The Emancipation of Learning Widening Participation, ‘Credentialism’ and Higher Education.

The Emancipation of Learning

Widening Participation, ‘Credentialism’ and Higher Education

The Argument• Conceptions of ‘the university’ are changing• Alternative models of informal learning present

opportunities for disruptive innovation• MOOCs may disrupt existing models and present

opportunities for emancipating learning• Emancipating learning may support development• There are resonances for widening participation• There are thorny issues relating to credit and

credentialism Liz Marr UALL 2014

What is the University?

It is an asylum – or what do they call them now? – a rest home for the infirm, the aged, the discontent and the otherwise incompetent. […] - we are the University.

From ‘Stoner’ (Williams 2012)

Liz Marr UALL 2014

Liz Marr UALL 2014

Higher Education MarketsThe cost of entry:

Fees/Funding

Prior qualifications

Social/cultural capital

The value on exit

Credentials

Enhanced capitals?

Debt?

Alternative conceptionsA silent revolution in education, where innovative initiatives are challenging what it means to learn and how knowledge is created’

‘rethinking and redoing higher education – particularly within social or ecological movements and indigenous communities’

Teamey and Mandel, 2013

Alternative models• Open access• Informal to formal learning• Lifelong learning (credit accumulation)

7 million course learners

250 million views per year

9 million active learners

5 million OU registered learners

MOOCs – emancipating learning?• Massive Open Online Courses• 1,000 - 100,000 learners• Open to all, no prior quals needed• 2-6 hours per week• 6-10 weeks• Social interaction throughout

MOOCs and IllichAn educational system should ‘provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at any time in their lives; empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn from them; and finally furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known.Illich (1975)

But..The pupil is […] ‘schooled’ to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new

The question of accreditation• Hugh Lauder: Western economic policy predicated on

the belief that the knowledge economy is made possible by those on the credential ladder who climb to the top and receive all the benefits.

• Such trends intensify the positional competition of the ‘best’ degrees from the ‘best’ universities on a global basis.

Liz Marr UALL 2014

Which means that….• There is further disadvantage to those already

marginalised through lack of opportunity to step onto or move up the credential ladder

• Further compounded by restrictions on ‘what counts’ as credit and lack of sector recognition schemes

Liz Marr UALL 2014

Amartya Sen and development• The freedom to be and to do

• Developing capabilities for self-actualisation and to assess what ‘functionings’ are needed

Lifelong Learning, widening access and development models• Who, if anybody, should decide what knowledge/

learning is important/of value?• Who has the right to decide what and how people should

learn?• Does credit matter?• Whose interests are most served by what we, as a

University, do?