Whose interest does it serve? A confucian community engagement

Abstract

It is a well-known fact that universities assumed the third mission, which includes community engagement, in order to be financially viable, and this has taken centre stage. This paradigm shift begs the question as to whose interests community engagement serves. It has been difficult to separate community engagement from traditional research, as community engagement projects can emerge from new research ideas. As an emerging property, community engagement is not supposed to be reductionist, but rather holistic, in order to afford universities various opportunities to function as sites of citizenship. This enables universities to contribute to the knowledge society and knowledge economy, and to generate mutual benefits. No instruments are used to gauge the benefits for communities, but in the case of academics and universities, the benefits include outputs, promotions and revenues. The epistemologies and methodologies are foreign and do not appreciate or understand problematic situations of communities and locals. Universities have transformed from communities of scholars into workplaces. The communities are often pawns in the hidden agenda for community engagement activities, include, but are not limited to, university entrepreneurialism; dispossession of indigenous knowledge of natives and locals; advancement of commercialisation and capitalism; and academics' quest for promotion. This conceptual paper argues that community engagement is a complex phenomenon and requires a systemic non-linear approach.