Mainstream WeeklyThere can be little doubt that global higher education (HE hereafter), as we know it now, is in a flux. This has increasingly been palpable in a growing plethora of monographs written over several preceding decades, which grapple with what is often described as a crisis of university education or HE at large. Although this concern refers to a wide range of issues including curriculum, pedagogy, governance, finance, equity, and standard and their current trends, the notion and purpose of a university stands out to be most foundational. The present essay aims at sketching ideational evolution of the notion and purpose of university or HE at large since early modern period of human history heralded by the European Enlightenment soon followed by the Industrial Revolution in late eighteenth century, although origins of an idea and existence of ‘university’ could be traced to ancient human civilizations across world.
The modern notion of university or post-school education originated with the European Enlightenment and its aftermath, with sustained voice for reforms that eventually freed medieval universities from their prolonged subjugation to Church, priests, or monarchs up to early or mid-nineteenth century. In eighteenth century, the Age of Enlightenment, propelled a historic shift of idea/purpose of university from mere preservation and transmission of received knowledge to discovery and advancement of new knowledge by laying down foundation of empirical and experimental approach to learning and scientific enquiry.
In this wake of what is called ‘enlightened absolutism’, universities in several European countries were remodelled with an aim of producing proficient bureaucracy to be recruited on grounds of merit rather than birth. Curricula too began to be reformed toward incorporating modern promising subjects. And these enlightened reforms were not necessarily linked to ‘bourgeois’ social interests either. [1]Although such enlightened reform efforts in French universities were disrupted or even abolished in the wake of the French Revolution of 1789, its revival had to wait until reign of Napoleon, with the Napoleonic ‘University’ [named The University of France] founded in 1808 as a centralized, secular, national body, with separate faculties. The central emphasis, however, was on professional education, while general literary and scientific education was relegated to secondary schools, maintaining a separation between teaching and research. Indeed a separate system of elite grandes écoles, notably the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Ecole Polytechnique’ was created. [2] Technical training schools belonged solely to ecoles, which were meant to prepare required personnel for nation’s industrial progress. [3] This model of highly centralized state education, with deliberate separation of technical schools and related training which feed into immediate productive activities, continued to prevail in European territories conquered by Napoleon.
A common global notion of university took a firmer shape only around early decades of nineteenth century with founding of the University of Berlin in 1810 under towering intellectual influence of the German philosopher and educationist Wilhelm von Humboldt. The newness of the Humboldtian idea of modern university, which came to be a model across entire Europe, the US, and Japan by the end of nineteenth century, lied in the profound wisdom of an unity of teaching and research along with unconditional academic freedom of professors to organize the two as they see fit. This soon gave rise to a ‘chair’ system in which senior professors gathered a group of junior staff around them. The entire idea of unity of teaching and research derives from a pragmatic conviction that ‘the best teaching should result in learning on the part of the teacher as well as on the part of the pupil’. [4]
Another pillar of the Humboldtian model of university is the ideal of Bildung, the German tradition of self-cultivation wherein philosophy and education get interlinked to constitute a process of personal and cultural maturation, which is a harmonization of individual’s mind and heart along with a unification of selfhood and identity within broader society. This was thought highly instrumental to shaping a ‘national culture’, since pursuit of knowledge was perceived to be the base for culture, civilization, and whole intellectual texture of a nation, while Bildung is essentially individualistic, self-motivated and non-utilitarian. All this calls for corporate autonomy for universities, while being entirely funded by the state. Indeed, a system of academic self-government, a key to the Humboldtian model, continued to be widely seen as a defining characteristic of a ‘real’ university by nearly whole world. From today’s vantage point, these ideas are generally branded as ‘traditional’ model of university, which however has been dominant across world until rising dominance of neoliberal ideational regime in post-World War II decades. [5]
For Wilhelm von Humboldt the key question was one of how to secure necessary institutional order or framework for modern science and pursuit of qualified knowledge, while at the same time preventing it from being corrupted or destroyed by other mighty forces in society such as politics, economy, and religion. The solution in his thinking lies in securing an unfettered autonomy guaranteed by the state or by the sovereign. [6] It is only under state’s or monarch’s role of financial guardianship together with absolute academic autonomy to university that the latter could survive as an exceptional (or precious) ‘ivory tower’ confined to superior creative minds passionately devoted to advancing disinterested knowledge in the state’s own enlightened interest – both political and economic. This is not to construe that the state be careless about ‘worldly things’ directly instrumental to material development. Amongst the classicist triad of beauty, justice, and truth, the Humboldtian thinking gave absolute upper hand to truth and truth-seeking. Indeed the Humboldtian ideas of university were so profound and pragmatic that in less than half a century it became ‘the undisputed model institution for practically all university systems of the world’. [7] In fact, the ’Humboldtian’ university became a model for the rest of Europe, and by 1914 the German universities came to be admired as ‘best’ in the world. It was the Humboldtian ideas that inform what we now brand as ‘research universities’, which top international league. However, the Humboldtian ideas began to be overruled by rising post-WWII dominance of neoliberal ideas and arguments that posit university education as private good to be sold and bought in a competitive market context (more on this to follow).
Indeed, the Humboldtian ideas of a model-university received further boost and refinement from writings and lectures of the English Cardinal, Henry Newman, who in the mid-nineteenth century focused on the value of what he termed ‘liberal education’. Newman advocated a conception of university which would be an autonomous academic institution primarily engaged in pursuit of knowledge and truth even if for its own sake liberated from control or influence of non-academic interests. Although Newman did not deny the role of universities in separately conducting professional training and vocational courses, both Humboldt and Newman viewed university education not merely as a matter of acquiring a credential for boosting vocational employability. As Friedrich Heer, the German historian and a renowned authority on medieval Europe remarked, ‘In the universities were laid the foundations of the scientific culture of our modern world, in them grew up the habit of disciplined thinking, followed by systematic investigation, which made possible the rise of the natural sciences and of the technical civilization necessary to large industrial societies’. [8] While Newman’s ideas of university and liberal education have of late been downplayed sometimes even on arguably nebulous grounds (e.g. it earns only prestige at the expense of immediately beneficial vocational education), [9] the modern history of world has borne out indisputably that particular emphasis on ‘cultivation of mind’ (liberal education) vis-à-vis acquisition of skills (vocational education) has served as a boon rather than a drag on sustained progress even in material spheres of income, production, wealth, and technology. [10] For instance, as late as 1957 the university was defined by the proceedings of a conference held in South Africa precisely in terms of these nineteenth century educational ideas: [11]
In a university, knowledge is its own end, not merely a means to an end. A university ceases to be true to its own nature if it becomes the tool of Church or State or any sectional interest. A university is characterized by the spirit of free inquiry, its ideal being the ideal of Socrates—“to follow the argument where it leads.”
Although primary purpose of university education was not conceived to be directly instrumental to material production or generation of wealth, the economy – both at individual/household and societal levels – does benefit greatly (often as biproduct) from liberal education in university and its emphasis on disinterested research. As university education is intended to inculcate specific states of mind desirable in themselves, it is ‘a misunderstanding of education to think of it as a means to an end, even though extrinsic goals such as getting better jobs or socialisation in some general sense might be achieved through the process of education.’ [12] These traditional ideas of university education entail a subtle distinction between giving of ‘education’ (e.g. useful and productive skills and knowledge) and making ‘an educated man’ (i.e. with some crucial attributes such as ‘critical thinking, integrity of character, etc’). [13] Edward Shils defines university in terms of its central mission of what he calls ‘advancement of learning’ concerned both with discovery of fundamental truths over whole range of subjects through scientific and scholarly research as well as training of ‘outstandingly able young persons towards deeper understanding and appreciation’ and intellectual-practical professions. This is not meant to preclude ‘specialised colleges of particular sciences, engineering colleges, commercial colleges, mining academies, colleges of chemistry, teacher training colleges and many others’ that offer ‘professional and advanced occupational training and certification’. [14] While some recent researchers have questioned and undermined instrumentality of universities in scientific and industrial revolution in historical Europe especially on grounds of alleged elitism and other parochialisms, [15] it is hard or indeed unwise to defy that universities had played a crucial role as an intellectual backbone to steady scientific, technological, socio-political progress in western countries over (at least) preceding two centuries. [16]
As its corollary, HE/university education has historically been restrictive, thronged by those who have proven intellectual and creative abilities and, no less importantly, a tested passion/volition for higher learning in respective fields. Given the fact that the above attributes are not of the kind which can be acquired or developed, in equal measure, by all, there has historically been no question of making university education compulsory, unlike elementary education. This does not preclude university/HE from being entrusted with responsibilities of teaching vocational or productive skills imparted generally at undergraduate or technical colleges/polytechnics for several specialised occupations. In fact, until 1970s there has been a broad tripartite division into universities, regional/technological colleges/polytechnic, and skill-boosting/vocational part-time or evening colleges offering diploma/certificates. This division corresponds to an approximately tripartite division of intrinsic capability of students namely, ‘capable of abstract thought and interested in ideas’, ‘more interested and adept at the application of ideas in technology’, and ‘more concerned with practical activities and the immediate environment’. [17]
For example, during 1960s in UK, only about 6 per cent of relevant age group used to go to universities, and some went to technical/polytechnic colleges or vocational training institutions, while a vast majority left full-time education at an age of 16 years. [18] Indeed in this historical period an extremely limited youth participation in HE had been a pervasive scenario across entire world with very few exceptions (e.g. USA where much larger proportion have been going for HE). And this tripartite division of students and HE institutions, as an author notes, ‘reflected and helped preserve a particular idea of a university’ – an idea which had reigned over more than a century before WWII and has during the same period fashioned overall acceleration of both economic prosperity and democratic deepening and ethos many parts of western world. Indeed, the landmark Robbins Committee Report of 1963 in UK, which recommended rapid expansion of HE/university system and its enrolment in conformity with rising aspirations and demands, appeared no less cognizant of the key element of time-tested ethos of university, namely ‘advancement of learning’: ‘But the search for truth is an essential function of institutions of higher education and the process of education itself is vital when it partakes of the nature of discovery’. [19]
All students, admitted after prior screening, do not turn out to be equally successful academically, but a few do distinctively well not exactly or exclusively in terms of scores or ranks in final examinations per se but more importantly in terms of overall academic brilliance, affinities, maturity levels and acquired depth in understanding of disciplines concerned. This relatively tiny group has traditionally been encouraged and/or admitted to academy at higher level, leaving rest relatively mediocre candidates to leave academia to pursue non-academic careers and professions. And it goes without saying that superior intellectual ability per se is not all that is imperative for academic success. An academic bend of mind – a passionate inclination towards contributing in some form to existing knowledge in specific disciplines not just for quick fame or wealth, but rather more for a deep joy/satisfaction/self-esteem derived from such academic accomplishment - is also crucial for sustaining creativity and academic excellence. These latter requirements/traits from prospective entrants of late are being flouted under dominant neoliberal regime in its process of increasing marketisation and privatisation of university education under competitive market governed by profit-maximising principles and related values including politically propagandised popularity or ideal of achieving mass or ‘universal’ HE (more on this below). This in turn is amounting to a pervasive sacrifice/compromise of quality, rigour and standard of HE.
The crux of why university/HE has traditionally been of limited size and participation lies not exactly in an exclusionary practice of ‘elitism’, as is often alleged nowadays. This is rather because in any cohort or generation the intellectually superior/meritorious ones born are naturally few in number, irrespective of class, race or caste. Even far fewer are those who happen to be both intellectually able, studious as well as volitionally passionate towards academic pursuits. This is borne out by entire post-Enlightenment (especially post-Humboldtian) regime of HE with both direct comprehensive financial support of the state and absolute academic freedom, which coincided with a period of steady flow of scientific inventions, technological progress and innovations as well as improvements of living standard, socio-political stability and sustained cultural and civilisational refinements in western countries over a couple of century preceding WWII.
Neoliberal Capture of the Idea of University or HE at Large After WWII
The WWII and the onset of Cold War marked a watershed in global history of university/HE, as the latter was drawn increasingly into centre-stage of politics and economics in western seat of capitalist bloc, namely USA and UK. In 1950s through 1970s the long-existing model of public university/HE received a barrage of ideational attacks in a concerted pursuance of overriding agenda of its rapid expansion/accessibility among wider masses, along with its concomitant corollary of increasing privatisation. All this was happening in its explicitly stated bid to undo allegedly ‘elitist’ and ‘inequitable’ character and structure of traditional HE system. Let us analyse the basic features, arguments and guiding principles and policies of what we call ‘neoliberal reign’ vis-à-vis the traditional system of university/HE.
Neoliberalism as an ideology and related policy paradigm derives from its abiding emphasis on the value of free market competition defended by its foundational conviction that ‘human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade’. [20] A foundational conviction in intrinsic superiority and efficiency of free market competition begets almost tautologically not only a policy for deregulating economy and privatizing public sector, but also a progressive abandonment of notions of welfare state and public good. Accordingly, the currently dominant neoliberal model of university sets out with the idea that there is an urgent need for breaking away from traditional notion of ‘model university’ to instate a new (neoliberal) approach to meet demands of a global productive system that is radically different from that of just a few decades ago. More specifically, the argument is that managerial and labour force needs of the new economy, which operates within parameters of globalisation and an overarching context of pervasive impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs), cannot be adequately satisfied by approaches and methods based on traditional ideas and ideals of university/HE. Neoliberalism thereby redefines very meaning and purpose of university/HE and commodifies its intrinsic value and emphasizes directly transferable skills and competencies to be acquired at HE institutions. Nonmonetary values and non-quantifiable conceptual categories (including ethos that have been thought for long to be essential for sustaining healthy democratic society) get marginalized by the domineering neoliberal reign over university education/HE.
Thus, neoliberalism has broken away from long-pre-existing ideas and practices on university/HE across globe especially after the Washington Consensus. Unlike long-standing view, education is now treated as a commodity not necessarily in the nature of a public good, of which provision therefore is no longer the sole responsibility of the state. The supreme purpose of education in general is now radically reduced to one of churning out skilled productive personnel (so-called ‘human capital’) required for functioning of economy and economic growth in a democratic capitalist society. As its corollary, expenditures on HE both by individuals and state are reckoned with as investments with aim of achieving respectively economic mobility and macroeconomic growth. A college education has come to be seen as a private good to be purchased by a student thereby redefined as a ‘customer’. Accordingly, colleges and universities should compete for students as customers in a marketplace and produce ‘trained or skilled workers’ who will enable the nation to compete successfully in global sphere.
Since 1980s, public universities - initially in advanced western countries and subsequently across the developing world - had undergone a series of reforms meant mainly for closer and deeper embracement of markets. After this initial stated bid to make universities more ‘efficient’ and ‘instrumental’, by 1990s the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and such other multi-lateral agencies spearheaded a concerted move of many national governments towards embracing the idea that future of human civilisation lies in a ‘global knowledge economy’. Therefore, new policies were introduced to make HE an ‘engine’ for production of ‘knowledge’, productive skills of various kinds, and graduates to generate intellectual property and newly innovated products that are thought to make their countries internationally more competitive. As Cris Shore and Susan Wright have recently noted, ‘these reforms are premised on neoliberal ideas about turning universities into autonomous and entrepreneurial “knowledge organisations” by promoting competition, opening them up to private investors, making educational services contribute to economic competitiveness, and enabling individuals to maximise their skills in global markets’. [21] In fact we would now discuss a delineation of the key contours of what is aptly called ‘neoliberal university’, with a view to analysing their deeper and wider ramifications in the days ahead.
The ‘Neoliberal University’ and its Wider Ramifications
First, a fundamental transformation of pre-existing notion of university/HE taking shape in late 1950s or early 1960s with a concerted effort on the part of mainstream economics profession in the seat of capitalist bloc in building an elaborate case for treating post-secondary education ideally as a private investment in accumulation of so-called ‘human capital’. Its immediate policy implication, namely that individuals, not the state, should take responsibility for ‘repeatedly investing in their education and skills in order to sustain and improve their position in a fast-changing competitive and global labour market’ is perfectly consonant with neoliberal ideology. This is what the OECD termed as ‘new human capital theory’, which subsequently came to pervade global official thinking and policy on HE. Conceptualizing HE as private good prompts a policy of steady reduction in the state’s share in total expenditures on HE, which in turn forces HE institutions to replace long-standing student grants with loans, together with steady hikes in student fees under an overarching rubric of what the World Bank experts and the ministers euphemistically called ‘cost-sharing’.
There has been a progressive withdrawal of government’s (financial) support (in proportionate and sometimes in absolute terms) to university/HE. In the UK, for example, during 1980s and 1990s, the state-funding per student had declined by 40 per cent. In 2010, the UK government removed all state-funding for teaching except in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). By the same token, students are now required to pay fees which is thrice the previous amount, state-funded loans being made available. Other countries have also withdrawn state-funding from university/HE. For example, in September 2015, Japan’s eighty-six national universities were asked to take active steps to abolish social science and humanities or to convert them so that they serve areas that better meet society’s needs. These policies appear as a cue from what was being practiced in the USA. In California between 1984 and 2004, state spending per capita on HE declined by 12 per cent, while in an ironic contrast the same period witnessed a 126 per cent increase in per capita spending on prisons, a 400 per cent increase in charges in tuition, room and board in US universities and the rise of tuition costs by ten times the rate of increase of family income. [22] All this clearly reflects not just state’s retreat from direct funding of HE, but also a ‘calculated’ initiative to enable private companies to grab and profit from tax-funded student’s loans.
However, there is a considerable body of research that unravels some blatant paradoxes entailed in this way of financing HE. [23] For example, government funding of student-loans turns out to be costlier for taxpayers than the previous system in which government used to fund universities directly for students’ education. Most students and/or their parents, while repaying costs of HE, are bound to resort to the kinds of debt-financing that governments across world now denounce as ‘reckless and inappropriate for themselves’. Moreover, faced with massive national debt, many countries are forced to resort to emergency austerity measures. Still these policies are in vogue because of pervasive and unquestioning adherence to pro-market and personal-gain-oriented re-definition of HE, eloquently expressed by the catchphrase, ‘learn to earn’. But such ideationally radical shifts apropos purpose and aims of university/HE are often found to have deeply adverse ramifications for overall quality and standard of teaching, learning and research. [24]
Faced with diminishing state-funds and national budget for HE, public universities are now compelled to seek alternative income streams. This has resulted in: ‘fostering more lucrative and entrepreneurial partnerships with industry; conducting commissioned research for business and government; partnering up with venture capitalists; commercialising the university’s intellectual property through patents and licences; developing campus spin-out (and spin-in) companies; engaging proactively in city development programmes; and maximising university assets including real estate, halls of residence, conference facilities and industrial parks’. [25] In addition, there is now general move of raising student fees and relentless drive for admitting more high-paying international students. A sustained pursuit of these new income streams has had a transformative effect on universities. Money is the key objective, but frequently as a means to a more fundamental mission, namely ‘prestige and competitiveness’ seen as an end itself. While all these changes essentially flow from mounting pressure from governments on universities to transform themselves as pseudo-business corporations, there is a growing cohort of entrepreneurially ‘hawkish’ university rectors, vice-chancellors and presidents who enthusiastically welcome these changes in shaping corporate-house-like or business-oriented incarnations of millennia-old notion of institutions of higher learning.
A fourth major trend precipitated by neoliberal reign in educational thinking refers to creation of a funding-and-assessment regime purported to increase ‘productivity’ and ‘competition’ among HE institutions/universities both nationally and globally. For example, the exercise introduced initially in 1980s to assure ‘quality’ of research in British universities had morphed, by the end of 1990s, into ever more invasive systems for ranking institutions, disciplines, departments, and even individuals, with a view to allocating funds to those institutions that have performed ‘best’ in terms of ratings and ‘world-class’ status wherein some rankings are focused on ‘research performance’. This obsession with auditing and measuring performance also includes systems or procedures for evaluating teaching quality and for surveying and measuring the ‘student engagement’.
Fifth, along with growth of ranking systems, there has been a proliferation of performance and output measurements and quantifiable ‘indicators’ designed ostensibly to nurture transparency, efficiency and ‘value for money’. All this has given rise to what is often termed as ‘audit culture’ pervading both public and private HE institutions. Financial imperatives and rhetoric of ‘value for money’, coupled with a political discourse on virtues of transparency and accountability, have driven these measurement and ranking technologies to become particularly instrumental in promoting ‘the logics of risk management, financialization and managerialism’ in HE institutions. While time has often become a key metric and instrument for efficient throughput of students and accountability of institutions, these measures generally affect the very nature of education. Thus, a few scholars have convincingly shown that while auditing of HE institutions does not simply measure performance, they actively reshape the institutions into which they are introduced. Based on extensive research, Cris Shore and Susan Wright expose a bitter irony underlying such quantitative exercises of measurements of educational performance, outcomes, and ranking of HE institutions: [26]
When a measurement becomes a target, institutional environments are restructured so that they focus their resources and activities primarily on what ‘counts’ to funders and governors rather than on their wider professional ethics and social goals.
Thus, widespread audit culture as a major offshoot of neoliberal thinking, perceptions, and practices in university/HE ends up producing wide-ranging ramifications, some of which are academically as fundamental as course content/curriculum and pedagogy and hence quality and standard of education itself.
The sixth major development under neoliberal reign of HE is a spectacular growth in number and status of managers and administrators. In UK, for example, for the first time in history, support staff now outnumber academic staff in more than 70 per cent of HE institutions. Denmark has witnessed an equally large increase in number of administrators, with increased annual expenditure on administrators in just five years turning equivalent to an amount by which as many as 746 new lecturers could be appointed. [27] The record of the USA is no less dramatic. As per Federal figures for period 1987 to 2011/ 2012, the number of college and university administrators and professional employees has more than doubled, amounting to estimated average of 8/7 new administrators every working day. The recruitment of administrators has far exceeded the growth in the size of faculty – or even students, while at the same time universities claim to be struggling with budget crises leading them to reduce permanent academic posts, resulting in a massive increase in the temporarily employed teaching assistants – the ‘precariat’. This astonishing increase in management and administration is partly caused by pressures ‘universities now face to produce data and statistics for harvesting by the ranking industries’. An enormous rise in government regulations is often held to contribute to growth of administrative and technical units in universities, but increasing financial compulsions too force universities to take on new functions for new income streams, fuelling proliferation of administrators and managers. Since 1987, the US universities have started or expanded ‘departments devoted to marketing, diversity, disability, sustainability, security, environmental health, recruiting, technology and fundraising, and added new majors and graduate and athletics programs, satellite campuses, and conference centers’. [28] On the other hand, to use eloquent words of Benjamin Ginsberg, ‘universities are filled with armies of functionaries—vice presidents, associate vice presidents, assistant vice presidents, provosts, associate provosts, vice provosts, assistant provosts, deans, deanlets, deanlings, each commanding staffers and assistants’. [29] As the latter generally have little or no-faculty experience, the promotion of quality/standard of teaching and research is less important than expanding their own administrative domains where the means are proverbially the ends. In their statistics, there is no distinction made between administrative staff who support teaching and research and those who do not. Thus, while support staff is critical for enabling academics to carry out effective research, teaching and scholarship, many university managers now see their role no longer as one of providing support to academics but, rather, one of managing them as ‘human capital’ and a resource. All this has deeply adverse ramifications for academic quality and rigour.
Unlike in past, the main cleavage in contemporary universities is between academics and managers. As Cris Shore and Susan Wright write succinctly:
‘Today, rather than being treated as core members of a professional community, academics are constantly being told by managers and senior administrators what “the university” expects of them, as if they were somehow peripheral or subordinate to “the university”’. [30] This drives university/HE increasingly away from an environment where innate ingredients (e.g. autonomous imagination, creativity, and intellectual curiosity) of academic excellence and contributions could get adequate and healthy nourishment. Universities/colleges are increasingly transformed into business-like entities: all of its constituencies get tied into business relationships; educational efficiency, accountability and quality are gauged in accountancy and clerical terms; courses get recast as instructional commodities; curriculum is redesigned in accordance with prime purpose of preparing ‘human capital’ for employment and earnings (i.e. vocationalized). All this goes on to progressively distance itself from pre-existing conception of university/colleges’ sacrosanct role of igniting, nurturing and cultivating creative imagination, innate intellectual curiosity and the passion for knowing the unknown. The momentous upshot of all this is a metamorphosis of long-existing legitimating idea of public ‘higher education as a social institution’ into its present identity ‘as an industry’. [31] Rather than guiding economy, society, culture and politics, universities under neoliberal regime are made subordinate to corporate-style managerialism and profit-maximisation. Under pre-war notion of university as a social institution, it was devoted to a wide array of social functions such as educating academically able and motivated cohorts of students, development of individual learning and productive and creative skills, socialization and cultivation of citizens and political reliabilities, advancing knowledge through research and its preservation. But contemporary neoliberal university like an industry has increasingly embraced many economic functions and activities (e.g. selling or trading of skill, information and know-hows for earning revenues or profit) which are not really social. This radical transformation of age-old university/HE into its present neoliberal incarnation has been engineered over several decades since WWII across world by respective governments of the countries through drastic policy reforms formally on recommendations of some commissions/committees/panels of experts officially set up. But core intellectual exercises, arguments, and theorising that founded ideational/intellectual edifice of neoliberal reign with radical reforms in HE have been generated and propagated by a section of academic stalwarts of the mainstream economics profession typically of neoliberal/neo-classical persuasions in the seat of capitalist bloc, of course with hefty benefaction and patronisation by big multi-national corporate funding bodies and major multilateral agencies such as World Bank, IMF, OECD and UNESCO (). [32] While intellectual construction of a neoliberal reign in HE was demolishing long-standing notion and traditions of university/HE built over centuries, it is notable that there have been only very few – albeit distinct – voices from entire academic fraternity and educational thinkers in defence of retaining fundamental/cardinal elements of traditional thinking, practices, and values. [33] Such scattered dissenting voices seemed too feeble and inconsequential and were generally ignored, making possible a steady ascent of neoliberal reign and reforms even in many glorious universities that have been in existence over several preceding centuries. [34]
An Epilogue
The genesis of an idea of higher learning and teaching in quest for objective truth, knowledge, or spiritual awakening in an organised or institutionalised manner (e.g. monasteries or academies) by scholars, thinkers and disciples could be some three thousand years old, traceable to ancient civilisations in a few countries such as China, India, Greece, and parts of the Middle East. These ancient institutions of learning, intellectual nurtures or spiritual pursuits fed into an emergence of early nascent versions of modern university in some of the European countries beginning from eleventh century. But these early medieval universities, mostly in Europe, were offshoots of Church or Monarch and were essentially a community of masters, scholars, disciples for professional training and careers such as teachers, preachers, lawyers, officials and administrators. By early seventeenth century, concerns of universities hardly extended beyond teaching of undergraduates, and it was only in early nineteenth century that responsibilities for higher level of teaching, research and advancement of knowledge were vested firmly upon universities.
It was only after the European Enlightenment and its aftermath that a foundation for empirical and experimental approach to learning and modern scientific inquiry was laid down. Consequently, the university’s remit got enlarged from mere preservation and transmission of received knowledge to discovery and advancement of knowledge. Indeed, a broad common global understanding of an ideal university took a firm shape around early decades of nineteenth century with the birth of the University of Berlin in Germany in 1810 under inexorable influence of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s ideas and thinking. A key complementarity or ‘unity’ between research and teaching in a university, along with the latter’s self-government, utmost academic freedom, and full-funding guaranteed by the state came to be well recognised and indeed became a hallmark of a model university across Europe and America. In this enlightened thinking, the task of building an exceptional ‘ivory tower’ of higher learning was not meant to be careless towards ‘worldly things’ and its usefulness for material development. Achieving an ‘ivory tower’ of higher learning is important because intellectual cultivation and truth-seeking in diverse fields has classically been found to have prospered only outside or above the ‘real political world’. As university education or more broadly HE is supposed to inculcate higher and admirable states of mind, it was not seen to be just a means to an end. And all this basic modern ideational model of a university – with some relatively minor variations in features and modalities across space and time – remained to be dominant across globe roughly until WWII when educational ideas and thinking began taking a neoliberal turn.
Over post-WWII decades, the long pre-existing idea of university/HE as a celebrated site both for changing ‘states of mind’, for cultivating and promoting creativity and new inventions, for advancing ‘knowledge’ (distinct from ‘information’) has been steadily replaced by its full-blown neoliberal incarnation as a machinery for producing skilled productive, self-seeking, individuals engaged chiefly in market economic activities, material production, and for heavily touted macro-level goals of achieving economic growth and national competitiveness in global market. With a radical (often arrogant) disregard for long traditions of hailing public-good character of university/HE and its broader aims of nurturing creativity, imaginativeness, inventiveness, capabilities for rigorous analytical reasoning in search of objective truth and the unknown and for transcendental cultural pursuits and humanistic and democratic consciousness and values, the predominant neoliberal reign in university/HE has been steadily choking off age-old precious routes and mechanisms for sustained human progression. It is quite understandable that these are some of the major reasons why therein (i.e. full-scale neoliberal transformation of pre-Cold War ideas and ideals of education) lies roots of contemporary global crises of university education or HE at large – a concern, with which this essay set out at the outset as its major source of motivation. Needless to add, the present Indian university/HE landscape is almost a text-book type illustration or a full-blown culmination of its long traverse along this neoliberal route and reforms since very early and rather deferentially too – a proposition, which has been dealt with in details elsewhere. [35]