CRESJ Seminar

The idea of common good in education has become topical. In 2015, UNESCO suggested to consider education as a “common good” in order to differentiate knowledge from a mere commodity. According to UNESCO, education can be understood as more than just a “public good”. This conceptual shift arises important questions about how knowledge is created and, ultimately, how it is distributed fairly (see Marginson, 2024). According to the seminal work of Elinor Ostrom (1990), common goods are primarily created and governed by communities. This prompts the question: How can markets and states in both developed and developing countries promote knowledge as a common good?

A way to address this question could be twofold. First, it is necessary to engage in an empirical analysis to understand how specific communities generate knowledge as a common good. Second, it is crucial to explore, both nationally and globally, how these communities organize themselves within specific institutional settings to create and distribute “common goods”. This research project addressed the first question.

As the concept of the common good is “relational”, according to Mazzucato (cited in Marginson, 2024:25), two relations were identified within nine higher educations of Mexico: (1) Teaching Relationship (TR) and (2) Research Relationship (RR). These relationships describe how students, teachers and administrative staff collaborate to educate young people academically and how they act collectively to create knowledge. These two dimensions then were operationalized by defining five key dimensions of university life: agency, institutional stability, governance, fairness and human flourishing (ASGFH). Empirical data were gathered via a survey sent to probabilistic samples of students, teachers and administrative staff across the nine selected universities in Mexico. The questionnaire included questions about each of the ASGFH dimensions, using a Likert scale.

This project highlighted the importance of viewing higher education as a common good by focusing on the “quality” of institutional processes, rather than merely on output indicators. Central concerns for promoting institutional quality, thus, may lie in how members of a university community act, relate and organize themselves daily—not just in how much they produce by the end of the academic year.

As anticipated, the aggregate measure of common good across universities varied significantly. However, it was interesting that the most prestigious and productive universities did not necessarily register the highest value of common good. Processes matter. In this regard, human agency emerged as a central factor for the formation of the common good within universities. The “freedom to advance whatever goals and values a person has reason to advance” (Sen, 2009:289) was positively and significantly related to the other four dimensions of the ASGFH model.

Focusing on human agency as a key component of the common good in the university allows a more imaginative way to discuss and promote institutional changes within the university. Since processes matter, teaching and research relations between the members of a university community do so too. If these relationships are altered, so too may the quality of the university. To forge such changes, governments can intervene, but only once the common good is observed empirically and better understood globally: “the more people who share useful knowledge, the greater the common good” (Hess & Ostrom, 2007:5).

Dr Flores-Crespo has held visiting scholar positions at Harvard University, the University of York (UK), and the Pablo VI Foundation in Spain. His work focuses on education policy analysis and the relationship between higher education and human development. Dr Flores-Crespo served as Network Co-ordinator for the Human Development and Capability Association. Over the past 20 years, he has led impactful research projects, including the Education Policy Lab. Drawing on both his theoretical expertise and empirical evidence, he has advised the Mexican Ministry of Education and was a member of the academic team responsible for drafting Mexico’s Higher Education Law. Dr Flores-Crespo was also the editor of the Inter-American Journal for Adult Education and of the Mexican Journal of Educational Research. He is currently co-leading the “The Futures of Education” project in collaboration with universities in Central America. His most recent book, Why education policies fail? A governmental analysis from 2018 to 2024 (forthcoming in Spanish by ANUIES), examines the shortcomings of education policy in Mexico over the past six years.