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Title: 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.

3
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

4
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

5
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

6
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

7
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.

8
Ideal-type model of internal governance of
universities
9
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).

10
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)

11
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.

12
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

13
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.

14
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.

15
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)

16
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.

17
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)

18
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.

19
Two Forms of the Post-historical University
  • The Global Service University (UK, The Dearing
    Report)
  • The Hollowed-Out University (Australia, The West
    Report)

20
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

21
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

22
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

23
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.

24
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?

25
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).

26
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

27
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.

28
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.

29
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.

30
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
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