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 State’s 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 doesn’t 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 2003–04, education services were
worth A$5.9 billion to the Australian economy, a 13 per cent increase on
2002–03.’
• 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.
Australia’s 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