The wet weather still seems to be haunting us. Even so I did make it to the office one day this week, which though was quite quiet in comparison to other days I have spent in the office, I was a productive and constructive workspace. I also had a day’s leave this week as well, visiting Stourhead (in the rain).
After a tip off from that Lawrie, I read Peter Bryant’s most recent essay in his Mirror University series of blog posts: The Mirror University 7: Trust is the only currency that matters in higher education: Rebuilding a culture of trust in an era of distrust.
The central argument of the article is that trust is the real existential crisis facing higher education. While public debates fixate on generative AI, academic integrity, declining attendance, or marketisation, these are symptoms of a deeper erosion of trust between students, academics, institutions, government, and society.
As with much of what Peter writes it’s a piece that makes you stop and think. Peter does come from this, from an Australian perspective, but there is much in there that resonates with the current climate in the UK towards higher education. Well worth taking the time to read.
I had my regular check in with my colleagues within NRENs 4 Education, or as I call it E in NREN. The team is presenting at TNC in Helsinki in June, I hope to be attending.
As part of my work on E in NREN I have been developing some position papers on the eight use cases from the European Higher Education Interoperability Framework and where they sit within the UK context, where they sit within Jisc, and what are the links with a potential student data model and the proposed future of LLE (Lifelong Learning Entitlement). The key word is developing, rather than writing, as because as they are developed I am not only writing what I know, but also what I know I don’t know. In addition the act of development is helping me understand what I don’t know I don’t know. One of the challenges with all eight use cases are the multiple stakeholders involved. Jisc on its own, is not the solution, but is part of the solution.