The Idea of the University
Today
Gerard Delanty
University of Sussex
The Idea of the University
The Idea of the University debate:
• Kant, von Humboldt 1780s
• Newman 1852
• Nietzsche 1872
• Eliot and Leavis 1930s
• Jaspers 1946
• Parsons 1973
• Lyotard 1979
• Habermas 1980s
The Idea of the University?
• Do we need to re-think the modern idea of
the University?
• If so, which one? There is not one idea,
but many
• There has always been a diversity of
traditions
• The University is largely a product of
modernity
Some more questions
• Does end of modernity mean the end of
the University?
• Does globalization empower universities
or bring about their demise?
• How can the idea of the University be reinvented today?
• Can universities be sites of
cosmopolitanism?
Three dimensions to the
University
• The institutional context of governance
• The production of knowledge and
expertise
• The ethos of education
Functions of the University
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Teaching
Research
Training
Transmission of culture
Re-phrasing the question
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To what extent have current develops led
to a change in the models of governance
knowledge and education that have been
the basis of the modern university?
• Can there be an idea of the university
today given functional differentiation?
Universitas
• ‘Universitas’ designated a defined group
whether a craft guild or a municipal
corporation
• Bologna: a student guild
• Paris: a guild of masters
• Berlin (1810)
• University College London (1827)
• Johns Hopkins (1874)
Four Modern Ideas of the
University
• The Enlightenment (von Humboldt and
Kant) vision of the unity of reason
• The liberal vision (Newman, Eliot, Jaspers
and the transmission of heritage)
• The functionalist vision (Parsons, the
University as an integrative institution)
• The radical idea (Habermas, Gouldner,
Dewey - HE as a transformative project)
The Regulatory order of the
University
The university as an institution is shaped by
three regulatory principles of governance:
• Regulation by professional bodies
• State regulation
• Market regulation
Governance
• Today there is a major transformation in
governance
• Shift from ‘government’ to ‘governance’
• A governance of science
• How do universities govern themselves? Is
there a crisis of governance today?
Models of Governance
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Professsional self-governance
Shared or co-governance
Regulatory governance
Corporate governance
The University and SelfGovernance
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Academic autonomy/freedom
Autonomy and sovereignty
The seminar as a communicative process
Education as an agent of democratization
Conflicting visions, competing
ideas
• Reproductive versus transformative
concepts of the University: Von
Humboldt/Kant and Newman
• Parsons: the University as an integrative
institution in society
• Habermas, pragmatism and the reinvention of the modern University
Immanent Transcedence
• The concept of immanent transcendence
in Heglian Marxism and pragmatism
(Peirce)
• The capacity of societies to realise their
potentials
• The normative and empirical
• The relation of knowledge to immanent
transcendence
The Modern University
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Disciplinary specialization
Separation of basic from applied science
Separation of facts and values
Separation of the expert from the
intellectual
• The research university
• The political neutrality of the university
• Professional training
The University and the Project of
Modernity
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Nation-state
Secularization
Industrialization
Public culture/civil society/citizenship
Four Academic Revolutions
• The von Humboldian university
• The civic university (UK)/state universities
(US)
• The mass university
• The virtual university
Types of knowledge
• Knowledge as science
• Knowledge as action/praxis
• Knowledge as creativity/reflexivity
Reflective Knowledge
• The University has been constitutive of
socio-cultural evolution
• Provided a means of cognitive evolution
for society
• Articulated the basic values of modern
society (secularization, self, knowledge)
• Facilitated key societal learning processes
• Modernity evolved through cognitive shifts
The Knowledge Society
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The Enlightenment
The professional society
The information society
Risk society
The knowledge economy
The knowledge society
A definition
The knowledge society is a condition in
which knowledge is the key to social
reproduction and to citizenship. It is a
societal condition in which immanent
transcendence occurs through the
reflective appropriation of knowledge
Implications for HE: some
scenarios
• From the university to ‘the multiversity’
• Loss of autonomy
• Increase in managerialism (if everyone
has knowledge all that can be done is for
knowledge to be managed)
• The impact of the market
New Regimes of Governance 1
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The decline of academic self-governance
External and internal governance
Financial accountability
Corporate governance (formal audits,
rankings for research, teaching quality,
internal reviews, appraisal schemes, selfassessment)
• Move from teacher to learner based forms
of instruction
New Regimes of Governance 2
• Legal accountability (complaints
procedures, anti-racism, equality and
diversity)
• The changing structure of professional
competence (peer review, the citation
index, users in industry)
Ideologies of the Knowledge
Society
• Postmodernism
• Neoliberalism
• Third-way
Postmodernism as ideology
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Everything is culture
Knowledge lacks ‘meaning’
The impossibility of the curriculum
Everything is a matter of choice (the
module)
• Discourse of excellence (de-referentialized
and does not need to be underpinned by
scholarship)
Neoliberalism as Ideology
• Denial of society
• Principle of the market and
individualization
• Efficiency as legitimation
• Accountability (or accounting)
• The McUniversity
• Quality, relevance and efficiency
Third Wayism
• Reflexibility as flexibility
• Inclusion
• Reflexivity (people can shape their life
projects by drawing upon knowledge)
• Mix of neo-liberalism and postmodernism)
• Deferentialized terms (‘beyond’ right and
left, ‘between’, ‘excellence’)
The Old Cultural Contradictions
of HE
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Freedom and solitude
Cosmopolitanism and nationalism
Universalism and particularism
Innovation/critique and affirmation
Producer v reproducer
The New Cultural Contradictions
of HE
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Teaching and research
Efficiency and scholarship
Massification and democratization
Management and leadership
Opinion and knowledge
Science and technology
De-regulation v hierarchy/centralization
Triple Crisis of the University
• The crisis of the state (from provider to
regulatory state, globalization (“global
elites don't need HE” - B. Gates), Mode 2
knowledge/techno-science)
• The universalization of the market
(academic capitalism)
• Cultural change (contestability of
knowledge, unreliability of knowledge, the
knowledge society is a ‘fragile society’)
Four Debates on the End of the
University
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The liberal critique
The postmodern critique
Mode 2 Knowledge
Globalization
The Liberal Critique
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Intellectual crisis
Politization of the curriculum
End of high culture
Decline of the intellectual and rise of the
expert
The postmodern critique
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End of knowledge
End of the curriculum
Impossibility of universal education
End of the nation-state
Technocratic discourse of excellence
Mode 2 Knowledge
• From Mode 1 to Mode 2 Knowledge
• The marginalization of the university
The Globalization Thesis
• Partnerships between university and
industry
• Academic capitalism
• Corporate governance and the retreat of
the state
• The rise of the virtual university
The Post-University?
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Global mega universities
Virtual universities
Globalization and the university
Universities in China and India
The Market
• Has the market undermined HE?
• How bad is the market?
• Some myths about the market
The State
• The state has not disappeared
• European v American trends
• Europeanization and universities
Europe and Higher Education
• The Bologna process
• The role of HE in shaping Europeanization
and a European identity
• The rise of cultural policy and the
emergence of a European public culture
• Notion of a unity in diversity
• Communicative rationality
Re-Imagining the University
• The university as a zone of mediation
between knowledge as science and
knowledge as praxis
• Communicative conception of the
university is what is needed today
• The idea of interconnectivity
• University as the site where culture,
knowledge and society interact
Cosmopolitanism and the
University
• Cosmopolitanism and immanent
transcendence
• Cosmopolitan citizenship
• The cultural and social dimensions of
citizenship
• Technological citizenship
• Universities and human development
• Universities and democratization
Universities and Human
Development
• In central and eastern Europe universities have
played a leading role in shaping societies
• In Latin America universities were important in
for opening up opportunities for women
• Universities have been important in cultivating
democratic values
• Universities and economic development
• Social and cultural citizenship
Some Conclusions
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The resilience of the University
Huge variety of Universities
The academic profession in comparison
The university and citizenship
Globalization and pluralization
Cosmopolitan challenges for the university
Sources 1
Delanty, G. 2001. Challenging Knowledge: The
University in the Knowledge Society Buckingham:
Open University Press.
Delanty, G. 2002. ‘The University and Modernity: A
History of the Present’. In: The Virtual
University? Information, Markets and Management
edited by K. Robins and F. Webster. Oxford
University Press.
Sources 2
Delanty, G. 2004 ‘Does the University have
a Future?’ Pp. 241-4. In: P. Manicas (ed.)
Globalization and Higher Education.
University of Hawai’i Press.
Delanty, G. 2005 ‘The Sociology of the University
and Higher Education: The Consequences of
Globalization’ Pp. 530-45. In: C. Calhoun, C. Rojek
and B. Turner (eds) Handbook of International
Sociology. London: Sage.
New Book
The Cosmopolitan Imagination: the renewal
of critical social theory (in press, Cambridge
University Press)
Email: g.delanty@sussex.ac.uk