University community engagement and the core business of the university
Tom Bourner
Abstract
At first sight, university community engagement (UCE) does not fit easily into the
received notion of a university. Why not? Because the prime task of such a
university is the advancement of knowledge. By contrast, the prime task of
university community engagement is to employ some of the university's specialized
assets, such as its intellectual riches, teaching abilities, access to networks and
learning groups, in ways that benefit the community - which makes UCE peripheral
to the core business of such a university. This paper shows that, on the contrary,
UCE is grounded in the values and ideas that have persisted in every age since the
birth of the western university.
Introduction
This paper is about where university community engagement (UCE) fits within the
university. Not all universities have embraced university community engagement
(UCE) and the paper explores why not. It aims to locate UCE within the ideas and
values that underpin a university.
University community engagement (UCE) refers to university activities intended to
benefit both the wider community and the university itself. It is not easy to see where
this fits into what many people see as the dominant goal of the university: the
advancement of knowledge. From the latter perspective UCE is peripheral to the
core business of the university and risks diverting resources away from that goal.
Current interest in UCE is associated with recent developments in the university's
world such as 'widening participation', 'third stream funding' etc. And from this
perspective UCE looks like a pragmatic response to some current concerns and
therefore it is unlikely to persist when the issues that affect the university change.
The problem this paper addresses is the concern that UCE is marginal to the core
business of the university and a transient response to issues of particular relevance
to the university at the present time. The implications of such a belief are (1) that
UCE should always defer to the core business of the university which is the
advancement of knowledge and (2) when current circumstances change UCE will be
recognised as a passing fad.
This paper shows that this concern is unfounded because UCE is grounded in the
values and ideas that have persisted in every age in the long history of the western
university; it is therefore central to the university mission.
The problem
It has not been easy for UCE to gain entry to the academy and its development
within universities has been an uphill task. To some people, UCE seems like a
cuckoo in the university nest because it does not align with the proper purpose of the
university To understand this viewpoint it is necessary to briefly review a little of the
recent history of the university.
1
According to conventional wisdom the universities were in disarray by the start of the
19th century.
“By the eighteenth century universities everywhere were in the doldrums,
confined to the training of priests or pastors, a few civil servants, and those
gentry too poor to educate their sons by private tutors and the increasingly
popular “grand tour” of the Continent. … most universities in eighteenth
century Europe were moribund, with idle professors ... despised by the
intellectuals of the Enlightenment. In England the historian of the Roman
empire Edward Gibbon described his student days at Oxford as “the fourteen
months the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life,”(sic) and his teachers,
“the monks of Magdalen,” as “decent, easy men who supinely enjoyed the
gifts of the founder.” In Germany civil servants and politicians seriously
discussed whether universities did more harm and good and ought to be
abolished.” (Perkin, 1997, pp. 14, 15).
A way out of the malaise was provided by William Von Humboldt who established
the university of Berlin with a new mission: the pursuit of knowledge. It was not the
role of the Humboldtian university to serve the needs of students but rather it was
the role of students as well as the staff of the university to serve the pursuit of
knowledge. In Humboldt's own words (in translation):
"At the highest level, the teacher does not exist for the sake of the student:
both teacher and student have their justification in the common pursuit of
knowledge" (Humboldt, 1970, page 243)
Knowledge is pursued in order that it may be found so the goal of the pursuit of
knowledge is the discovery of knowledge and that meant research. This was to be
the superordinate goal of the university. It was the birth of the research university.
Berlin's lead was followed by other German universities and what became known as
the German model was adopted by universities in other countries too. There are at
least three reasons:
1. German industry was thriving in the latter part of the 19th century and this was
attributed, at least in part, to the adoption of research (and especially research
into the natural sciences) by the German universities.
2. There was a large inflow of students to German universities particularly from
those wanting to get a training in research.
3. German professors' commitment to research and publication gave them a
source of reputation not enjoyed by the university staff in other universities who
confined themselves to teaching. This enhanced the esteem of the German
universities as well as German academics.
Consequently, the German universities which had been regarded as the most
backward in Europe at the end of the 18th century transformed themselves in the
course of the 19th century into the universities that were seen as the most
successful. In other words, by the start of the 20th century not only were the
German universities seen as at the leading edge but also they were the ones that
had made most progress. The conclusion was clear: if you wanted to build a
successful university you needed to prioritise the pursuit of knowledge.
2
As 'form follows function' so the Humboldtian university developed many distinctive
features following its elevation of the advancement of knowledge above other goals.
The following list of a dozen changes illustrates its impact on the university:
1. Promotion of the accumulation of new knowledge as the superordinate goal of
the university
2. Development of the PhD as a training for research ( - see Simpson, 1983).
3. Development of the university seminar ( - see Clark, 1994)
4. Elevation of the principle of 'subject specialisation' over the principle of the
'unity of knowledge'
5. Legitimisation the position of natural science (and empirical knowledge more
generally) within the university
6. Elevation of science to the highest level in the academic hierarchy, a position
previously held by the classics ( - see Stray, 1998)
7. Elevation of 'research' above 'scholarship'
8. Elevation of the role of critical thinking in higher education above that of
aesthetic or moral sensibility
9. Elevation of skepticism as the proper attitude of the scholar
10. Elevation of secular ethos above the prevailing faith-based ethos
11. Elevation of academic freedom of enquiry as a core principle of the modern
university.
12. Increased reliance on written assessment relative to oral assessment
The 'Humboldtian university' is sometimes called the German model or the 'modern
university' (a reference to its connection with modernism). For most of the senior
staff in universities today it is the received model of a university i.e. the model they
encountered when they first entered universities as students.
So how does university community engagement (UCE) fit into the Humboldtian
university education paradigm?
Not very well, because UCE does not prioritise the advancement of academic
subject knowledge above that of employing the knowledge embodied in the
university in ways that benefit the community. The 'pursuit of knowledge for its own
sake' is part of the philosophy of the Humboldtian university. By contrast, UCE
favours the 'pursuit of knowledge to make a difference'.
From a Humboldtian perspective UCE attracts well-meaning people who don't really
understand the main purpose of a university. That explains why UCE is more
developed in new universities than older universities which have a firmer grasp of the
Humboldtian idea of what a university is for. It explains why the people leading UCE
in universities are usually professionals hired from outside the university for
employment on time-limited contracts. And it explains why it is so difficult to embed
UCE values within the received culture of the university (see Hatakenaka, 2005).
If UCE is marginal to the main business of the university then a number of
consequences follow:
1. It will be perceived as of lower status than research or teaching.
2. It will have difficulty competing for resources within the university.
3. Many academic staff will see involvement in UCE as unhelpful in terms of
career progression. If UCE is seen as a passing fad, then academic staff will
be reluctant to commit their long-term academic careers to it.
The main problem for UCE is that unless it is recognised as part of the 'core
business' of the university it is likely to be seen as an 'add-on' which is in danger of
detachment when that serves the interests of the 'core business' of the university.
3
The problem outlined in this section is that UCE appears to lie outside the core
business of the university. So long as that perception remains UCE will be seen as
in a marginal position within the university and hence vulnerable with its long-term
future precarious. Can it be brought from the margin into the centre? The task of
the next section is to show that it can.
4
A solution
The full picture
The trouble with the historical approach of the last section is that it is selective
history; it focuses on the development of the university over the last two hundred
years only. But the western university has a history of almost a thousand years1.
The development of the Humboldtian university itself needs to be put into historical
context. In other words, we need to view the full history of the Western university
which means starting in the Middle Ages. And when one takes the longer term view
then it becomes clear where UCE fits within the university.
Institutions that have been referred to as universities go back for millennia outside of
Western Europe. However, there is a good measure of agreement that the history of
the modern Western university has its origins in the Middle Ages. For example:
"The medieval university was essentially an indigenous product of western Europe.
... Centres of higher education such as the philosophical schools of Athens, dating
from the fourth century B.C., the law school of Beirut which flourished between the
early third and mid-sixth century, or the imperial university of Constantinople,
founded in 425 and functioning intermittently until 1453, may have anticipated the
medieval universities in some respects, for example in terms of embryonic
organization and the emergence of regular courses of study. But collectively the
distinguishing features of the medieval university seem to have been nowhere
reproduced in previous institutional form; and there does not appear to be any
organic continuity between the universities which evolved towards the end of the
twelfth century and the Greek, Graeco-Roman, Byzantine or Arabic schools."
(Cobban, 1975, p. 21-22)
"All advanced civilizations have needed higher education to train their ruling,
priestly, military and other service elites, but only in medieval Europe did an
institution recognizable as a university arise... Only in Europe from the twelfth
century onwards did an autonomous, permanent, corporate institution of higher
learning emerge and survive, in varying forms, down to the present day." (Perkin,
1997)
The western university originated in medieval Europe and there have been
universities in England since the early part of the last millennium. The roots of the
national 'system' of universities in England go back to the 12th century. That is the
context of the following reconsideration of the core business of the university and the
position of UCE.
Three broad stages can be discerned in the development of our universities. The
first stage was the medieval university that lasted until the end of the 15th century.
The second stage was triggered by disengagement of the university from the Latin
Church and lasted until relatively recent times. The third stage has its origins in the
development of the research-led university in Germany in the 19th century that we
have already looked at.
If the roots of most of the earliest universities in Europe can be traced back to the training of
th
th
priests in cathedral schools in the 12 and 13 centuries then the seeds were planted by the
instruction of Pope Gregory VII in 1078 to bishops to set up cathedral schools to meet the
needs of a Latin Church that was growing in power across Europe.
1
5
If we are to really understand the 'core business' of the western university we need
to distinguish the permanent from the transient. What endeavours have endured
across the long history of the western university that reflect its lasting values and
ideas and allow it to claim a history of almost a thousand years? What goals are
recognisable in all the stages of the development the western university? To answer
this question it is necessary to look a little more closely2 at the university in each of
its stages.
Stage 1: The medieval university
In the first stage, the Western university of the Middle Ages started as an institution
of the Latin Church, no less than a cathedral or a monastery. The medieval
university, existed primarily to serve the Church by preparing students for the
priesthood and by advancing knowledge through dissemination of spiritual
knowledge, scholarship and the accumulation of knowledge from other civilisations
(particularly from Islamic countries and from ancient Greece). The medieval
university was run by clerics to serve the needs of the Latin Church with its
aspiration to serve God and save the immortal souls of Christendom.
Stage 2: the early modern university
In the second stage, the university acquired a large measure of independence.
Income from endowments and the fees of students from well-heeled and wellconnected families meant that the post-medieval universities had sufficient financial
autonomy to give them considerable discretion to follow their own destinies. The
focus of the university shifted from the needs of that Church to the needs of the
members of the university itself, i.e. the students and the fellows. It opened up the
domains of recognised knowledge to a variety of new academic subjects, particularly
the humanities, and new fields of enquiry. In this stage, the university curriculum
became less Church-focused and more student-focused. The range of university
subjects expanded and university education became more liberal. It provided
freedom to acquire a higher education fit for a godly gentleman and for leadership in
a variety of different fields in the young nation state. And it was a civilising force in
times that were still in many ways wild, philistine and brutish.
Stage 3: the Humboldtian university
The third great epoch of university development is characterised by increased
emphasis on the advancement of knowledge, by the admission of empirical
knowledge into the university and by subject specialisation. The Humboldtian
university sought the advancement of knowledge through the accumulation and
dissemination of new knowledge. It provided a higher education that sought to
develop the critical faculties of the student. And it sought to benefit those outside
the walls of the university by enhancing human material well-being through greater
understanding and control of the world in which we live. In this stage a subjectfocused education replaced the student-focused education of stage 2. The heyday
of the Humboldtian university was the high years of the 20th century and it was
increasingly challenged in the last decades of the 20th century as we shall see.
The following table summarises the main focus of each of these concerns in the
three stages of the development of the university.
A fuller account of the stages, including reasons for shifts from one stage to another can be
found in Bourner (2008a)
2
6
Main focus of endeavours in each of the mains stages of the Western university
Service to those
The Higher
The advancement
beyond the walls of
education of
of knowledge
the university
students
Serving the Latin
Preparing students for Accumulating and
Stage 1:
Church with its
priesthood in the Latin interpreting such
The
aspiration to save the Church
knowledge from
medieval
immortal
souls
of
Islam and Classical
university
Christendom from
Antiquity as could be
torment.
reconciled with the
teaching of Christian
scripture
Contributing to the
The development of
Enlarging the domain
Stage 2:
civilisation of those
godly gentlemen who
of academic
The early
who would hold high
could tell right from
knowledge by
modern
office in the learned
wrong morally,
opening up new
university
professions and the
socially, aesthetically
fields of enquiry and
young nation state
and intellectually
new academic
subjects beyond
those prescribed by
the Latin Church
Contributing
to
Preparing
students
for
Enlarging the domain
Stage 3:
greater
a role in the discovery of academic
The
and dissemination of
knowledge through
Humboldtian understanding and
control of the world in knowledge.
research and the
university
which we live and
recognition of
increasing the
empirical knowledge
material well-being of
people.
A tripartite mission
What can we conclude from reviewing the main endeavours of the university in each
of its developmental stages to answer to the question. The first conclusion is that in
every stage of its development the university has had the same three basic
concerns:
1.
2.
3.
To provide for the higher education of students
To contribute to the advancement of knowledge
To benefit those beyond the walls of the university i.e. the wider community.
It is reasonable to conclude that to warrant the name 'university' it is necessary that
an institution's endeavours to contribute to the advancement of knowledge, the
higher education of students and benefit those beyond the walls of the university.
This is sometimes termed the tripartite mission of the university and it is grounded in
the history of the university in each of the stages of its development.
The second conclusion is that in each of the stages of the development of the
university one part of the mission has dominated the other two. In stage 1 the
dominant part of the mission of the medieval university was to serve the Latin
Church and through it the community of western Christendom. In stage 2, the
dominant part of the mission of the early modern university was to meet the
requirements of its students for a university education. In stage 3, the dominant part
of the mission of the Humboldtian university was to contribute to the advancement of
knowledge.
7
How did the dominance of one part of the mission impact on the other two parts in
each of the three stages of the development of the university? As the tripartite
mission of the university has been dominated by each part in turn, the other two
parts have taken on new forms that serve the dominant part.
In the medieval university the dominant part was service to those beyond the
university. The medieval university directly served the Latin Church and was thereby
committed to the salvation of immortal souls from everlasting torment. What sort of
higher education was provided by the medieval university? A higher education that
supported the university's primary purpose of serving the Church i.e. it provided an
education for the priesthood based on the trivium and quadrivium. The particular
forms that the advancement of knowledge took in the medieval university were such
as would support the university's primary purpose of serving the Church i.e.
dissemination of the Word of God, interpretation of Holy Scripture (i.e. scholarship)
and the accumulation of such secular knowledge as could be reconciled with
Christian scripture.
In the second great epoch of university development, with universities financially
independent of the Latin Church, the dominant purpose of the university was the
education of its students. In this stage universities contributed to the advancement
of knowledge by legitimising new fields of academic study; this was the age when
the humanities gained entry to the university. Liberated from Church-based
constraints the fellows of the university had more freedom to indulge their own
interests in the pursuit of knowledge. Freed of the requirement to study subjects that
supported service to the Church there was increasing interest in humanistic enquiry.
The goal of higher education was to develop godly gentlemen i.e. men of virtue who
could tell right from wrong morally, socially, intellectually and aesthetically. How did
universities of the second stage benefit those beyond the walls of the university?
They developed leaders for the new nation-state and the learned professions and
they were a civilising influence in what was still a barbaric age.
The third stage of the development of the university is the Humboldtian university
when the advancement of knowledge became the dominant part of the university
mission. Consequently, the nature of a university education changed to reflect that
purpose with an emphasis on the dissemination of new knowledge and the
development of critical faculties. Likewise the 'service' part of the university mission
was interpreted in ways that reflected the new dominance with an emphasis on the
enlargement of the pool of knowledge from which we can all draw, increasing
mastery of the physical world and the development of critical faculties to expose
those who would seek to control through deception.
There is a further lesson to be drawn from this discussion of mission dominance: the
way that each part of the mission of the university has been expressed has been
very different in each of the three epochs of the development of the university. This
suggests that there may be many more options in the ways that each of the three
parts of the mission can realised than are currently imagined by minds still enthralled
by the Humboldtian paradigm.
The tripartite mission in the 20th century.
Over the last century the university has moved from a peripheral position in the
community to a more central location. In the first half of that century the view gained
ground that a key to national economic success was research, particularly scientific
research, and universities became responsible for a growing share of research in
8
society. This elevated the importance attached to university activities the contributed
to the advancement of knowledge.
The service part of the tripartite mission has also become more important in its own
right. The main reason for this has been increased government expenditure of
public money to support the universities. Over the last century public expenditure on
universities has rocketed, bringing with it rising expectations of their contribution to
the wider community that provides them with so much public funding. The classic
reason for government subsidising the extension of an activity with public money is
market failure caused, for example, by external benefits. Significant external
benefits imply a sub-optimal level of the activity. The more public money that
government spends on universities the more it expects them to show benefits that
are not fully recouped in terms of revenue ie external benefits. One way that
universities can show such benefits to society is by providing evidence of service to
the community. This has led to much more pressure from governments on
universities to serve the wider community. In some Scandinavian countries this
pressure has been particularly intense:
"In Sweden, in 1997, a third task was added to the law covering higher
education and research: to relate and collaborate with practitioners in the
community near the university to support developmental processes
(Regeringens proposition, 1996/97:5) The third task was added to the former
two, which are to educate and to conduct research." (Brulin, 2000, p. 440)
Also, over the last half-century the higher education part of the tripartite mission has
also become more important in its own right. The main reason for this is the
increasing rate of participation in HE.
Universities were 'elite' institutions during the period of the development of the
Humboldtian university. In those years the percentage of the population with a
university education was in less than single figures (i.e. less than 1 per cent). By
contrast, we are now in sight of a time when most people will experience university
education at some point in their lives. One consequence of this is a change in the
destinations of new graduates. In the elite system of HE of the 1960s, when the
number of school leavers going on to university was less than 10 percent most
students stayed in the education system after graduation3 (Bourner and Rospigliosi,
2008b). 40 years later the first destinations of most new graduates were outside the
education system. It is much easier to justify a form of Higher Education that
prioritises the pursuit of knowledge in an academic subject when the majority of
students remain in the academic system than it is when most graduates find
employment outside the academic system. The upshot is that in recent decades the
wider participation in higher education means that university education has become
more important in its own right (rather than as servant of the advancement of
knowledge) and this has led to the development of forms of Higher Education that
are not necessarily predicated on service to the Humboldtian goal. Examples of the
new Higher Education includes work-based learning, service-based learning,
problem-based learning, the development of skills for graduate employment, projectbased learning and reflective learning. These are not easy to explain in terms of a
higher education intended to serve the pursuit of knowledge of increasingly
specialised academic subjects ie a Humboldtian university education.
They went on to research, a higher degree (research or taught), teacher training or some
other aspect of education
3
9
These seismic shifts in the university landscape have produced a revival of interest
in the role of the university in society and attempts to renegotiate the 'compact'
between universities and the wider community (Fallis, 2006; Watson 2007). An
important consequence of these larger forces on the position of the university within
the wider community has been changes in the relative position of the three parts of
the tripartite mission. The 'advancement of knowledge' which was dominant for most
of the 20th century has in recent years been challenged by increasing weight
attached to the 'higher education of students' and 'service to the wider community'.
This is not because the advancement of knowledge has become any less important
but because the higher education of students has become more important (as
participation has risen) as has pressure to serve the wider community (as public
expenditure on universities has risen).
By the early years of the 21st century the three parts of the university mission were
more evenly balanced than in the high years of the 20th century when the
Humboldtian ideal dominated universities. Much evidence is available to support this
contention. Three examples should suffice. First, universities now produce mission
statements to make explicit their priorities. Until the 1980s university mission
statements were unnecessary since the mission of a university was self-evidently the
advancement of knowledge. Inspection of the mission statements of a range of
universities nowadays shows a varying mixture of the three parts of the tripartite
mission. Second, the elevation of the polytechnics and some colleges to university
status in the 1990s doubled the number of universities. The polytechnics had been
created to give more emphasis to the education of students who would follow a
range of professional employments and to serve local/regional communities. Third,
increasing recognition of 'third stream' activities has led to increasing need to fund
them; we now have three streams of funding corresponding to the three parts of the
tripartite mission. Until the 1990s government funding for the 'service' part of that
mission was spasmodic and directed a specific projects such as 'Enterprise in Higher
Education'. Now there is recognition of the need for stable funding for 'third stream'
activities. Universities are making increasingly senior appointments to support this
area of their work as evidenced, for example, by the University of Brighton's recent
decision to appoint a Head of Economic and Social Engagement. And in 2005
Watson was able to write "There is evidence, all around the world, of increased
interest in civic and social role of universities." (Watson, 2005, p. 1)
The core business of the university
So what is the core business of the university in the 21st century? It is now what it
has always been: (1) the advancement of knowledge, (2) the higher education of
students, and (3) service to the wider community beyond walls of the university.
Together these three endeavours are the enduring concerns of the university. For
legitimate entry to the university any potential activity must contribute to one or more
of these three goals. How does UCE meet this test of legitimacy? Let us take the
three criteria in reverse order:
1. Benefit those beyond the walls of the university
UCE benefits those in the wider community; that is the sine qua non of UCE.
2. Contribution to the higher education of students
UCE contributes to the higher education of students in a range of ways, from
accrediting the learning from student volunteering, through individual units of
student-community engagement on broader courses of HE to fully-fledged focused
programmes of student-community higher education. In these ways UCE, like work-
10
based learning, enables students to achieve the learning outcomes of a university
education through practice-based experience.
3. Contribution to the advancement of knowledge
UCE enlarges the domain of legitimate knowledge within the university and in so
doing it is continuing a tradition that the university can recognise. Medieval
universities enlarged the domain of legitimate knowledge (by including such
knowledge from Islamic countries as could be reconciled with Christian scripture).
The early modern university enlarged the domain of academic knowledge by
including the humanities. The German universities expanded the range of academic
knowledge further by welcoming the empirical sciences as legitimate knowledge into
the university. UCE is enlarging the domain of academic knowledge to include
knowledge that is local and practice-based (Hart, Maddison and Wolff, 2007., p.5).
The advancement of knowledge is often framed in terms of the discovery,
dissemination and application of knowledge. UCE offers scope for all these three
aspects of the advancement of knowledge.
The conclusion of this section is that the core business of the university comprises
three parts and has done so long as the western university has existed. Together
the three parts comprise the tripartite mission of the university that can be readily
identified in every stage in the long history of the university. UCE can contribute to
each of the three parts of that tripartite mission which means that it is neither
marginal nor ephemeral but rather it is at the heart of the university project.
Discussion and implications
This paper has shown that UCE can claim a legitimate place within the core
business of the university by making a significant contribution to all three parts of the
tripartite mission. This counts for little, however, if more senior members of a
university, and those in position of influence within it, are wearing blinkers made in its
recent Humboldtian past. It is tempting for advocates of UCE within such a
university to be pragmatic and to try to position UCE within the dominant
Humboldtian culture rather than within the university's more enduring tripartite
mission. There are dangers, however, in so doing:
(1)
There is a hierarchy of knowledge within the Humboldtian paradigm. At the
top is knowledge that is 'objective knowledge' i.e. knowledge that is empirical
and universal (independent of space and time). This is why the traditional
pecking order of academic subjects in the Humboldtian university runs from
the sciences at the top, through the social sciences to the humanities (at the
bottom). The knowledge that UCE delivers is likely to be local, contextspecific and practice-based. Consequently, UCE is never likely to be more
than an also-ran within the Humboldtian university.
(2)
The relative dominance of the Humboldtian paradigm is waning. This is not
because the 'advancement of knowledge' is becoming less important but
rather because the 'HE' and 'service' parts of the tripartite mission are
becoming more important. The shift from an elite system of higher
education to mass higher education means that higher education can no
longer be just for the sake of the advancement of academic subject
knowledge but must also be for the sake of the students themselves. In
other words, university education has become more important in its own right
and not just as servant of the advancement of knowledge. And the increased
use of public funds to support universities has also made the service part of
the tripartite mission more important in its own right.
11
The danger for UCE in positioning itself within the Humboldtian culture is that
although the Humboldtian goal dominated universities during the 20th century
the other two parts of the tripartite mission are growing as independent
forces.
(3)
Trying to force-fit UCE into the Humboldtian paradigm runs a risk of distorting
UCE and limiting its development to ways that serve only the Humboldtian
goal.
In order to gain a foothold within the academy UCE has had to be sensitive to
university culture and the main forces affecting it. But cultures change over time and
the strength of different forces ebb and flow. The argument in this paper is that UCE
also needs to pay attention to the values and ideas in the deeper waters that lie
beneath the cultural currents and surface forces.
The implications of the paper is that UCE is more likely to find a permanent home
within the tripartite paradigm than within the Humboldtian paradigm. This does not
imply that UCE should cease emphasising its contribution to the advancement of
knowledge. It does imply that equal emphasis should be placed on its contribution to
the higher education of the university's students and to the service part of the
mission in their own rights. Appendix 1 contains some reflections on implications of
this conclusion for UCE strategy-making.
Conclusion
Since the earliest universities of medieval Europe the mission of the university has
been made up of three parts: (1) the advancement of knowledge, (2) the higher
education of students, and (3) service to those beyond the university i.e. in the wider
community. These three ingredients of the university can be recognised in all the
stages of the development of the university since the Middle Ages. Etched across
this continuity has been a pattern of change whereby first one part then another has
dominated the other two. Dominance by one part has meant that the other parts
have been expressed in ways that serve the dominant part. Consequently, each
stage of the development of the university has displayed distinctive characteristics
(which is summarised in appendix 2). The 'advancement of knowledge' dominated
universities for most of the 20th century. In recent decades its dominance has been
challenged by the pressures on universities to pay increasing attention to 'the higher
education of students' and 'service to those beyond the university' as separate goals
in their own right. By the start of the 21st century we had moved out of the stage 3,
the Humboldtian stage, in the development of the university to a position where the
three parts of the university mission are more evenly weighted.
What can we conclude about where UCE fits within the western university? At the
centre of the western university is the tripartite mission which has endured in every
stage of its long history. And UCE can claim to make a significant contribution to
each of the three parts of that mission. It is therefore reasonable to locate UCE at
the heart of the university.
The persistence of the tripartite mission over the best part of a millennium means
that it is no passing fad. UCE can remain important so long as it contributes to all
parts of the tripartite mission.
12
The Humboldtian university has been around for two centuries and from that
perspective UCE is a recent interloper. The tripartite mission of the university has
been around for almost a millennium and from that perspective the Humboldtian
university is a recent interloper. If UCE is new it is simply a new way of helping to
realise a venerable aspiration: the tripartite mission.
References
Brulin, G. (2000) 'The Third Task of Universities or How to Get Universities to Serve
their Communities!' in Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry
and Practice, edited by Reason, P and Bradbury, H., London: Sage.
Bourner, T. (2008a) 'The fully-functioning university', Higher Education Review, Vol.
40. No. 2. Pp. 26-46.
Bourner, T. and Rospigliosi, A. (2008b) 40 Years On: Long Term Change in the
First Destinations of Graduates. Higher Education Review, Vol. 41, No. 1 pp.
36-59.
Clark, B. (Ed.) (1994) The Research Foundation of Graduate Education, (Berkeley,
CA, California University Press).
Cobban, A. (1975) The Medieval Universities: Their Development and Organisation,
London: Methuen
Fallis, G. (2006) Multiversities, Ideas, and Democracy, Canada: University of Toronto
Press.
GEES (200#) 'Community Engagement' Geography, Earth and Environmental
Subject Centre (add web-address)
Hart, A., Maddison, E. and Wolff, D. (Eds.) (2007) Community-University
Partnerships in Practice, Leicester: National Institute of Adult Continuing
Education.
Hatakenaka, S. (2005) 'Development of third stream activity. Lessons from
international experience' London: Higher Education Policy Institute.
Haynes, P., Britt, D. and Gill, S. (2007).'Substance misuse, teaching and research –
using knowledge and evidence for community benefit' in ) CommunityUniversity Partnerships in Practice edited by Hart, A., Maddison, E and Wolff,
D., Leicester: National Institute of Adult Continuing Education.
Humboldt, W. v. (1970) 'On the spirit and organizational Framework of intellectual
institutions in Berlin', Minerva, pp.242-67 (German original 1810).
Perkin, H. (1997) 'History of Universities' in The History of Higher Education (Second
Edition) edited by Goodchild, L and Weschler, H, Boston (USA): Pearson.
Regeringens proposition (1996/97) Forskning och samhalle.
Simpson, R. (1983). How the PhD Came to Britain: a century of struggle for
postgraduate education. Guildford: Society for Research into Higher
Education.
13
Stray C. (1998) Classics Transformed: Schools, Universities and Society in England,
1930-1960, Oxford:
Watson, D. (2005) What have the universities ever done for us? Talk for the Higher
Education Policy Institute (HEPI) seminar, House of Commons, 30
November, 2005.
Watson, D. (2007) Managing Civic and Community Engagement, London: Open
University Press (McGraw-Hill Education)
14
Appendix 1: UCE strategy-making and the heart of the university
University activities that best suit the requirements of one community may be very
different from activities best suited to another. Responding to the needs of the
community in East London in England is unlikely to require the same set of activities
needed to serve the community in California. In other words, the activities the comprise
a university's UCE are likely to be more context-dependent and context-specific than
either teaching or research. The diversity of activities this implies across the range of
universities has led to difficulty in developing government funding support for UCE:
"However, public funding support for third stream activities is not easy to design.
'Third stream activities need to remain very diverse as each university should
respond to external needs in its own way, and so it is vital that government
support should not lead to straight jacketing or even to narrowing its focus."
(Hatakenaka, S., 2005, p.2)
However, it is well to keep in mind that to be a university at the start of the 21st century
does mean what it has always meant since the first universities of the middle ages: (1)
the advancement of knowledge, (2) service to those beyond the walls of the university
(i.e. the wider community) and (3) the higher education of students. Activities that serve
all three parts of this tripartite mission can reasonably be regarded as the most central
to the purpose of the university. This suggests a strategy for locating UCE activities at
the very centre of the core business of the university, i.e. look for activities that serve all
three parts of the tripartite mission. Here are three examples of such activities:
1.
Develop a UCE doctoral programme. Doctorates are a form of higher education
that provide a training in research and the doctoral thesis contains the evidence
that the candidate has developed the capacity to make a significant original
contribution to new knowledge through research. A UCE doctorate would need to
make the case that it also makes an actual or potential contribution to the wellbeing of the wider community.
2.
UCE self-study offers opportunities to contribute to all three parts of the tripartite
mission. For example, a study of the development of student community
education schemes could advance knowledge in the field, benefit the higher
education of students on such courses and thereby also contribute to the wellbeing of communities. Even more specifically, a research proposal to explore and
profile variation in the range of provision of HE based on service in the community
across universities could contribute to all parts of the tripartite mission.
3.
Another very specific example is provided by the title of one of the contributions to
Hart, Maddison and Wolff (2007): 'Substance misuse, teaching and research –
using knowledge and evidence for community benefit' (Haynes, Britt and Gill,
2007). That title declares its three aspirations: teaching, research and community
benefit.
In assessing the strength of the case of any activity's claim for inclusion within a
university's UCE programme it is worth asking how it will contribute to each part of the
tripartite goal of universities. For anyone seeking to make the case for inclusion of an
activity within a university's UCE programme it worth looking for answers to the following
three questions: (1) How can the activity benefit the community? (2) How can the activity
contribute to the advancement of knowledge? (3) How can the activity contribute to the
education of students? Activities with the most convincing positive answers to all three
questions most clearly lie at the centre of the university enterprise; they are the ones
15
that will contribute most to the assuring the long-term future of UCE at the heart of the
university.
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Appendix 2: the main stages in the development of the Western University key characteristics
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Epochs
Approximate period
Dominant mission
Highest value
Focus
Metaphor
The medieval
university
Early 12th century
to late 15th century
Service to Church
and Christendom
Piety
Church-focused
Apprenticeship for
servants of the
Latin Church
To develop pious
clerics
1. Knowledge of
Holy Scripture
2. Mastery of the
liberal arts
3. Piety
The early modern
university
Early 16th century
to late 19th century
Higher education
of the students
Virtue
Student-focused
Finishing School
for gentlemen
The Humboldtian
university
Late 19th century
to late 20th century
Advancement of
knowledge
Knowledge
Subject-focused
Seed-bed4 for
researchers
To develop critical
scholars
1. Latest
knowledge
2. Well-honed
critical faculties
3. Questioning
attitude
Secular
Science
Empirical
knowledge
Focus of the
curriculum
Holy Scripture
Main form of
patronage
Religious affiliation
Dominant subject
Dominant
epistemology
The Church
To develop godly
gentlemen
1. Breadth of
knowledge
(including the
humanities)
2. Good manners
and social
graces
3. Virtue
Humanities
through Classical
Studies
The Crown
Latin Church
Theology
Reason applied to
texts approved by
the Latin Church
Scholasticism
National Church
Classical studies
Reason applied to
an enlarged range
of texts
Humanism
Highest aim of
higher education
Generic learning
outcomes
Ascendant
intellectual
paradigm
Subject-specific
The State
Empiricism
Wordcount: 6830 words
4
The word seminar is from the Latin seminarium i.e. seed-bed.
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