Alex user takes on the oft-made claim by universities that "we care about community" by asking, essentially, "where is the evidence of this?" He looks at two example of measures, one of which (pictured, 48 page PDF) was produced by Nous Group from a series of Global University Engagement Summits, and the second (77 page PDF) an outcome of the a European Towards a European Framework for Community Engagement in Higher Education (TEFCE) initiative. "As a self-improvement tool, TEFCE's toolbox seems useful – almost certainly more useful than what the Nous Group has developed," he writes. There's a lot of overlap between the two but the second offers a much more precise set of indicators. That said, they both feel very narrow, nibbling around the edges of what a university does, and being (it seems to me) not willing to consider a case in which the university's core mission (providing access to research and learning) is contributed to the community.
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