PaTHES and Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA)
Central European Summer TIME (CEST/UTC+2) = March 28th 2023, 20.00-21.30
Melbourne (AEDT) = Wednesday 29th March, 6.00am
Auckland (NZDT) = Wednesday 29th March, 8.00am
The recording of the event is available here
In a now classic explication of public goods, Paul Samuelson (1947, 1954) distinguishes between private consumption goods and collective consumption goods. Samuelson’s basic definition is that a public good is one that – having been produced for a given individual or group of individuals – can be consumed by more than those for whom it was initially intended at no extra cost. This is also known as being nonrivalrous. Another traditional characteristic of a public good is that it is non-excludable; anyone can receive its benefits. The two primary characteristics of public goods make them unamenable to market production or, at least, quite difficult to deal with through market processes.
How should we re-examine this theory, especially as it applies to education? How can we rethink the public generally and public goods specifically and how have these notions changed over the last half century? Do we need to reconsider them in late capitalism?
Universities, as traditionally viewed as connected to the idea of the public good, are navigating between various expectations of knowledge production, impact, and societal partnership – not all purely linked to the notion of public goods. Universities and higher education programmes have been accused of consumerism, protectionism, extractivism and neo-nationalism. Does the idea of the university as a societal and cultural institution need to be re-enacted and perhaps even re-thought? How can thinking about higher education or the university as a public good inform such re-enactment?
For this symposium, we have sought proposals that address these kinds of question and, ultimately, how such examinations inform where and how higher education fits as public goods, if they do. While not an exclusive list, we have welcomed proposals dealing with the following general topics around public goods:
- Origins of public goods and the public
- Expanding orthodox understandings of public goods
- Implications of expanding conceptualizations of the public goods as local, global, translocal
- The transformation of the Public Sphere / Rethinking the public sphere in the 21st century
- Globalization & multiplicity of the public
- Global public goods
- Private vs Public provision of “public” goods
- Knowledge & science as global public goods
- Environmental public goods
- International comparative understandings of the public and what is a public good
- Trust and the erosion of public goods
More specifically, authors have considered, among others, the following questions
- How might the concepts of ‘public goods’ and ‘the public good’ play out, either in relation
to the university or the educational processes of higher education? Do they play out
differently across the disciplines? - Which non-economic goods might come into play as far as higher education is concerned?
- Are there significant distinctions to be observed between ‘public good’ and ‘social good’ in
the context of the university? - What implications arise for university leadership from debates around public goods or the
public good? - How might tensions be addressed between national and global public goods?
- Can helpful classifications be developed to help in distinguishing different kinds of public
goods for the university? - What pedagogical implications arise from considerations of public goods and the public
good? - In relation to universities and higher education, are there other key concepts to be
identified that are contiguous with ‘public goods’ and ‘the public good’ (such as ‘public
sphere’; ‘public realm’; ‘public mission’; ‘public intellectual’)?
The authors of successful proposals have now been notified, and are developing their abstracts into full papers. The symposium will provide them with an opportunity to share the work in progress with the broader academic public, and to enter in a conversation with it.
Paper idea presentations (5 mins each):
The greater/public good and research impact
Rene Brauer, University of Eastern Finland, Finland
Mirek Dymitrow, Lund University, Sweden
Shrinking ‘Public’ Spaces and Inequality in Access to Professional Higher Education in India
Pradeep Choudhury, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India
Formative Higher Education for Public Insurgence
Samantha Deane, Boston College, United States
Chris Higgins, Boston College, United States
Finding the edges of “publicness” for the concept of public goods in higher education
Tessa DeLaquil, Boston College, United States
The role of universities in the creation of communities of inquiry
Jakob Feldt, Roskilde University, Denmark
What publics? Whose good?
Andrew Gibson, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Søren Bengtsen, Aarhus University, Denmark
Hyperobjects, fractals and ruinous connections: emerging ecologies of public good in post-anthropocentric university landscapes
Kirsten Locke, University of Auckland, New Zealand
EPIC-WE for public good – A new co-operative model for the civil role of higher education institutions in society
Rikke Toft Nørgård, Aarhus University, Denmark
Higher Education for the Public Good as a Public and Private Good or Replacing a Technocratic Understanding of the Public Good with a Philosophical One
John Petrovic, University of Alabama, United States
Re-claiming the ethical university: Moving beyond value
Wesley Shumar, Drexel University, United States
Sarah Robinson, Aarhus University, Denmark
Søren Bengtsen, Aarhus University, Denmark