Lucy Montgomery

Reinventing Universities

In April 2018, thirteen of us from around Australia and the world gathered to think about the future of the university as an open knowledge institution. This book is the product of that thinking. It represents a consensus view from some distinct perspectives.

An OKI is one in which barriers are eliminated in favour of a diversity of models for knowledge production and access. This shift is one of both technical and ideological revolution. Technical solutions diversify models of production and access.

The monopoly that universities may once have enjoyed as sites of privileged access to knowledge resources is being lost as digital developments make it possible for ordinary citizens to find, make and share knowledge in open and networked systems, mediated by technology platforms

In order to operate as effective Open Knowledge Institutions, universities need to implement the principle of subsidiarity: that responsibility for decisions and actions resides as close as possible to the makers of knowledge.

Our argument for Open Knowledge Institutions places diversity of perspectives, information, and knowledge sources at the centre of optimally functioning knowledge production networks.

To imagine universities as open knowledge institutions, we begin with some words about forms of knowledge, leading to ways in which knowledge has been conceptualised as a good in the knowledge economy.

This flow of video, information, searches, communication, transactions and intra-company traffic now greatly outpaces the movement of people and traded goods. There are some indicators that Open Knowledge Institutions (OKIs) are positioned to gain from these global data flows.

Policymakers are participants in the process of creating Open Knowledge Institutions. They contribute through the creation of formal policies and appropriate governance mechanisms.

Openness requires transparency. This principle applies both internally and externally. Both forms of accountability require organisational procedures and protocols for assessing the status of the open knowledge institutions by means of indicators.

The pathways to an open knowledge society must navigate between two extremes of chaos or anarchy, order and control. But these dystopic extremes have different characteristic forms. In other words there is not just one dystopia; the two extremes are dystopic, each in its own way.