Builder, broker, beacon, base: how universities anchor communities

 Australia’s Universities Accord commits to encouraging greater community engagement, and the new Australian Tertiary Education Commission that the accord calls for will ensure that universities are accountable to local people. But what exactly does it all mean?

The idea of universities as “anchor institutions” provides a basis for developing this local engagement and is particularly relevant for my university, Monash. The concept of anchoring is underdeveloped but it is broadly possible to identify four dimensions of universities’ anchoring role – the four Bs – which, properly understood, can help shape universities’ approach to engagement.

First, universities as anchor institutions are builders, often via research that benefits communities. There are many instances around the globe in which universities have engaged in such work. For example, the University of Cape Town built a knowledge transfer programme with local government to develop knowledge of sustainability issues and partnerships with policymakers.

Universities have also developed their anchor mission through education programmes aimed at local people. For example, Swaraj University in India initiated place-based learning through collaborations between students and community members.

Universities can also revitalise communities through their operations. Since the mid-1990s, they have used their hiring power to improve local communities by, for instance, mandating that a percentage of purchasing must be local, offering assistance to neighbouring schools, or investing in housing development.

A TV anchor curates information and relationships. This metaphor stands up well for the second aspect of university anchoring, too: brokering. As non-state, non-corporate entities, characterised by cultures of peer review, universities curate knowledge better than most institutions do – and they can marshal educational materials in ways that combine university and community knowledge.

Universities also curate relationships between people. For example, Duke University built a diverse range of community partnerships to support its work in revitalising its local town, Durham. Such action often involves making connections across social boundaries. For example, several universities have developed “age-friendly campus” initiatives that encourage older people to live on campus.

Third, universities have often sought to engage in transformative projects, acting as beacons. This work is often experimental. Universities commonly develop schemes and practices – for example, ways of engaging with technology or forms of community engagement – that are open to revision. For example, “living labs” employ the built and human infrastructure of institutions to test ways of addressing human and environmental challenges, often with a particular focus on sustainability. Living labs are typically embedded in research and teaching programmes but provide points of interest and participation for individuals and institutions outside universities.

Universities’ work as experimental beacons is also evident in their attempts to remake urban space. Since the late 20th and early 21st centuries, many universities have reimagined peripheral city landscapes. For example, in the 1990s and 2000s, the University of Pennsylvania invested $500 million in real estate development along the edge of its Philadelphia campus, with a focus on community benefit.

The role of universities as beacons also emerges clearly in new institutions operating in marginalised parts of the world. For example, small universities in Peru have frequently been engaging their local communities while acting as exemplars of educational change. New universities in provincial India have built relationships with local businesses/government and engage in exemplary community outreach.

Fourth, the university is also a physical base. Reciprocal relationships with communities require campuses to be welcoming, accessible and flexible. University leaders have worked with others to integrate campuses into public environments in Bolivia, the US and South Africa, for example.

Universities may distribute bases across space. For example, alternative universities in Bolivia developed “caravans of happiness” – buses, jeeps, trucks and motorbikes – carrying singers, artists and campaigners who spread progressive ideas. In other cases, universities have developed their campuses as hubs. An example is the widespread development of university precincts that integrate university functions and business.

Several Australian universities have played anchoring roles overseas. My own, Monash University, has a global campus network spanning the Indo-Pacific and stretching into Europe. Individually, Monash’s campuses use education and research to anchor communities, reflecting their permanence in place and connections with local populations, especially indigenous groups.

But Monash is also using its commitment to local engagement and reciprocity as a means of building connections between its various campuses and exploring how pursuing the four Bs varies internationally. This is another way of challenging older models of the university as a monumental institution radiating benefits.

There are reasons for remaining cautious about universities’ capacity for progressive change, not least the recent publication of studies that demonstrate the weaknesses of some universities’ local engagement. Anchoring may unwittingly erode some of the goals of universities, such as basic research, autonomy or the capacity to cater for their own staff and students.

But anchoring often benefits universities and local societies. And by providing a scaffold for reflecting on its various manifestations, the four Bs model of the engaged university – as builder, broker, beacon and base – can boost this process.

Craig Jeffrey is deputy vice-chancellor (International) and senior vice-president at Monash University.