Being a Graduate in the Twenty-first Century

Ronald Barnett, Institute of Education, LondonInternational Career Studies Symposium, University of Reading, 22-23 September, 2009

Centre for Higher Education Studies

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Context – and Emma’s tale

A present context: the unemployed graduate

‘Last year, I created a new society for the University, for my course. That involved quite a lot of responsibility and taking control and I’ve never been in that, sort of, leadership position before. … the society stuff definitely helped my degree – if no other reason than just feeling more accessible to the lecturers and the tutors.

‘I’m [also] an artist .. I tend to do [large] landscapes in acylics.Q Do you see that as something quite separate or do you think it spills over in any

way?‘Yeah, I think it does in a way because I was thinking about how long it takes me

to do the paintings, I think that’s, kind of, patience and the motivation to do it because there’s times when I think, I just want to give up.’

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Beginning questions

So from these two starting points: Just what is it to be a graduate in the C21? Just what might we hope for from our students? What might they want of themselves? How might we understand ‘career’ now (eg amid

(worldwide) recession) What is it to learn in a university? What are the

responsibilities of a university towards its students?

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Changing answers

Built successively around the themes of:- knowledge/ understanding (‘initiation’)- skills (‘employability’)

And now emerging?- wellbeing (‘therapy’)- citizenship (‘the global citizen’)

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The twenty-first century

• Challenge• Change• Uncertainty• Complexity/ supercomplexity• Division – differences – of values, of resources, of

perspectives• Global dimension

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Students as Global Citizens

• A care/ concern for the world• A sense of interconnectedness• Not living in one’s own world• Helping to bring about a better world (cf ‘wisdom’)• A project of ‘engagement’• Implies first-handedness; genuine (critical) thought & action• Impact on curricula• And on opportunities while a student

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Forms of learning

• Sense that learning takes place in multiple sites• Even for the student • Is anything special about the student’s academic learning?• Lifewide learning – horizontal learning• Lifelong learning – learning through time

(We’ll come back to these matters in a moment.)

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The ideas of ‘graduate attributes’ & ‘graduateness’• (So) the world presents human being with considerable

challenges – technical, social, communicative, personal• We look to graduates esp to be human beings who can live

purposively in the face of these challenges• Even to be exemplary human beings• Such a world requires, in the first place, neither knowledge

nor skills but dispositions and qualities of certain kinds

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Dispositions for a world of challenge

• A will to learn• A will to engage• A preparedness to listen• A preparedness to explore• A willingness to hold oneself open to experiences• A determination to keep going forward

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Qualities for a world of challenge

• Carefulness• Courage• Resilience• Self-discipline• Integrity• Restraint• Respect for others• Openness

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Dispositions and qualities compared

• The dispositions are necessary; the qualities have a degree of optionality in them

• Hence, just a few dispositions; but many qualities• The dispositions enable one to go forward • The qualities colour that forward movement; give it

‘character’

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The (higher) educational significance of the dispositions and qualities• The dispositions and qualities are concomitants of a genuine

higher education• Curricula and pedagogies could nurture them• But often fall short• Students are denied curricula space, and pedagogical

affirmation• But the dispositions and qualities (above) are logically

implied in a ‘higher’ education.

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The idea of a career

• The idea of ‘career’ implied steady progression in a particular (and challenging) field of work

• And that there were clear boundaries between work and non-work• Both of those axioms have to be ditched• Against the considerations here, a ‘career’ becomes the continuous public

working out of one’s possibilities in an uncertain world• It is the sedimentation of the dispositions and the widening and strengthening of

the qualities• In particular, the will to learn (disposition) and courage and openness (qualities)

are paramount• ‘Careers Units’ should perhaps be renamed ‘For-Life Units’

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Lifewide learning

• Being a graduate (it follows) calls for both lifelong and for lifewide learning• If lifelong lng is lng through one’s lifespan, lifewide learning is learning across

one’s life experiences• Implications for universities: the opening up of learning experiences outside the

formal curriculum – both on and off campus.• It just may be that graduates gain as much – in the formation of the dispositions

and qualities – from non-formal settings as from the formal curriculum. • So the idea of the ‘life-informed curriculum’ beckons• (We are unclear as to the relationships between the student’s manifold sites of

learning; to what degree learning in one domain can assist learning in another domain. The answer may lie in Ds and Qs.)

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Conclusions

Becoming clearer about being a graduate in the C21 calls for a sense of the world in which graduates find themselves

& of the responsibilities graduates have in the world - to themselves and to others and even to the world itself In turn, the idea of ‘career’ diminishes But there arises larger questions as to the relationship

between graduates and the wider world In turn, arise profound issues over curriculum & pedagogy & in turn, arise qs as to the responsibilities of universities And so arises the question of the university in the C21 It is that, no less, that lies before us in these considerations.

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