No abstract

The university is a highly politicized and fractious realm for students and academics. Amidst trade-offs between the processes of massification, democratization, commodification, and globalization, the question of transformation for sustainability has become crucial to the social good(s) of higher education. This paper considers academic citizenry within Indian public higher education — a context where the increase in the enrollment of first-generation students and female students, due to affirmative action policies, has not substantially translated into altering the composition of academic staff. Informed by a mixed-method study conducted in 2019 with the participation of academics and those in leadership positions at four higher education institutions, we found that the enactment of such policies was operationalized for the production of the “New Middle Class” by universities. Of concern is that neither the representation nor the participation of academics who are women, “lower” castes, or minorities meets the mark of just, inclusive institutions. Despite the rhetoric of inclusiveness and development, the implementation of related policies clothe subalterns with the veneer of the intellectual class, permitting access on condition that sociocultural identities are concealed, and the hegemonic status quo maintained. Terms such as “quality” and “equality” function as tools for social control rather than serving social justice, where assertions of caste identity and resistance are simultaneously repudiated and misrecognized.

No abstract

This chapter contributes to scholarship concerned with the meso-curriculum shaping academic citizenry, and the conditions created for leadership, participation and inclusion within higher education institutions. Cognisant of the importance of the sector to drive the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, it considers the fitness-for-purpose of higher education institutions when it comes to peace, justice and strong institutions (SDG 16), gender inequalities (SDG 5) and how these intersect with notions of quality education (SDG 4).Primary data from the standpoint of key stakeholders within six institutions from the postcolonial contexts of India and South Africa was generated. These two middle-income contexts are of interest, because they are characterised by strong constitutional commitments to democracy and social justice at the macro-level, with bold policy interventions undertaken at institutional meso-level to address the legacies of exclusion and oppression in their student and staff composition and experiences in higher education. However, the last five years have seen fraught dynamics and unrest within the sector in each country, which data from our study indicates relates partially to the politics of participation, institutional culture and a breakdown of trust in governance and management.Academic staff and those in leadership position are important agents, because of their roles and responsibilities in shaping the trans/formation of higher education and its purposes. Drawing from the quantitative and qualitative data generated for this study, the chapter explores the patterns which emerged, paying particular attention to gender and intersectional inequalities, and what they revealed about the persistence of policy-implementation gaps and also interactional dynamics which point to principle-implementation gaps. Concerns are raised about the limitations of an imaginary, when it came to the agency of leaders to effect change in the Indian context, and impoverished comprehensions around sustainable ethical leadership which emerged across the study.

No abstract