Opinion
Griffith University’s journey to being ranked second in the world in the Times Higher Education Sustainability Impact Ratings started with values and strategy.
We pride ourselves on being a values-led institution and our strategy reflects that in everything from its title – Creating a Brighter Future for All – to what it measures. For example, Griffith committed to providing 250,000 hours of free or very low-cost services to our community as one of our key strategic outcomes. While not a traditional measure of university success, we wanted to ensure that our contribution to our local communities was both measured and valued.
Deciding to engage with the Times Higher Education Sustainability Impact Ratings was therefore a way of holding ourselves to account through a global measurement for ensuring that all of our work (research, teaching, the way we operate our campuses) really did contribute to that brighter future for all.
Refocusing on impact as an institution raises some interesting questions. Research specialisation is again in vogue and, superficially, Griffith’s outcomes in the impact ratings may seem to validate this approach.
Griffith was the first university to teach Australian Environmental Studies (one of our four foundational programs in 1975) and continues to have clear strengths in environmental research and a depth of talent in water related research. These are areas in which we scored well, with life below water ranking number 1 in the world.
So far, so apparently specialised.
What made Environmental studies at Griffith such a leading program, however, and what continues to inform our research today, is a commitment to multidisciplinarity. Environmental science, of course, cuts across traditional sciences disciplines and engages people with a wide variety of STEM specialities. Yet any serious research program to protect the environment draws on law, policy, communications, politics, economics and more. What looks at a superficial glance to be specialised and narrow, turns out on investigation to be complex and broad.
A focus on impact very often requires thinking beyond university silos and disciplinary boundaries to ask what is needed to achieve the desired outcomes. Instead of starting with the researcher or discipline, you start with the community or the ecosystem or the individual and their needs.
While I recognise that research funding – whether provided by the university or externally – is not limitless and that some degree of focus or specialisation is needed, we do need to be thoughtful about the benefits of more comprehensive universities.
If one of the aims of universities is to provide the expertise to help tackle pressing problems, we need to recognise that these do not come neatly packaged in a way that narrow specialisation can solve. At Griffith, we’ve seen powerful outcomes when those with a background in mental health have worked with people from the arts or when medical scientists have partnered with quantum physicists.
If it is impact we want from universities, then policies which encourage narrower focuses may be counter-productive in an increasingly complex and interconnected world.
Impact rankings, like all rankings, are imperfect and flawed but they helpfully put a spotlight on a different set of questions than the traditional rankings. They are less about ‘how good are we’ and more about ‘how much good do we do’. Their implications for the policy debates around comprehensive versus specialised institutions should not be ignored.