Higher Education Renaissance
Peter Lake is a Professor of Law who has never shied away from addressing the controversial topics that impact higher education with his trademark candid, unique, and often humorous approach. Eric Seaborg has created this podcast series to capture the insight of Peter Lake on the status of higher education. Eric will have Peter analyzing the key issues challenging the industry of post-secondary education and the future direction of our institutions across the nation.
Higher Education Renaissance
The Academic Crossroads: UK and US Education Systems Face Similar Challenges
Have a topic you'd like us to discuss...just send us text!
Imagine two countries with top-notch universities facing similar crises. This insightful chat with two education law experts, Peter Lake from the US and Gary Attle from the UK, sheds light on the striking similarities between American and British universities. They emphasize the need for administrators and academics to collaborate and find solutions. Topics like financial stability, political scrutiny, and academic content transformation, to name a few, are dissected with Peter and Gary elaborating on the legal and public opinion regarding these issues.
Welcome back. I'm Eric Seaborg and this is Higher Education Renaissance. It's been some time since Peter and I have sat down to discuss the key topics in higher education, mainly because with each day seems to come a new policy change. Because with each day seems to come a new policy change or at the very least, a media frenzy over an issue that has had many of our institutions polarized, with no real national consensus or solution building and with the United States under the world microscope on many issues, we thought this would be an ideal time to get a perspective from across the pond. So today we've invited Mr Gary Adel, a private law attorney from Cambridge in the UK, to join us on the show. Gary has spent over 30 years in the practice of educational law and, along with Peter, is a strong supporter of sharing the knowledge and ideas between the two countries. He was recently a guest keynote speaker at Peter's Stetson Higher Education Law Conference.
Speaker 2:But actually it was quite dramatic because a few days before I flew out it was, various European leaders were walking into the White House and then, as the conference unfolded, the experience was palpable in terms of the various executive orders and announcements that were coming out of the White House. So to be firsthand and talking to delegates about what was going on in your country, in your massively successful higher education system, really was quite dramatic, you know, and it's one of those times when you think you know history is history is being made as you're, as you're there and experiencing it from mc1r associates.
Speaker 1:This is higher is Higher Education. Renaissance with Peter Lake.
Speaker 3:I'll tell you who Gary is to us an essential liaison to not just United Kingdom but really European legal thinkers on higher education, and we're already working on a variety of potential opportunities that could help connect US higher education law and policy with, again, not just the United Kingdom but perhaps even European allies, and to do more with that.
Speaker 3:Our center and our conference have traditionally been very focused on domestic issues. We've had people from Canada regularly over the years, some from Central America and the Caribbean, occasionally from UK, but one of our goals at the center is to expand our reach globally and and, ginger, I don't mean this to be self-promoting, but I do have a book with Oxford coming out, a US handbook Higher Education Law, and it's designed as a marketing opportunity globally to talk about US higher education to the world, which I think is, as Gary already kind of indicated, is something that is more interesting to people as we're going through this transformative period. So to me, gary is he's like the channel, but across the Atlantic. It's a much, much longer and more important connection of its kind and, as Gary can share with you, his career in England has been just nothing short of illustrious, connected with just about everybody on every issue, and so you can't really get a better ambassador to the United States on this type of a topic. So that's who Gary is to me.
Speaker 2:Well, that's very kind, peter, and very flattering. So, by my background, I am a legal advisor, a solicitor in the language of the UK, so I have been in private practice in law firms in England for over 30 years and have developed, hopefully, an understanding of how our law applies to universities and colleges and trying to take the laws of our land and think about how they apply in a specific context of an academic environment, and that, for me, has been a fascinating career, and almost no two days are the same, where the issues that happen in the world tend to play out on a university campus, and so for me personally, that's been extraordinarily stimulating professionally and I have had the privilege of advising universities and colleges across the United Kingdom for over 30 years on a whole range of, I guess, what you might call public law topics. So really thinking around the constitution of universities, what is a university, its relationship to our central government, the relationship with its students, the functions of a university and then how the laws of the land impact on all of that, and I've seen, you know, over many years how that's changed and currently, I think, going through quite a challenging time in the UK as in the US. Hence I think it's really great to be able to talk about these things. Currently I'm a consultant at a law firm based in Cambridge in England. I'm doing that on a part time basis.
Speaker 2:Now I'm stepping back a bit from the front line of what I was doing, trying to do some other things and slow down a little bit. I'm also on the advisory panel of a lovely charity in England with headquarters in London called Into University, and what they do is try to support and encourage young people school pupils to aspire to go on to university or to pursue another type of learning or activity like an apprenticeship really is aimed at children from disadvantaged backgrounds whose families before them might not have gone to university, hence to give some extra confidence and aspiration. And they run a number of what they call learning centres, really after school clubs, so that young children have a space to go and receive some extra tuition. And nurturing and confidence building really is the big thing, yes, and they're tremendously successful. Sadly, they're needed, but there are real pockets of deprivation in the UK and they try to focus on how to those particular communities that need some extra support and for me that's a real privilege to be able to give something back helping on their advisory board.
Speaker 1:What are those impactful issues right now? And I'm talking about our administrators, our scholars, our higher ed legal experts. Why should they come together right now and talk about these impactful issues from both countries? Peter, let me talk with you. Let's start with you.
Speaker 3:Sure, well, I'll go way high on the altitude, gingy, and say that both Gary and I have been doing this a long time and I don't want to speak for him. But I think what we've seen in our careers is a vacillation between globalism and populism and how it impacts both the municipal systems we're in but also the international and transnational relations that occur. You know, one of my first incursions into England was to go and do a round table there, and this was a time when there was a lot of talk about the Bologna process, normalizing credits and degrees not only on the European side, but actually importing some of that thinking to the United States, and I think there was a lot of enthusiasm around globalism. And now we've seen a little bit of a pullback from that, at least more recently with this particular administration in the United States. But the European countries, including England, have had their moments with that as well, and I think we watch the impact that that has on the higher ed community that I think wants to become more global. You know, people from China want to study United States, people from the United States want to study in England or Germany, and I watch the pitching and throwing of this, as you know, the different countries are more receptive to the idea of international, transnational collaboration. You know, we're we see that spike up and when things get the borders get a little tighter, it pitches back. And I think we're predicting in the United States that we're going to see fewer students come to study from abroad for a period of time. They're worried about their status and completion and that sort of thing. So I think that's likely to happen. But I've seen this go up and down over time. But I can't help but say and this is the renaissance point Genji is, I think, over the very long haul there's a natural progression towards a global higher education interchange and so it becomes essential to understand what's happened elsewhere.
Speaker 3:And I know I'm babbling and I'll stop because that's what law professors do. We talk too much. But my first visit to England was incredibly instructive. I remember spending an evening with a judge in England who talked about the role of the visitor in English law and I had no idea what he was talking about. I felt like the village idiot. It was as if I was hearing a conversation in a foreign language and I became obsessed with it and I studied it and realized that the visitor role actually at once played a huge role in American higher education but for various reasons essentially died out to a vestigial level, like the arms on a T-Rex or maybe something less than that, and it became instrumental in a lot of the scholarship and writing that I'm doing, even understanding the history of business models in America.
Speaker 3:So there is a lot to learn from going back and just reminding all of our readers is the entire concept of college in the United States was imported from England, was imported from England. Every single American higher education institution is essentially a descendant, one way or another, from a group of people who wanted to reform the Anglican church and the teaching methodologies, but basically using much, if not all, the structure of what college meant. And that may be the question of the day in America today is what is a college If it becomes an instrument of state politics and dominated by politics? Does it have the same kind of flavor that it would have? And I can, and I can honestly say over here that the Puritans would be rolling over in their graves thinking about how a federal government is directing conduct at Harvard College. They never would have joined the union if they thought that was going to happen.
Speaker 3:So there's so many lessons from history and across the pond, and the other one I've been tweaking with Gary a lot is that I just get this distinct sense that Americans are playing around with the idea of monarchy and royalty, and you know that one thing that's happening right now is almost Robespierre-esque. It's like bring the elites to the streets of Paris and execute them, you know, take them on directly. And there's something going on in American constitutionalism and I think we have a lot to learn from our English partners. So babble, babble.
Speaker 1:Gary, from your perspective over in the UK, why is it important for these interactions to occur between our higher ed communities?
Speaker 2:I think it's really helpful. And just talking on a personal, professional level, one thinks about how does one learn for oneself? And sometimes it's by going away and seeing the same thing but in a different place and talking to people about what you think is the same thing. So here we have two, I think, world-leading higher education systems. The United States is tremendous. I think the United Kingdom has a tremendous world-leading higher education system. So, professionally, to talk to colleagues and peers about how things play out in another country where we have such a common heritage actually sharpens one's own professional mind and thinking and learning.
Speaker 2:So for me, even though some of the language I still have to try and get my head around parts of your constitution and I have to translate it into what does Title IX mean under English law? What's the equivalent? That's stimulating in itself because it takes you back to some of the basic ideas behind these things. So for me, professionally, having these sorts of interactions is hugely important. But scale that up for colleagues.
Speaker 2:Generally one thinks about what's going on in the world at the moment. There are some huge tensions and differences of views about all sorts of things, whether it's what's happening in the Middle East, whether it's what's happening in Ukraine, whether it is about how we deal with differences of views over equality-type issues and some of these issues have been unconscious, have been really quite vocally expressed both in the United States and in the United Kingdom. And what can we learn about those things? Because underlying all of that, surely, are some universal principles about humanity and some universal principles about power and how power is distributed. So for me, these conversations take me back to the basics and I hope then you scale that up.
Speaker 2:It can help all practitioners, whether you're a lawyer or you're a university administrator, think about some of these things. So, even though my recent visit to the United States, I was listening to fascinating talks about the law in the United States, actually, underneath, when you peel back the jargon and the language of the law, you're actually dealing with some issues that I'm familiar with back home in the United Kingdom, and so you can engage with. You know, are you doing something in a better way than we are? Can we learn from each other and have new ideas about how to address some common issues?
Speaker 1:Let's talk about those issues. You know the differences, the similarities that the countries have in certain issues. You said Title IX, but I'll let you all lead the parade here as far as what issues really seem to be at the top of that higher education ladder that we both share and where they differ.
Speaker 3:Certainly one of the things that is the top of my list when I look across the pond is what might be more broadly called human rights, and I traveled to Chile, for example, to talk about Title IX and disability law and Gary perfectly stated that there's a lot of American jargon. But when you get past the jargon you start to realize that the issues are actually common. There's a lot of basic instinct to move to certain types of things and one of the things I find that's magic in that kind of conversation is almost like language variation. There's certain things you can say in a foreign language that can't be adequately captured in English. Like you realize that it's, there's a certain texture.
Speaker 3:I don't know why I'm drawn to Yiddish but, for example, some Yiddish words just have a meaning that doesn't easily express in English. It's just there, but they're perfect for the situation. You know, if you understand what I mean and I picked this up when I do transnational discourse you start realizing that there's more than just a jargon difference. There's a little bit of conceptualization difference to all of this and then, of course, getting a little more practical. You know we deal with a lot of European students who come to the United States, and they have certain expectations about how human rights laws will be expressed and enforced and come to the United States and they see some significant dissonance in some ways with some of these issues.
Speaker 3:So it's an opportunity, I think, to learn and to translate, but realizing that in the process of translation you're actually picking up nuances that you could only get if you take advantage of someone else's experiences in a different environment. There's quite a bit there.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. We have current discussions at a political level around human rights and we've seen, in a sense, an explosion of some of the cases under human rights legislation. So we are a signatory to the European Convention of Human Rights after the Second World War, which did support all sorts of good proper, you know, civil and political rights. We had the Equality Act, which brought together lots of laws to prevent discrimination on certain protected characteristics, so race, sex, age, and there are nine of those. So that is an important part of our framework. Now, if you like, We've had recently considerable discussion at a political level about freedom of speech on university campuses, and we've had new primary legislation passed in 2023, which was pretty much one of the final bits of legislation under the former Conservative government. We've now got our new Labour government, which came into power last July, and immediately the Labour government put that legislation on hold pending a review of whether it went too far. So that's been a huge topic.
Speaker 2:But probably the number one topic for UK universities at the moment, I think, is around financial sustainability. There's a real, real concern whether some of our wonderful universities, you know, could face real cash flow problems, real cash flow problems, and so almost a week doesn't go by when there's something in the national newspapers about a new redundancy program for academics or closing of courses Often they're humanities courses and so there's something really quite systemic and troubling going on for UK universities around financial sustainability. Tomorrow we've got the government makes, our government makes its so-called spring statement, which is about funding allocations to different areas of public policy, and higher education is not a protected area. So there's not much hope of any more money coming from government, and if money doesn't come from other sources, then we are facing potentially are we going to see some universities needing to close or merge or downsize, and so there's a big structural thing going on.
Speaker 2:That probably is the number one, I think, issue facing UK universities at the moment, as well as all the human rights issues and worries about the geopolitical situation. But probably the geopolitical situation doesn't necessarily help on the funding side. So there is a worry about, for example, international collaborations around research. If research money from your federal government slows down, what will the impact be where there are joint ventures around the world? So these things have a knock on and that is quite concerning for our established universities.
Speaker 1:I know Peter and I have talked numerous times about the and the country has too about the value of an education, of higher education, and a lot of that is driven by the media and the politics involved. Is that what you're seeing over there also? Is that questioning the value of that education?
Speaker 2:It is, and under our last government we had 14 years of a conservative government, and some of this is quite political and some of the rhetoric was getting quite difficult for universities around the value of higher education, and so is a university degree nowadays worth? Is there a return on investment? And, particularly when the job market is more difficult, is it a good investment for young people to be spending money on going to university? It still is, and there's still good data out there that there is a graduate premium, so to speak, of you are likely to get a higher paid job if you go to university, but that's not always the case, and sometimes then it's the humanities and the creative subjects that suffer. We're starting to see more talk as well about skills, and again this is linked to the economy.
Speaker 2:If we've got low productivity in our economy, don't we need to be encouraging apprenticeships? Don't we need to be encouraging more vocational training as the needs of our economy change? You know we're trying to have a bit of a green revolution and make sure we have, you know, alternatives to fossil fuel energy. Don't we need to be skilling up people to harness, you know, wind power and get involved in that, and so some of the more maybe academic subjects and the idea of an academic university career is starting to fall out of favour, potentially, but my personal view is there's room for both. There's proper room for pure learning and the development of creative thinking in young people, but we also need electricians and plumbers and technicians and lots of the skills. So the language is starting to move to talk about the idea of a tertiary education which would embrace skills and more academic higher education. It is some of the language that's starting to emerge.
Speaker 1:How does that translate over here? For us, peter, would that be more towards our community colleges taking on more of a greater role? Or? I hear a lot of similarities from what you've been saying, for years.
Speaker 3:It's remarkable how similar the dialogues are, and I think it goes right down to return on investment value. But the basic question what is higher education? Is it preparation for a job? Is it skill training? Is it building the mind to be able to think for the future? Is it an emphasis on creativity and the arts? And you know it's worth remembering that the Harvard experiment started essentially as a job training program. I mean, if you really want to cut to the chase, I mean Harvard was training ministers and so it was a skills and knowledge training combined together, and I think that's been a perpetual debate in American and perhaps even UK higher education. But it's particularly salient when resourcing becomes such an issue.
Speaker 3:And going back to what Gary said, a lot of my work now is focused on what you might loosely call merger, acquisition and program redefinition, and I think that is such a common experience here and elsewhere. In the first order, university systems that are out there is trying to figure out how to create efficiency and meaning. But I think that what we're struggling for is trying to gain the public's understanding of what our mission or missions are and why it's worth individual and public investment in what we're doing. You know. Not a particularly hard sell when you go back to the origin of Oxford and Cambridge, where the kings and queens were basically saying this is something that will be and we have cash for it and if we need to do it, we'll go into the treasury, so to speak, to support what we're doing.
Speaker 3:But a harder sell today, when you're competing with things like defense, budget spending, health care, with aging populations and facing the reality that the young people aren't quite there the way they were in the traditional age group that they were before. Our customer base is drying up. I think the big thing that's on my mind, Ginge, is that human population growth looks like it may move to places that aren't where the universities typically are. So we're going to see Africa, for example, explode and to me, a lot of the future of higher education and, frankly, I think, for America and England is going to be whether our systems can globalize to become platforms for where the population will grow and have the greatest needs of higher learning.
Speaker 3:One thing that's very unique in the United States globally, is how our First Amendment operates. The tolerance for hate speech is extraordinary in American culture, and it isn't just a tolerance, it's almost like an obsession with preserving it. So you know, for example, right now we have a standing Supreme Court case that upheld the rights of neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, to the terror of people who had been in concentration camps, and yet we've got a Trump administration pushing schools like Columbia to combat hostile environment. And you know, that kind of tension is really deeply embedded in American thinking in all of these things. And then something else which I think has been fascinating to watch is that the political system can turn any major international or national issue into a college issue to deflect some attention towards colleges with respect to insolvable problems.
Speaker 3:So I saw this with Title IX is. You know, our legal system has really struggled to deal with interpersonal sexual violence, and then it became a college issue and all of a sudden colleges were the you know, the bad guys in not dealing with this when in fact, it would be easy to point the various systems not succeeding in dealing with sexual violence the way it might need to be, and the same thing is playing out with dramas in the Middle East is. You know, I I've always hoped my whole life that we'd find peace and reasonable solutions in the Middle East, but they seem very elusive and now they're becoming college issues. And so I think in the United States we're watching politicians realize I have a difficult issue.
Speaker 3:You know, for example, my body politic is uncomfortable with trans athletes. Let's make that a college issue. My body politic is uncomfortable with what's happening in the Middle East. Let's deflect and make it a college issue. And we have become political media front runners.
Speaker 3:Now, whether we want that stage or not, american higher education is being pushed that way and I dare say, to a certain extent I've seen some of this play out in England as well. Gary has a front row seat over there, but I think we're kind of playing out that same drama. And of course this would have been very unusual. I mean, having studied just a smattering of English legal history, I rarely read about the attack on the colleges. You see people being thrown in the tower and executed. But I mean, gary knows more about this than I do. But did an army ever march into Oxford to fight with the deans? I just I don't remember reading that sort of thing.
Speaker 3:But it seems like now we're moving in a way towards bringing the colleges into the political discourse. And I think in the United States it's particularly tricky because, you know, our politicians took each other to New Jersey to shoot at each other with loaded weapons. They threw tea in the Boston Harbor, I mean they, you know, kind of a punk rock culture really to start, and it's really infused, our First Amendment thinking so. I could go on and on, but here's a couple of thoughts I have.
Speaker 1:I'd love to hear that from Gary's perspective hear that from Gary's perspective.
Speaker 2:Wow, that is fascinating. And some of those topics are where we do have a common heritage and yet some things have played out quite differently. So I am intrigued about the whole concept of freedom of speech and how I think it probably does differ in the US as it does across Europe probably, and I think you know you have a much more almost absolutist approach to freedom of speech and the European model and the UK model is really based around the European Convention of Human Rights. So freedom of speech is what we call a qualified right. So you have that right to freedom of speech within the law and then you look at the European Convention and it says but you've only got that right so far as it is necessary in a democratic society, and there are limitations in a democratic society and there are limitations. Those limitations must be construed narrowly, but there are things like national security, protection of health and morals and so a number of limitations. So the whole jurisprudence of the European Convention of Human Rights which our judges do have to think about and implement. It is a balancing process whereas, as I listen and see what goes on in your country some certainly on the freedom of speech side. You know, I've always taken the view that you have, broadly speaking, a much more absolutist view about this. Um, equally as equally it's.
Speaker 2:It was fascinating to see what's happening and really difficult to see what's happening at places like Colombia and I was listening to the news when I was in the US and the news reports about the particular protesters who, again, are trying to exercise their rights. And it's a really tricky one't it? How do you draw that fine line between the right to protest, which is part of the right to free speech, and yet when does it infringe and create a hostile environment for other members of the community? That's really, that's really really tricky. And everyone's grappling with that on both sides of the pond. Uh, as much as my thought.
Speaker 2:We don't have, we don't have the guns issue, we don't have the arms issue, and so when I was looking to see what was happening at the various protests and encampments on US universities, I was looking at some of the you know the police engagement, whether they were your sort of national police or whether they were campus police, and there are guns, you know we just don't have. Well, we do if we need to, but the whole that culture is different on that front, which made what we were seeing across the Atlantic seem much more significant in the issues that you were having to deal with than we were. Much more significant in the issues that you were having to deal with than we were, even though some of the protests here were pretty vocal and some of the chanting could have been problematic.
Speaker 1:What we see at Columbia and taking over buildings and things of that. Does it get that extreme in the UK?
Speaker 2:in the uk? Yeah, it's um. So when, so immediately after the 7th of october, um attack in on gaza, um, the streets of england erupted in in protests and the campuses across the country erupted in protests and there were the police had to try and deal with things on the streets, the public order type issues and the fine line between was that chanting lawful or unlawful? And the police had to deal with that. And then the universities many of the universities had to deal with their own protests and encampments, and there were many long established encampments.
Speaker 2:There were many long-established encampments. Then we started to see universities needing to take action. But that didn't tend to be what we saw, not so much sending the police to clear out people. It was more than civil litigation in the courts to get an injunction if it was felt that those encampments had gone too far and were starting to disrupt the proper administration of the university. So I'm here in Cambridge in England, and I've just read, I think in today's newspaper or yesterday's newspaper, that the University of Cambridge has just been awarded an injunction to stop some of the encampments coming back around key times relating to graduation, for example, because some of the important activities of the university were being interfered with.
Speaker 2:Now, obviously, the counterpoint to that is is that an infringement of the right to process? Does that create a chilling effect on people? But there is that balance between when you allow people to make a lawful protest and when it does really start to interfere with the proper running of a university and other people's rights. And there's been strong, strong opposition from the Union of Jewish Students to say that some of the protests actually did create a difficult environment for them. But balancing these things is really difficult. The guiding law that we have under our Equality Act is that public authorities and for these purposes, most universities are regarded as public authorities. We do have some private for-profit institutions, but most are regarded as public authorities and they have to have what's called due regard to the need to promote equality of opportunity and good relations between different groups. So there is this sort of positive duty on a university here to try and get harmony as best as possible, not shut things down, but to try and foster as far as possible some respect and tolerance towards each other.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that would fall within an orbit of DEI. Executive orders are sweeping and I'll tell you what I'm seeing directly is campuses and even vendors are going through all of their materials, utterances, iterations, and looking for words or concepts or presentation materials that might trigger some kind of negative inquiry. And you know, it's interesting because what it's fostering is the parallel question of free speech, is the freedom to not speak or the freedom to cave in. And what we're very recently I think this week in particular has been kind of dramatic in this regard is that there are a lot of people that are upset that Columbia just backed out Paul Weiss, the major law firm in New York who happens to have a chairperson who I went to law school with, that I knew quite well, is willing to acquiesce and offer the federal government $40 million in free legal services.
Speaker 3:Legal services and you know, with a culture, with a public culture of speak your mind, stand your ground, don't tread on me. Does the Calvin report kind of energy of like we're neutral or we're outgunned and we'll back down? Does that? Does that fit? Do you become a first amendment pariah if you don't stand on your rights? And this issue is, I think, absolutely permeating discussions now throughout the field is do you stand and fight Do?
Speaker 3:you hide and sort of wait for the war to be over and hope the tide turns. Do you acquiesce, do you embrace? Because we've seen some institutions, particularly public ones, that have embraced DEI sweeping so thoroughly that they actually are looking for people who might be not using those words but doing the same kind of work and trying to root out that kind of work as well. It's really really kind of fascinating. And I brought up the European experience. I deliberately ginge because and I thought Gary did an excellent job of illustrating this is that, because of the legal metrics in the European community and UK, our conversations are very different around this right now and we may be going in a different direction. For students coming to the United States from European entities, they may be surprised at the level of change of protection regarding, for example, lgbtq rights, dei, training and opportunity, multiculturalism and then and Gary made reference to this is perhaps the more dramatic interventions into free speech, because I hope you caught this. I mean, I think this is really critical is we have encampments. We call the police England. They have an encampment, they go to a judge and you get a black-robed individual to opine and it's a very different tone and texture to it.
Speaker 3:I think we've been very, very lucky in the United States that we haven't had some armed confrontations. I mean it's given the weaponization level in the country, it's remarkable that we haven't had that. But of course we have a history of that going back to Kent State and I think that's very deep in the American higher education consciousness of what happens when you over weaponize. Even just going to the UC Davis pepper spray incident, which was more recent, there were no fatalities but Americans are very sensitive to too much physical force appearing in an event. But nonetheless you know the risk I think is ever present that we may see something escalate beyond what we've seen before.
Speaker 1:But, peter, is the faculty becoming tired? Are they becoming tired? When we grew up in the 60s you and I talk about this Ken Staten faculty were very instrumental in the creation and the innovation and, as I think Gary said, the confidence given to the student to be able to speak your mind, stand for your issues and all that. And it seems and we've talked about this in the last couple episodes that the faculty, they're so much under attack now. Are they getting tired? And is that tiredness going to leave a student that really does not know or can't experience the right way to go about voicing or coping or whatever the case may be, or being innovative? Well, gary or Peter, is the academic community getting tired? Are the ones that are right, as we talked about Peter, are they ready to say I don't care about a legacy, I just got to get out of here before I get sued?
Speaker 3:Gary, I don't mean to jump in, but I got to grab this one first, if you're okay with that. I think the thing a lot of us are grappling with Ginge is that the ground rules of higher education as we knew them as we entered the field are all changing. For example, academic freedom as we knew it in the 20th century is now it's quaint. I mean it just doesn't resonate the way it did even 20 years ago, let alone 30 or 40. And so I think a lot of us that have been in the career for a long time are really grappling with.
Speaker 3:This isn't entirely what I got into. I find it a little demoralizing sometimes when I see public officials say that I'm the enemy or a Marxist lunatic. I haven't even read Karl Marx. I commented Jen just heard this before, but I commented to a local radio. I'm not trying to make students woke, I'm trying to keep them awake, and it just makes the job a lot harder.
Speaker 3:But I think what we're risking here for benefit or negative it's up to society to decide. This is I think we're moving away from traditional academics and teachers in the classic tenure model to influencers, and I think we're moving away from traditional academics and teachers in the classic tenure model to influencers, and I think the people that are going to move towards this jobs will see hey, there's opportunity here to become a media star. You know, I can make a name for myself. I don't need tenure, I don't need to publish in a traditional way. I can get out there and wham bang, jump on the reality show and be the next star.
Speaker 3:So I think the casting has changed. You know, it's sort of like the 50s American sitcom cast one way, but now the reality show of the 21st century is a different casting call and I think we're going to have to come to grips with that. That your sons and daughters, future teachers, are more likely to be very different from the hardened academics that I was trained by. They're much more likely to be people, creatures who seek the limelight in an ongoing media activity. That's essentially reality TV around higher education, and that could be good, it could be bad, but it's going to be different and I think it's uncomfortable for the people who grew up in a different model of how TV shows work of the academics here it was always the administrators and the academics and they always had their issues against each other.
Speaker 1:And then the student voice became very, very popular and you had an interesting triangle of three voices instead of two. And now I see the weakening in that triangle is the fact that the faculty is under. Instructors are under attack. What are your thoughts? What's going on over there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, no, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Even in my time practicing as a lawyer in this field over the last 30 years, I've seen a paradigm shift in the legal framework that applies to the university-student relationship. So once upon a time originally it was all about public law, it was the power of the university and the student you analysed it as a matter of public law. So when I went to university in the 80s, it was free for me and I paid nothing. There was no tuition fees in England and I was given a government grant because I came from a certain background and I was funded to go and study for higher education. And then we introduced tuition fees for the first time. It started off a small amount and it's now a large amount by UK standards, not by US standards. I'm conscious of that and I've seen as our tuition fee has been brought in and increased over the years.
Speaker 2:The legal model has changed from being public law to now being private law. It's now the law of contract, and so the courts now primarily think of the relationship between a university and a student as contractual. The university is delivering services and it's not just a contract, it's a consumer contract and therefore the student, as the consumer, is buying services, and we now have a regulatory model. Unlike the United States, we have a national regulator for higher education called the Office for Students. So all the focus is on students and so I can imagine I'm not an academic. I can imagine at times, you know, it must be pretty demoralizing to be in what is now seen as a provision of services. The counter argument is that the consumer and the market model is supposed to increase delivery and service and innovation model is supposed to increase delivery and service and innovation. But conceptually I don't think I'm persuaded that higher education is a pure market. I think it's a hybrid. It's more of a public good, in my view, and trying to bring in market concepts to higher education has just changed fundamentally.
Speaker 2:So universities now are at risk of being sued in the courts for breach of contract. So, following you know, with the pandemic and with industrial action by academics, we've had a lot of that over recent years. Students actually did have a bit of a hard time through the pandemic and have just brought class actions saying we want our money back. We didn't get what we contracted. So universities are having to think like businesses and I can't speak for academics going about their academic role. But it's a mind shift and what we're seeing now as well, with major redundancies to try and bring down the cost for some universities of their faculty staff, you start to wonder where the next generation of academics are going to come from. Is this going to be an inspirational sector to be in? And that's a real worry because I care passionately about how good higher education is, what good it did for me and for so many others. But where will the academic workforce of the future be and will they be motivated when they're constantly under criticism and having to deliver in a consumer model?
Speaker 3:Yeah, Gary, just to play on that. I teach in the law school sector and we've for years and years and years and years and years we've had a process by which our association of law schools can allow people to put their resumes into a central repository for consideration throughout the law schools in the United States, and the number of people entering that has radically declined to the point now where really no American law school could really populate all of their needs. Simply by going to the central repository you have to search for people that might be interested in places that we would not have traditionally looked. It is incredibly noticeable how less attractive being a law professor was than it was, say, 30 years ago, and you just see it in the number of applications.
Speaker 3:My mentor, john Rawls the philosopher, was the one who I had a very privileged philosophy education at Harvard that I didn't fully appreciate until later in life.
Speaker 3:But Rawls brought me in and he said you know you could stick around here and be a doctoral student in political or legal philosophy, but I suggest you go to law school and do your work in a law school platform.
Speaker 3:The jobs are more plentiful, they're better paying and you should head that way, and so my career was directed towards legal education and honestly, I'd be surprised if too many people are giving that advice today.
Speaker 3:I think I would have gotten a different take from John Rawls last week than I got 35 or 40 years ago when it came up.
Speaker 3:So there's no question that it's just it isn't the job it used to be, and a lot of us honestly operate in kind of a Valhalla mentality that, because we're in the middle of so many controversial things, when will I blow up?
Speaker 3:You know, when will something happen that just destroys my career, makes it impossible to continue, and of course, that completely undermines the idea of tenure, where you were thinking if I just do my job and mind my business, I could potentially work here very late in life, and I think a lot of folks now are thinking with restructuring, political drama etc, it's just not a comfortable place to be. Hence, hence the influencer trend that if you want to protect your long-term career, you make a name for yourself, get a following and it doesn't really matter if they fire you. You make more money off that because you can be in the front page of a newspaper and write a book and join a political movement and you know there's another career waiting for you if something goes wrong, and I hate to say it, but I think more people are thinking that way.
Speaker 2:That is disturbing, isn't it? Because it's a hollowing out of a real crown jewel for your great country and for our great country, and that's a crying shame. When you think about you know, you stand back and you think as a taxpayer and from personal experience how important education generally is. But higher education is for the wealth and the health of a nation.
Speaker 1:And I think that's.
Speaker 2:I think it's a crying shame.
Speaker 3:I would be tempted to move someplace where there's more respect for people with higher learning and who aspire to create and imagine new things that haven't been there before. I have to admit, when I went to Chile, I was treated like a star. I mean, it was a remarkable difference in cultural attitude towards someone at my level of achievement, Even Canada. I've noticed the difference when I've traveled over time, and I think academics will gravitate towards that. So the smart people that want pure academic work will find where that is valued and they tend to migrate or emigrate to those places. And that's what does worry me a little bit, Gary, is that people might say hey, you know, it used to be UK. Us was absolutely the best of all possible places to be. You know, Germany, France, Italy included, et cetera, but maybe not, you know, maybe people will start thinking differently about where the opportunities are, and that's something that all of us need to be watching on a transnational basis is being from Massachusetts, where are the wicked, smart people going now?
Speaker 1:The title of this podcast, higher Education Renaissance, was a Peter Lake concept and at the time I said let's call it a higher education renovation. And he said, no, this is a renaissance. And the more I have talked with Peter over gosh Peter, two and a half years I guess we've been doing this it is a renaissance and like any renaissance, it's like well, okay, where is the bottom of this thing? Do you see higher education in the UK as going through this renaissance, or is it just, you know, I don't want to say bumps in the road, but challenges that they'll just continue on and the forces at work that are playing here are incredible.
Speaker 2:So in a sense, higher education in the UK has become very political and we've just had a change of our government, as I mentioned earlier in July last year, and we have noticed a change in rhetoric, which is good. A change in rhetoric, which is good. So I think, after 14 years of what seemed like a government, a conservative government, that the rhetoric, I think, probably became quite demotivating for all of us involved in the higher education ecosystem. The rhetoric has changed with the Labour government. There is more positive mood music, so that's good. I'm not sure. There's more money. Our new Secretary of State for Education did allow an increase, a small inflationary increase, in the cap on tuition fees. So next academic year there will be some more money coming in from tuition fees, which is good, because everybody's crying out on the financial sustainability front. But then another part of our government in the Exchequer, the Treasury, have increased our employee taxes, national insurance contributions, so so actually, hence the financial sustainability question, and it is, I guess, a big issue of macroeconomics how to make this work in an economy. Um, and when the government is feeling it's got. You know, our new government says it had a huge inherited a huge black hole of finances from the last government, and so, until the economy gets productive again, I think it's going to be a real squeeze.
Speaker 2:The governor of the Bank of England today or yesterday had some pretty gloomy news about productivity and growth in the United Kingdom but, pointed out, is the salvation going to be through artificial intelligence? Is that going to be the way in which suddenly everybody becomes super productive? And I don't feel equipped to really give a view on letting that out of the box. Which way is it going to go? I can see all the horror stories and some of the issues for higher education, but a lot of people are putting their money on AI being the game changer, the next industrial revolution, if you like. That might get Western economies back on the productivity road, which then I hope would help higher education, but that's a big old topic, I think. Reporting words, peter.
Speaker 3:Gents, you know I'm always surprisingly hopeful, no matter how rainy it might seem outside, and I'm going to make this bold prediction, but I believe that we are on the cusp of an age of invention that we haven't seen in a very, very long time. I think this is going to stimulate that kind of thinking. I've been through these economic pitches before and seen the micro ones and what they can look like, and deep in my gut I feel like literally soon we're going to start to see an explosion of inventive thinking. I think it's connected in part to what Gary's talking about is the rise of human integrated artificial intelligence, and I wonder if some of what's going to change is that higher education is going to come to a more micro level to people, perhaps through their own humanoid robots you know the C-3PO's that'll follow them around and actually tutor them right from childhood forward and so I think we need to be thinking in a very different way. But this is how Renaissance works is you really have to break all the paradigms of a prior period and to some extent hit rock bottom with them? To then begin looking and realizing right around the corner is something really brilliant that could help all of us, and you know, just imagine a future that's full of invention and positivity and human learning.
Speaker 3:The planet wants us to get smarter, it wants us to know more. It needs us to do that and we sit right now with the largest number of humans who've ever achieved higher education in the history of humans. I mean, this is an extraordinary achievement to have brought so many people not just education, which is itself a major achievement, but to higher learning and even graduate level learning. This is the smartest the planet has ever been. And I think you know we're paying attention to a lot of the voices that have come through the system and say I'm dissatisfied with it, I don't like it, I'm angry about it.
Speaker 3:But that itself is a sign of just how many educated people there were. There just weren't enough highly educated people in 1915 to have the kind of conversations we're having today. You know it would have been, you know, very rich Americans, very well-connected politically people in England, and they just wouldn't have had this kind of a discourse. The privilege of the rage against higher education is a function of something very positive that so many people have achieved higher learning and we can take the next step, I think, very easily by encountering some of the bitterness and displeasure and meeting it with more positivity. Invention, but you heard me say it. The great age of invention of the 21st century is upon us, and watch what happens. It's going to be fun and I wouldn't miss it for the world.
Speaker 1:Well, I wish we could talk for days. And, gary, it's just been a pleasure hearing your take on all of this and I must say, a non-academic take in a sense that you don't work in the field, you work with the field, and that's always refreshing and we appreciate it. And I hope we can do more of this because I do believe, as Peter has said time and time again, if we can get more international listeners on these types of issues and discussion, it brings this world culture together a little bit more, and I think that's one thing. We're a little bit spoiled in this country because we are cordoned off from having a number of different cultures around us, and so we have time to sometimes sit and think a little bit longer about our issues. And this has been eye-opening for me, listening to just the variances and the similarities, and I appreciate you both, I respect you both and I do hope we can have this discussion very soon again. So thank you so much for being a part of this.
Speaker 3:Thanks, jen, gary, it's great to see you again. Get Gary on the show alone sometimes, so you don't have to listen to me prattle on.
Speaker 2:so it's great and from my, from my perspective, thank you both very much. It's been a, it's been a joy and a privilege to have these conversations, and the world is in a difficult place and time, and my view is, the more that we can talk about these things, that in itself is a we need. We need bridges and strengths together in these, in these challenging days. So thank you for inviting me on and hosting me.
Speaker 1:Wonderful to have you both. Take care and we'll talk to you next time. Thumbs up, be optimistic and let's get this higher education renaissance moving. Take care, Bye-bye.
Speaker 3:Awesome. Thanks Dan.
Speaker 1:Bye-bye. We do hope you enjoyed our guest discussion with Mr Gary Adel coming to us from his home in Cambridge. You can find his bio, along with past episodes of our podcast, at highereducationrenaissancebuzzsproutcom. As always, feel free to drop me a comment or topics you'd like us to discuss at mc1rassociates at gmailcom. This is Eric Seaborg and I hope we see you again real soon.
