The idea that universities can become key agents in the process of ‘knowledge exchange’ has come in recent years to be important in the context of British higher education. This article first sketches out a critical account of ‘knowledge exchange’, challenging the frequently profit-driven agenda of its original basis, before going on to explore its more ‘progressive’ social potential. Following this, the article discusses ‘Making Politics Matter’ – a political engagement project at Canterbury Christ Church University – as a form of progressive knowledge exchange strategy that seeks to build political networks of interaction between students and the wider community.

‘FROM KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER TO KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE’

European universities are facing a crisis of finance and indeed of legitimacy. The public funds associated with the economic growth of the late 1990s are drying up. Throughout Europe the new watchword is ‘austerity’. Britain for example is currently undergoing cuts in the higher education budget far more extensive than those of the 1980s. In France and Italy too we see an increased focus on the marketisation of higher education provision, and concomitant emphasis on global ‘competitiveness’.

As public sector cuts take hold, and marketisation continues apace, the very idea of the university is yet again coming to be questioned. This paper will focus primarily on the British university model, though given the realities of globalisation, national developments automatically have a wider significance. This model is quite different to the one dominant in the rest of Europe, despite the attempts at harmonisation ushered in by the Bologna Declaration. Throughout Europe, higher education systems are elite-based (see Bourdieu, 1988; Halsey, 1992; Slaughter and Leslie, 1997). However, where outside Britain there is a relatively clear delineation of the roles and functions of providers within the sector, in Britain, at least since the 1990s, there exists a unitary model; all university subject areas are judged by the same quality benchmarks, and therefore restrictions are placed on curriculum content.

Reality is of course much more complicated. We have the Russell Group of the twenty leading UK research universities, which attracts not only the ‘brightest’ students, but also the most profitable funding streams, the ‘new universities’ (former ‘polytechnics’), and the ‘new new universities’ – that is institutions that gained university status in the last 10 years. Moreover, the educational ‘philosophy’ at the basis of the unitary model is a problematic fudge of the abstraction of traditional academic discourse, and a more economic stress on vocationalism and applicability. Newer providers of course do not start from the same position of power as older established elites; this means that they need to be both more cognisant of ‘alternative’ funding sources, and concerned to demonstrate the ‘relevance’ of the knowledge that they generate.

It is in this context that we must situate the emerging discourse of ‘knowledge transfer’. Initially, the discourse of ‘knowledge transfer’ was embraced by central government – particularly through the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) – as a way to ‘unlock’ the knowledge within universities, and to increase ‘UK PLC's’ productivity in the context of the global ‘knowledge economy’. If universities were to continue to receive public funding, then they would need to demonstrate their ‘impact’ not only on academic knowledge communities, but also on the ‘real world’. But what precisely is ‘knowledge transfer’? Argote and Ingram (2000) characterise knowledge transfer as ‘the process through which one unit (e.g., group, department, or division) is affected by the experience of another’ (Argote and Ingram, 2000: 151). The context of the knowledge transfer debate is primarily organisational, and specifically private sector business focused. The concern is with how knowledge can be exchanged in order to increase profitability within the business cycle (see for example Argote et al, 1990; Epple et al, 1996; Holland, 1999; Lavis et al, 2003). This instrumental attitude towards the ‘knowledge’ at the heart of the ‘transfer’ process is summed up well by Jarvis (2001) who writes that:

In the knowledge economy … knowledge is money and so the development of new knowledge becomes imperative for those transnational companies whose survival depends on it. But it is obvious that they are really only concerned with scientific and technological knowledge, so that they can develop new products that can be marketed, and those aspects of practical knowledge that enable them to function efficiently. (Jarvis, 2001: 50)

Yet, it is not the case that the economic imperative has come to be entirely hegemonic. This can be evidenced by the fact that in some recent official documents the more reciprocal ideal of ‘knowledge exchange’ has come to replace ‘knowledge transfer’. For example, one important document states that:

We have stressed in our strategic plan that KE [knowledge exchange] is not just about the commercial sector (although wealth and job creation are important parts of social responsibility of HEIs for their communities, and not just about income generation for the institution)… KE with the public and third sectors is equally as important to the HE sector as that with the business world. (HEFCE, 2008: 4)

Thus the stress seems to be not only on the economic, but also on the social. A number of observations need to be made here. First, a great deal needs to be done to unpack the precise meaning of ‘social responsibility’. Indeed, how robust is this commitment intended to be? On the surface, this does seem to be strong. However, so does the commitment to the economic imperative (and it is not too wild a concern to suggest that the two may very well come into conflict, and one may trump the other). Second, there is at times in the document what appears to be a conflation of the social and economic – wealth generation and social responsibility are tied together. Moreover, social activity is at times viewed not as a value in and of itself, but as an opportunity for enterprising activity. This is particularly the case with the discourse of social enterprise (see IKT, 2009). Third, it should be reiterated that business engagement – specifically identified – is not the ‘be all’ and ‘end all’ of knowledge exchange; business engagement is rather one possible engagement across a range of many – though we all know how the idea of separate but equal value can be put to less than progressive uses.

‘… the discourse of “knowledge transfer” was embraced by central government – particularly through the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) as a way to “unlock” the knowledge within universities …’

In short, much of the drive of what I now refer to as knowledge exchange remains tied to what Bates (2007) and Harvie (2000, 2006) understand as a process of commodification of higher education, and what Slaughter and Leslie (1997) term the ‘rise of academic capitalism’.

A PROGRESSIVE APPROACH TO ‘KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE’

But is a progressive understanding of knowledge exchange possible? If so, a number of conditions must be met. First, we must view social – as opposed to purely economic – knowledge as worthy of exchange. Second, in acknowledging this point, we need to look beyond organisational processes, and interrogate the complex social networks and structures of power in which such social knowledge is embedded. There is often only minimal sociological explanation in the business focused literature – little is said about the ideological orientation of managerial agents, or even the stratified character of the labour process – everything comes to be addressed in the way of ‘solutions’. Third, a progressive approach to the exchange of social knowledge needs to focus on meaningful partnership; that is where one partner is not permitted to become dominant. Private sector engagement must be balanced with appropriate public sector engagement, trade union involvement, and the participation of NGOs etc. One of the reasons for the decline in political participation relates to how politics is perceived as a club for wealthy elites, and we have a responsibility as those interested in facilitating political engagement not to reinforce such perceptions. Fourth, it would prioritise the space of the public over that of the private, recognising that for meaningful democratic political networks to be established, encounters must occur in the public domain; for it is only in public space that we can aspire to a situation where citizens engage as ‘equals’. Finally, knowledge exchange is seen primarily as about exchanging forms of (public) knowledge and experience between parties, not for the sake of profit, but for the ‘common good’. To this extent, the sceptical general public to whom I have referred must be an integral part of the knowledge exchange process.

KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE AND ‘MAKING POLITICS MATTER’

‘One of the reasons for the decline in political participation relates to how politics is perceived as a club for wealthy elites, and we have a responsibility as those interested in facilitating political engagement not to reinforce such perceptions’.

In this section of the paper, we need to address issues that are perhaps of more direct concern – learning and teaching (in politics and international relations). In the financial context of contemporary academic life, it is quite easy to lose sight of what may seem to some to be rather idealistic goals. Stoker (2006) and Hay (2007) have recently emphasised why in seemingly ‘apolitical’ times, politics matters. To this extent their work builds on the seminal statement of the importance of politics that we find in the writings of Crick (2000). Crick wrote that: ‘The person who wishes not to be troubled by politics and to be left alone finds himself the unwitting ally of those to whom politics is a troublesome obstacle to their well-meant intentions to leave nothing alone’ (Crick, 2000: 16). The apparent disengagement with politics is to some extent misleading – based as it is on an overemphasis on formal participation. As Hay (2007) points out:

This is not simply a story of declining levels of political engagement and participation. Such a decline is undoubtedly underway, but it would seem to be accompanied by a simultaneous rise in other forms of political expression – notably, those which bypass conventional/formal political channels. (Hay, 2007: 23)

It is the mistake of the politician to equate the level of political engagement with levels of formal participation. Our politicians are more worried than most about the apparent extent of disengagement from formal politics. Yet politics curricula – both at pre-university and undergraduate levels – tend also to prioritise ‘formal’ politics as an object of investigation. And if Hay's point is to be accepted, then perhaps politics learning, teaching, and curriculum design, rather than going simply against the tide, needs to adapt to the new realities of political engagement. This is not to suggest that a stress on formal engagement is to be set aside. Rather, I think that politics learning and teaching is likely to be more effective if it attempts to encompass in a coherent way formal and ‘non-formal’ aspects (both in terms of study and engagement), and indeed attempts to challenge the hierarchies between these.

This in another way brings about an important shift. This point is made with some caution, but it seems that the formal political process in Britain at least owes something to the Burkean idea that we elect a representative, and the representative is then ‘left to get on with their job’. At best, this is a form of passive citizenship. But the ‘new’ form of politics is active in its focus, though the span of activity will vary significantly from individual to individual. This is a mode of commitment, which is not simply based on the expression of an identity; rather it may be founded on a commitment to a cause. There is here a sort of parallel between the relative passivity of the traditional politics class (where politics is an external object to be studied) and what is the subject here – engaged politics learning and teaching, though we should not in any way reject the idea that there is something called politics, which can be a fruitful object of social scientific investigation.

Returning to the key issue of this paper – the forms of active engagement that we are seeking to embed are activities premised on creating effective networks through which information, experience, knowledge, cultural, economic, and social capital can flow. For, without the creation of such networks, the active curriculum for which we strive is impossible to create.

‘… politics learning and teaching is likely to be more effective if it attempts to encompass in a coherent way formal and “non-formal” aspects (both in terms of study and engagement) …’

Take some of these aspects – ‘Making Politics Matter’ seeks, through a range of different initiatives, to facilitate the process via which our students are able to make effective connections with politics, politicians, and the wider community, and thus participate in the shared knowledge and experience of political ‘networking’.

Our students for example initiated a speakers’ series (‘Have Your Say’), which has attracted a wide range of political figures, including NGO activists, MPs, MEPs, think tank researchers etc. Students are responsible for liaising with the speakers and their representatives in order to organise the event, networking with wider university authorities, and members of the local media for the purpose of promotion. Thus the students gain an experiential encounter that reaches well beyond the classroom. They start to see how the media functions, and how institutions operate. They get to ask questions of those who deal with political issues on a day to day basis. ‘Have Your Say’ also conceives of the University as a type of public square, that is as a site of ‘social capital’, where debate can occur between students, academics, politicians, and members of the general public (see Putnam, 1995). As one of our students put it: ‘Making Politics Matter gives us the opportunity not only to involve ourselves in current political debates, but also … the chance to meet with politicians and members of local authorities, thus gaining first hand experience of how politics really works on a local and more global level’.

‘Making Politics Matter’ is also intimately connected with the formal curriculum. Our second year module Political Research and Practice seeks to make a connection between the often rather dry research skills, which students need to acquire as an aspect of a politics degree, and the world of political practice. ‘Practice’ here can be used to mean a number of things. It can be used to refer to students becoming involved in say a political protest (see Kiernan, 2009). Practice may also be used to denote a form of research – for the political researcher is in many ways as involved in the political process as is the activist (and the distinctions between the two will also frequently blur). The important point of this module is that it enables students to build a form of structure in which they can reach beyond the classroom, relate ‘academic’ study to ‘experience’, bring their experience to play in the world around them, and where possible benefit their community.

The assessment mode here is the quite controversial action research (see Earl-Slater, 2002; Reason and Bradbury, 2006; Whitehead, 2005). Students apply the skills they have acquired to a concrete piece of research or political practice, and then reflect on this process both in the context of a presentation and a write-up. It is worth remarking at this juncture on the exciting projects that students have carried out. Of particular interest is the project on the highly charged political issues of immigration and asylum in Dover. The student talked to those held in the local ‘reception’ centre. She carried out attitude surveys of members of the public in Dover. She interviewed members of the local press, so crucial in terms of attitude formation. And she carried out her own piece of elite interviewing of the local MP. Crucial now to explore is how the rich knowledge gained during the process of this study can be disseminated and exchanged with the wider community, therefore, for example, some benefit can be gained for community cohesion in what is a very disadvantaged area.

Now, in such forms of engagement, students are faced with experiential barriers. They realise that the way they thought the press functioned is in fact not at all accurate. They realise (in a practical fashion) that bureaucratic structures, rather than enabling, frequently act as a brake to progressive initiatives. They become troubled and concerned when politicians seem more enthusiastic about speaking to students from ‘elite’ universities than from their own. Thus, while one of our students wrote enthusiastically about how Making Politics Matter ‘provided a platform for me to interact with well-known and influential politicians’, which ‘subsequently led to an opportunity to work as an intern … during the 2010 General Election …’, another student remarked that: ‘Politicians in particular are more interested in interacting with staff and older members of the public than students … this reluctance of speakers to interact with students makes building political networks much harder’. There is clearly a lesson here, in relation to the types of context and indeed behaviour, which can best overcome such issues – and a starting point must be critical reflection on the part of not only politicians but also staff who initially may be unaware of this dynamic.

And this brings us to the sociological domain, which the literature tends to neglect. The processes through which our students are able to gain the experience and knowledge acquired in political encounter are in no way straightforward.

Christ Church is in an institution that has taken very seriously the idea of widening access and participation. It is an institution in one of only a few regions in the country that still operates with an examination at 11, which decides which form of secondary school children will go to. Historically, it has been a ‘recruiting’, rather than ‘selecting’ institution (see Cant and Watts, 2007). Many of our students have taken serious knocks in their confidence, owing to a range of negative experiences throughout their educational histories. Many have not had access to high levels of what Bourdieu (1977, 1988) terms ‘cultural capital’. They may not have experience of discussing at length some of those philosophical first principles that underlie political debate. The cultural arena in which the political discourse of the powerful is embedded is largely alien to them, thought the environments from which they come have their own political dynamic. The key concern is therefore to generate some of the conditions of possibility for engagement, making use of the form of public space which the university embodies.

There is a need to state one important caveat. In an interesting article, Cant and Watts (2007) point out that when the term ‘cultural capital’ is used in the education literature, it is often attached to a deficit model. But instead of identifying faults with the habitus of ‘non-traditional’ students, what might be required is a transformation of the academic field itself. Cant and Watts’ object of investigation is nevertheless different to the one that occupies us here. For, they are concerned with the operationalisation of the ‘sociological imagination’ in a particular sociological ‘community of practice’ (see Wenger, 1998); thus they are interested not so much with public engagement, as with engagement in a particular discipline community.

The approach to engaged politics learning and teaching to which ‘Making Politics Matter’ is committed is one that seeks to reach beyond the discipline community; all are viewed simply as equal participants in a public space, though acknowledging that the public space itself must be the subject/object of transformation (see Freire, 1972).

It is worth discussing another one of our initiatives at this juncture – the ‘Making Politics Matter’ schools engagement project. As noted, there is an extent to which we as a programme are forced to deal with the ‘effects’ of wider educational disadvantage, resulting in part from a particular local distortion of the educational field. This is something that our school engagement project attempts to address, in a way that avoids the capital deficit model. The school engagement project, like many of these initiatives, was conceived as a vehicle for recruitment. And we were initially faced with a number of issues.

First, for most of these students, studying politics was the last thing they had considered. The vast majority of students wanted to study disciplines like psychology, criminology, and business studies/management. Second, when interrogated about what seemed to be political apathy, something else emerged. That is, students had political views, they simply did not regard these views as ‘political’. The main reason for this seemed to be that students associated politics directly with politicians, for the most part middle and upper middle class men with whom they had absolutely no connection (see Miliband, 1969; Kavanagh, 2000). It also appeared that for many of these students, the only connection that they had with parliament was at that point they reached for the remote control to search for another programme – and this raises the question of how politics can compete if at all for the attention of the young at a time where there is such a proliferation of media stimuli.

However, if instead politics was explored more from what we might term an ‘ethical’ position, then it seemed that these students opened up. Therefore, rather than discussing the structure of the British political system, questions were asked such as ‘is the present day global distribution of resources fair?’, ‘what can we do to address environmental destruction?’, or ‘what limitations, if any, ought to be placed on immigration and asylum in the UK?’ It then became possible to make a move from these more ‘abstract’ lines of questioning, to look at say environmental policy in the UK. Then questions could be asked such as ‘who controls environmental policy?’ ‘Are there any controlling interests that set the agenda?’ Examples can then be drawn from the concrete political process.

‘ … sometimes university lecturers can seem like politicians to 16–18 year olds; that is, as rather abstract authority figures’.

Thus, we started to see the possibility of a project that could enable us through respectful dialogue with students in these particular educational settings, to begin to ask critical questions on political issues (see Freire, 1972). However, our team also started to think that we as university lecturers might not necessarily be the best vehicles for helping to promote the generation of these critical capacities. For, sometimes university lecturers can seem like politicians to 16–18 year olds; that is, as rather abstract authority figures. Accordingly, a better focus would be to utilise our students for the delivery of such a project. For our students, by the time that we might encourage them to go in to schools, they would have built up an extensive knowledge base. Yet they still have a form of memory and comparability of experience not unlike the students with whom we are attempting to engage. How then can we create projects and networks through which these two groups can be brought together, and through which a type of ‘knowledge exchange’ could occur? There are many possibilities here. We will be working with a selected number of our students to facilitate extended workshops in targeted schools, workshops that move beyond the idea of a traditional ‘academic’ simply giving a ‘talk’. Themed events around say ‘democratic education’ raise some interesting possibilities. For if students can see others ‘like them’ who are interested in politics, see political engagement as important, and studying politics wherever they choose to do so as worth while, then a range of possibilities start to emerge.

WIDER CIVIL SOCIETY, PRIVATE BUSINESS, AND ‘MAKING POLITICS MATTER’

The engagement through knowledge exchange with wider civil society brings with it certain challenges and indeed tensions. The idea of involving students with the type of knowledge exchange projects, which take on an outreach form few would find problematic. Therefore too, to get our students involved with the activities of NGOs, the voluntary sector etc. as an aspect of their politics education seems to most academics interested in learning and teaching innovation to be a good idea.

It is important to point out that the real sticking point for some academics is private sector engagement (a concern in part shared in this paper). Thus, as noted earlier, there is a danger that knowledge exchange may come to be equated simply with income generation, and therefore business interests become dominant. This said we ought not to rule out a priori forms of partnership with private sector companies and their representatives, provided that is they really are one among a range of partners. For example, members of our team have worked on possible engagement projects with organisations representing the business community. Work with such organisations of course brings with it a wide range of possibilities, and indeed a dazzling range of contacts. Our students really can benefit from engaging with private sector organisations, just as they can benefit from engaging with trade unions, Amnesty activists, and representatives of refugee charities. Perhaps there is a degree of naivety and utopianism here, but it seems clear that the private sector must be engaged in a public space, where all partners are regarded as equal. The danger of course is that if a project such as this comes to be reliant on particular sets of private funds, then some partners may be more equal than others, and the progressive ethos of the project will come to be undermined. For political engagement is critical engagement, and at times critical engagement is uncomfortable for the wealthy and powerful.

Perhaps a less controversial mode of engagement can be found in a project the politics team worked on with Kent TV (see Francis, 2007).Footnote 1 Kent TV was a TV station that obtained the large part of its revenue from local government sources. Kent County Council conceived the station as a way to engage civil society – though the station it should be pointed out did not have any explicit party political content. The station's remit was described as ‘informational’ rather than ‘investigative’; being an internet TV station, it also presented some interesting possibilities for modes of e-democracy. Members of the local community could make their own films, and post them on-line.

Our students worked closely with Kent TV in order to put together a film on the politics of housing in Kent. First, a few words about the housing debate in Kent. Kent as a region has some significant housing challenges. Though Kent has not been particularly diverse ethnically, this is starting to change. Immigration and asylum has been a particular issue for the South East of England. Housing policy in the region has been forced to address the challenges that this has presented, causing some highly charged political debates. Second, Canterbury has a relatively expensive private rental sector, and a relatively low level of social housing provision. Moreover, tight planning restrictions mean that housing stock is difficult to extend.

Our students worked closely with Kent TV in order to put together a film on the politics of housing in Kent (see KentTV.com, 2009). The process of film making was guided by the former high profile political journalist. A ‘Question Time’ style event was put together in the Christ Church TV studio. Members of the local community, politicians, and the voluntary sector were invited to attend. There was a panel, comprising of a representative from the Campaign for Rural England, Porch Light (a charity for homeless people), the President of Christ Church Students’ Union, and the (Conservative) Leader of Canterbury City Council. The event was chaired by an experienced TV presenter. Our students also carried out focus group and survey research for the programme, which in part comprised the basis of discussion. (Unlike the ‘real’ Question Time, we did not have preset questions. Therefore, in effect we did not know what would happen. Unsurprisingly, there were some questions that the participants put that were not so clear, others that were perhaps more ‘outrageous’. Yet, the intention was not for a ‘polished’ product – the stress was on the process and the encounter itself.)

Now, this event can be viewed as a success in many ways. First, student feedback was positive. Looking back on the opportunities generated by Making Politics Matter, one student remarked: ‘the [Kent TV] event … was wonderful, and had a great turn out from staff, students and members of the public, all of whom were lively and engaging … . This whole experience provided the basis for my research project module, which I was subsequently able to write about with great enthusiasm’. Second, it was a good example of a progressive form of knowledge exchange. The project used the university as a public space in which to create the possibility of an engagement between a wide range of parties. As far as possible, the encounter was democratic. All parties had the opportunity to have their say. Moreover, it utilised the knowledge base and skills of our students in relation to the wider community of which we are a part. Our students got to put their research skills into practice. However, we were also faced with some significant challenges in relation to the medium. In particular, an aim was that the debate would continue after the event. With this in mind, Kent TV created an area where members of the community could upload films – which could simply be made in accordance with the YouTube mobile phone method. However, the rate of public engagement was not as extensive as hoped, necessitating re-evaluation. It should be noted that such re-evaluation was carried out by a number of our students in the action research component of the Political Research and Practice module.

CONCLUSION

We – by which I mean staff and students – have learnt a number of important lessons in the course of Making Politics Matter. First, not to consider higher education agendas as entirely static – if subject to challenge, it is sometimes surprising to what progressive uses they can be put. Second, generating new forms of social and political networks creates the conditions of possibility for various types of encounter; yet this process of generation is far from straightforward. Given what has been said about our student base, it is clear that our students are frequently outside of political networks, at least in any usually recognisable sense; they have little engagement with the power centres of the public sphere. The challenge then is how to allow for such engagement to take place, and for meaningful discourse and exchange to occur. Third, there is a need to focus on issues that really are engaging to students and the population – and therefore to reach beyond our own preconceptions as political scientists. Fourth, we need to be inventive in the face of the erosion of public space in contemporary liberal democracies. Public space is undergoing a substantial challenge, and our attempt to work through ‘Making Politics Matter’ to promote the ‘public square’ is an attempt to address this issue. As students and the general public benefit from the exchange of social knowledge, which this process brings, so too politicians get to engage with those groups with which – partly owing to the consequences of the party structure and less progressive forms of media – often remain external to the formal political debate.