UNESCO's common good idea of higher education and democracy

Higher education produces a broad range of collective goods, as well as the individualised goods that receive the main attention in neo-liberal policy settings. However, tendencies to the privatisation of provision and of funding, not universal but often pronounced, have weakened the association between the shared collective virtues of higher education and 'public' provision by states. The chapter reviews different meanings of 'public' and 'public/private' in higher education, and their policy use, noting that in Anglo-American countries, especially, a conceptual and practical impasse has been reached. The public/private dualism of economics blocks from view the full social value of higher education. A more useful notion is the communicative and universal public, the inclusive democratic relations embodied in 'public opinion' and 'public sphere'. This public is not in a zero-sum relation with private good. The UNESCO concept of 'common good' takes that understanding further. It moves beyond questions of ownership or distribution to include the kind of social relations that are fostered. Common good is premised on participative and solidaristic communities. It is created in civil society as well as the state, and involves private as well as public actors, though state engagement is important in securing equity. When applied to higher education the notion of common good is a useful heuristic and objective that counters the attenuated notion of society in the market model. The chapter concludes with reflections on the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic in higher education, which highlights the problems of financing a collective approach to provision, but underlines the need for it.