Knowledge Democracy & Community Engagement in Higher Education

Higher education, and its numerous institutions, are experiencing some major structural changes worldwide; with growing mass enrolment in several developing countries, questions about  access and inclusion are being raised; with declining public funding to HEIs in many developed countries, issues of financing and relevance, along with international recruitment, are being addressed. As communities and societies experience turmoil and uncertainty around the world, societal expectations from higher education seem to be increasing. There is a beginning debate on social responsibility of higher education in the world of tomorrow.

It is in this context that a recent pan-Asian conference on ‘Higher Education-Community-Industry Engagementâ   convened by Malaysian National University in Kuala Lumpur acquires significance. The conference brought together nearly 150 delegates from 20 countries of the region to share experiences and discuss strategies in mainstreaming community engagement in higher education. Presentations by various scholars and some practitioners seem to indicate that there is a lot happening on the ground, and that more needs to happen as well. Two sets of issues came up: first, the need for clear national policy and institutional incentives for community engagements by HEIs; second, the enhancement of capacities in the HEIs and communities to undertake community-based participatory research to forge partnerships of mutual respect.

It may be useful to analyse the underlying assumptions behind community engagement by HEIs; as HEIs are primarily meant to educate and produce knowledge, it may be asked why do they need community engagement?  The general belief is that expertise available with students and academics can be shared with communities to help them solve some problems communities face. This perspective assumes that all knowledge and expertise resides in HEIs; the students and academics can perform this ‘residualâ function of HEIs without much effort. However, the experiences of communities and civil society may be somewhat different? In another perspective, sites of knowledge may be multiple, including communities themselves. In this perspective, knowledge is not only produced in multiple sites, its modes of production and epistemologies are also multiple and diverse.

Such a recognition of multiplicities of knowledge may imply that engagements between communities and HEIs may actually be more mutually influential; community engagement may influence both teaching and research in significant ways; engagement may not be the third, residual mission of HEIs in this perspective; it may be transformative for both. This is the perspective of knowledge democracy; in this perspective, knowledge serves citizens; in knowledge economy perspective, knowledge serves the market; in knowledge society lens, it may be narrowly construed to serve the state and its public institutions; neither markets nor governments necessarily serve citizens—all citizens.

As this trend of community engagements of HEIs further develops, it may be worthwhile to explore ways in which it can be situated in, and inspired by, the perspectives of knowledge democracy.

Rajesh Tandon