Reimagining the University in the Global Era

1
Reimagining the University in the Global Era

• Michael A Peters, UIUC
• Presentation for WUN
• 25 May, 2005

2
Orientation

• if we create market universities run purely on
  market principles they may be of their age, but
  they will not be able to transcend it.
• Federico Mayor, UNESCO Director-General, Times
  Higher Education Supplement, 3 October 1997, p.12.

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Outline

• Introduction The Concept of the University
• The Modern (Historical) University
• The Post-Historical University
• Two Forms of the Post-Historical University
• - The global service university
• - The hollowed-out university
• Conclusion

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Introduction The Concept of the University

• Bill Readings - The University in Ruins (1996)
• - the Kantian idea of reason
• - the Humboldtian idea of culture
• - the technological idea of excellence
• Shifting core commitment From universal truth
  to quality assurance in the discourse of
  excellence
• Neoliberal managerialism as dominant model of
  knowledge performance

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Neoliberal Managerialism

• Structural transformation towards the knowledge
  economy based on production of knowledge,
  investment in human capital and diffusion of ICTs
  requiring management
• Neoliberal knowledge management rests on
  principles of homo economicus (assumptions of
  individuality, rationality and self-interest)
  that are radically at odds with distributed
  knowledge systems

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Accountability Regimes

• state-mandated agency form that regulates
  activity or performance according to standards or
  criteria laid down at state or federal level
  often associated with devolution of management
  (though not necessarily governance) and the
  development of parallel privatization and/or the
  quasi market in the delivery of public services.
• professional accountability operates through
  notions of collegiality, peer review,
  professional autonomy, the control of entry and
  codes of practice.
• consumer accountability through the market,
  especially where consumer organizations have been
  strengthened in relation to the development of
  public services delivered through markets or
  market-like arrangements.
• democratic accountability that has its home in
  democratic theory and is premised on the demand
  for both internal and external accountability,
  that is, typically accountability of a politician
  to parliament or governing organization and
  accountability to his/her electorate

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Democratic vs Market Accountability

• There has been an observable tendency in western
  liberal states to emphasize both agency and
  consumer forms at the expense of professional
  and democratic forms, especially where countries
  are involved in large-scale shifts from
  traditional Keynesian welfare state regimes to
  more market-oriented and consumer-driven systems.
  Indeed, it could be argued that there are natural
  affinities by way of shared concepts,
  understandings and operational procedures between
  these two couplets.
• One of the main criticisms to have emerged is
  that the agency/consumer couplet
  instrumentalizes, individualizes, standardizes,
  marketizes and externalizes accountability
  relationships at the expense of democratic values
  such as participation, self-regulation,
  collegiality, and collective deliberation that
  are said to enhance and thicken the relationships
  involved.

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Ideal-type model of internal governance of
universities
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Neoliberal Technologies of Governance

• Neoliberal managerialism functions as an emergent
  and increasingly rationalized and complex
  neoliberal technology of governance that operates
  at a number of levels the individual (the
  self-managing technologies), the classroom
  (classroom management techniques), the academic
  program (with explicit promotion of the goals of
  self-management), and the educational institution
  (self-managing institutions), all within national
  audit frameworks (see Peters et al, 2000).

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New Public Management (NPM)

• Performance management including the use of
  incentives to enhance performance, at both the
  institutional and the individual level (e.g.,
  short term employment contracts,
  performance-based remuneration systems, promotion
  systems, etc.).
• Contractualism An extensive use of contracts
  to specify the nature of performance required and
  the respective obligations of agents and
  principals (including, performance and purchase
  agreements).
• The development of an integrated and relatively
  sophisticated strategic planning and emulation of
  private sector management styles throughout the
  public sector.
• The removal, wherever possible, of dual or
  multiple accountability relationships within the
  public sector, and the avoidance of joint central
  and local democratic control of public services.
• The institutional separation of commercial and
  non-commercial functions the separation of
  advisory, delivery, and regulatory functions and
  the related separation of the roles of funder,
  purchaser, and provider.
• The maximum decentralisation of production and
  management decision-making, especially with
  respect to the selection and purchase of inputs
  and the management of human resources.
• Financial management based on accrual accounting
  (sometimes including capital charging), a
  distinctions between the States ownership and
  purchaser interests, outcomes and outputs, an
  accrual-based appropriations system, and
  legislation requiring economic policies that are
  deemed to be 'fiscally responsible'.
• Strong encouragement for, and extensive use of,
  competitive tendering and contracting out, but
  few mandatory requirements for market testing or
  competitive tendering.
• Boston et al (1996 4-5)

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Performance management

• Performance management doesnt sell itself as
  scientific but rather adopting the paradigm of
  cultural performance it re-describes itself as an
  ars poetica of organizational practice, which is
  evident in texts like
• - Corporate Renaissance The Art of
  Reengineering (Cross et al, 1994)
• - Jamming The Art and Discipline of Business
  Creativity (Kao, 1998)
• - Cultural Diversity in Organizations (Cox,
  1993).
• This new soft power of management theory and
  practice recognises performance as having
  acquired a normative force.

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The Modern University The Kantian Idea of Reason

• For Kant it was the idea of reason which provided
  an organizing principle for the disciplines, with
  'philosophy' as its home.
• Reason is the founding principle of the Kantian
  university it confers a universality upon the
  institution and, thereby, ushers in modernity.
• Reason, as the immanent unifying principle of the
  Kantian university, displaces the Aristotelian
  order of disciplines of the medieval university
  based on the seven liberal arts, (divided into
  the trivium grammar, rhetoric and knowledge and
  the quadrivium arithmetic, geometry, astronomy,
  and music), to substitute a quasi-industrial
  arrangement of the faculties.
• The three higher faculties -- theology, law, and
  medicine, have a content, whereas the lower
  faculty, philosophy, does not.
• It has no content apart from the free exercise of
  reason and the self-critical and self-legislating
  exercise of reason, embodied in the philosophy
  faculty, controls the higher faculties, checking
  their credentials and credibility, and thereby
  establishing autonomy for the university as a
  whole

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The Conflict of the Faculties

• It was not a bad idea, whoever first conceived
  and proposed a public means for treating the sum
  of knowledge (and properly the heads who devote
  themselves to it), in a quasi industrial manner,
  with a division of labour where, for so many
  fields as there may be of knowledge, so many
  public teachers would be allotted, professors
  being trustees, forming together a kind of common
  scientific entity, called a university (or high
  school) and having autonomy (for only scholars
  can pass judgement on scholars as such) and,
  thanks to its faculties (various small societies
  where university teachers are ranged, in keeping
  with the variety of the main branches of
  knowledge), the university would be authorised to
  admit, on the one hand, student-apprentices from
  the lower schools aspiring to its level, and to
  grant, on the other hand -- after prior
  examination, and on its own authority -- to
  teachers who are free (not drawn from the
  members themselves) and called Doctors, a
  universally recognised rank (conferring upon them
  a degree) -- in short, creating them.

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The Humboldtian Idea of Culture

• For the German idealists, from Schiller through
  Schleiermacher to Fichte and Humboldt, the unity
  of knowledge and culture, exemplified best in the
  organicity of ancient Greek culture, has been
  splintered and lost. It can be reintegrated into
  a unified cultural science through Bildung, the
  formation and cultivation of moral subjects.

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Bildung

• Under the rubric of culture, the University is
  assigned the dual task of research and teaching,
  respectively the production and inculcation of
  national self-knowledge. As such, it becomes the
  institution charged with watching over the
  spiritual life of the people of the rational
  state, reconciling ethnic tradition and statist
  rationality. (Readings 1996)

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Culture as Literature

• In England, the idea of culture gets its purchase
  in opposition to science and technology, partly
  as a result of the threat posed by
  industrialization and mass civilization. Newman
  gives us a 'liberal education' as the proper
  function of the university, which educates its
  charges to be gentlemen, not through the study of
  philosophy, but through the study of literature.

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Newman

• "A literature, when it is formed, is a national
  and historical fact it is a matter of the past
  and present, and can be as little ignored as the
  present, as little undone as the past".
• National language and literature defines the
  character of "every great people", and Newman
  speaks of the classics of a national literature
  by which he means "those authors who have had the
  foremost place in exemplifying the powers and
  conducting the development of its language" (p.
  240).
• "Literature A Lecture in the School of
  Philosophy and Letters" (1858)

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The 'Post-historical' University

• The Postmodern Condition A Report on Knowledge
  (1984) originally published in Paris in 1979,
  became an instant cause célèbre because Lyotard
  analyzed the status of knowledge, science and the
  university in way that many critics believed
  signaled an epochal break not only with the
  so-called modern era but also with various
  traditionally modern ways of viewing the world.

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Two Forms of the Post-historical University

• The Global Service University (UK, The Dearing
  Report)
• The Hollowed-Out University (Australia, The West
  Report)

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The Dearing Report, 1997

• Globalisation (World Economic Integration)
• Main Causes
• technological changes in telecomunications,
  information and transport
• the (political) promotion of free trade and the
  reduction in trade protection
• Main Elements
• the organisation of production on a global scale
• the acquisition of inputs and services from
  around the world which reduces costs
• the formation of cross-border alliances and
  ventures, enabling companies to combine assets,
  share their costs and penetrate new markets
• intergation of world capital markets
• availability of information on international
  benchmarking of commercial performance
• better consumer knowledge and more spending
  power, hence, more discriminating choices
• greater competition from outside the established
  industrial centres

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Dearing cont

• Consequences for the Labour Market
• downward pressure on pay, particularly for
  unskilled labour
• upward pressure on the quality of labour input
• competition is increasingly based on quality
  rather than price
• people and ideas assume greater significance in
  economic success because they are less mobile
  than other investments such as capital,
  information and technology
• unemployment rates of unskilled workers relative
  to skilled workers have increased
• more, probably smaller, companies whose business
  is knowledge and ways of handling knowledge and
  information are needed

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Dearing cont

• Implications for Higher Education
• high quality, relevant higher education provision
  will be a key factor in attracting and anchoring
  the operations of global corporations
• institutions will need to be at the forefront in
  offering opportunities for lifelong learning
• institutions will need to meet the aspirations of
  individuals to re-equip themselves for a
  succession of jobs over a working lifetime
• higher education must continue to provide a
  steady stream of technically skilled people to
  meet needs of global corporations
• higher education will become a global service and
  tradeable commodity
• higher education institutions, organisationally,
  may need to emulate private sector enterprises in
  order to flourish in a fast-changing global
  economy
• the new economic order will place a premium on
  knowledge and institutions, therefore, will need
  to recognise the knowledge, skills and
  understanding which individuals can use as a
  basis to secure further knowledge and skills
• the development of a research base to provide new
  knowledge, understanding and ideas to attract
  high technology companies

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The West Report, 1997

• Future Principles
• Enhancing access -- a commitment to universal
  access
• Maximizing study options by fostering a direct
  relationship between the student and provider and
  emphasizing student choice
• Promoting outcome-based assessment of quality and
  accountability to students and the taxpayer
• Maximizing the benefits of research in terms of a
  national strategy
• Cost-effectiveness of public funding and
  orientation to the community's needs
• Fair levels of private contribution.

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West cont

• How can they protect their student numbers
  against local and international competition?
• Can they afford to develop individual courses and
  course materials when better quality and less
  expensive materials could be developed by
  cooperative action?
• Can they afford to build and maintain expensive
  support services, such as library services, when
  better and cheaper services could be provided
  through collective action?
• Can they afford to continue to invest in
  large-scale 'bricks and mortar' infrastructure
  when new technologies offer cheaper and less
  expensive means of communicating information to
  large numbers of people?
• Should they seek to meet all educational needs of
  students or should they focus their energies on
  areas of greatest expertise, and, therefore,
  advantage?

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West cont

• The vertically integrated university is a
  product of brand image, government policy,
  history and historical economies of scale in
  support services. If government policy is no
  longer biased in favour of this form, and
  technology liberates providers from one location,
  then we would expect to see new forms arising
  such as multiple outlet vertically integrate
  specialist schools and web based universities
  Specialist service providers, such as testing
  companies and courseware developers will arise,
  as will superstar teachers who are not tied to
  any one university. Many universities will become
  marketing and production coordinators or systems
  integrators. They will no longer all be
  vertically integrated education version of the
  1929 Ford assembly plant in Detroit (p. 12).

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Australian national system as flagship

• Australian system is the most stripped down
  export-education model of late modernity
• 4th largest national income generator In
  200304, education services were worth A5.9
  billion to the Australian economy, a 13 per cent
  increase on 200203.
• Education without Borders International Trade in
  Education (2005)
• As populations grow and national incomes
  increase, countries in Asia are both investing
  more in domestic higher education and turning to
  international education to help meet surging
  demand for student places. Australias
  institutions are taking increasing numbers of
  international students and are establishing
  campuses offshore. International trade
  negotiations are liberalising education trade and
  contributing to the emergence of a borderless
  market for international education.
• http//www.dfat.gov.au/publications/eau_education
  /index.html
• In 2007 QUT closes School of Humanities because
  it was losing between 200,000 and 400,000 a
  year substituting Creative Industries faculty

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Reimaging the University

• From a single unifying idea to a constellation or
  field of overlapping and mutually
  self-reinforcing ideas
• THE KANTIAN UNIVERSITY AND THE IDEA OF REASON
• Kant's critical philosophy or critical reason as
  a source of criticism, critique and reflection --
  self-criticism, self-reflection and
  self-goverance.
• "the thread which may connect us to the
  Enlightenment is not faithfulness to doctrinial
  elements but, rather, the permanent reactivation
  of an attitude -- that is, of a philosophical
  ethos that could be described as a permanent
  critique of our historical era.
• Michael Foucault, "What is Enlightenment?". In
  Michel Foucault Ethics, The Essential Works, ed.
  Paul Rabinow, London, Allen Lane Penguin, 1996,
  p. 312.

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Reimaging the University

• THE HUMBOLDTIAN UNIVERSITY AND THE IDEA OF
  CULTURE
• From Bildung as self-cultivation and moral
  self-formation to learning processes (pedagogy)
  based on an ethical relation of self and other.
• From national culture to cultural
  self-understandings and reproduction which
  implies
• - a recognition of indigenous cultures and
  traditional knowledges
• - an awareness of 'nation' as a socio-historical
  construction
• -an acceptance of the reality of
  multiculturalism.

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Reimaging the University

• THE UNIVERSITY OF LITERARY CULTURE
  (Newman-Arnold-Leavis)
• National culture as a literary culture revealed
  in the tradition of a national literature or
  canon. The shift from a literary to post-literary
  culture the modern western university was a
  print culture shaped by print technologies for
  the creation, storage and transmission of
  knowledge. The shift to a new techno-culture is
  being shaped by digital technologies for the
  storage and exchange of information.

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Reimaging the University

• THE CORPORATE MASSIFIED UNIVERSITY
• From cultural élite formation to mass access and
  participation.
• THE REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT UNIVERSITY
• THE ELITE RESEARCH-LED UNIVERSITY VS THE
  COMMUNITY TEACHING UNIVERSITY
• THE CONCEPT OF FLEXIBLE SPECIALIZATION IN THE
  DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONAL SYSTEM
• THE RISE OF THE PRIVATE NETWORKED UNIVERSITY
• EMERGENCE OF WORLD SYSTEMS, CONSORTIA,
  COLLABORATIONS AND LEAGUE TABLES