Reclaiming the Civic Role of Universities: What Social Cohesion Data Tells Us About the Road Ahead

As Australia navigates an era of heightened social, economic, and political complexity, the civic role of universities is being both questioned and rediscovered. At our final Welcoming Universities Network Meeting for 2025, we were joined by Anthea Hancocks, CEO of the Scanlon Foundation Research Institute, to explore the findings of the 2025 Mapping Social Cohesion report and reflect on what they mean for the higher education sector.

What emerged was a powerful ideas about the opportunity, and it could be argued the responsibility for universities to help shape a cohesive, inclusive future. But doing so requires intentionality, imagination, and a recommitment to the core civic purpose of higher education.

Theme: Universities as Neighbourhoods of Belonging

A recurring idea throughout the discussion was the need to see universities not as detached institutions, but as neighbourhoods within neighbourhoods, living civic spaces woven into the social and cultural fabric of their communities.

This reframing unlocks a more expansive understanding of the potential role of universities, to become places where people meaningfully connect across difference, participate in public life, and build a shared vision for the future.

This theme guided the session, revealing several clear insights and actions.

Social Cohesion in Australia Is Stable – But Belonging Continues to Change.

Anthea opened by highlighting key findings of the 2025 Mapping Social Cohesion report:

The national cohesion index remains stable and relatively high, even amid economic and geopolitical uncertainty.
Financial stress, particularly among young adults, renters, and students, continues to erode confidence, optimism, and belonging.
Support for multiculturalism is strong, especially among young people, reflecting an enduring value across the population.
Negative attitudes toward some groups, particularly Muslims, remain elevated, and concerns about immigration numbers continue to shape public narratives.
A notable trend: local belonging is high but national belonging has declined, suggesting that people connect most strongly with the immediate communities around them.

This distinction between national and neighbourhood belonging is deeply instructive for universities, which vary in size and location, but are fundamentally large, complex institutions with the capacity to create “local” communities on a meaningful scale.

Universities Are Civic Institutions, Whether They Embrace It or Not

Anthea emphasised that universities are not separate from society; they are active contributors to the civic landscape. Universities can help shape:

How people understand difference
How they engage with challenging public issues
How they imagine their own place in the world
How they carry values of respect, openness, and critical thinking into their future roles

Unlike other public institutions, universities have the long-term horizon, scale, and diversity to model what cohesive communities look like.

But fulfilling this role requires reconnecting with core principles of higher education: curiosity, critical reflection, respectful dialogue, and shared purpose.

Belonging Doesn’t Happen Accidentally, It Must Be Designed

One of the strongest messages from the session was that diversity is not the same as inclusion. Diverse campuses do not automatically generate connection or belonging.

Universities must intentionally create the conditions where belonging can flourish. This includes:

Creating safe environments

Students and staff – especially those from under-represented or culturally diverse backgrounds – need to trust that their physical, social, and online environments are safe.

Addressing inequality

Rising financial stress affects students’ ability to participate in campus life. Initiatives like subsidised meals, community canteens, and supports for housing or transport don’t just address hardship, they foster connection and remove structural barriers to belonging.

Designing for intercultural connection

Students want to connect across cultures, yet traditional models of fostering engagement have not always worked. Universities need new approaches that shift from transactional engagement to relational, human-centred interaction.

Actively gathering community voices

Neighbourhood-level belonging thrives when people can help shape the places they live. Universities can apply the same principle – inviting students, staff, and communities to co-create the vision and culture of their institutions.

Collaboration Across Universities Is an Untapped Opportunity

A compelling question raised during the session was:

What might be possible if universities collaborated rather than competed?

Participants noted that competitive pressures – rankings, marketisation, recruitment targets – can inhibit meaningful collaboration. Yet, collaboration:

Expands the sector’s collective capacity
Creates shared learning and shared solutions
Strengthens the public value of universities
Helps smaller institutions adapt models developed by larger universities
Builds cross-campus communities of practice, especially for professional staff

Examples already exist: Pasifika student engagement programs across multiple universities – collaborating and sharing ideas and learning; shared initiatives for international students (i.e Gold Coast Study Hub); community events built with local residents (i.e UTAS Cradle Coast Campus CommUNIty Festival). These examples point to what might be possible at scale.

Welcoming Universities is committed to supporting and amplifying this cross-sector collaboration.

Leadership Matters – But So Does Collective Agency

When asked what advice she would offer university leaders, Anthea was clear:

Leaders must model what it means to be a learning organisation – curious, open, reflective.
They must address inequality head-on and champion initiatives that reduce barriers to participation.
They must establish a shared institutional vision that staff and students can see themselves in.

But equally important is the agency of individuals. Staff and students at every level can influence culture, build connection, and cultivate environments where social cohesion grows from the ground up.

A Path Forward: Reclaiming Universities as Civic Anchors

This session made one thing unmistakably clear:

Universities have a critical role to play in building a cohesive, inclusive Australia – but only if they choose to step into it.

By seeing themselves not as corporate entities or isolated institutions, but as civic neighbourhoods where belonging is built through everyday interactions, universities can: