Three roles of universities as a public good

Universities are critical public institutions. But what are they for? This enduring question has never felt more urgent.

On the September 2, 2025, I attended an OECD webinar titled Is Tertiary Education Meeting Today’s Job Demands? The discussion framed higher education primarily in economic terms—measuring its value by graduate employability, alignment with labour market needs, and returns on private and national investment. While important, such a perspective risked reducing universities to little more than training grounds for the economy.

Within the Australian context, the higher education sector is in a state of uncertainty. Job cuts have become alarmingly widespread across the university sector. The National Tertiary Education Union documented 4,524 redundancies during 2020 and 2021. The Union also estimates that, since last year, 18 universities have collectively announced 3,578 job losses, representing around 2.5% of academic, research, and administrative roles in the sector.

This productivist framing and erosion of capacity undermine the university’s ability to contribute as a public good.

What does it mean for a university to serve the public good?

Universities, as a public good, prioritise the well-being of society over individual or commercial interests. They align their teaching, research, and community engagement to serve the collective welfare. They earn and maintain their social licence by demonstrating that they operate not merely for private or commercial gain but in ways that benefit society as a whole. Simon Marginson highlights two categories of the public good outcomes of universities: individual benefits in the form of “personal growth or formation as a citizen” and collective benefits such as “technological literacy, public health, local cultural activities, or peaceful and tolerant society.”

Publicly engaged universities ensure that their work is accessible and relevant to the broader public. Sociologist Raewyn Connell emphasises that a good university prioritises social good over profit, upholding equity, democracy, and public accountability. It plays a critical role in fostering critical citizenship, advancing social justice, and generating knowledge for collective benefit.

We should resist the narrow productivist framing of higher education as merely a pipeline for the labour market. The idea of public good underscores that the societal value of universities lies in their ability and willingness to act as universities, rather than adopting the logics of business.

Three metaphors for a public good university

Universities’ contribution to the public good emerges precisely from the unique functions they perform: producing knowledge, educating citizens, and sustaining critical inquiry.

Building on this view, I suggest that a public good university can be understood through three interrelated metaphorical roles: glass, mirror, and telescope. Let us discuss briefly each of the roles in turn.

The glass role

The glass role of a public good university signifies openness and accountability. This role enables reciprocal engagement between universities and the societies that support them. It allows society to see clearly how knowledge is produced, shared, and applied, while holding the institution accountable to the public it serves.

Critical to the metaphor is the idea that universities should serve as role models for equitable and free societies. At the same time, they must not only project knowledge outward, but also receive insight, critique, and priorities from society. In a way, the glass role ensures a continuous, two-way exchange. Commenting int eh context of the U.S., former University of Missouri president C. Peter Magrath wrote:

Universities not engaged with their communities in the 21st century will soon find themselves disengaged from any meaningful relevance to the citizenry.

His warning is both timely and incisive: universities that fail to engage meaningfully with their communities risk losing their relevance and legitimacy in society.

The mirror role

The mirror metaphor underscores the role of a public good university in critiquing society, thereby reflecting back to society. Just as a mirror allows a person to recognise and confirm their own being, a public good university enables society to see itself and interrogate its values. Without this reflective function, society risks losing its capacity for critical self-understanding and democratic renewal. In the words of Ahmet Altan,

The mirror shows you to you, it confirms your being. The distance between you and the mirror creates a field that belongs only to you, a field that surrounds you, is yours, somewhere no one else can trespass. Without a mirror, that field also disappears.

Without such a reflective space, society risks losing the capacity for self-awareness and transformation, much like the individual without a mirror loses the field of recognition that confirms their being.

The telescope role

The telescope role of a public good university represents represents imagination,, projecting visions of possible futures and guiding society toward long-term solutions through research, innovation, and creative inquiry. A public good university should seek to expand knowledge horizons.

A university that values its mission of serving society does not stop at reflecting back to society its strengths, contradictions, and injustices; it also providing a space to reimagine alternative social arrangements. The telescope role of universities value responsible innovation, which is grounded in four key principles: anticipation, reflexivity, inclusion, and responsiveness. It calls on researchers and institutions not only to foresee potential impacts and uncertainties, but also to critically examine their own assumptions, engage diverse voices in the process, and remain adaptable as new challenges and opportunities emerge.

Public engagement

What unites all three metaphors is the idea of public engagement. The glass role conveys engagement through transparency and openness, allowing society to look in, ensuring accountability, while also enabling knowledge to flow out as a shared resource. The mirror role highlights how universities not only reflect society’s values, challenges, and inequalities, but also create space for critical self-examination. The telescope role, by contrast, points to a more future-oriented engagement—extending society’s vision, anticipating emerging challenges, and shaping what could be through research, innovation, and imagination.

Universities are increasingly framed in market terms—as private investments or engines of economic growth. We should resist this temptation. As a counternarrative, we should reclaim the non-economic public values of those knowledge institutions.

This article was originally published on EduResearch Matters. Read the original article.