by John Brennan, Emeritus Professor of Higher Education Research, The Open University

A Liberal Vocationalism was the title of a project and book written by  Harold Silver and John Brennan back in the 1980s. It researched the extent and ways in which the vocational side of higher education was trying to legitimise itself against the quality and standards of the liberal academic side. Today, a Vocational Liberalism would research the extent and ways in which the liberal academic side of higher education is trying to legitimise itself against the features and pressures of the vocational side.

The ‘liberal academic’ and the ‘vocational’ features place their educational focus as follows:

In the 1980s, most universities were mainly focused on the liberal academic side whilst those on the vocational side were attempting to adapt themselves to the features on the left list above. However, today, it is universities on the left who are finding a need to adapt themselves to features on the right. We can read all the time that higher education is important because it provides ‘skills for jobs’.

Of course, there is always diversity within institutions and the 1980s project focused on vocational subjects such as Engineering and Business Studies. A new project would be more likely to focus more on the Humanities and Social Sciences. While policies and debates about higher education in the UK currently emphasise ‘skills for jobs’ as the key focus, 40 years ago ‘knowledge for critical thinking’ would have been a more common emphasis. I remember more than once interviewing employers of graduates who explained to me that they recruited graduates to ‘change jobs’ not just to ‘do jobs’.

Some research questions today might include the following:

1. How much and how do the liberal academic subjects move towards the vocational?
2. How much of the liberal academic features can they keep as well? And what is the balance and relationship between the liberal and the vocational?
3. And what are the institutional policies on the relationships?
4. And how do the academics react?
5. And how do employers react?
6. What are the graduate employment outcomes for students studying liberal arts subjects?

Of course, higher education institutions differ and responses to the pressures to move from academic liberalism to vocationalism may well differ as well, quite possibly according to the distinction made by the American sociologist, Martin Trow, between elite, mass and universal higher education institutions, with the elite moving the least and the universal moving the most, and the mass in between.

Going back to the 1980s, higher education emphasised critical thinking as a key focus. And the Sliver and Brennan project found that this was also the case in vocational courses such as accountancy and law. Now it’s skills for jobs.

And one last memory of some of the higher education literature is the idea of universities being ‘troublesome institutions’, partly as a result of the critical thinking. What does the world today need more, skills for jobs or critical thinking? Maybe both?

John Brennan

Ian Joseph Open University and Kasima Whittingham Break Tha Cycle

The sudden announcement of the general election in 2024 ended months of collaboration between OU researchers and non-government organisations, resulting in the joint decision to cancel a community-based national discussion about effective youth policy for tackling serious violence. The event was part funded by a RESDEV grant and would have brought together policy think tanks, local authority officials, community/ voluntary organisations and academics. To not lose momentum, in the weeks that followed, work continued between the Open University’s Contemporary Youth Culture and Transition (CYCAT) team and a single London-based social enterprise called Break Tha Cycle (BTC) in organising a local neighbourhood event in late summer.

This took place in an area of East London which had seen months of intensifying concerns about youth vulnerability to serious violence and would offer a way for those who lived and worked in the area to examine the problem but also to do something to keep young people safe from knife crime. It would especially focus on the high number of criminal convictions of young people through joint enterprise law and the reasons for its disproportionate effect on non-white youth (see Williams and Clarke 2016).

The event built on the grassroots activities of BTC by slotting into a larger programme of conversations with local residents called ‘NO MORE YOUTH VIOLENCE’. Throughout the year these brought local young people together with community representatives, local authority decision makers, service providers and politicians – sometimes attracting more than 40 participants – to look at different aspects of the problem and ways of working with others to tackle them. For example, another session looked at violence against women and girls. As a consequence of highlighting youth voice, collaborative working and grassroot empowerment, the initiative was seen as an important opportunity for knowledge exchange about service effectiveness that was of direct interest to CYCAT researchers.

The event happened in a local primary school; an ultra-modern building that was only accessible by being buzzed in at a large metal main gate. Everyone attending was met at the entrance by a young person who escorted them to a large hall filled with warm greetings and friendly talk. The welcoming cordial atmosphere was helped in no small part by a delicious hot Caribbean meal professionally served by a chef from a well-known local restaurant.

At an unprompted point in the evening, casual chit-chat seamlessly gave way to a formal group discussion. This was managed by the award-winning CEO of Break Tha Cycle, who impressively knew the small details of each topic discussed but also the first names of everyone who spoke. Special focus was given to hearing from young people about their experience of violence and what this meant for their day-to-day life. Those who were statutory and community service providers suggested practical solutions to the everyday problems faced. Further, parents described their experience of dealing with the criminal justice system with a mother giving an emotional account of how simply knowing someone in a group of friends during a night out resulted in her son’s murder charge.

Responding to many of the things said, Stella Creasy MP and local councillor Kizzy Gardener (the Cabinet Portfolio Lead Member for children and young people in the London borough of Waltham Forest), actively contributed to discussions, answering questions, giving advice and setting out wider strategic issues effecting local youth violence. Many of these comments pointing to the importance of and need for a joined-up approach and the key role of community action.

Not everyone agreed with everything that was said and even though some individuals expressed deep frustrations with the police and other local services, all points of view were respected. By the end of the evening everyone had a chance to speak, with special patience extended to those who were shy or not confident about speaking in public. The lively dialogue provided different perspectives but more importantly the opportunity to listen and learn from others, fostering a real sense of unity, out of which emerged details of a shared experience and overall agreement that:

• Youth violence is now an all-pervasive problem that continues to make many young people feel unsafe in public and shapes the daily decisions they make in attempts to keep away from potential danger and harm.
• A complex mix of local factors but also forces at a wider geographic level causes individual incidents of knife crime but also the more mundane violent to which young people are exposed.
• Individuals as well as whole communities live within bubbles of fear about safety that can now only turn around with an effective long-term strategy and service interventions that do not simply react to but prevent knife crime.
• All young people (not simply those living in the most deprived neighbourhoods) are routinely exposed to the possibility of violence. This is due in no small part to social media, now requiring a specific form of violence safeguarding.
• Effective prevention must involve more effective community and statutory sector partnership. Joint planning will help to more successfully fill gaps in services to young people but must also include how strategic and political decisions are made.
• The actions of existing neighbourhood self-help networks must be at the forefront of effective partnerships which should help guide the design and delivery of services.

Furthermore, CYCAT was able to take away important new insights on participative action research and evaluating community-based grassroots impact. As part of knowledge exchange with local organisations over several months the event helped consolidate ideas on how to better put youth policy into practice, the importance of local provision, the need for collaborative knowledge exchange and why the voice of young people is essential to effective service delivery.

As CYCAT researchers looked back on what was learned from the event and how best to follow up, it seemed that key aspects of current national youth policy and practice achieved little more than scratching the surface of the everyday problems faced by young people and the communities they lived in. The small but intense, intimate meeting provided a good example of how the cohesion and energy of local people can pinpoint early action that could potentially produce authentic positive outcomes. It confirmed how local knowledge can make a difference by providing the kind of detailed insight necessary for action relevant to situational context and workable solutions that produce lasting results.

We however came to see our conclusions on the event as a mere initial understanding and first step towards an ultimate goal of working with local people to make their neighbourhoods more safe and secure. Getting to this point would require building new forms of grassroots capacity and sustainability so as to improve links between agencies, better coordination of local activities as well as strengthening and expanding stakeholder engagement. This would nevertheless require consolidating existing activity but also developing additional capacity that cannot however be realistically done within existing assets, skills and expertise. It became clear that community-based action for preventing serious youth violence would require formalising the collaboration that had started but also forming funding partnerships to attract new finances.

Ian Joseph Open University and Kasima Whittingham Break Tha Cycle

References

Williams, P. and Clarke, B. (2016) Dangerous Associations: Joint enterprise, gangs and racism. An analysis of the processes of criminalisation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic individuals. Available at: https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/publications/dangerous-associations-joint-enterprise-gangs-and-racism