Going to university is a deeply social experience

The experience of going to university is deeply social.

University campuses across the country have come alive in the last few weeks and I was oddly, perhaps even disproportionately, excited to see it.

Don’t get me wrong, I welcome the start of each academic year as it always has a bit of frisson. But this year seemed different.

At my university the sense of anticipation from both students and staff was stronger; the sense of ‘not-quite-post-pandemic’ relief was palpable. People were keen to be there.

There were lot of smiles – many nervous ones – and a strong sense of the collective. The experience was a profoundly social one. This was the congregation of a scholarly community.

It did remind me that going to university, and particularly coming onto campus, is and will continue to be a deeply social experience. And for good reason.

Social interaction is fundamental to student learning and a university education.

Learning something new and expanding your understanding in any area means being open to new ideas, views and opinions.

In classrooms that hum, academics provoke students with their expert view and then help students engage with these ideas. In classrooms that really hum this involves getting students to have conversations among themselves so they can explore and wrestle with new ideas. So they can contest and challenge ideas and each other in a process of furthering their overall understanding.

In the last few Covid years some of my academic colleagues have lamented their inability to really engage with students and see their students as they engage in this learning process. Being remote from students made it more difficult for them to provide students with feedback, to mediate their understanding or challenge and extend them further.

A wonderful and quintessential part of an undergraduate student experience at University is finding your tribe. Like minded souls who collaborate and challenge your thinking in equal measure. Who knew there were others obsessed with every nuance and interpretation of English literature? I can’t believe I found others who are happy to work for hours nutting through the engineering of robot circuitry!

Beyond the classroom, coming onto campus gives students further opportunities to challenge themselves and embrace difference.

Universities are both big and small communities, with student clubs, museums, gyms, festivals, libraries, concerts, coffee shops and cafes. Campus life, when even minimally embraced, means students wander through a gallery, join a social club, take in a political demonstration, or happen upon a cultural celebration. When you are asked to sign a petition to score a free vegan sausage for a social cause, you need to weigh things up a little before responding.

While it is likely that students will encounter people like them, they will also inevitably rub shoulders with people from whom they are different.

As with classroom learning, this is incredibly important in furthering individuals’ understanding of themselves, the world around them, and their place in it.

These social interactions, inside and outside the classroom, are essential to a university education and are the foundation stones not only for the development of new knowledge – in economics, law, philosophy, computing, whatever discipline – but also to the development of the individual.

Some will make the point: “But can’t you do all this online? Surely the pandemic has shown us we can use digital technologies to provide education remotely, that does not burden students with the need to come to campus”.

While the response to this is “Yes”, my excitement about this year’s return to campus stems from a recognition that those who are participating in university education sense that something was lost over the last few pandemic years.

Ultimately, any forced choice between online and campus-based education is a false one. Both have and will continue to exist and are intertwined.

There are excellent ways to carefully design effective online education that leads to productive student learning. Australian universities and those around the world have been doing this well for many years, and well before Covid hit. And some students will continue to choose this as their preferred way to access a university education.

But the mass return of students to campus across Australia this week shows that students themselves are seeing the value of a campus-based education are voting with their feet. As we emerge from the pandemic, universities and academics are also rushing towards campus-based education not away from it.

Contemporary Australian universities come in various flavours and have different emphases in their missions – education, research, engagement with their local and international communities among others.

But for many, providing opportunities for student to get together as a community on a campus, to be given the opportunity to engage with academic experts and other students, and to be challenged to think differently, is central to a university’s mission.

Our return to campus should be embraced, for the individuals involved, for the community, and for the social good that it is.

Gregor Kennedy is deputy vice-chancellor (academic) at the University of Melbourne and a professor of higher education in the Centre for the Study of Higher Education.