ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that higher education needs to replace instrumental self-serving norms with altruism, compassion, and social cohesion. Recent policy-level initiatives, and associated institutional-level systems of reward and recognition, have artificially skewed higher education towards individual-level selection and competition. This competition has resulted in a division between top ‘performing’ academics and ‘lower rated’ staff. Furthermore, whilst these initiatives have been driven towards the attainment of excellence, in reality, they have created a system that is seen to be increasingly self-serving and ill-suited to the world beyond academia. Drawing on Darwinian thinking, it is argued that higher education needs a rebalance between individual- and group-level selection processes. Many call for research to address the big problems facing society today, leveraging resources across disciplines. Such collective interdisciplinary efforts contrast the individual-level gamesmanship prevalent in academia, requiring a shift from individual- to group-level competition. With this shift comes the need for altruism, compassion, and social cohesion, replacing instrumental self-serving norms. It is argued that governments, institutions, and academics themselves have an important role to play in this process.
