Inaugural lecture looks at role and place of universities

The first annual University of Otago U3A Dunedin Lecture was held at the end of November, with Otago Vice-Chancellor Grant Robertson delivering the inaugural address.

The annual lecture was borne of an MOU signed between Otago and U3A Dunedin, a charitable trust focused on further education in the third stage of life, retirement.

U3A Dunedin Board Chair Elizabeth Wilson says the MOU acknowledges the long tradition of collaboration between the two parties.

“University staff have contributed hugely to the academic rigour and variety of U3A courses offered during the past 30 years.

“I doubt whether our ability to maintain running 18 six-week courses a year over such a long period would have been possible without the support of University staff, past and present.”

Celebrating their 30th anniversary this year, U3A Dunedin was delighted to have Grant deliver the inaugural lecture, Elizabeth says.

In the lecture titled “More Important Now than Ever - The Role and Place of Universities in the 21st Century", Grant spoke about the economic, social, political and technological challenges that face universities and the opportunities that exist for universities to cement their role.

Grant described his lecture as an “exercise in pragmatic idealism”.

“We have to stick to the values and ideals that have seen universities evolve over more than a thousand years.

“But we must continue to evolve and acknowledge the changes in the world around us. We must chart our own course, but to ignore the world around us is to consign us to steady decline.”

Grant outlined eight things he would like to see at Otago, starting with “a more collaborative tertiary sector in New Zealand”.

“As a country, we do not get the best use out of the funding that we put in because of the competitive model that has been created for tertiary education.

“I do not believe it is delivering the best value for money and the best outcomes for our students and our staff.”

Funding was a key part, with Grant touching upon the need for “a more long-term sustainable funding path” and to “diversify our funding to non-government sources”.

“There are people out there who want to support us, be they alumni, be they those from the private sector or from the community sector.”

Otago also needs to be innovative, flexible and relevant while giving staff more time, he told those gathered.

“We need to give staff time back to be the researchers that we want them to be, and we will have given people a reason to come to this campus, to be part of face-to-face learning, because we will have shown why that is so important and different to what you get online.

“We can only do that if we are genuine in our approach to Te Tiriti, taking tikanga into account in how we teach, how we organise, and how we assess.”

We also need to incorporate technology, he said.

“We need technology to be an enabler for those students to find their purpose and place and make it a tool to upholding the values of our University.”

He also emphasised the need to encourage disciplinarity and trans-disciplinarity.

“We need in-depth disciplinary expertise, but then I'm asking our people to look up and to look out to see the connections that exist in the world today.

“We need to approach the big issues of our time, be at the cutting edge and bring those students to us who want to do that as well, irrespective of what degree they study to do that.”

And finally, he wants Otago to be the place where staff and students feel valued and appreciated.

“I want the University of Otago in 2030 to be a place where a world-class education is delivered by researchers at the cutting edge of their fields and an environment where our staff and students lead, debate, connect with each other and the world, and are rooted in this place here, its history and its people.

“If we do that, the relevance of universities will be maintained and our relevance now, which I argue is more important than ever, will be able to continue on into the future.”

~Kōrero by Sandra French, Adviser, Internal Communications