Sustainable University — Digital University — Equitable University? A Comparative Analysis of Higher Education Organizations Across Europe

• In Event: Just Academia? Higher Education Organizations as Social Spaces for Equitable Transformation

Abstract

Sustainability transformation and digital transformation are probably the two most comprehensive and globally far-reaching processes of social change that we can currently observe. Both developments will not only fundamentally change the everyday practices and lifestyles of all people worldwide, they will also lead to the question of social justice in general and educational equality in particular being posed anew and differently - and not least having to be answered in the education system.
At the same time, sustainability transformation and digital transformation are not unrelated processes, but are interwoven in many ways: Their relationship can be thought of as a) parallel, in which they serve each other as relevant frameworks; b) competitive, in which further developments in one mean specific challenges for the other; or c) synergetic, in which both developments support and promote each other. The contribution at hand examines the question, how these possible relationships between sustainability and digital transformation are being practically brought about in education organizations and more specifically: in universities.
The object of research is fundamentally approached from an organizational pedagogy perspective interested in learning in, by, and between organizations (Göhlich et al. 2018). The theoretical basis is a practice-theoretical approach (Elven/Schwarz 2018), whereby in particular the practice-theoretical conceptualization of social change (Elven 2020) can be linked to. On this basis, we assume that organizations are not only exposed to social change and have to adapt to it, but that they also always play an active role and are thus of central importance in bringing about processes of social change. For educational organizations, there is a specific additional dimension, because their educational mission is generally geared toward the long-term shaping of social change.
In order to empirically investigate the practical relation between sustainability and digital transformation in universities and to analyze its implications for the creation of an equitable education system, we examine organizational structures, educational programs, and programmatic documents of universities across Europe (EU-27). For each EU member state, we select (maximum) the top 3 universities according to Times Higher Education World University Rankings. The analysis of the documents will be used as a basis for a qualitative content analysis (Kuckartz 2018) and especially a correspondence analysis (Greenacre 2007), that can help to reveal latent patterns concerning the relation between sustainability and digital transformation.
This connects to the discussion about equitable education as both sustainability and digital transformation have the potential to increase as well as decrease social inequalities: While the UN's sustainability concepts aim to reduce global inequalities, they are also accused of being blind to relative inequalities in industrialized countries; the covid-19-crisis has shown that digital teaching may reinforce social inequalities due to lack of equipment and competences, while at the same time offering great emancipatory potential for educationally disadvantaged milieus. The results of our study show how universities meet the two central challenges of 'sustainability' and 'digitalization', how they relate them to each other in their organizational structures and course offerings and how this contributes to establishing equitable education.

Authors

• Julia Elven, Friedrich Alexander Universität Erlangen Nürnberg

• Jörg Schwarz, Helmut Schmidt University / University of the Armed Forces Hamburg, Germany