The burden of privilege

A virus does not discriminate. It does not mind whether its host is rich or poor. But nor is it the great leveller that it might at first seem to be.

The impact on individuals of the pandemic, and the economic crisis it has precipitated, is heavily influenced by circumstance, and almost everything – from the health risks of obesity and co-morbidities to the jobs that involve the greatest exposure and now the inevitable swathe of lay-offs – has been stacked against the least privileged in society.

With such stark imbalance impossible to ignore, the past six months have perhaps helped to shine a light on other ingrained inequalities, the Black Lives Matter movement being a prominent example.

That is not because such issues are new – as Katherine Fleming, the provost of New York University, put it at the Times Higher Education World Academic Summit this month, “anyone who suddenly thinks that racism is all around them has been asleep at the switch for several centuries”.

What’s new, perhaps, is that during a pandemic in which inequality is staring us in the face, there is an urgency to do something about it, and for Fleming higher education “bears a heavier burden to address this because it has been so complicit in it”.

This growing sense that societies are being forced to reflect on the inequalities either supported or exacerbated by their education systems can be found all around us.

Consider the furore last month in the UK, when an algorithm was employed to decide A-level grades that in essence normalised on the basis of social background, downgrading countless young people without any regard to talent, effort or the expectations of their teachers.

Consider, too, the interview in this week’s THE with Michael Sandel, Anne T. and Robert M. Bass professor of government at Harvard University, who raises concerns about a fetishising of credentials and the role that elite universities now play as the “arbiters of opportunity”.

The impact of Covid-19 and higher education on social equity collide when we consider future delivery models, in a world that has rapidly gone digital first.

It is almost a decade since the over-hyping of massive open online courses (MOOCs) as an “avalanche” that would sweep away the university as we knew it, and democratise higher learning for all.

It was always too simplistic an analysis, but this year’s crisis can and will change the way that universities operate, and the audiences they can potentially serve, as well as disrupting their underlying business models.

As the new vice-chancellor of the University of Leeds, Simone Buitendijk, puts it in an interview in THE this week, the key will be to emerge from this crisis “not just intact but actually better than we went in”.

For universities fully waking up to the role that technology can play, that will be partly about modes of delivery, but it must also encompass their role in addressing inequality.

In our cover story, we take an in-depth look at higher education in South Africa, a sector that has arguably done more – and had more to do – than any other in this regard.

I was talking recently to a South African vice-chancellor who reflected that during the Covid-19 crisis, universities there “have had to do what everyone else has had to do, but in a deeply unequal context”, and that this had required what he called “pragmatic radicalism”.

There were those who argued that in a country that does not have universal access to broadband internet, or even to basic hardware such as laptops, “if everyone can’t go online, then no one should”.

But, the vice-chancellor went on, “social justice isn’t about the lowest common denominator, it is about recognising inequality and lending a helping hand – so we went out and bought laptops and loaned them to students. We negotiated with the telecom companies about how to extend connectivity.”

This idea of radical pragmatism is an attractive one because it is about embracing the unique and perhaps fleeting moment to effect change, but doing so in a way that works in the messy and unequal world rather than dreaming unrealisable silicon dreams.

But as another South African vice-chancellor says in our cover story, getting serious about tackling inequality will also require radicalism on the part of those well served by the status quo.

Redistribution of privilege, says Mamokgethi Phakeng, vice-chancellor of the University of Cape Town, is “the most threatening form of transformation” since it “requires an acceptance that there’s a problem. It requires a willingness to give up your privilege. And the willingness…to accept that people who come to your space might think and do things differently.”

john.gill@timeshighereducation.com