The Role of Higher Education in Driving Social Change

Societies are never static. Over time, they shift – in the way people think, the values they hold, the structures they live within, and the opportunities they access. This process is what sociologists call social change. And while many forces drive it – technology, economics, politics, culture – education, particularly at the higher level, stands out as one of the most deliberate and sustained drivers of change. Universities and colleges do not merely respond to society; they actively reshape it. Understanding how higher education fulfils this role – and where the tensions lie – is essential for anyone involved in teaching, policy-making, or learning.

Understanding social change 🔗

At its core, social change refers to fundamental shifts in the attitudes, values, relationships, and structures that organise collective human life. These shifts can be gradual – such as the slow change in gender norms over decades – or rapid, as seen during revolutionary periods or major technological disruptions. Social change is not always linear or uniform. Different communities and regions experience it at different speeds and in different directions, depending on their historical, cultural, and economic context.

What is important to note is that social change is not inherently positive or negative. It is, by nature, contested. Industrialisation, for instance, brought economic growth but also deepened inequality and displaced communities. Urbanisation created new opportunities but eroded traditional social ties. These contradictions are central to any serious discussion of how institutions like universities engage with change. Social change also involves shifts in power – who holds it, who gains access to it, and whose knowledge systems are recognised as legitimate. Education sits directly at the intersection of all these dynamics.

Education as a catalyst for social change 🔗

The relationship between education and social progress is well-established. UNESCO describes education as a fundamental human right that empowers individuals, strengthens communities, and fosters inclusive societies – a lifelong process that equips learners with the knowledge, skills, and values needed to build a better future. This is not merely aspirational language. Education shapes the labour market, informs public health behaviour, influences political participation, and determines how communities respond to crises.

In the Indian context, the Education Commission of 1964-66, chaired by Dr. D.S. Kothari and popularly known as the Kothari Commission, articulated this connection with unusual clarity. The Commission was established to examine every aspect of India’s educational sector and recommend a national pattern of education aligned with the country’s developmental goals. Its report, titled Education and National Development, opened with the now-iconic declaration that “the destiny of India is being shaped in her classrooms.” This was not rhetorical flourish – it was a policy conviction. The Commission explicitly framed education as an instrument of national reconstruction, social transformation, and economic modernisation.

The Commission identified several key goals for education: increasing national productivity, accelerating modernisation, promoting social and national integration, and inculcating values aligned with a democratic, secular society. Each of these goals represented a direction of social change that education was expected to drive. The Commission also recommended raising educational expenditure to 6% of GDP, underscoring the view that investment in education is, in effect, investment in national transformation.

UNESCO’s own position mirrors this. The United Nations system recognises that education is not just a goal in itself but a catalyst for achieving broader development transformations, from economic growth to gender equality to resilient civic institutions. This perspective frames education as something fundamentally intertwined with social outcomes – not separate from them.

Higher education’s unique role 🔗

While all levels of education contribute to social development, higher education occupies a distinct position. Universities and colleges are, by design, sites of knowledge production, critical inquiry, and intellectual debate. They bring together learners at a formative age, expose them to diverse ideas, and send them out as professionals, researchers, and citizens who will shape their fields and communities for decades.

According to UNESCO, higher education institutions have a critical role to play in responding to pressing contemporary challenges – through research, teaching, and community engagement, they can provide the critical understanding, scientific expertise, and creative imagination needed to tackle complex, multi-layered issues such as climate change, persistent inequalities, technological disruptions, and democratic backsliding.

What makes higher education particularly powerful is its ability to integrate knowledge across disciplines and expand the boundaries of what is known. A medical researcher drawing on sociology, an economist informed by environmental science, an engineer guided by ethics – these forms of cross-disciplinary thinking are what help societies navigate complex transitions. Higher education, when functioning well, is not simply a place where existing knowledge is transmitted but where new knowledge is generated and existing assumptions are challenged.

UNESCO notes that higher education systems lie at the heart of social progress, advancing knowledge and innovation worldwide, and that by reaffirming their public mission, they can build more inclusive learning ecosystems and accelerate solutions to global challenges. This framing is significant – it positions universities not as isolated academic institutions but as active participants in shaping the societies around them.

The Kothari Commission also recognised higher education’s integrative potential. It specifically recommended strengthening postgraduate research, developing autonomous universities of excellence, and linking higher education to national economic and social needs. The Commission’s vision was of a higher education system that did not operate in isolation from the community but was responsive to it – producing graduates capable of contributing to India’s ongoing social and economic transformation.

Challenges and controversies: whose change, and in which direction? 🔗

The relationship between higher education and social change is not straightforward. It is marked by genuine controversies about what “progress” means, who defines it, and whose interests are served by any particular direction of change. Three overlapping debates are worth examining closely.

Modernisation and its discontents 🔗

One of the most persistent tensions in higher education is the association between education and modernisation. In development discourse, modernisation typically refers to the transition from traditional, agrarian, or subsistence-based social forms to industrialised, urbanised, and technologically oriented ones. Education is often seen as the vehicle for this transition – teaching scientific thinking, rational inquiry, and professional skills that enable societies to industrialise and participate in the global economy.

However, this framing of modernisation is not neutral. Critics point out that it tends to treat Western-style industrial society as the inevitable endpoint of social development – and education systems as the mechanism for achieving it. This has real consequences for what gets taught, whose knowledge is valued, and what cultural practices get preserved or marginalised.

The westernisation controversy 🔗

A closely related issue is westernisation – the concern that higher education, particularly in the global south, has been shaped by and continues to replicate Western epistemologies, curricula, and institutional models. Scholars have noted that globalised and internationalised practices in higher education systems continue to reinforce particular knowledge hierarchies, where global north contributions are treated as primary and global south contributions as secondary. This has significant implications for how social change is conceptualised within universities and what kinds of knowledge and cultural frameworks are mobilised in its service.

Research on the internationalisation of higher education in contexts like China has found that for many academics, internationalisation meant convergence with Western models of higher education – raising questions about whether internationalisation is, in practice, indistinguishable from westernisation. This is not a peripheral debate. It goes to the heart of what it means for a higher education system to serve its own society’s vision of change rather than importing someone else’s.

Ideological conflict within universities 🔗

Universities have also long been contested ideological spaces. Historically, many states have viewed universities as potential sources of political opposition and have sought to use educational institutions to disseminate prevailing ideologies – a pattern that has led to significant restrictions on academic freedom in various parts of the world. At the same time, universities have served as incubators of social movements, producing the intellectual frameworks and activist energy that drive demands for change from below.

This dual character – universities as both instruments of state ideology and sites of resistance to it – reflects a fundamental truth: higher education does not exist outside of politics. The question of which direction social change should take is never purely academic. It is always bound up with interests, power, and competing visions of the good society. The ideological conflict within universities – between conservative and progressive visions, between indigenous and globalised epistemologies, between elite formation and mass access – is not a failure of higher education. It is evidence that higher education is doing what it should: engaging seriously with the contested nature of social life.

Higher education’s responsibility in guiding progressive change 🔗

Given all these tensions, what can higher education realistically contribute to social change? The answer lies in how clearly institutions define and act on their public mission. UNESCO’s International Commission on the Futures of Education has argued that universities and higher education institutions must be active in every aspect of building a new social contract for education – from advancing research to serving as contributing partners to communities across the globe.

This means that higher education’s role in social change is not simply about producing economically productive graduates. It is about cultivating citizens who can think critically, engage ethically with complex problems, and contribute to a more just and inclusive society. The UNESCO roadmap for higher education identifies fostering inquiry, critical thinking, and creativity – alongside committing resources to equity and pluralism – as central to the sector’s transformative potential.

For developing societies in particular, the stakes are high. Higher education systems that serve only elite groups, that replicate imported knowledge frameworks without adaptation, or that remain insulated from community needs, are unlikely to drive inclusive social change. The Kothari Commission’s insistence that educational equality is essential for a democratic society remains as relevant today as it was in 1966. The challenge is not whether higher education can drive social change – it clearly can, and does. The challenge is ensuring that the change it drives is genuinely progressive, equitable, and rooted in the values and needs of the society it serves.

What do you think? As higher education systems expand globally, do you think universities in countries like India are driving social change on their own terms – or are they largely adapting to models shaped elsewhere? And in your experience, does higher education do enough to address the needs of the most marginalised communities, or does it tend to reproduce existing social hierarchies?

References

1. https://www.unesco.org/en/education
2. https://educerecentre.com/kothari-commission-1964-66/
3. https://www.insightsonindia.com/modern-indian-history/social-policies/education-policies/kothari-education-commission-1964-66/
4. https://unsdg.un.org/latest/stories/transforming-education-un-country-teams-leading-charge
5. https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/transforming-higher-education-global-collaboration-visioning-and-action
6. https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/transforming-higher-education-global-roadmap-future
7. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14767724.2025.2510593
8. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13803611.2022.2041853
9. https://www.britannica.com/topic/education/Colonialism-and-its-consequences
10. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000379707