Universities: just another business or there to serve the common good?

Delivered by the most outstanding academics in the UK and beyond, the British Academy’s flagship Lecture programme showcases the very best scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.

About the event

How can we make a world better than this? How can we regain the common good, which seems to be slipping away? What collective tools do we have? One of the essential tools must be higher education.

Yet, the contribution of UK universities to the common good is patchy: better at allocating people to unequal destinations than creating equal opportunity, better at building their own prestige than bringing knowledge to all. Is this inevitable? Reflecting on British policy and international examples, this Lecture explores the present limits and future possibilities of universities for the local, regional, national and global common good.

Speaker: Professor Simon Marginson FBA
Simon Marginson is Professor of Higher Education at University of Bristol, emeritus professor at Oxford and Joint Editor-in-Chief of Higher Education. He has visiting professor affiliations at Tsinghua, Peking, Hong Kong and Melbourne universities. His research focuses on the personal, social and global effects of higher education.

Chair: Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Newcastle University, Professor Nigel Harkness

Image credit: Newcastle University

The Lecture will be followed by an audience Q&A and then a complimentary drinks reception.