The Idea of the University of the Future
Reykjavik, University of Iceland
2 & 3 May 2005
Conference Report
On 2 and 3 May, under the co-sponsorship of the Magna Charta Observatory and the
University of Iceland, a taskforce of 18 university leaders met in Reykjavik to debate the core
missions and fundamental values of tomorrow’s university, an institution now asked to meet
the challenges of the emerging knowledge society. Participants had been invited either by the
Observatory – mainly members of the Collegium and Board as well as two of the finalists of
the 2004 Romanzi Award – or by Prof. Pall Skulason, the Rector of the University of Iceland,
who asked colleagues interested in the development of higher education and research to join
as well as international partners, officers from the European University Association (EUA) or
the Luxemburg Ministry of Education, and colleagues from outside of Europe, Argentina and
the United States in particular. Madeleine Green, from the American Council of Education
(ACE), acted as the facilitator of the 2 days conversation (cf. list of participants in annexe).
Participants had been asked to read in advance a few papers1 offering some points that the
discussions could refer to, directly or indirectly. Moreover, Pall Skulason, the Rector, and
Michael Daxner, from the Magna Charta Collegium (who had to cancel his participation)
also sent around documents dealing more specifically with a specific area of interest –
governing the university’s future.
A.
On Monday 2nd, after the members introduced themselves by looking over their
shoulder back to year 2005 seen from a 2025 perspective – pointing to the main changes that
had happened over this twenty year period – the group focused on the shared values and
common functions that have shaped the university’s identity over the centuries. Does indeed
the university strive on common basic assumptions - in terms of education, innovation, social
commitment to change and development, for instance? If so, what are the key features of a
shared identity – not only per se but also in relation to those other providers of knowledge
and information who are part of the system of tertiary education?
A grid of analysis had been proposed for structuring a very open discussion – especially in
terms of the long-term perspective of the debate. A probable future, it was suggested, results
from the tensions between pull, push and weight factors. The vision – for example of an
institution serving democracy – could represent the pull factor while the growing
commercialisation of knowledge, an on-going trend, would correspond to the push factor; the
weight factor consists in the existing shape of the institution, the given points that need to be
taken along or changed in order to progress, like the present under-funding of higher
education, the ageing of staff or the disciplinary organisation of science. Participants thus
attempted to focus on the fundamental core of the university as an institution, i.e., its
founding myths as expressed by the narratives they could refer to, implicitly or explicitly.
What is the recognised raison d’être of universities? This usually untold part of the
university’s self-understanding becomes more explicit in the culture of the institution – that
acts as a Leitbild, a worldview embodied in the functions met by the institution that are
orientate the organisation of the university as a social system, whose visible life finds
1
Four of those texts were taken from The University in Transformation: the future of the university, by Sohail
Inayatullah, Bergin & Garvey, Westport, Conn., 2000
expression in a litany of small or big events – decline of student numbers, new partnerships
with local industry, reorganisation of the office for international relations, etc …-, events that
seem to have little in common when they are not related to levels of deeper connections – the
system, the Leitbild or even the core myth2.
This led to a lively discussion on the ‘true’ university, a term used in the Magna Charta
itself: that has to be set up in the context of the second half of the1980’s, when the document
was drafted for possible endorsement by hundreds of academic leaders convened in
September 1988 at the 900th anniversary of the University of Bologna. At the time, the idea
was to codify the university tradition in Europe after the centrifugal forces of the 1968 student
revolt had questioned the existence of the institution as such. In a European landscape of
waning national bureaucracies and growing European integration (the Single Act was to
suppress borders internal to the Union by 1992), the Magna Charta represented a pro-active
move of the academic community towards reinforced autonomy and re-asserted academic
freedom, both seen as tools for its long-term contribution to the development of Europe’s
collective future. In that context, the university was perceived as a self-conscious institution
(at system level) and as an instrument of progress and social justice (at Leitbild level).
‘True’, however, supposes a reference to the absolute that requires some kind of predefinition of the main aspects of academia and its intellectual role in society - a very selfcentred debate on academic a priori that often does not evoke agreement on the specifics of
university identity. This makes it very difficult for the supporting community to define an
accepted part for higher education and research in today’s world – not to speak of
tomorrow’s. A more empirical approach would start from the functions now fulfilled by the
university in the higher education system - with national and regional differences. An analysis
of the existing overlaps would point to the common core of the system and could be aligned
with models structuring university operations and social behaviour, such as the Napoleonic
service institution, the Humboldtian research for training set up or the ‘multiversity’ of our
day and age. But then, does the litany of changes linked for instance to the use of new
information and communication technologies reflect transformations in the organisation and
culture of universities that go deeper than the simple extrapolation of accepted progress
because of the use of powerful instruments of development? In other words, do ICT induce a
qualitative leap in academic identity, the growing quantity of computerised data asking for a
different approach to knowledge than the traditional methods of information management that
are being taught at present in the universities of Europe and the world?
If the university remains a gatekeeper of knowledge, how does it share responsibility with
other providers – firms and media – that have robbed the academic world of its monopoly on
knowledge organisation and dissemination? Or is the monopoly now simply restricted – but
for how long – to the validation of learning, i.e., to the placement of individuals into the social
hierarchies born out of knowledge power – thus representing the last specificity universities
can claim in terms of a recognised role in the shaping of society? Can such an instrumental
view of higher education be reconciled with the culture of enlightenment, which the
university refers to when it considers itself to be a centre of metamorphosis where individuals
become citizens, e.g. responsible partners in the transformation of society? In a dispersed
community, can a fragmented university be more than the servant of varied interests the
commonality of which is illusive at most? Is not the normative debate on the reflexive and
critical function of academia disappearing then behind pragmatic considerations, such as the
existence and struggle for survival of an administrative structure supposed to support the
professional relevance of jobs and careers that contribute to the adequacy of social change,
2
These grids for reflection refer to models taken from Questioning the Future, another book of Sohail
Inayatullah, published by Tamkang University, Taiwan, in 2005
2
i.e., signposting as best as possible the path of least resistance in community development?
But who is to decide what adequacy implies – inside or/and outside the institution? The
networked university (inside among disciplines or faculties, outside, among stakeholders and
academic units of all kinds) is often mentioned as a key development but the concept stays at
the instrumental level and rarely questions the culture and raison d’être of academia – both
for university members and for stakeholders. The debate builds on two interlocking
discussions, an internal appraisal of what the university could, should and would like to do, on
one side, a conversation on the same topics with the financiers and consumers of intellectual
goods and services, on the other. It should take into account the challenges facing tomorrow’s
university – corresponding very much to the trends or push factor indicated above; the
following were mentioned: at general level, virtualisation, and the application of science to all
fields of reality, both leading to a growing abstraction from everyday realities; in terms of
organisation, the increasing fragmentation and dispersion of institutions that is reinforced by
devolution as well as by commercialisation – all moves that strengthen an expanding depoliticisation of society; in terms of people, growing challenges are born out of
individualisation and de-motivation – that result in a ‘de-solidarisation’ among the members
of the community. Can the university manage the resulting tensions between its shaping role
in society and its critical function vis-à-vis the said society?
For the Magna Charta – since it is interested in the university’s fundamental values and
rights – the aim of the Reykjavik taskforce (as a preliminary mapping exercise supporting
such dialogues, internal and external) is to define a common vocabulary that can lead to a
substantial understanding of the institution, i.e., of its boundaries in the higher education
environment. To offer meaning to shared concepts, their placing in a historical context – thus
trying to understand how they ‘loaded’ themselves over time with various connotations seems essential if the discussion is not to fall into an idealistic trap (the illusory dream) – even
if ideals are grounded in the subjective perception people may have of their situation, like in
Plato’s cavern. Some participants, however, pleaded for the use of imagination as a way onto
a possible future – so that what is improbable, but desirable, comes true when enhanced by
shared will. Hence the interest of a multi-layered analysis3 accounting for the various levels of
reality, that sustain each other like ‘matriochkas’ in a Russian doll.
As a mapping exercise, the following quadrant of narrative concerning the universities’
raison d’être was mentioned as a possible grid of explanation:
IMAGINATION
SEARCH FOR TRUTH
i.e., exploring the unknown
SEARCH FOR ORDER AND FREEDOM,
i.e., moulding the person’s responsibilities
HUMBOLDT
Science & Research
NEWMAN
Education & Training
DISSENT ------------------- HORIZONTAL AXIS
Critical distance
SEARCH FOR MEANING
i.e., re-organising knowledge
OF SOCIAL POSITIONING
SEARCH FOR WELFARE
i.e., meeting society’s requests
AQUINAS
Ethics & Aesthetics
NAPOLEON
Innovation & Development
REALITY
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-------------------- CONSENT
Social reproduction
See, Questioning the future, op. cit.
3
Each corner4 represents universities focusing on one essential aspect of their nature; most
of them, however, combine these features in their different cultures and organisations; a
balance between the four leads, today or tomorrow, to the search for unity – ad unum vertere
– a motto drawn from the term universitas and suggested for academic action by Vaclav
Havel, when welcoming the Association of European Universities in Olomouc in 1993.
B.
On Tuesday 3rd, the group focused on alternative models for the university future
keeping in mind the 2025 representation of higher education participants offered to the
conference the day earlier. Comparing members’ contributions, Madeleine Green, the
facilitator, showed that the institutions born out of the perceived future were essentially built
on extrapolations of the present, with some participants asking for a strong differentiation
between undergraduate studies (the BA level) and graduate and post-graduate training (the
MA and PhD levels) – thus reconstituting an elite institution, more cosmopolitan, more
research oriented, more trans-disciplinary than the lower level - in the wider context of the
tertiary education sector. The first few years leading to a BA would then meet the full impact
of an education extended to some 80% of an age cohort (perhaps in a rather school like
manner). Others, however, questioned more thoroughly the university as an institution,
speaking of its dissolution in order to serve learners of all ages with varied expectations; or of
its de-nationalisation to serve regional or European needs, not to speak of its absorption by
the tertiary sector of higher education as just another provider of knowledge – university
monopolies of dissemination and validation having vanished for good. A way to pursue
knowledge development in a more flexible and diversified manner (two qualities mentioned
nearly by all participants) would be the networking of academic institutions with other
universities or with their stakeholders (public authorities, industrial firms, research centres or
media companies, for instance), thus structuring the dialogue for relevance through well
defined compacts. But what of the authority of such a learning organisation: would it not need
long-term horizons not provided for by urgent social requirements, i.e., a sense of its own
purpose in the context of society’s own transformation? Would not some kind of balance be
required between the horizontal axis of social positioning and the vertical one of what could
be called the transcendence of immediate realities by the strength of imagination - some
participants speaking of the spiritual structuring of mankind’s understanding of the world?
The longer the future envisaged, further back can the past be considered in order to
understand university development - especially if an organic approach to change is being
adopted. Every step taken expresses indeed a unique choice that excludes many other
possibilities of growth, thus determining the next moves on the institutional playing field:
what has been learned from earlier decisions shapes the potential for the future. From this
perspective, the medieval university, after a preparatory education in the Arts, first trained for
jobs structuring the society of the day (the professions covering physical wellbeing –
medicine, social welfare – law, and spiritual development – theology) in the so-called major
faculties. At the Renaissance, the service of mankind came to centre on humanism by
criticising inherited knowledge and questioning the cosmological worldviews inherited from a
long tradition. As a rule, the university survives when it reshapes such assets – training and
rearranging knowledge - to meet new requirements, for instance when the industrial
revolution asked for the formation to those jobs that structure a world order of engineering
and technological change – up to the present when IT has become the horizon of the technical
development supporting social growth. As for equity, it is a heritage from the French
Revolution now expressed by the efforts made by universities to educate for democracy. At
present, thanks to IT, old services that had the personal touch of individual crafts are being
industrialised – meeting general laws that can be pre-chewed for a wide public rather than for
4
Adapted from P.H. Spies, in The University in Transformation, op. cit.
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specific individuals. The university is thus encouraged to become a factory for the training of
service providers while, at the same time, there is a demand for tailor made courses to answer
the needs for expert knowledge – also a prerogative of academic teaching, especially in an
emerging society of knowledge. There is, from this point of view, a growing tension between
specialisation processes and general training - at all levels of higher education, be it with the
younger generation or with adult learners who take advantage of lifelong learning. To reduce
such tensions, the university of tomorrow could be obliged to define the niche of activities it
will excel in – when accounting both for external requirements and for the internal balance of
its specialties. Such niches used to be determined by the Church in the medieval university, or
by the State - following the humanistic transformation of the Renaissance or the democratic
egalitarianism of the French Revolution. Tomorrow, even if the State retains a role as a
stakeholder, authority and choice could be exercised by other partners – alone or as a result of
collective bargaining: how can the university then use its assets, past and present, to meet best
new external demands taking account also of the tyranny of trends such as the demographic
decline in Europe and the concomitant ageing of society? This supposes reflecting on the reorganisation of curricula (combining professions and science), on the re-definition of quality
(adapting the humboldtian heritage to purpose oriented activities), on the re-shaping of
education and research (cross-fertilising personal and social responsibility for the
management of a changing knowledge basis supposed to offer meaning to development).
In that context of varied forms of institutional empowerment, the taskforce discussed how
the university, as it is today, does influence, shape or even re-invent its identity for tomorrow.
Members also dwelt on the counteracting influences on the university of society – or of varied
lobbies representing different if not divergent interests in the community. Following on the
previous discussions, what are the mission and core functions of academia that are still valid
for tomorrow’s society, what are the university’s enduring functions and could the narratives
expressing its raison d’être (if strictly adhered to) put the institution at risk - considering the
changes expected to occur over the next twenty years in clienteles, organisational structures or
curricula? The group considered that success or failure in terms of survival would very much
depend on the quality of governance: new concepts are needed to meet the challenges of
adaptation to a transformed social set up. Income generation, for instance, will certainly
reflect the difficulties and opportunities met by higher education and its institutions – that will
have to develop responsible behaviour not as enterprises but like enterprises; this should help
create mediating structures for the allocation of funds between various areas of academic
work while sustaining general processes of change (rather than pursuing specific outcomes)
in order to keep a balance of quality in all areas, a quality to be assessed by international
accreditation procedures. In terms of management, tomorrow’s universities – still retaining
their specificity of horizontal organisations – will need to invent new participation modalities,
thus transforming the power structures that now resist to change, for instance in offering a real
stake in the institutional future to university partners in society – an input to be combined with
academia’s responsibilities for their own work and abilities.
In other words, what is the autonomy of the university if not a dialogue between the
institution and its supporting community? What is the institution’s capacity for manoeuvre, if
not a margin of determination that, often, is not even taken advantage of since the university
or its constitutive parts are not aware of its existence? Can this elbow margin then be used
fully, be extended or transformed so that the institution becomes a real partner in the
development of its own community rather than a slave to its needs - not to say to the whims
of external customers, thus losing a real sense of purpose? The Magna Charta question of
institutional freedom, of self-determination is thus central to any discussion of identity if
universities are to navigate their own future by defining pro-active niches of relevance and
quality. Indeed, the group agreed in Reykjavik that, if academic institutions play different
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roles, some in international, others in regional and local contexts, all require good leadership
– understood not so much as enlightened decisions taken by one person but as the group
process that takes an institution from one ‘state of being’ to a different situation, from one
decision to the next – thus shaping the institution’s specificity along its historical growth. This
leaves open the definition of the university in relation to other providers of education and
innovation, public or private, some participants arguing that in 2025 there will no longer be
academic determinants giving universities a specific part in the management of the society’s
intellectual assets; others considered that the function would certainly evolve but that its
academic specificity would remain. Yet all agreed that steering towards potential futures is
the challenge of long-term relevance, quality and progress.
C.
On Monday and Tuesday afternoons, the conversation opened to a wider public,
graduate students, professors and administrators of the University of Iceland interested in
confronting their own sense of academic purpose with foreign experience. Several of them
have been working on university development and are about to set up in Reykjavik a research
centre on higher education as a factor of modernity, focusing on the case of small countries
like Iceland – with a population of less than 300’000 inhabitants. Extending on the morning
discussions, members of the taskforce introduced the problems facing a ‘true’ university, the
present heritage of university models based on 18th century Enlightenment premises, the
quantitative and qualitative challenges met today by universities countries as diverse as the
US, China, Australia, Japan, Malaysia, Kenya, Egypt or EU countries when compared to
Iceland. Then, the debate moved on to possible futures, first with representatives of younger
academic staff like the finalists of the 2004 Romanzi Award, and then with more seasoned
members of the European University Association.
D.
To conclude, it became apparent from the discussions in the taskforce or with the staff
of the host university, that the encounter represented mainly a first mapping of the many
levels and areas of interest that need to be addressed in a systematic way if academia is to
steer its development towards a meaningful future. In Reykjavik, some signposts have been
planted on the ways to approach changing roles and patterns in higher education - mainly
from an insiders’ point of view considering that the Magna Charta Observatory found support
for this venture in an academic institution, the University of Iceland. The stakeholders’
perspective was represented by one Ministry official – who helped set up a university in
Luxemburg, another small country where betting on academia for the building of the
knowledge society has induced full debates on the long-term development of the country.
This proportion should change in a later exercise by opening to more social partners.
The mapping exercise left also many questions untouched – for instance in terms of
culture (the pockets of resistance to a future oriented opening of the institution), or in terms of
organisation (the support and engineering of trans-disciplinary activities to refocus long-term
university development) and in terms of the litany of on-going events (the EU support of
blue-sky research in academic institutions that could help universities to moderate their
utilitarian temptations). The debate indicated critical views - although constructive – but also,
referring to seemingly ubiquitous identity and financial problems, manifested some surprise
about the university success over the last century. Another set of tensions, this time between
the gloom of many academics about their future and the vibrancy or optimism of many
institutions ; this sense of change, good or bad, is reflected in the Bologna process debate.
Indeed, not many institutions have multiplied so fast and taken such a place in social
expectations – and in public and private budgets – as have the universities, remembering that
they had to confront mass education after World War II, not only in the West but the world
over. All this proved somewhat unpredictable: so, a possible focus for a new meeting could be
preparing for unpredictability, i.e., defining tomorrow’s tools of flexibility and integration
that all participants have considered to be essential for the horizontal expansion as well as for
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the vertical structuring of knowledge dissemination and development when using academic
modalities. Mapping thus invites reflection on possible scenarios – convergent and/or diverse
- to reach long-term ends. Out of this could emerge a modern definition of the university,
rather than a definition of the modern university. This implies that, irrespective of what the
definition would look like, agreement can be reached on the methods to develop such a
definition, hoping that some invariance could emerge independently of the method used: this
might help determine the common features explaining the dynamism and risks leading to
tomorrow’s higher education and research nexus, a combination that, at present, offers
already criteria of differentiation and commonality among institutions of the tertiary education
sector. This area of interest, to participants, invited substantial discussions since the
combination of these two features exists everywhere but varies greatly in specific institutions
according to the various emphases of their work – uniting differently, for example, their focus
on truth, meaning, welfare or order. The modulation of such factors will certainly evolve in
function of the changing raison d’être, culture and organisation of universities as institutions
or of society as a community of belonging. However, today – and tomorrow perhaps? -,
teaching already needs research as much as research needs teaching, both being approaches to
knowledge that invigorate each other to become the two sides of the same coin, in fact a
contribution to the positioning of man in the world. As to academic freedom, it makes sense
of the synergy between the two approaches since it allows to turn the raw material of data into
knowledge, i.e., a subjective re-arrangement of information that gives it scientific and social
meaning.
The higher education enterprise will go on expanding, the numbers of students, degrees
and the volume of research growing unabated irrespective of the debate on the idea of the
university. Going beyond the rather romantic, semi-historical views and empirical notions that
are often referred to as a part of university narratives, the institution deserves a more
theoretical and substantive analysis of its potential and assets, be they intellectual or social.
Indeed, the Reykjavik taskforce agreed about the importance for universities to understand
what makes them change, not necessarily as individual institutions but as an enterprise, that is
the higher education sector. For the Magna Charta Observatory, this implies unfolding the
rationale for university autonomy and an understanding of what makes academic freedom
essential for the development of studies (or scholarship) and the transformation of society. On
that basis, the institution should assume responsibility for its possible futures rather than
submit to the fatality of short-term urgencies. Empowerment - by academics and university
stakeholders - is the name of the game; a long-term process to which the taskforce first
convened at the University of Iceland in May 2005 could contribute further, with the help of
the groups that are now working on the identity, functions and organisation of tomorrow’s
university – in Reykjavik, Luxemburg or other centres.
POSSIBLE NEXT STEPS
a)
Follow the debate on the research/teaching nexus launched by the Magna Charta
Observatory at the yearly Bologna event due on 15 and 16 September 2005 – on the
basis of a comparative study commissioned to Prof. U. Felt, University of Vienna.
b)
Propose researchers and academic leaders area studies about the conditions for
social partnerships leading to a flexible and differentiated compact sharing
responsibilities between universities, students and their supporting community.
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c)
Prepare for unpredictability by imagining possible scenarios re-arranging the
universities’ institutional assets (including the research/teaching nexus and the
social compact) for - and within - long-term social and intellectual change.
The discussion of scenarios for possible futures could be the focus of a second session
of the Magna Charta convened taskforce on the identity tomorrow’s university.
AB/Geneva, 7 May 2005
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