The community-engagement team of a reputed conventional university wants me to have a conversation with the top leadership of the university regarding the challenges that such engagements face globally. This essay is the summary of what I communicate to them based on my exposure to universities in India and abroad. 

There is an increasing pressure on universities to contribute directly to social purposes. These may include the needs of specific communities (like indigenous people), sustainable development (or towards the attainment of SDGs), national development, etc. There is an increasing expectation on the part of political and social actors. There is a certain frustration among them that universities are not responding to this social demand adequately. It is an important reason for the dampening of social support for the demand for adequate public funding for universities. There is also a decline of social legitimacy of universities and their values like academic autonomy, partly due to this reason. 

Universities are also responding to this social demand in different ways. Many among them spend resources for what can be called third mission, service learning or community engagement and all these attempt to meet one or other social purpose. There is also a greater awareness on the part of the leadership and management of universities to take these activities seriously. I could understand different steps taken by a set of conventional universities in this regard. 

One question that many conventional academics ask in this regard is the following: What universities normally do which include teaching and research are useful to the society, and why should there be an additional focus on social or community-engagement? Yes, it is true that the work of universities is useful to society sometimes indirectly, invisibly and in the long run. However such a focus on the indirect or invisible connection with social needs may lead to a situation where a major part of the academic work – though may lead to degrees for students, and research in academic disciplines based on normal paradigms and publications in peer reviewed journals – may not have any major social impact. In my conversations with a set of sincere academics in reputed universities, it is clear that they also see and witness this rote and mechanistic academic work for its own sake. Hence a specific concern about social purpose or a direct engagement with communities is useful for universities. 

However there are major  challenges in this regard: The third mission or community engagement has not changed the conventional teaching and research in normal undergraduate and graduate programs. Even when students take up internships, what they learn through these remain somewhat separate from what they learn in classrooms. Teaching in most contexts do not enable students to connect what they see in the real world (through community engagement, internships, etc) with what they study in classrooms. 

Though academics spend substantial time for research and that may inform teaching, it is not adequate to enable students to connect with what they see through practice-learning (say, internships) and community engagements. This is mainly due to the inadequate focus on the development of context-specific knowledge in university settings. The knowledge that is developed through research is primarily aimed at generating universally-valid or generalisable insights (which are publishable in international journals). This knowledge-base often neglects context-specific issues. 

Students and faculty may get an exposure to specific social challenges through service learning and community engagement. This may lead the question of `what can be done’ to address these challenges. However social sciences, though help to understand/question the status quo, do not have an adequate orientation towards `problem-solving’. This limits the capacity and orientation of students to think about how to address those challenges which they confront through community-engagement. 

Understanding and addressing social/community challenges may require inter-disciplinary and inter-domain courses. However these are not so common or popular in academic settings where researchers have their training mostly in one discipline and one domain. 

Academics have fewer incentives in the current context to take up community engagement seriously. Their incentive structure is heavily biased in favour of conventional research and to a lesser extent teaching (in normal disciplines). Top-down approaches to compel academics to take `community-engagement seriously’ may be seen as an intrusion into academic autonomy and may be resisted.  

Increasingly universities are also losing incentives to take community engagement seriously. This is partly due to the inadequate inclusion of this aspect in the ranking of universities. Hence community engagement may remain as an additional unit/department mostly manned by non-academics, with little or no involvement from the majority of academics. Or there may be an involvement by only a few academics based on their individual/personal interest. 

There is a need to think about possible ways to address these challenges. There is a need for platforms to connect academic work and practice in all (and not only professional) disciplines. Though management schools have accepted the case-study approach, it is yet to become a practice in social sciences. 

Along with the research that attempts to bring out universally generalisable sights, academics should have the incentive to develop context-specific knowledge. The evaluation of academics may need tweaking to make this change. Teaching in universities may have to be changed to include a lot more inter-domain and action-oriented knowledge. 

Community engagement or other steps that may contribute to the social purpose may sustain well only if there is a strong interest and ownership on the part of the top leadership of the university. Universities may have to identify those few faculty who are motivated intrinsically to make these changes, and encourage them to exert informal peer pressure. 

Rather than simply following the model which is reflected in the global ranking of universities, specific universities can become role models in making community-engagement an important part of their reputation. These role models may help to bring about a positive change in higher education gradually. 

End Note: The content and opinions expressed are that of the author, and are not necessarily endorsed by/do not necessarily reflect the views of Azim Premji University