Blog | Patrick Blessinger

Rethinking higher education in the service of humanity

Rethinking higher education in the service of humanity Patrick Blessinger St. John's University (NYC) and International HETL Association As I reflect on the first 25 research-based articles I have authored and co-authored over the past several years with University World News, I would like to evaluate and summarise the key findings that have emerged from the empirical evidence used to ground these articles. The findings discussed in these articles is further explicated in the peer-reviewed book series, Innovations in Higher Education Teaching and Learning, a research collaboration between Emerald Group Publishing, the International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association (HETL) and hundreds of educational researchers and scholars from around the world. Other research on higher education is disseminated through the Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education. HETL (in consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council or ECOSOC) initiated this book series to further the mission of ECOSOC and to support goal four of the UN Sustainable [...]

Patrick Blessinger2018-07-20T12:25:26+00:00July 20, 2018|Tags: Democracy, Human Rights, Patrick Blessinger, University World News, V5A5|

Academic freedom is essential to democracy

Academic freedom is essential to democracy Patrick Blessinger and Hans de Wit St. John's University (NYC), International HETL Association, and Boston College Since the inception of the first universities nearly a thousand years ago, the freedom to pursue intellectual inquiry has served as a core value for professors, students and educational institutions. Freedom of inquiry became more important during the Renaissance and Reformation periods as well as the Scientific Revolution because of their focus on freedom of thought and critical inquiry. Following these periods of dramatic change, freedom of inquiry took on greater importance as universities transitioned from scholasticism, which emphasised dialectic reasoning as the main pedagogical approach, to humanism, which emphasised critical thinking and empirical observation. Since higher education is, by definition, an environment where new knowledge is produced and consumed, it follows that the freedom to engage in intellectual inquiry is essential to the purpose of higher education, to the mission of higher education institutions and to [...]

Patrick Blessinger2018-07-20T12:27:38+00:00April 14, 2018|Tags: Academic Freedom, Democracy, Hans de Wit, Patrick Blessinger, University World News, V5A4|

Enabling lifelong learning through open education

Enabling lifelong learning through open education Patrick Blessinger St. John's University (NYC) and International HETL Association Broadly speaking, open education (OE) is the widening of access to high quality educational resources in order to promote lifelong learning and greater participation in higher learning and training. One of the driving principles of OE is that lifelong learning is a human right. Thus, at its heart, OE is an educational philosophy about how knowledge should be created, shared, and accessed, and it is this philosophy that drives OE principles, policies, processes, and practices. These ideas are further explained in the research-based book I published with OBP, Open Education: International Perspectives in Higher Education. UNESCO supports OER as a means for “…building of peace, sustainable social and economic development, and intercultural dialogue.” In addition to UNESCO, organizations such as the Hewlett Foundation, the International HETL Association, and Open Education Consortium, among others, have promoted the OE movement [...]

Patrick Blessinger2018-10-23T21:46:56+00:00March 31, 2018|Tags: Democracy, Open Book Publishers, Open Education, Patrick Blessinger, V5A3|

Towards a more equal, inclusive higher education

Towards a more equal, inclusive higher education Patrick Blessinger, Jaimie Hoffman and Mandla Makhanya St John’s University (NYC), University of Wisconsin at La Crosse, University of South Africa Widening participation initiatives aim to improve access to higher education opportunities for all people. Driven by increased demand for education from all segments of society as well as legal reforms and human rights declarations, these initiatives focus on improving access for students from historically marginalised backgrounds (for example, ethnic minorities, students with disabilities and students from low-income backgrounds) to address inequities and inequalities in higher education. Thus, the heart of widening participation policies revolves around making access to education more fair and equal. To that end, equity and inclusion initiatives aim to address and redress longstanding practices of exclusion and privilege (typically along race, ethnicity, sex, gender and socio-economic class lines) which have tended to stratify society. Each society or institution of higher education is unique [...]

Patrick Blessinger2018-03-17T16:40:45+00:00March 17, 2018|Tags: Equality, Inclusion, Jaimie Hoffman, Mandla Makhanya, Patrick Blessinger, University World News, V5A2|

Towards higher education in service of humanity

Towards higher education in service of humanity Patrick Blessinger and Mandla Makhanya St. John's University (NYC), USA and University of South Africa The growing importance of education at all levels and the inclusion of more stakeholders in the educational enterprise has sparked debate about the fundamental nature and purpose of higher education (that is, what type of good is education?). Traditionally, viewed from an economic perspective, higher education has been treated largely as a public good. Since the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948, this public good view has been reinforced by the view that education is also a human right. These factors, together with the increased demand for higher education to meet the economic development needs of the post-World War II economies, resulted in a huge increase in government support for higher education. This factor further solidified the notion of higher education as a public good. However, [...]

Patrick Blessinger2018-02-18T23:18:36+00:00February 18, 2018|Tags: Common Good, Inclusion, Lifelong Learning, Mandla Makhanya, Patrick Blessinger, University World News, V5A1|

Higher education’s social responsibility to refugees

Higher education’s social responsibility to refugees Patrick Blessinger and Enakshi Sengupta St. John's University (NYC), USA and American University of Kurdistan The number of displaced people around the world has reached unprecedented levels. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, estimates that more than 65 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced from their homes due to extreme violence, war, persecution and similar factors. Currently, people are being displaced at a rate of about 20 people per minute. Particularly disturbing is that most of the growth in displaced people has occurred over the past five years. About one-third of the 65 million displaced people are classified as refugees. Over 50% of all refugees are children. The UNHCR defines a refugee as a person who is forced to leave her or his home country to escape extreme violence, war, persecution and man-made disasters and is granted asylum in another country. Most displaced people come [...]

Patrick Blessinger2017-12-24T15:05:58+00:00December 24, 2017|Tags: Enakshi Sengupta, Human Rights, Patrick Blessinger, Refugees, Social Responsibility, University World News, V4A13|

Inclusive higher education for the benefit of all

Inclusive higher education for the benefit of all Patrick Blessinger, Jaimie Hoffman and Mandla Makhanya St John’s University (NYC), University of Wisconsin at La Crosse, University of South Africa Broadly defined, institutions of higher education are social structures that fulfil a common social purpose of creating an educated citizenry. They achieve this through policies, rules, customs, symbols and traditions. As such, institutions exemplify structures for social order, creating the norms and expectations for human behaviour. As such, educational institutions have an implicit social responsibility to ensure that these practices work for the benefit of all students. Throughout the nearly one thousand-year history of higher education, higher education institutions, or HEIs, have demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of continual political, social, economic and technological change. HEIs have remained remarkably stable in their missions, structures and practices over the past millennium, even in the face of revolutions, innovations and other forms of [...]