamics of global science. He calls for the development of new approaches that would acknowledge openness and partial autonomy of global science, both horizontal and vertical dynamics, and hegemonic power relations.

In the final seminar, Prof. Pedro Teixeira (University of Porto) focused on the economic perspective to explore how higher education contributes to individual and social well-being. The economic perspective essentially embraces the theory of human capital where individual and social benefits of higher education take monetary and non-monetary forms. They include higher earnings, lower unemployment, longer professional activity, positive impact on productivity, health, family, technological progress, social mobility and others. However, empirical data testifies that there are cases of incongruence (e.g., disparities between human capital gains and individual earnings) and other facts that the said theory fails to explain.

In sharing their feedback, the School participants emphasized the high quality of the webinars and an opportunity to learn from and network with leading experts in the field for free. In their turn, the faculty stressed that the students of the Summer School 2021 were a bright and highly aspiring cohort of academic prospects who asked questions and engaged in discussions in a thoughtful and vibrant manner at all times.