Roger Sugden – essays

By Roger Sugden and Marcela Valania

This essay was written as background for contributions by the authors to a session at the Association of International Education Administrators Annual Conference, Montreal, February 2016. The session was organized by Britta Piel, Free University Berlin, and entitled “Stakeholder involvement to impact social and economic activities in communities in practice – Small-scale impact to tackle global challenges”.

Although universities have long-running experience in the study of medicine, law and theology that has been shaping practice for centuries, many are now struggling to find the most appropriate way of impacting actual social and economic activity. This is perhaps especially acute in some parts of the world. There is certainly an argument that universities have much to learn about how to engage with regional, non-metropolitan communities.

When thinking about the impact of universities, attention often turns very quickly to medicine, engineering and certain natural sciences. Eyes are on global challenges – cures for cancers, climate change and so on. Everyone is aware that teaching medicine is vital because doctors are needed everywhere. People can readily appreciate the potential benefits of putting millions of dollars into researching cures for diseases that affect thousands – global challenges can be addressed on a global scale. For university leadership, the number of dollars that are needed for medical research, and the high public profile that it often attracts, can be critical to the university performing strongly in world rankings.

In contrast, the social sciences, arts and humanities are typically thought of less positively. Learning about a region’s social and economic history might be interesting, but practical relevance to solving the world’s problems is a less obvious attribute. Research in such disciplines often affects a relatively small number of people in particular territories in some parts of the world, and requires comparatively fewer dollars. Less people and less territory can be interpreted as less impact, and can mean less publicity. All of that can imply that such research carries less influence in determining a university’s world ranking.

Nonetheless there is significant potential for the social sciences, arts and humanities to impact people’s lives. That is unquestionably the case for non-metropolitan regions, where those disciplines are at the forefront of engaging communities on the real challenges that they face. And whilst particular initiatives might be relatively small scale, and indeed necessarily so, that does not negate their relevance to global challenges.

To illustrate, in May 2015 the University of British Columbia (UBC) ran an interdisciplinary graduate course focused on water supply for Peachland, a community of just over 5,000 people in the Okanagan, British Columbia. Peachland faces problems that are arguably ‘wicked’ (as defined by Rittel and Webber, meaning each problem is unique, with no definitive formulation and no true-or-false solution).* Peachland needs to secure a healthy water supply in a region facing climate change. It must do so whilst implementing an as-yet non-existent model for the community’s sustainable economic growth. It has a social, economic and cultural context in which First Nations rights, claims and aims are uncertain, and for sure changing.

The course placed the social sciences, arts and humanities at its core. It entailed students, faculty and administrative staff working in close engagement with the municipality, and whilst the focus was on a small community in peripheral Canada, that community is facing a set of challenges that resonate in communities small and large throughout the world.

In seeking the most appropriate ways of designing such initiatives there are many factors for universities to take into account. They include the expertise of various disciplines; sensibility in developing relationships with communities; opportunities provided by internationalization; and the distinctive role of a university.

The expertise of various disciplines

In the Peachland course, an initial task was to frame the challenge that the community faces. This was addressed through the expertise of different disciplines. The problem has an economic side, because Peachland seeks sustainable growth. It has a legal dimension, as the recognized rights of First Nations are altering. Moreover, the prospects for economic growth depend upon First Nations rights, which demonstrates that economic and legal aspects are inseperable. The course requirement was therefore that economists, lawyers and other experts from the social sciences, arts and humanities worked alongside each other, and indeed with engineers, as the community needs new infrastructure to secure a sustainable and healthy water supply.

It is only by bringing together the perspectives of various disciplines – and ensuring that those disciplines interact with each other – that challenges such as that facing Peachland can be fully addressed.

Sensibility in developing relationships with communities

The importance of sensibility can be illustrated by another example. In 2014 UBC and KEDGE business school in Bordeaux, France, established an annual Wine Leaders Forum. An aim is to support the emergence of British Columbia as a global wine region by providing education for its winery owners. The case is pertinent to any region in the world that targets sectors for global success.

Initial thinking had envisaged executive education business-school style, but engagement with the industry soon showed that such a program has no market amongst wineries in British Columbia. Over a period of months, university faculty and staff visited members of the industry in their own environments to listen to their perspectives. This interaction revealed the fragmentation, distrust and emotionally charged atmosphere that exist in the industry. Sensibility – a feel for the points being expressed – allowed those characteristics to be identified. As the interaction progressed, hard evidence confirmed the initial reading of the situation. The implication was that the industry needed a safe, yet challenging, retreat-style arena in which winery owners and principals might identify and address their strategic issues, founded on the use of reason and evidence. This arena would also require explicit sensibility to allow industry relationships and interests to evolve, enabling winery owners, faculty and administrative staff at UBC and KEDGE to develop appropriate ways of working and learning together. The latter is important because, although the industry clearly wants university support for its development, it is unclear about what form that support might take, other than knowing that large-scale academic research from the natural sciences is not required by almost any of the wineries in British Columbia at this point in time.

Opportunities provided by internationalization

The experience of the Wine Leaders Forum also illustrates the significance of internationalization. The partnership between UBC and KEDGE purposely brings together complementary expertise: on regional socio-economic development and the local context from UBC, and on territorial competitiveness and wine as a global business from KEDGE. In short, not all expertise needed to support the industry in British Columbia is available in the region, or indeed in Canada.

The design of each Forum is also deliberate in drawing directly on experiences from different wine regions in the world; contributors to sessions have come from Argentina, South Africa and France. This is because the Forum aims to support development of the British Columbia wine region, and to achieve success there are lessons to think about from the experiences that other regions have gone through. Moreover, if the industry is to be recognized globally, winery owners in British Columbia must have a good understanding of international standards and expectations.

All of this constitutes a considered attempt to bring to the project the advantages of perspectives from people with varied experiences, histories and cultures; to create a multinational environment, bringing innovative voices to the development issues facing peripheral communities.

The distinctive role of a university

We would also emphasize that activity must focus on a university’s distinctive role. People working in universities often pay remarkably little attention to this factor, perhaps because they are caught up in funding difficulties, or because they feel pressures to act in a particular way. Identifying what form this role might take is a contestable matter, but it is critically important to be clear about the aims and objectives of the university in relation to its role in society.

To illustrate, it has been stressed that a basic need in a university (in certain subject areas) is to pursue truth through reason and evidence. In initiatives such as the Peachland course, students work directly with the municipality on the challenges affecting the community, with the aim of presenting solutions, or at least ways forward. Students should be aware that whilst the demands of regional politics might incline a municipality towards a particular approach, they should be prepared to challenge that approach – enabled by faculty and administrative staff at the university – if reason and evidence suggest something different.

The UBC-KEDGE Wine Leaders Forum highlights a similar aspect. Winery owners might be used to sharing opinions founded on assertion, but one of the aims of the Forum is to encourage them to develop arguments and reach conclusions based on the use of reason and evidence to back their choices.

* Horst W J Rittel and Melvin M Webber, 1973, Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning, Policy Sciences, 4, 155-169.

By Roger Sugden

This essay considers transformation of the supply-side as an economic policy challenge for the Macri government in Argentina, and examines support for universities as a way of meeting such challenges. It introduces the context of previous Argentinean administrations and considers experience in developed countries, focusing on UBC’s experience in the Okanagan, a region in Western Canada with some similarities to Argentina.

The Kirchner administrations in Argentina (2003-2015) arguably benefited from high commodity prices on world markets that stimulated the economy by giving high returns to agriculture and natural resources – for example soy, perhaps also shale oil. The de la Rúa administration (1999-2001) had no such luck, otherwise it might have been able to avoid the worse excesses of the financial crisis and social unrest that precipitated its collapse. Good fortune is similarly lacking for the new Macri government (installed in December 2015), commodity prices having fallen significantly over recent months.

One thing that Macri might benefit from is foreign investment. His freeing of the dollar exchange rate is (in part) intended to lure funds that would boost the supply-side of the economy, and achieving this objective might be helped by the slowdown of its neighbour, Brazil. But Macri might do well to think about Argentina’s own experience in the 1990s. The Menem administrations (1989-1999) relied on foreign investors and indeed Argentina became the poster child of the IMF. The benefits were short-lived and the country eventually lost out with those policies, the economy going into a severe downturn (leaving the de la Rúa administration with a legacy that it never came to grips with).

All of this suggests that an issue for Macri, if he is to succeed in pushing Argentina to a new state and level of economic development, is finding ways to transform the supply-side of the economy. The goal is to ensure that production capability is strongly and sustainably rooted in the places – the localities and regions – that make up Argentina, without simple reliance on volatile commodity prices or fragile inward foreign investment.

Argentina is not alone in facing such challenges, which are also evident in the so-called developed world.

One illustration is the Okanagan, a place in British Columbia in Western Canada that has some possibly unexpected similarities with Argentina. Despite being part of a country categorized as economically developed, the Okanagan is in a process of developing and its current state is in certain respects relatively undeveloped compared to some other parts of Canada.

There has been an economically active First Nations population in the region for millennia but it is only since the end of the nineteenth century that there have been a significant number of immigrants, thus an embracing of models of market capitalism. There is currently a recognized, untapped potential for meaningful growth. Like Argentina, the Okanagan has tended to rely on agriculture and natural resources but it now appreciates that approach has its challenges. Also similarly, inward investment has figured importantly. Recently there has been emphasis on the example provided by Disney Canada, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company that is headquartered in Kelowna, the Okanagan’s principal city. The difficulty with relying on subsidiaries of transnational giants is finding ways of ensuring that they remain in a particular place.

To help to address such challenges, one of the public initiatives in the region has been establishment (ten years ago) of the Okanagan campus of The University of British Columbia (UBC). Through that campus, UBC is deliberately attempting to impact the supply-side of the Okanagan economy.

In agriculture, British Columbia has a globally emerging wine industry, the vast majority of which is located in the Okanagan. In partnership with KEDGE business school in Bordeaux (France), UBC has created a forum for winery owners to identify and address their strategic concerns. The aim is to enable sustained growth by shifting the industry into production of premium and super-premium wines. This is a focus on high value, intended to remove the region from competing at the low end, a wine market in which success is very difficult.

Another example is the recently established Survive and Thrive Applied Research facility (STAR). Focusing especially on high value manufacturing, STAR is intended to provide Okanagan-based small and medium sized enterprises with access to research and development laboratories. An objective is to foster cooperation on innovation between those enterprises and global corporations. The intention is to use STAR as a catalyst that draws out the benefits of working with large corporations, without making the Okanagan dependent on unstable inward investment.

To underpin the impact of such initiatives UBC has also initiated a project on the occupational structure of the Okanagan. The objectives are to understand the Okanagan’s recent occupational history, and to use that history to stimulate citizens to strategize about the region’s sustainable, long run future. The significance of this project is that it goes beyond the consideration of particular sectors, such as wine or high value manufacturing; the idea is to envision the future of the economy, which highlights the crucial importance of contextualizing each sector in the economic development of a region more broadly.

Referring back to Argentina, these examples possibly suggest an opportunity for the Macri administration: initiatives by universities in comparable parts of the world indicate the potential benefits of supporting the country’s universities so as to impact the supply-side of its economy.

Such opportunity also comes with a caveat, however. It is unknown how far Macri is committed to a neoliberal economy, and if universities are seen as a means of supporting the supply-side so as to buttress neoliberalism, that might violate their public interests mission. The explanation is simple: according to economic theory and evidence, an essentially neoliberal economy does not necessarily satisfy public interests. That can be the case for many reasons, for example because the interests of particular groups of people (maybe consumers, or employees or First Nations) are excluded from key decision-making in these economies, which then follow the narrower aims and desires of an exclusive group.

Similar reasoning also serves as a reminder for UBC, and indeed any university that is deliberately attempting to impact regional economic development anywhere in the world: if the concern is with public interests, outcomes cannot be left to the vagaries and dictates of an essentially neoliberal economy.