Reflections on the Functions of the European University in the New Millennium
Prof. María José García Ruiz
1. Introduction
Nowadays the European university is being subject of deep scrutiny concerning its
mission in society, the functions it performs and the objectives it intends to develop. We
can enumerate three factors that explain this analysis and valuation of the social projection
of the university institution. Firstly, we can mention the contextual factors: it is well-known
that, in times of emergency of a “new society”, the university is summoned so as to help
design and consolidate change (FERNÁNDEZ, 1999: 210). The university was
instrumentalized in the beginnings of the XIXth century to construct nations and edify
States. Thus, when Humboldt was called to regenerate the Prussian State after the Jena
defeat in 1806 by Napoleon, Humboldt contributed to this revival creating in 1809 the
University of Berlin, which Humboldt relates to an idea of the university based more on the
search of truth (research) than in the transmission of already acquired knowledge
(teaching). Based more in humanistic principles than in “utilitarian” aims: the education of
men (universal aim) should precede any other political or economic consideration
(particular aim) (idem). In the same way, the university is now summoned by the European
Union and the member states to rethink the buts and the nature of knowledge in times of
transit from modern times to “postmodern” times. Secondly, we must mention the character
of the social and economic changes that are taking place in the first years of the XXIst
century and, specifically, the advance towards a knowledge society in which the university
necessarily constitutes the apex institution of the transformations taking place. Thirdly, as
the European Union has testified since the ratification of the Treaty of Maastricht (1992),
(the instrumentalization of) education is a sine quanon condition to successfully lead and
develop any European political, economic, social and cultural project. Such
instrumentalization must be initiated --as has, in fact, happened-- with the university, first
and original institution of the educational systems, from which and in response to which the
rest educational levels have been configured (GARCÍA GARRIDO, 1998: 47) and that
exerts a dominoes effect upon the remaining levels of European education systems.
In view of the social responsibility of the university institution in the new
millennium, the international institutions are devoting a wide space of analysis and debate
to the study of the mission and functions of the university in the first years of the XXIst
century. Thus, in 1991 the European Commission published a Memorandum of Higher
Education in the European Community which was answered --not always positively-- by
the member states (vid. EUROPEAN COMMISSION, 1993). More recently the
Commission has published a communication with the explicit title of The Role of
Universities in the Europe of Knowledge (vid. EUROPEAN COMMISSION, 2003). In
2005 the European Commission celebrated a conference with the title Enabling European
Higher Education to Make its Full Contribution to the Knowledge Economy and Society. In
this conference several experts and academics --such as Jan Figel, Ginés Mora, Andreu
Mas and others-- debated crucial aspects of the university institution (priorities, quality,
attraction, financing, autonomy, etc) in view of its contribution to the Lisbon strategy.
Finally, in May 2006 the Commission has published a communication about the
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modernization of the European university with the aim of strengthening its social mission
by means of the interrelation of the university roles of education, research and innovation
(EUROPEAN COMMISSION, 2006). Simultaneously to these profuse activity of the
international institutions, in the bosom of the member states there have emerged numerous
forum of debate (vid. SMITH and WEBSTER, 1997: 1-14) that try to analyze to what
extent the idea of the European university of the XXIst century is a continuity and
evolution of the liberal tradition that regards the acquisition of knowledge as a selfsufficient aim and that it could continue exerting its traditional social functions (FILMER,
1997; KUMAR, 1997) or, in the other end of the continuum, if the university institution has
reached or advances towards such a degree of differentiation, specialization and
vocationalism (BAUMAN, 1997, SCOTT, 1997) that demands a real revolutionary
redefinition of social functions among which lifelong learning would occupy a privileged
place.
2. Transformations in higher education
In the last years the European university has experienced deep changes in its bosom
which partly affect the nature of this institution. The presence of these changes is
recognized by all academics: by the advocates of a traditional conception of this institution
in the XXIst century as well as by the supporters of a radical change of the mission of the
university. The more relevant changes that have taken place in the university resume in the
transit from an elite culture in the university to a culture of masses; the drastic diminution
of resources traditionally assigned to this institution; the devaluation of the value of the
university certificates (as a consequence of the increase in the number of students); the
management type of the university administration; the impact of information technology -that allows the development of teaching outside the traditionally conceived campus--; and
in the supposed drive of the university according to a governmental and industrial
predetermined agenda --which determines a skills based teaching and a research linked to
governmental interests-- (SMITH and WEBSTER, 1997: 1-5). Other authors add to these
changes other crucial transformations in European higher education, such as the
institutional differentiation (the development of new moulds of higher education that have
allowed the quantitative expansion of this educational level); the development of new ways
of teaching and learning; and the europeinization of higher education (that has determined
an increasing transparency in the European higher education system and a development
towards armonization and integration) (GELLERT, 1993: 17-19). All these factors are
provoking the development of functional modifications and the emergency of new missions
and functions in higher education (ibidem: 17) that can alter, in the long term, the
functional approach historically characteristic of the different systems of higher education
(ie. the German research model; the French professional model, and the British
personalistic model). Among the enumerated changes the one that, probably, affects in a
deeper degree the change of nature of universities, is the first one. That is, the change that is
provoking the transit from a university conceived for a social elite to one designed for the
masses. And this specially in the Anglosaxon model of the university, more than in the
French or German models of university, due to the British ideal of “intimacy” between
teachers and students (ibidem: 12).
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All authors –both moderns and postmoderns– come to recognize that a key change
in nowadays university is the transition from a elite culture of higher education to a mass
higher education culture. But moderns and postmoderns differ in their interpretation of the
degree of democratization that the university has reached in the XXIst century, and in the
interpretation of the statistics. And why is it so important or relevant to state that we have
reached or not reached the full democratization of higher education? It is relevant in the
sense that for moderns we are still in a quite selective system of higher education (the
institution has not changed dramatically and can still exert its traditional functions). But
postmoderns as the academic Scott demonstrate the phenomena of massification of English
higher education, in which the 32% of the age cohort is inscribed, stating that “the most
popular taxonomy of higher education systems determines that these systems cease to be
elite systems when they gather more than the 40% of such age cohort” (Scott, 1997: 43).
The phenomena of massification of higher education is a phenomena with shows quasicausal relations with the changes that have been produced in the culture of university
institutions, in the sociological composition of universities and in the epistemology of
university knowledge. It justifies a radical redefinition of functions of the university.
On the one side, modern academics affirm that the Robbins spirit of the decade of
the sixties has not yet been accomplished. Such spirit, in the will of overcoming of the
society of classes predominant in the postwar years, consecrated the political principle that
“all qualificated applicants would find a place in the diversificated system of higher
education” (KOGAN and HANNEY, 2000: 65). Higher education adopted, in principle, a
role of contribution to social cohesion, of construction of “a common culture and a
common standard of citizenship” and of democratization of knowledge in an educational
system whose expansion, in this level, was eminent. It was this principle of access which
legitimated the continuous expansion of higher education, backed by the student demand
and which persisted till the middle of the decade of the nineties, when expansion was
contained. Nevertheless, as these same authors affirm “equality in higher education has
always revealed an ambiguous and complex issue” (idem) and specially in those
educational systems that have revealed a remarkable independence among the different
educational levels. That is: when the comprehensive school was instituted in England in the
decade of the sixties, in the university circles there was, in general lines, a general approval
of a movement conceived as an alternative to selectivity and failure. They did not feel very
closely the implications of this reform in the university institution, insofar as it had its own
selective devices. Several authors and politicians recognize that, if the expansion and the
increase in the access to higher education derived in a greater equality of opportunities in
higher education, that had not happened because this principle had been an explicit item of
the political agenda, because it had not been such (ibidem: 66). The principle of equality of
opportunity in higher education had been disregarded and it still was in the middle of the
decade of the nineties. The only thing there was it was a residual belief in the distributive
function of higher education underneath the support to a system in expansion. What there
always was in academic and political circles was an explicit support to the promotion of the
university excellence, which was a continuation of the traditional policies. Despite some
authors have affirmed that we are assisting to the third educational revolution of those
occurred in industrial societies since the XIXth century, characterized by the
universalization of terciary education (1970-2010) (JONES, 1995: 150), it seems clear that
such revolution has not yet been accomplished: despite the number of university students
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continues increasing, nowadays only a third of student of the age cohort assist to university
institutions in countries such as England (SMITH and WEBSTER, 1997: 2). In the era of
the society of knowledge the different authors continue arguing of the social injustice in the
university in the sense that the phenomenon of a greater social inclusion coexists with a
greater selectivism in the access to the prestigious institutions which favor better labor
perspectives. The students most susceptible of suffering social injustices in the access to
university are, according to different authors, the mature students, those belonging to
disadvantaged backgrounds and ethnic minorities (ibidem: 12). That is why there are
authors that, analyzing this selectivism from the point of view of the actual competence
diminished State affirm that “education is again transforming itself in an oligarchic good”
(BALL, 2006: 69), or that ask themselves --in a clear yearning attitude of the role of the
Welfare State-- “(…) if citizens are today ready to loose the individual conquests --the
rights of freedom-- and the social conquests --the social rights-- that are the result of a long
historical evolution and of a long fight for their achievement” (PUELLES, 1993: 14).
The mission of the university and its social function constitute a historical subject
(FERNÁNDEZ, 1999: 210). Already in the XIXth century there was a vivid polemic in this
respect. On the one side there were the supporters of the University of Oxford, to which
“liberal or philosophical knowledge” contained an end in itself which reported a holistic or
integrative thought “emphatically useful in the sense that a cultivated mind or the person
that has learned to think and reason, to compare, to distinguish and to analyze (…) has a
power and resources applicable to any job or occupation he accomplishes (…)”
(NEWMAN, 1996: 177-178, quoted in FERNÁNDEZ, 1999: 211). Among the supporters
of this vision we can cite personalities such as John Henry Newman and Giner de los Ríos.
On the other side there were those that conceived the mission of the university as
necessarily oriented to give a diversified, quick and adjusted response to the preparation for
the world of work. In which terms is taking place this revived and vigorous debate in the
first years of the XXIst century? Which ideas of the university proclaim the different
proponents and which social functions are, respectively, assigned to the university as its
distinctive mission for the XXIst century? Which is, specifically, the paradigm of university
promoted by the European Union for the construction of a European society of knowledge?.
Due to didactic aims we are going to characterize the existing positions in two extremes,
knowing that the position of many instances and academics, and also our own, are
intermediate and integrative positions.
3. The modern vision of the University
For many authors, the classical piece of cardinal J. H. Newman The Idea of a
University still is, in the first years of the XXIst century, “the most eloquent statement of
the mission of the university” (SMITH and LANGSLOW, 1999: 8). Reverend Ian Ker,
biographer of Newman, has resumed the conception of Newman about the university
institution and has showed the relevance of such conception for today´s university. We can
underline four key aspects of his idea:
1. From an organizational and administrative point of view, Newman proposes a
university based in the model of the University of Leuven. Not only because the
then recently founded University of Leuven constituted a model of a catholic
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university for the Catholic University of Ireland that Newman wanted to found
and of which he was first Chancellor. But because “it constituted the continental
corrective to the collegiated system of Oxbridge” (KER, 1999: 15). He wanted
to combine the advantages of both systems and to constitute a university
composed and developed in colleges in a system, such as the English, in which
the university lacked any real or practical jurisdiction on them.
2. From a conceptual point of view, Newman conceived the university as a “place
of teaching the universal knowledge” (ibidem: 13) and of research.
3. In what concerns the social mission of the university, Newman emphasizes the
teaching and the development of “liberal education” (he also denominates it
“liberal or philosophical knowledge”). By this education he understands the real
cultivation of the mind, knowledge when it is impregnated with reason, when it
is imbued with “the idea of method, order, principle and system to have the
habit of method, of starting with one idea, follow it and distinguish what one
knows from what one does not know” (ibidem: 21); the acquisition of the
faculty of judgement, the ability of distinguishing priorities and the power to
evaluate and make normative judgements inseparable to the adoption of
decisions inherent to the advancement of knowledge (ibidem: 24). The
“intellectual culture” consists in learning to think and reach intellectual
excellence. This culture or philosophy presupposes knowledge and the carrying
out of long readings to acquire it. It also presupposes imagination and memory,
but it goes long further.
4. Finally, and in what concerns the nature of the sciences which best favor the
“intellectual culture” and which are best instruments for the cultivation and the
progress of mind, Newman points to the classical subjects and the arts, referring
to the seven liberal arts of the medieval university, which included grammar,
rethoric, logic and mathematics --this last one subdivided in geometry,
arithmetic, astronomy and music-- (ibidem: 18). In his Catholic University of
Ireland of the end of the XIXth century he did some adaptations to the medieval
concept of liberal studies, including among them science and theology. In his
writings he alludes to the “contemporary threat of the expansion of modern
science related to the position of classical subjects in the university studies, and
asks himself whether such a science would be able to educate the mind so
suitably as traditional liberal arts do” (ibidem: 19). Newman establishes the
unity of knowledge, where all sciences have their place and form a unitary
whole, advising against any type of academic imperialism in which a powerful
or fashionable science is considered the center of truth (ibidem: 26). Newman
advises against the danger of rejection or of relativism of Liberal Education
understood as conformed by general principles and constituent ideas in the
agenda of the emergent universities in the sense that “the most powerful and
aggressive subjects will dominate the curriculum and will establish the character
of the university” (ibidem: 28).
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Paul Filmer, one of the authors which participated in the colloquium organized by
Anthony Smith and Frank Webster in the Magdalen College in Oxford and the University
of Brookes in Oxford on July 1996 on the nature of the university in a context of radical
change, is one of the actual academics that support the modern idea of the university and
the permanence, in general lines, of the traditional functions of the university in the present
society. Filmer establishes that “the logic of the posts --postmodern society,
poststructuralist epistemology and postindustrial economy-- is one that informs speculative
theory, but is not yet a socio-logic and, therefore, does not have substantial social or
cultural correlates and cannot provide for an adequate consideration of the social role of
higher education” (FILMER, 1997: 57). This author admits the existence of a plurality of
ideas of the modern university according to the structural forms that this institution has
gradually adopted in its response to social demands. We take the British case because, as
some academics affirm, “(…) it is more probable that the European universities orient
themselves in the direction of the British that the other way round” (SMITH and
LANGSLOW, 1999: 8). Such plurality of ideas, briefly, include a wide fan that embraces
from the Oxbridge model (and its idea of university as essential to the preservation of the
culture of minorities against the mass civilization), to models such as the University of
London of the XIXth century (whose cultural ideal allows the coexistence of pure and
applied sciences, political economy, social sciences and humanities); the university which
emerged in the decade of the sixties and which arouse to university status some colleges of
advanced education; the new universities created by the legislation of 1992 which unified
the binary system, and the universities which develop their task by means of the new
technologies (Open University, University of the Third Age, University of the Highlands
and Islands, and the University of Industry, whose ethos in a sense, and imitating some
similar Northamerican, is to provide specific vocational training for concrete industries)
(FILMER, 1997: 48-51). This diversity of institutions of higher education and their
associated ideas make Filmer claim a differentiated system of higher education with three
categories of university. The most pure category of university --linked with pure and
applied research and with the teaching of postgraduates-- category that Filmer clearly bets
for, would continue developing its classical functions in today´s society (ibidem: 52-53):
1. Cultural reproduction function - guaranteeing the continuity of the cultural
tradition, may be linked to the reproduction of an stratified social structure, and
constituting an environment in which epistemological culture can be debated,
revised and renewed by means of innovation.
2. Research function - by means of the development of pure and disinterested
epistemological research, the exploration of the social implications of the results
of research and the assessment in relation of the political adoption of such
results.
3. Teaching function - nowadays economy demands the university the training of a
labor force with transferable skills, but the university has the social and cultural
responsibility of teaching to critically think in respect policy and society
(ibidem: 58). The development of disinterested research is crucial to achieve this
objective. The formation of the epistemological excellence demands that the
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access to the university is selective, with a selection based in merit demonstrated
by the achievements of students.
There are certain features in nowadays society that seem to demand a redefinition of
such functions (ie. the governmental imposition of privatization of public services and of
market structures of financing in public expenditure; the introduction of responsivity
structures and its associated culture of financial and administrative inspection; the
development of models of academic provision moved away from the most traditional
discursive models of higher education, etc.) (ibidem: 55-56), but higher education
institutions must resist those “reductionist roles” and “maintain a clear vision of its role and
place in contemporary society --vision that depends on the ability of these institution to
develop a disinterested provision of education, training and research--” (ibidem: 57).
4. The postmodern vision of the university
In the other extreme of the continuum there are academics which state that both
from an economic point of view and from a cultural and social point of view we are
immersed in a situation of total fracture with the era of late modernity. They use the term
post-fordism to categorize this situation of radical transformation that manifest itself in
contemporary society in phenomena such as acceleration, the new conceptions of
time/space, risk, complexity/no linearity/circularity, and the power of reflection (SCOTT,
1997: 43). In this context it is inscribed the phenomena of massification of higher
education, phenomena that shows quasi-causal relations with the changes that have been
produced in the culture of university institutions, in the sociological composition of
universities and in the epistemology of university knowledge. Authors such as Scott
demonstrate the phenomena of massification of English higher education, in which the 32%
of the age cohort is inscribed, stating that “the most popular taxonomy of higher education
systems determines that these systems cease to be elite systems when they gather more than
the 40% of such age cohort” (ibidem: 38). He also adds that, considering that the
abandoning rate in England is comparatively low in respect international levels, this
country produces annually more graduates than France or Germany. Therefore, the
arguments that affirm that the British system is substantially more selective academically,
socially restrictive and numerically less developed than higher education systems in other
developed countries cannot be sustained.
Among the consequences that Scott points out that have been produced in the
academic and institutional cultures due to massification in university and the increasing
heterogeneous composition of the students, we can point out the functionalism of the
definitory categories of higher education in face of the typically essentialist (now
considered anachronic); the impossibility of maintaining the intimacy traditions of British
higher education --specifically, the phenomena of attenuation of the personal relations
among professors and students and among academic colleagues-- and their substitution for
burocratic systems of guidance and guarantee of quality; the reduction of the profile and the
collegiated practices and of the ideal of the university community and the promotion, in its
place, of the power and profile of the institutional administratives; the erosion of the
demarcations among higher education and other forms of education; the institution of
institutional differentiation by the market in substitution of institutional stratification by
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planification and the abandonment, as a consequence, of a fix hierarchy of institutional
roles; the objective of making the institutions as attractive as possible to potential students:
the choice of the consumer now competes with academic selection as determinant of the
access to higher education, and the emphasis in performance and buts achievement (ibidem:
38-41).
From an epistemological point of view this vision adduces that there has been
produced a “devaluation of traditional scientific culture not only in terms of decadence of
the cultural and intellectual canons which reflected the interests and aspirations of elite
students, but also due to the increasing skepticism in relation to the universalist
presumptions that denoted the values of cognitive rationality” (ibidem: 41). Therefore we
talk about the deconstruction of traditional scientific culture (in relation to its cognitive
values, social practices and institutional forms) and about the emergence of new types of
knowledge institutions with patterns of academic and professional socialization different to
the typically pertaining to the university and constituted in rivals models of the university
(idem). The concept of “knowledge” has evolved to a broader category which surpasses the
definitions and the academic and scientific spheres and, therefore, apparently it is not clear
that the universities, as they are nowadays constituted, are the most able institutions of
creation and manipulation of these new forms of knowledge. Knowledge is no more
privileged, in the sense that it is no more restricted to a social or academic class. It does not
make sense the function of preparation to a differentiated professional work, because such
division of work has been erosioned “from within” by epistemological insecurity and “from
without” by the reconfiguration of labor market (ibidem: 42).
With the view of responding to the new configuration of society, the university
institution (in process of “deinstitutionalization” and of adoption of virtual forms) must
adopt new social functions different from those traditionally developed:
1. Production function (not, no more, of reproduction) of social hierarchies (idem:
46): the decline of importance of expired forms of social stratification based in
social class and gender, race and the place of origin promotes that the
participation in higher education constitutes now one of the new ways of
differentiation and significant of cultural capital possession, but from the
perspective that the university contributes to social mobility and social change
of those participating in it and makes them able to construct their own
biography.
2. Teaching and research function: but not any more from a holistic and
disinterested point of view aimed to the “education of the minds of the students”
(KER, 1999: 25), but closely linked and in response to labor demands and to a
new labor culture of more diversified and diffused occupations than the former
rationalistic and burocratizied and which demand a curriculum oriented towards
the promotion of skills, aptitudes and attitudes.
3. Lifelong learning function (SCOTT, 1997: 45, FERNÁNDEZ, 1999: 221,
GELLERT, 1993: 240) that demands “not only providing the future graduates
with lifelong learning skills --curiosity, flexibility and adaptability-- but
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promoting the development of a new ironic, intuitive and instantaneous
mentality” (SCOTT, 1997: 45).
4. Education for leisure function: university education is “increasingly
incorporated in the more broader sector of “learning and leisure” which
constitutes the 13% of the gross national product in England” (ibidem: 46).
Higher education nowadays does not only exert a preparatory and preliminary
function for the world of work. Instead, many persons go to university as an
antidote to work and, therefore, the university must provide for the development
of personal, social and vital skills of the people that are inscribed in it (ibidem:
47).
If we had to situate the position of the European Community in one of the analyzed
extremes, we would situate such a position, preferably, in the last extreme. Certainly, the
European Commission does not ask itself drastic questions typical of the supporters of the
second position --ie. “the death of the university?”-- (SMITH and WEBSTER, 1997: 106).
The European Commision underlines, in the contrary, the relevance of the university
institution in the development and achievement of the aims established in the Lisbon
Conference. But it does seriously question that the universities maintain in the future their
place in society and in the world if they continue to be organized as they are now
(EUROPEAN COMMISSION, 2003: 25) and if they do not adapt and respond to the new
needs “to whom they are obliged to respond” (ibidem: 3). From the document of the
Commission that deals with this theme The role of universities in the Europe of knowledge
(2003) we could point out three main functions that the European Commission assigns to
the university in the first years of the XXIst century:
1. Social change function: together with excellence in teaching and research, the
university must offer a “wide, fair and democratic access” (ibidem: 7). It must
“widen the access conditions to this educational level --allowing access to those
that do not come from secondary education and a recognition (…) of the
competences acquired outside the university and in the margins of the official
teaching--“ (ibidem: 9).
2. Innovation function: there must be promoted a close and efficient cooperation
between the university and industry that allows the university concentrate
themselves in the innovation, transference and diffusion of knowledge. The
Commission urges the university to commercialize its research works and, in
line with the Northamerican university model, “to develop a basic research -search of knowledge for its own sake-- in a context of application, without
losing its basic character”.
3. Internationalization and creation of excellence European networks and of
development of an interdisciplinary academic task
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5. Some remarks about the function of social change of the university
Before stating some final conclusions of my intervention, I would like to make
some remarks regarding the function of social change assigned by some postmoderns to the
present university institution. Specifically, I would like to make some remarks on the link
between mass higher education and social mobility.
We can say, that probably mass higher education in Europe has served the function
of social mobility only during its expansion in the Welfare State. In the decades of the
Welfare State there was a clear link between higher education and social mobility.
Most empirical studies on social mobility at that time confirmed that a high
correlation existed between the level of education attained and the social standing of
occupation. Thus, the expansion of higher education was accompanied by expectations for
a more equal access to opportunities that had been the reserve of a small and privileged
elite before. A highly influential report by the OECD campaigned in the 1960s for the
expansion of mass higher education in Europe. Women and working-class children were
among the social groups that benefited from the expansion. Education came to be seen as
the key variable to individual and social group success, defined in terms of obtaining well
paid, secure, and high social status positions that had previously been reserved for the
elites. Nevertheless, the expansion of the higher education system in Europe occurred as
part of a larger societal development connected with the flourishing of the Welfare State.
The expansionist logic of the Welfare State provided both new educational opportunities,
and at the same time it also created new employment opportunities in education, health and
welfare. In this state of things, everyone sorting out of higher education had an employment
opportunity and his social mobility according to the higher education received could be
measured by means of the so-called mobility tables formed on the basis of a more or less
stable hierarchy of social and occupational positions. In the decades of the Welfare State,
therefore, there was presumably a clear link between mass higher education and social
mobility.
The link on the now called “mass” higher education and social mobility has changed
and has become tenous. The redefinition of this link has happened due to two factors
mainly:
1.- In the actual knowledge society in which LLL policies and practices have
already been implemented, higher education has already become not only a right,
but a quasi-obligation. According to authors such as Jones (1995) we are between
two revolutionary periods concerning education:
universalization of higher education (1970-2010)
era of Lifelong Learning (1990-2030)
Even if we have not yet fully reached the universalization of higher education, we
have entered the era of Lifelong Learning, to the extent that authors as Coffield
(1999) have stated that LLL constitutes “the last form of social control in the
educational systems, backed by menaces of compulsion”. It is the educational level
which exerts social control (LLL) the one that has the power and the role of social
mobility. In the first years of the XXIst century higher education as educational
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level is given for granted (even if it is not yet fully universalized). In our times of
LLL, the pressure towards more and permanent education needed to maintain the
dynamics of development of our society will not increase the returns of higher
education to individuals in terms of their career mobility. And this because the
extension of educational opportunities may reduce the correlation between status
achievement and education: the more widespread that higher education becomes,
the less will variations in status depend on it. The number of those who are now in a
position to derive benefits from mass higher education has vastly increased (new
admitted social groups, especially women and members of ethnic minorities).
2. Times have changed. The Welfare State in Europe has reached its limits
everywhere and partially is being demolished. The market and market-linked
thinking and institutions guided by the logic of the market have taken over in
many areas previously considered the exclusive domain of the State. There have
been deep structural changes in the way the economy works with far-reaching
repercussions on the employment system, including its link with the educational
system. The social and occupational hierarchy itself, formerly more or less
stable, has become mobile, rendering very difficult, tenuous and diffuse the
formerly clear link between mass higher education and social mobility.
Additionally to these new fluidity of positions, categories and concepts brought
by the new international economic frame, and also due to economic
considerations, a new factor has entered into the scene and exerts its weight on
individual decisions and public policy. This factor is the rising costs of
education. Opposite to the generous in funding Welfare State, the Neoliberal
State and its reliance in the market face economic constraints that have reopened
long muted debates on sensitive issues such as equality of chances, meritocracy
and elitism. Debates that have shown the altered nature of the assumed link
between higher education and occupational or social status.
Regarding this situation of scarce individual return of higher education in terms of
social mobility (and considering the actual situation of devaluation of BA degrees, rise of
graduate underemployment, etc.), different authors have different proposals:
- some of them show their willigness to pay for the expansion of opportunity
through higher education under conditions of rising cost
- others initiate searching questions of what is to be done in order to re-establish a
more positive correlation.
- others (recent article in northamerican Time Magazine “In Defense of Elitism”
advocated the reduction of the number of US high school graduates who go to college from
nearly 60% to a “still generous” 33%. The article stated that “the promise that we would all
become chiefs has ended in bitter disappointment, with wages for many graduates going
down”. And the author continues: “As a society, America considers it cruel not to give
them every chance of success. It may be more cruel to let them go on fooling themselves.
But above all, the price is too high for a continuation of an influx of mediocrities that
relentlessly lowers the general standards at colleges to levels the weak ones can meet”.
11
What could we say to support the need to continue investing in higher education?
1.- First, we agree with Nowotny (1995) that we must have caution about the fact of
adscribing mass higher education the role of serving the purpose of social mobility. Why?
Because the unfeasibility of such a role in nowadays higher education can provoke in the
supporters of it a resurge of conservative elitism or the conduction of strict value-formoney evaluation conducted in purely short-time perspectives.
2.- Second, that while no longer a guarantee for job security nor for a guaranteed
salary, higher education degree holders are less threatened by unemployment, and if they
are unemployed, the duration is shorter. In the future, this link will be even strengthened,
albeit in a different way. A more highly educated society will continue to reward those with
higher degrees, while at the same time the nature of these rewards, their timing and
duration, is likely to become increasingly uncertain, more diversified, and more negotiable.
3.- In the first years of the XXIst century, the right to higher education (whether
paid for or not) becomes something of an obligation (Nowotny, 1995). It is LLL, according
to Coffield, the educational level which has the attribute of exerting social control, not
higher education, whose completion is given for granted.
The scarce individual return of higher education in terms of social mobility does not
at all happen at societal level. Here we can say that society at large derives great benefits
from a vastly increased number of individuals with higher education. The greatest benefit
of mass higher education in society has resulted in a continued distribution of knowledge
throughout society that has created a mechanism that reshapes the way in which knowledge
is being produced. Thanks to the graduates that now can be found in many different
positions throughout the employment system, knowledge production today occurs in many
heterogeneous sites, constituting an invaluable resource for further knowledge production.
Therefore, the risk of investing mass higher education with the exclusive purpose of
social mobility, can be, as we have seen, the resurge of conservative elitism and/or the
establishment of strict value-for-money evaluation conducted in purely short time
perspectives.
6. Some remarks about the teaching and research function of the university
When talking about the teaching and research function of the university as seen by
the postmodern academics, we said that these academics see both functions of the
university as necessarily linked to labor demands.
To develop a bit further the interesting content of these functions we must focus on
the change of the nature of the debate that has occupied higher education in the last
decades:
The debates held in higher education in the decade of the 1970s centered around the
issue of quantity of education and can be resumed in the phrase: Too many graduates for
too few positions? (Nowotny, 1995: 77). The debate was marked by sharp disagreements
12
over a presumed over-education and over-qualification of the many more graduates for
whom not sufficient or not sufficiently well qualified jobs would be available. There were
authors, such as Ulrich Teichler (1991) that surveyed, based on labor market statistics, the
extent to which the number of higher education graduates surpassed the “demand” of the
employment system. He reached main conclusion:
1.- while graduates in the economic and engineering fields in most Western
European countries faced few difficulties in the 1980s of finding jobs, graduates from the
humanities and social sciences did.
The massification of higher education was experienced in many European countries
by the institutions of higher education as a structurally painful process. Nowadays, a new
process of adjustment and restructuring is under way that may be equally painful, but is
qualitatively very different. It is the process of adjustment of higher education to the labor
market, with all these implies in terms of change from the perspective of change of the
institutional culture of the university in its different aspects (knowledge, management) and,
ultimately, in its relation to society (University for Industry). The center of the debate in
higher education is no more quantitative issues or issues of over-education, but qualitative
issues. Quality understood as “possessing the right kind of skills and knowledge in new
mixtures and configurations” (Nowothy, 1995: 80). In this new category of the debate,
centered in quality understood this way, we can reach some conclusions concerning the
new link of higher education with social mobility:
1. Social mobility depends, to an extent never before experienced, not only in the
opportunities provided by the labor markets, but in the responsibility of the
individual. That is, in his will and ability to adjust to an increasing volatile and
ever changing employment system, and to active shape the job utilizing
knowledge. Society and the labor market, as never before, expect graduates to
become active agents of change. Indeed, graduates have come to experience
themselves this way too, in the sense that they expect to be able to either create
their own jobs (e.g., by setting up small firms or consultancies) or to alter the
conditions of their employment situation in line with what they see as their skills
profiles. That is why it is said that in the XXIst century, regarding the new
characteristics of the labor market of decentralized, globalized, volatile and
precarious, “social mobility will be determined much more along horizontal than
along vertical lines” (idem). Therefore, the claim that higher education must
teach and promote skills and attitudes, specially the “skill of learning new skills”
“the only skill that does not become obsolete”, and positive social attitudes
towards change (ibidem: 82).
Robert Reich (1990) has analyzed that, in the new knowledge society and in
the globalized international economy, there is a new category of job emerging:
“symbolic-analytic services”. Many graduates will become “symbolic analysts”.
This category of job includes and implies all “problem-solving, problemidentifying and strategic-brokering activities”. Symbolic analysts include, for
example, research scientists, but also advertising executives, film producers,
designers, journalists, musicians, and a large variety of other not well-defined
13
jobs. The result of their job (manipulation of symbols such as data, words, oral
and visual representations) will be traded world-wide.
Therefore, the new active graduates will need, together with the “skill of
learning new skills” and the positive social attitude towards change, a great
competence in research (skill not obsolete). The university of the XXIst century,
in accordance with the humboldian view of the university, has to be more based
than ever in research. The difference is now that research must not only be
conducted by professors working in the university, but by the students. The
demands of the knowledge society and of the new jobs emerging impose that
graduates are experts in the management of information. That they possess what
Cardinal Newman called “intellectual culture”: “The acquisition of the faculty
of judgement, the ability of distinguishing priorities and the power to evaluate
and make normative judgements inseparable to the adoption of decisions
inherent to the advancement of knowledge”. It demands that we inculcate
research abilities in the graduate level, and not only in the postgraduate or ph-d
level. Not all students will have the time or the opportunity of doing a ph-d
(tendency is increasing). But all students and graduates will increasingly face
tasks of manipulation of knowledge in their jobs.
An important shift in knowledge production is taking place in society that
demand that we teach research abilities in graduates. It is what authors such as
Gibbons (1994) have called the shift from Mode 1 knowledge to Mode 2
knowledge. Mode 1 knowledge implies knowledge generated within a
disciplinary, primarily cognitive context. Is knowledge generated within a
vertical structure. In contrast to it, Mode 2 knowledge, which results from the
multiplication of sourcing of knowledge in contemporary society and the
heterogeneous growth in the number and kinds of sites where knowledge is
produced and being used, implies a kind of knowledge produced in diverse and
heterogeneous contexts of application. And whose generation involves an aspect
of continuous negotiation: knowledge will not be produced unless and until the
interests of the various actors are included. Mode 2 knowledge has other
characteristics, such as transdisciplinarity and heterogeneity. It means a
horizontal structure of knowledge. Higher education has played a pivotal role in
this shift, since it is the distribution of knowledge through graduates into society
that drives changes in knowledge production. This is considered to be one of the
most significant effects of mass higher education, the one that has lead to the
emergence of the learning society in which life-long study, as well as training
and retraining, are possible and taken for granted by large fractions of the
population. Higher education has the task to educate and concientiate graduates
of their condition of lifelong learners.
2. Concerning the traditionally called two cultures in higher education (the
academic culture and the professional culture), which can be still differentiated,
we can say that in the new functioning of the labor market, the professional
culture and its teachings remain less touched or implicated. In the sense that in
professional higher education the link to future labor market has always been
14
more clearly specified and constantly updated. And also because its teachings
have always contained a great amount of skills. We can say that the professional
culture reveals more related and similar to the actual postmodern vision of the
university. To the extent that, if in former times the academic culture in the
university was predominant and much valued, nowadays the professional culture
(in its teachings and methods) has taken the lead in political and economic
spheres and is more valued. In view of the disadvantaged position of the
humanities and the social sciences, which have never possessed such a clear-cut
employment profile, we must be aware that the new attitudes and skills that the
labor market demands to the graduates must be with a greater emphasis and in a
deeper way inculcated in the students belonging to the academic culture. To
allow these graduates have the same opportunity of chances of social mobility.
7. Conclusions
Certainly, universities have always revealed institutions in evolution and adaptation
to changing and new social circumstances. In the same way, and despite the existing
stereotypes about a uniform model of university, the university institutions have revealed a
notable institutional diversity, which has not impeded these institutions exert their task
from common objectives and priorities.
1) From an epistemological point of view: As opposed to the positions of postmodern
academics (Bauman and Scott) that suggest that the university “is transforming in a
radically new phenomena, without common institutional characters (…) and
developing forms of knowledge Type 2 --not hierarchical, plural, transdisciplinary,
changeable and socially adapted to the different needs of the students and to the
priorities of industry”-- (SMITH and WEBSTER, 1997: 104), I maintain the vision
that the university must adapt to new times but without at all loosing its essence and
without loosing the most positive elements of past times:
-
The university must maintain its common institutional mission (to maintain
its nature): the education of mind. The role of the university is to teach to
critically think in respect policy and society, and to manipulate symbols and
knowledge (symbolic-analyst in the knowledge society). To teach to think is
a superior objective than to teach to learn. In any case, both are important.
But the university must not loose its task of teaching to think. If the
university rejects its teaching to think mission and adopts the mission of
teaching the priorities of industry (only transferable skills), the university
would become merely an enterprise at the service of industry. And that
would signify the rejection of the mission of the university in relation to
society. The mission that Ortega y Gasset assigned to the university was: the
conduction and the lead of society. The university cannot conduct and lead
society if it has to follow the agenda of government or economy. The
university must maintain a certain autonomy to rightly develop its task of
leadership of society.
15
-
The university must adapt to the new epistemology emerging (Type 2
knowledge as horizontal knowledge) and, in this sense, it must inculcate
research abilities in graduates. But it must not at all loose its disciplinary
traditions of –Type 1 knowledge--“homogeneous, based in firm disciplines
hierarchically organized and transmitted in a relation professor-student”-(idem). Vertical knowledge is very important and it always will be so.
-
Concerning the content of epistemology, I defend an academic task rooted in
the Enlightment ideals. I do not share the vision that “traditional scientific
culture is devaluated” or that it is experiencing a deconstruction”. On the
contrary, I do have the university experience of frequently quoting the
classics in an academic task which analyses, reinterpret and advances the
inherited cultural heritage, but in continuity with this heritage, not in fracture
with it. I do not totally share the vision that “everything –anything-- is
culture”.
The expansion of distance education, on the other side, does not imply a
transit to a postmodern higher education, as some authors affirm. The change
of shape of traditional higher education to virtual university --already
operating since the decade of the sixties-- is perfectly compatible with the
maintenance and respect of the traditional principles and priorities of higher
education, only it also provides a response, in its new distance modality, to
present social demands that these institutions have been satisfying since their
creation. We invite the readers to reflect on the principles of distance higher
education that these institutions consecrate in their respective Statutes:
promotion of social justice, promotion of Lifelong Learning and promotion
of an innovative pedagogy (GARCÍA RUIZ and GAVARI STARKIE, 2006:
1-17).
-
One of the positive aspects of the present scrutiny on the university is that
the university institution is reflecting in itself and the academic community
can decide (and must be left free to decide) which elements incorporate and
which traditions maintain. One positive way through in this crossroad would
be, from my point of view, that the university chooses the debate and
revision of its traditional functions and the innovation of those functions but
in continuity (not in rupture) with the past. And the integration (not the
substitution) of new functions (LLL function, Leisure function, Innovation
function). In this sense, the university must welcome good developments
(development research skills and social skills in students).
Lastly, and in order to conclude our reflection, we think that what justifies the task
of the university institution in the first years of the XXIst century is not merely the issue of
certificates. In face to the emergence of alternative sources of knowledge, the university
education is the only one capable of improving the sophistication of thought, of promoting
the reflective capacities, of improving the analytical capacities and of teaching to
conceptually thinking by means of critical analysis and debate. In order to continue
developing what is its characteristic ethos, the university must claim the maintenance of its
16
tradition of university autonomy: only kept from a distance from the partial interests of
government and industry, and from its own aims and priorities, the university will know -as has always known-- to adapt to the society in which it develops and to provide a critical
vision on the character and future of this society.
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