Opinion
How can we reorganise higher education to achieve a more equitable distribution of knowledge?
This requires a broader understanding of openness: not simply as access to knowledge, but as a system of relationships in which resources, visibility, authority, responsibility and benefits are recognised and shared more equitably.
When we met in Canberra in February 2026, at the Universities Without Walls Symposium organised by Tim Winkler and Future Campus, we were approaching similar questions from very different experiences. The concept of a distributed university had emerged from a vision of more sustainable higher education, while Ukraine's University Without Walls had grown out of the need to sustain a university community through war and displacement. Future Campus had already explored the parallels between these approaches in 2025. Our meeting gave us an opportunity to discuss them together and reflect on what they might mean for the future of higher education.
Our conversation gradually moved beyond models of university organisation to broader questions of participation, collaboration and equity in education and research. These ideas were explored further at a webinar organised by Open Book Publishers, bringing together colleagues interested in finding practical responses to the challenges facing higher education.
Today there are more open journals, repositories, educational resources and digital platforms than ever before. Yet this does not mean that knowledge has become equally accessible to everyone. An open resource can remain invisible; global infrastructure can reproduce inequality; and formally accessible data can create risks for individuals and communities. Openness on its own is therefore not enough. We also need to look at how resources, capacity, visibility, authority, responsibility and benefits are distributed. This largely determines whether openness actually contributes to equity.
Colleagues from Australia, Germany, Mexico, Nigeria, the UK and Ukraine brought very different experiences to the webinar conversation. What struck us was how similar concerns emerged from such different contexts.
Drawing on her experience with the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Ivonne Lujano showed why open scholarly infrastructures need to take account of local languages, practices and community needs. Daniel Otto highlighted a paradox of open education: educational resources may be freely available yet remain invisible to those who need them. Omo Oaiya offered an African perspective, suggesting that perhaps we should focus on scaling collaborative ecosystems rather than individual institutions, while preserving their autonomy. Igor Lyman shared the experience of Ukrainian universities during the war, bringing questions of security, responsibility and institutional resilience into the discussion. Lucy Barnes helped bring these different perspectives together.
Despite these different perspectives, we found ourselves returning to four questions:
- Who can participate?
- Who makes decisions?
- Who takes responsibility?
- Who benefits?
Exploring these questions reveals the difference between simply providing open access and distributing knowledge equitably.
The experience of Berdyansk State Pedagogical University illustrates the human side of this challenge. Following the Russian occupation of Berdyansk in 2022, staff and students found themselves dispersed across Ukraine and beyond, yet the university continued to function as a community. Its "University Without Walls" depended on shared resources, coordination, human support and trust, rather than digital technologies alone.
The book Distributing Knowledge: Openness, Equity, and Higher Education Transformation (2026) builds on the distributed university model developed in The Distributed University for Sustainable Higher Education (2022), extending the discussion towards the equitable distribution of knowledge, resources and opportunities. This perspective resonates with research on extending the CARE Principles to the governance of data concerning communities affected by war and humanitarian crises.
This brings us to a broader concern: expanding access to knowledge does not by itself change existing relationships of power, responsibility and influence.
Open Science has achieved much in making knowledge more widely available. Yet open resources do not guarantee equitable participation in knowledge creation. Even broader participation does not necessarily mean having a say in research priorities, decision-making or the distribution of benefits. The issue, therefore, extends beyond how knowledge circulates to the relationships between people and institutions through which knowledge is created. The challenge now is to translate these ideas into forms of collaboration where participation comes with a genuine opportunity to influence decisions, share responsibilities and shape outcomes.
The webinar brought together different experiences, perspectives and questions. We would now like to take this conversation further, exploring practical models of cooperation in which universities can share resources while preserving autonomy, and students and researchers can participate more meaningfully in shaping knowledge.
What began as an exchange of different perspectives is now opening up possibilities for working together. We are already discussing international educational initiatives and plan to continue our conversations virtually, bringing together colleagues who share an interest in making openness more equitable in practice.
We do not have ready-made solutions, but we believe there is much to learn from working across institutions, disciplines and countries.
We would be delighted to hear from others interested in taking this conversation forward.
Richard Heller is Emeritus Professor at the Universities of Newcastle in Australia and Manchester in the UK.
Professor Yana Sychikova is Vice-Rector for Research at Berdyansk State Pedagogical University in Ukraine.