The Modern University (original) (raw)

Creative economies and research universities

Education in the Creative Economy: knowledge and learning in the age of innovation, 2010

When the world recession in 2008 began, the economy wars, which had been dormant for two decades, flared again. After thirty years of the culture wars, this came as a bit of a relief. In one corner, we had the followers of John Maynard Keynes(1883-1946), who were filled with a kind of self-belief that we had not seen since the 1960s. They had a few scores to settle. In another corner were the market friendly followers of Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992) and Milton Friedman (1912-2006). They were looking a bit bloodied after having dominated public polity for two decades. Looking on skeptically from outside the ring was another cohort, the admirers of Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950). These were, as usual, less combative than the other fighters, and had a quizzical eye trained on all of the pugilists. Part of the skepticism of the Schumpeter camp was a wariness of public policy tout court. It did not matter whether this was a policy bent on big government or one in love with small government. Schumpeter had been a student of the great Austro-Hungarian Empire Finance Minister, Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk. Schumpeter himself was the first Minister of Finance of the modern Republic of Austria. He seemed to take away from that unusually intimate experience of public policy a strong sense of the need for economists to look beyond rhe policy cycle and explore the deeper structures and long-run temporalities of economies. Schumpeter was a great economist who at the same time understood the power of history and society in shaping economies. He also appreciated the power of the imagination. He observed that modern capitalist economies were driven as much by creative impulse and imaginative insight, as they were by the more commonplace behaviors that arose out of greed, interest, need or calculation. It was not that societies could not-or should not-control such behaviors or encourage them, depending on prevailing economic philosophy. It was just that some of the most decisive economic outcomes could not be determined by such policy tools. Somewhere beyond them, in a larger social-historical zone, lay the human drive to innovate and create.

The Idea of Economics in a University

2010

Relying on John Henry Newman’s Idea of a University, this paper explores the relation between economics and other disciplines. Newman had high regard for disciplinary specialization, which he thought would teach students and scholars how to think and would keep them intellectually honest. At the same time, he insisted that the learning and exploring of a science had to take place within a university, that is, with proper regard to the science’s place among other disciplines. This paper contributes to the debate on the proper way to do economics by applying to it Newman’s ideas, arguing that it is at its best when faithful to its own character, as long as it seeks out the contributions and the corrections of other disciplines. Indeed, because economics focuses on order, principle, and method, and because it provides a “connected view or grasp of things,” it can contribute to the cultivation of the philosophical habit of mind.

Just Universities, Just Economics (Introduction)

Political Theology Network, 2022

Introduction” to the Symposium “Just Universities, Just Economics” on Just Universities: Catholic Social Teaching Confronts Corporatized Higher Education, by Gerald J. Beyer (New York: Fordham University Press, 2021), Political Theology Network, March 10, 2022.

Wild and Crazy Ideas: Keeping the Economics Profession Pragmatic and Humble

This paper reviews a sample of Professor David Colander's extensive methodological work on economics as art and craft. His work provides the economics profession an opportunity to introspect on its choice of methodology that addresses the goals of the workaday economist. I highlight a few key points from his recently published book on methodology. First, economic theories and abstract models have a role to play in the profession, but they have very little relevance to policy. Second, the Walrasian general equilibrium approach which is fraught with models that are detached from the complex and highly nuanced realities of the economy should no longer be the sole mode of analysis considering the available analytic and computational technologies. Third, the engineering method that is appropriate for economic policy paves the way for a complexity approach in equal measures especially in embracing the complex nature of economic dynamics and the emergent behavioural patterns of heterogeneous economic agents. The choice of methodology and its study is essential not only in the careful discharge of economic research that must seek to serve the society by helping solve its real-world problems but also in the way it influences pedagogical decisions in schools of economics. It is interesting to point out that even in schools where applied economics is offered, the dominant scientific method prevails in both the course content and learning delivery, which lends another dimension to the institutional screening effects that Colander points out as one of the reasons why the dominant way has maintained its current position despite obvious failings in shaping economic policy. In this review of Colander’s methodological work on economic as art and craft, ultimately, challenges economists to think about whether their work generates impact in the real-world or whether their work merely complies to the rigours and standards of science which, in Colander’s opinion, have little relevance to real-world economic policymaking. This collection of essays, when approached from the mainstream, would seem to be a collection of “wild and crazy ideas”. The foibles of the economics profession could be addressed with Colander’s wild and crazy ideas, which his work convincingly proposes as the path to the future of applied economics.

THE CONTEMPORARY UNIVERSITY A Tradition that Creates the Future

2020

ABSTRAKT Dmytro SHEVCHUK, The Contemporary University: A Tradition That Creates the Future DOI 10.12887/32-2019-4-128-17 Rejecting the frequently raised claim that the tradition of the university is on the decline, the author emphasizes the necessity of grounding the vision of the future of this institution on the refl ection on its past. He discusses both historical and contemporary models of the university (e.g., the medieval corporation of scholars, the state-controlled university, the Humboldtian university, and the entrepreneurial university), pointing to the need to fi nd a balance between maintaining academic traditions on the one hand, and, facing the political, economic, and cultural challenges of modernity, on the other; between the national state, which is gradually losing its sovereignty, and the global market. Drawing on the ideas of such authors as Jaroslav Pelikan, Bill Readings, Burton R. Clark, Michael Barber, Katelyn Donnelly, Saada Rizvi, Alasdair MacIntyre, and M...