What is Socially Just Design in Postsecondary Education, Why Do We Need It, and What Is Your Role?

What is Socially Just Design in Postsecondary Education, Why Do We Need It, and What Is Your Role?

By Andrew K. Koch, Ph.D., President and Chief Operating & Innovation Officer

You may have noticed that the Gardner Institute recently started a virtual series called Socially Just DesignTM in Postsecondary Education. As my colleagues and I circulate information about the series, we are often met with the question, “What do you mean by the phrase ‘socially just design?’” Since so many of you have asked, I am providing an answer.

For purposes of our work, the phrase “socially just design in postsecondary education” is defined as the means that colleges and universities, and those who work and study within them, use to actively address the ways in which people experience oppression and marginalization within postsecondary institutions and the broader communities of which those institutions are a part. 

Actively addressing and, as a result, advancing socially just design in postsecondary education requires both:

  • continuous examination of how burdens, responsibilities, power, benefits, and privileges are unevenly distributed – for both students and educators of all types; and,

  • actions that eliminate unjust practices, policies, and design as supported by continuous examination.  

Working to realize socially just design in postsecondary education is not a linear process. Rather, it is a continuous effort to refine equitable and just outcomes in ways that continuously include different perspectives and communities.  

Socially just design in postsecondary education requires local examination and active redesign of systems that are often deemed sacrosanct or the domain of a privileged few – such as the gateway course system, the curricular system, the academic labor system, the transfer system, and the academic advising system. These actions have been, heretofore, thwarted in many colleges and universities because of decades- and in many cases centuries-old traditions and privileges. These unexamined and unquestioned privileges and traditions thwart progressive social progress.     

Even when making progress, efforts to apply and scale socially just design in postsecondary education are filled with well-intentioned but misguided initiatives, changing targets and tactics, and failures. But the pursuit of socially just design in postsecondary education must persist and be accelerated. For education without justice is an empty promise, a means for maintaining an inequitable status quo, and a threat to democracy itself.

What I share is a working definition. As such, it will shape and be shaped by both the work that my Gardner Institute colleagues and I do as well as by the work done by persons, institutions, organizations, and systems with which we interact. This includes you, dear reader.

You and your colleagues are invited to join us in further developing the definition for and advancing the cause of socially just design in postsecondary education. This is a movement that needs your involvement. And the time for action is now.

We look forward to working together to realize a more just and equitable postsecondary system.