Session Information
Session 1, The Idea of the University in the 21st Century: Part 1
Invited Speaker
Time:
2005-09-07
15:00-16:30
Room:
ENG
Chair:
David Bridges
Contribution
It is just a century and a half since John Henry Newman presented his Dublin Discourses on the idea of a university. That occasion marked the founding of the institution which later became University College Dublin, where we now gather for the 2005 European Conference on Educational Research. In the early 21st century universities are much in the news internationally. Their importance is increasingly linked to the strategic concerns of governments, chiefly in the fields of economic and social policy. Thus public discourse on the role of the university today is replete with references to "the knowledge economy", "competitiveness", "relevance", "research-led growth", and so on. Of course it is important to acknowledge fully from the start the crucial part the higher education has to play nowadays in advancing the economic welfare of a society. But it often seems that this is the only significance accorded to higher learning today; that both traditional and liberal ideals of university education are now, at best, only of token relevance; that they have quietly become passé. In this presentation we will take issue with that newly dominant view and seek to uncover some ideas on university education which remain vital. In particular, we wish to investigate anew some overlooked currents of thought that arise from Newman's Idea of a University and from Wilhelm von Humboldt's seminal vision of the liberal university. We will argue that, far from being redundant, ideas of these two nineteenth century thinkers still offer a critical challenge to dominant contemporary viewpoints on the proper purposes of higher education. Joseph Dunne will contest the view - widely assumed though seldom argued - that Newman's Idea speaks only to a lost age. While acknowledging crucial differences in the settings of university education in his time and in ours, he will claim that there is much in Newman's book from which we can still learn. He will explore some of Newman's complex rhetoric and argue that his failure to espouse the then dominant conception of Enlightenment Reason - and the peculiar mixture of stability and destabilisation in his own account of 'reason' - gives The Idea of a University a peculiar resonance for contemporary philosophy as well as a strong relevance to contemporary debate about the university. Pádraig Hogan's contribution will begin with an investigation of the radical nature of Wilhelm von Humboldt's designs (with colleagues Fichte and Schleiermacher) for the University of Berlin in 1809-10. This new foundation was to become famous as a model for the liberal university in many parts of the world. Hogan's contribution will review themes such as Humboldt's vision, as Prussian Minister for Education, of the responsibilities of the university to the state and his striking arguments on the limits of state action in education. The significance for our own age of his understanding of the university's key role as a research as well as a teaching institution, and of his robust conception of academic freedom will then be investigated. Also explored in summary will be some notable instances of the failure of the liberal ideal in practice, some notable reaffirmations of it, and not least some notable attacks on it in recent times; not by politicians but by philosophers - for instance Alasdair MacIntyre from an anti-modern standpoint and Jean François Lyotard from a postmodern standpoint. Hogan's contribution will engage with criticisms such as these and will conclude with a brief articulation of some particularly pertinent and promising educational goals for higher learning for the twenty-first century.
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