What Are Universities For? On the Current State and Future of Universities (original) (raw)

In Defence of European Universities: Scholars and activists, unite!

2018

In the last couple of decades, European universities have undergone several major upheavals. These include a policy of harmonizing university degree programmes (the Bologna Process); attempts to streamline and coordinate university governance structures, to transform the standards for universities’ public funding; and so on. Together with other pronounced societal transformations, the roles and identities of European academic scholars have experienced significant challenges. Both scholars and policymakers largely agree that in the last 20 years European higher education policy has turned from policy based on democracy and culture towards policy driven by market-based ideals. Although there is a broad consensus that this major policy shift has occurred, there is less agreement over its reasons and consequences. If we really want our universities not only to defend their crucial capacity but also to expand it to better meet the major challenges of our times – climate change, immigrati...

The Condition of a Modern University — Is There a Problem?

Future Human Image, 2019

The beginning of the 21 st century became the time of the fall of the traditional idea of the university's functioning. The roots of this phenomenon could be seen in the 1960s when the paradigm of science changed. A commonly held attitude to university education changed to instrumental. Pragmatic use of acquired knowledge has become a reference point for many learners. The idea of the university, which was formed at the beginning of the 19 th century in Germany by Wilhelm von Humboldt, and then in England by the rector of the Dublin University John Newman, is now collapsing. Despite the preoccupation of the main postulates with these differing visions of the functioning of the university, today the term "university spirit" whose main goal should be to seek the truth seems not to be relevant any more. Nowadays people become more pragmatic and mostly consider the university to be only the next level of his professional career. Nowadays, we have a race for a better future, but we should not forget that the university that determines this future is the driving force behind it.

Three Ideas of the University (The European Legacy, 2019)

2019

What is a university? In the nineteenth century J.H. Newman famously spoke of "the idea of a university". This phrase has dominated all discussions of the nature of the university since. Most contemporary writers are against any attempt to theorise the university in terms of a single idea. But against the now standard view that universities should only be characterised empirically as institutions that perform many different activities, I attempt to defend the idea of the university, not by reviving a single idea of the university but instead by suggesting that there are, at root, three ideas of the university. These are rival ideas, and strictly incommensurable, though they are often found existing together in a state of tension in actual universities. I call them the eternal, the immortal and the immediate ideas of the university. 2 Coleridge, On the Constitution of Church and State, 4. 3 Hofstetter, The Romantic Idea of a University, x. 14 Ibid., 196. 15 Ibid., 340.

The University and the State in a Global Age: renegotiating the traditional social contract

European Educational Research Journal, Volume 4, Number 4, 2005

ECER Keynote 2005: This article is based on the Keynote Address to the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER), Dublin, Ireland, 7-10 September 2005. It argues that we are facing the simultaneous renegotiation of the major postwar social contract (concerning the welfare state) in Europe and the renegotiation of a smaller-scale modern social pact: the pact between the university and the nation-state. It suggests that the current, and especially future, transformations of the university are not fully clear outside of the context of transformations to the state (and to the public sector) under global pressures. These pressures, both directly and indirectly, will not leave the university as an institution unaffected. Thus it is more useful today than ever before to discuss the future of the university in the context of the current transformations of the state. The study is divided into four sections: a brief introduction; a section on the university and the welfare state in Europe; a section on the university and the nation-state in Europe; and tentative conclusions. Part I. Introduction Renegotiating Two Social Contracts It paper argues for a strong thesis according to which we are facing the simultaneous renegotiation of the postwar social contract concerning the welfare state in Europe and the accompanying renegotiation of a smaller-scale, by comparison, modern social pact between the university and the nation-state. The renegotiation of the latter is not clear outside of the context of the former, as state-funded higher education formed one of the bedrocks of the European welfare system. It is the overall argument that current transformations to the state under the pressures of globalisation will not eventually leave the university unaffected, and consequently it is useful to discuss the university in the context of the current global transformations of the state. The institution of the university seems already to have found it legitimate and necessary to evolve together with radical transformations of its social setting. For in the new global order, against the odds, universities are striving to maintain their traditionally pivotal role in society. The role of universities as engines of economic growth, contributors to economic competitiveness and suppliers of well-trained workers for the new knowledge-driven economy is being widely acknowledged. But it is undoubtedly a radical reformulation of the traditional social roles of the university. The main reasons for these transformations of the university include the globalisation pressures on nation-states and its public services, the end of the 'Golden Age' of the Keynesian welfare state as we have known it, and the emergence of knowledge-based societies and knowledge-driven economies. More generally, the processes affecting the university today are not any different from those affecting the outside world; under both external pressures (like globalisation) and internal pressures (like changing demographics, the ageing of societies, maturation of welfare states, post-patriarchal family patterns and so forth), the processes in question are the individualisation (and recommodification) of our societies and the denationalisation (and desocialisation) of our economies. On top of that, we are beginning to feel at universities the full effects of the universalisation of higher education and the increasing commodification of research.