Well – then all i said about “the life of the mind”- bless the young ones who still keep the humanities going

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7451115/?ref=nf

Seminar on the institutions of the humanities: past, present and future

CALL FOR PAPERS – take a look at the seminar page for more content information

Spaces of Knowledge and Bildung – The institutions and social conditions of the humanities

Conference venue: University of Oslo, Norway 17th-18th March 2011

Organizers: Forum for University History, University of Oslo and Nordic Summer University, study circle 5: “Humanities in Society”

The NSU study circle is visiting Forum for University History in the year of the 200 Year anniversary of the University of Oslo See more at:

www.uio.no/english/about/news-and-events/uio200/

Soft Knowledge in Hard Times – winter seminar in Copenhagen March 2010

Please note the final programme for the winter seminar March 9th-11th – look under the heading “Seminars”

Venue: The Danish School of Education, Aarhus University – Copenhagen Campus

Free admission for all interested

Danish debate on “miscounting” the humanities

Please visit the blog Humanistisk Forums Blog for a long critical appraisal of the new output measuring research policies in Denmark by Claus Emmeche

Please follow the blogroll reference to the society Humanistisk Forums blog on the right =>

Evidence-based science policy and the systematic miscounting of performance in the humanities

 

Prof. em. Aant Elzinga, University of Gothenburg

Paper given at workshop on evidence-based practice, University of Gothenburg, 19-20 May 2008

 

Introduction

 

Science policy as a separate policy domain emerged after the Second World War and it became institutionalized under the influence of OECD (Godin 2003, 2005 & 2006:654-655; Elzinga 2005). Important distinctions like the one entailed in the acronym R&D adopted in the early 1960s for comparative statistical purposes are still with us today, although now intermediate categories like mission oriented (basic) research, strategic research, frontier research (term used in Europe) and transformational research (term appearing in the U.S.) get considerable attention. Unless on subscribes to some species of idealism or essentialism, strictly speaking the term basic or fundamental research has no meaning outside its use as a statistical household word: in other words it is historically and socially contingent and sometimes regarded as a contested term (Stokes 1997; Godin 2007:28-43). There is a sociopolitics (Godin 2002) that drives S&T measurement within nation states in accordance with particular conventions together with rules of standardization codified within the intergovernmental frameworks of either the OECD (for the rich world) or UNESCO (for the so-called developing nations).

                      Another important distinction introduced in the early years was the one between policy for science and science for policy (Elzinga and Jamison 1995). The former has to do with the stimulation of research to develop an advanced knowledge base while the latter is what we now associate with sectorial research policies (Elzinga 1980). Under the head of science for policy one can also include various functions and mechanisms for science advice to government. Early on science advisors were often physicists, today the accent has shifted towards persons with a background in biomedical and biotechnological fields. In some cases systematic methods of reviewing the literature have been developed to provide decision-makers and international organizations with a science-base for important policy decisions. The most visible example today is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its periodical reviews with lead authors and teams producing chapters in a comprehensive report regarding trends in global climate change (Elzinga 1996).

                      A rough analytical distinction made in connection with environmental research but also useful in other areas where controversies arise due to a combination of epistemic uncertainty and strong political stakeholder pressures suggests that in practice four possible options or policy advisory strategies are available to the scientist in his/her position vis a vis the halls of power: pure scientist, science arbiter, issue advocate, and honest broker (Pielke 2007). In the present paper I shall not be concerned with these aspects of evidence-basing of policy measures. Neither shall I rehearse various points in the debate regarding organizational changes in the research landscape and policy-related doctrines that have been depicted with trendy terms (or rather metaphors) like “Mode 2” and “Triple Helixes” (for that debate see Elzinga 2004). Instead the focus will be on the more classical task of policy for science, evidence-based methods for determining priorities and computer-aided modes of allocating resources out of the public purse to academic science. It is in this area a lot has been happening lately. Towards the end of the paper a broader perspective will be introduced with some reflections on situating current developments in this area by relating them to a general shift in public management philosophy and practices.

                      It will also be noted how evidence-based science policy in the forms currently being introduced in Sweden has a detrimental effect on the well-being of research in the humanities, which will be (and are already) systematically “miscounted”  in as far as far as publishing patterns revolve around monographs instead of the production of international journal articles.

 

Goals, priority setting and incentive systems – from ideology to scoreboards

 

Research policy in its classical sense has to do with setting goals and priorities for R&D (Ziman 1994). The question of allocating resources to R&D activities is one of science policy’s most classical components. For the most part it is a matter of allocating resources out of the public purse at the national level, but it can also concern investments on regional or local municipal levels decided by actors at these levels. Funding of R&D by the European Commission through its Framework Programs and other avenues suggests that there is now also a supranational level, and here one finds administrators and planners hard at work with benchmarking and new sorts of science and technology (S&T) indicators to measure achievements and profiles.

                      Science policy also concerns different kinds of incentive systems to stimulate desired courses of development, for example tax reductions for firms to encourage reinvestment of profits into industrial research. There are also programs designed to foster collaboration between university researchers and extramural partners or users of research in industry and other areas (knowledge and technology transfer). In addition one finds practices of matching funding e.g., between academic units and firms, governmental agencies, or EU framework programs and the like. The state can also try to steer technological development via special procurement programs to jump start innovations in areas where there is otherwise no regular market, e.g., the military sector, but even within the hospital and healthcare sector where bio-compatible implants in human bodies is not necessarily a lucrative market. Sometimes there have been ideologies like ”picking the winners” (cf. Martin & Irvine’s now classic study with the same title) that have driven investment in new and emerging technologies (high tech) with an eye to the nation’s future competitive advantage in a global marketplace. The introduction of evidence-basing of policy in the UK has even in this area had the consequence of backing away from ideologically driven modes of science policy.

                      It appears then that much of the current discussion about suitable models for resource allocation to research has to do with a demand of accountability in terms that are quantitative and measurable. Helga Nowotny, whom I shall cite more below, has noted that even if the word ”evidence” is seldom used in science policy the philosophy nevertheless lies behind the attempts to construct metrics for fine-grained evidence regarding performance as a basis for decisions on continued financing in a part of the public sector.

                      It may also be noted that although the use of quantitative measures to evaluate research performance has increased enormously there is a dearth of literature with a reflexive take on the subject. Most reviews of the field have concentrated on bibliometric indicators and thus fail to cover the broader range of quantitative indicators, nor do they touch upon important issues of contextualization. The divide between science and technology studies (S&TS) on the one hand and the interdisciplinary field of science, technology and innovation (STI) on the other hand that has been institutionalized over the years may have contributed to a reinforcement of this situation. At least this is a conclusion one can draw from a review by an Australian research evaluation and policy group with broader ambitions (ARC Linkage Project 2005).  Commenting on the lack of contextualizing studies the authors attribute the dilemma in part to an historical legacy where the “sociology of science, which should have provided important background information about relationships between indicators and the research process, has not been interested in quantitative indicators for more than 20 years. With its constructivist turn, researchers in the discipline questioned the validity of bibliometric indicators on very basic principles (Gilbert and Woolgar 1974; Woolgar 1991) and has since ceased to make contributions to the topic. A recent trend is the emergence of a body of literature produced by scientists from outside science studies who have become interested in performance indicators. This literature is scattered across a wide variety of fields and tends to be fragmented and non-cumulative, often with little reference to the literature that does exist.” (ibid., p. 4). One consequence of this most recent trend is that the relative and inter-subjective social character of research quality, a feature early on recognized by sociologists and historians of science and some leading authors in STI (Martin and Irvine 1983; Herbertz and Müller Hill 1995; Van Raan 1996), also tends to be forgotten, eclipsed by spontaneous forms of positivism and essentialism partly inherent within communities of medical, natural and engineering scientists themselves. The situation is not improved when, as in Sweden, political scientists of a traditional strain reinforce the view that scientific quality is something inherent in superior knowledge itself, a position that has been sharply criticized in an incisive meta-theoretical inquiry by Ingemar Bohlin (1998), a study informed by an analytical framework founded on contemporary S&TS.

 

First and second orders of evidence

 

The science policy discussion I home in on in this paper has to do with evidence of the first order, i.e., benchmarking and descriptions of states of affairs within publicly funded units with the help of numbers as well as qualitative assessments (e.g., using review panels) in a landscape that is subject to policy orchestration by incorporating cultures of compliance. Evidence-basing of policy in the sense one finds in medical clinical work or units responsible for social work would require a second step. Such a second step would entail systematic evaluations of the efficacy of actual policy measures and instruments in order to determine to what degree intended aims or goals are achieved, for example that the prioritized profiled areas of R&D progress in a suitable manner when seen from the combined point of view of quality enhancement and relevance.

                      Another example would be assessing the actual impact of policies aimed at increasing a country’s international economic competitiveness, or intensification of collaboration between industry and universities in priority areas. In my reading of science policy documents I have not been able to find credible examples of evidence-basing in such a (second order) meaning. The current presidential election campaign in the U.S., however, is generating some signals in the academic world suggesting that the Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama may be a strong advocate of evidence-based science policy (Bhattacharjee 2008), meaning better “science for policy”. Some of his statements, made even long before the present campaign, are being contrasted to the practice of the Bush Administration that by comparison is seen to be ideological, particularly with regard to U.S. climate policy, but also in the field of health care (Oberlin blogspot 2008).

                      In order to be able to compare the result of an implementation of specific policy instruments and established goals one needs to start with a much more precise description of the existing situation that is the baseline from which one has to start. This is probably the reason why much of the talk about ”best practices” is still rather loose while a lot of emphasis is given to introducing ”benchmarking” that will give clearer points of reference to compare initial conditions before and final conditions after the implementation of a policy package. Therefore I think it makes sense to distinguish as I have above between a first and a second order of evidencing.                      

                      A second order of evidence concerns evaluation of science policy and its instruments. The first order of evidence on the other hand concerns situation-descriptors that are needed if one wants to tighten policy audits and facilitate future comparisons between conditions before and after the implementation of a policy or package of affiliated instruments. That is why the energy of planners today seems to be so much directed towards constructing and experimenting with fine-grained metrics that may be incorporated into decision-making related to annual budgetary allocations of resources to publicly funded R&D at universities and other institutions. This is evident in several countries where performance indicators are used as a basis for changing funding flows between universities as well as between faculties and research units within them.

 

A new acronym for science based policy (SciSIP)

                     

Some of the current efforts afoot in order to develop a robust indicator-based knowledge base for decision-making in science policy now fall under the heading of a new acronym, “SciSIP” which rejuvenates the crystallographer and Marxist John Desmond Bernal’s old dream of a science of science to steer the growth of science (Bernal 1939; Elzinga 1988).  The ultimate rationale for such efforts may be found in a statement by John Marburger III, science adviser to President Bush who ties it back to strong demands of public accountability regarding tax dollars and the generally diffuse policy of enhancing economic competitiveness of the nation in a global market.  In the wake of the launching of the President’s American Competitive Initiative (ACI) Marburger (2006) proposed an agenda for a Science of Science and Innovation Policy, which has now become a new phrase in policy documents. He argued as follows. “Science policy makers tend to rely on economic models and data when they exist, but also employ ad hoc surveys and opinions offered by panels of experts. Science policy implementers are usually government employees and elected officials whose information comes from a variety of sources of varying degrees of visibility, with advocacy groups on the high end and science policy technocrats somewhere near the bottom. I would like to change this. I would like to have science policy tools that are so credible that their products are embraced by the advocates as well as the technocrats. I do not expect tools that approach the credibility of Newton’s laws or quantum mechanics, but I believe we can move the standards of science policy making and implementation closer to what already exists in the world of economic policy.” And further:  “I am emphasizing models because they are essential for understanding correlations among different measurable quantities, or metrics.” (cf. also OECD 2006 and Marburger 2007).

                      Apart from stronger emphasis on measuring outcomes and impacts the intention is also to link micro and macro data sets and make indicators more directly science policy relevant. The foregoing has prompted the NSF Science Metrics initiative. “The eventual aim is to create a cadre of scholars who can provide science policy makers with the kinds of data, analyses and advice that economists now provide to various government institutions.” (Mervis 2006: 347 cited in Nowotny 2007:482). Proposals by a variety of scholars have already reached the NSF (the deadline for SciSIP proposals was March 18, 2008). The funding program is within the Directorate for Social, Behavioural & Economic Sciences (SBE). The FY 2008 competition emphasizes three areas: analytical tools, model building, and data development & augmentation (NSF 2008). Probably a number of STS & STI scholars will be getting grants from this program.

                      In the UK a system of review panels has long been used to evaluate and rank performance of universities and departments within them every five years. In December 2006 the government announced that a new system for the assessment and funding of research would replace that framework after the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) of 2008. The new framework will as part of its approach produce robust UK-wide indicators of research excellence for all disciplines. This represents a move away from the old ”subjective” approach to RAEs towards more ”objective” methods based on publication counts and citation measures to gauge quality and impact, plus statistical counts of external research income and postgraduate student activity at universities. The new framework will operate with fewer and broader subject divisions than the RAEs. The full set of indicators for the science-based disciplines will be produced for the first time during 2009 and will begin to influence funding allocations from 2010-11. The indicators will be based on data averaged across several years. For the arts, humanities, social sciences, mathematics and statistics the operation will be phased in more gradually, at first complemented by information from peer review panels. This is because publication patterns in these areas do not match those of the science-based disciplines, as the relevant international databases on publications and citation frequencies do not give a representative picture.

                      The idea nevertheless seems to be that reviews and summations of relevant performance indicators will fully inform funding from 2014 onward (HEFCE 2007). The aim is to try and enhance the overall relative international level of performance (in comparison with other countries) represented by the country’s research base. As Helga Nowotny has pointed out concerning the report that pushes in this direction, ”Although the report does not carry the word ’evidence’ in its title, it is yet another example of evidence-based policy intended to replace the RAE… By devising systems to compare ’best practices’ at national, European and international levels, self-generating, performance-enhancing mechanisms are created. Their function is to orient towards goals and objectives that readily can generate ever new performance targets and changing objectives by absorbing existing performances…” (Nowotny 2007:482).

                      Nowotny who has first hand experience of policy making and science advice at the highest level within the EU and is presently Vice-President of the Scientific Council of the newly established European Research Council, for her own part, expresses skepticism and is critical of the science metrics approach. She warns against fastening in a reification of numbers and the associated myth of a “trust in numbers” on which it rests; therefore she calls for other, competing constructions of “policy rooms” distributed throughout the science and innovation systems. Perceptive users of bibliometrics and research performance indicators have also warned of inadvertent consequences inherent in too much trust in numbers (Weingart 2004).                   

                      A leading centre in Europe where bibliometric methods have been developed is the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at Leiden University, led by Anthony van Raan who is currently also the editor of the journal Research Evaluation. Another is the so-called Leuven-group, the Steunpunkt O&O Statistieken (abreviated SOOS), a Flemish inter-university consortium located at the University of Leuven and directed by Wolfgang Glänzel who also has longstanding affiliations with the Information Science and Scientometric Research Unit (ISSRU) at the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences which is the co-publisher (with Springer Verlag) of the journal Scientometrics. The services of the CWTS unit at Leiden have frequently been used in bibliometric studies at Swedish universities. Medical faculties have also engaged Grant Lewison who has developed bibliometric competence at the Welcome Institute in the UK.  In Sweden Olle Persson and his Information Research Group (started in 1975) at the Sociology Department of Umeå University has been working with bibliometric methods since 1985, publishing empirical and theoretical papers and engaged operationally in various commissioned evaluation exercises. More recently Ulf Sandström who is affiliated with Linköping University has over the years developed various bibliometric skills in connection with research evaluations and policy, among other at the policy unit of the Swedish Research Council (VR), and as expert consultant to the recent Resources Inquiry led by Dan Brändström. The Resources Inquiry in its report Resurser för kvalitet (SOU 2007:81) proposes a new model for the allocation of funding through direct appropriations to Swedish universities. While this model is currently still only the subject of deliberations, no parliamentary decision having been taken as yet, it has already prompted a flurry of activities at universities to speed up work in developing their own capacities to do computer-aided evaluations of research performance. These activities mostly engage bibliometricians connected to the university libraries.   

 

 The Norwegian model for inter-university (re-)distribution of national appropriations for R&D.

 

In Scandinavia there is currently some discussion regarding what is called the ”Norwegian model” for linking state decisions regarding budgetary allocations to university research to systematic reviews of performance. One of the architects behind the Norwegian model is Gunnar Siverstsen (NIFU/STEP in Oslo) who has helped devise a system whereby researchers at universities and colleges report relevant information about their publishing activities into what has become a national database managed by bibliometricians employed at university libraries. The model is quantitative and bibliometric. A scientific publication is defined by four criteria each of which has to be satisfied: 1) presentation of a new insight; 2) presented in a form that makes the results testable and possible to use in new research; 3) expressed in a language and via a channel of distribution that makes it accessible for most researchers who might take an interest in it; and 4) the publication channel (scientific journal, report series, book, etc,) that it appears in must incorporate peer review procedures (Sivertsen 2008). Publications distributed through local channels (if more than 2/3 of publications in a publication series coming from the same institution) or non-scientific channels (lacking peer review) are excluded. Publication channels are divided into two levels: Level 1: a category that covers ”normal” quality, where one usually finds 80% of publications in a discipline; Level 2: a category that covers the other 20% where one finds the most significant or highest quality publications, e.g., high impact international scientific journals. In case of a multi-author article the publication is divided into corresponding fractional parts attributed to the respective authors’ home institutions. A point system is used to give weights to different kinds of publications:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Publication points are calculated annually by multiplying the author-fraction affiliated with an institution times the appropriate vectors for publication form (species & levels). In addition to publication points three other indicators are combined in the result-based decisions for redistributing funds amongst universities and colleges with an eye to their final quality measure expressed on a national scoreboard. The other three indicators are first the number of doctoral degrees, secondly EU-funding attracted, and thirdly Norwegian Research Council funding attracted over the same period. The evaluation/measurement exercise was incorporated into the state budget for universities 2005 and is currently being extended to include the national research institutes sector and health-related enterprises.

 

Swedish experience and the proposal of a more “objective” model

 

Interested parties in Denmark, Finland and Sweden have been studying the Norwegian model and looking at alternatives in order to incorporate quantitative and bibliometric information as a basis for state budgetary allocations of funds to university and other forms of research in the public sector. Several Swedish universities are developing bibliometic functions to provide university boards with instruments to monitor quantity and quality of publications. The most comprehensive report until now is one from the University of Uppsala where consultants from the CWTS/Leiden were employed to do an extensive evaluation, Quality and Renewal. KoF07 Report (see UU home page). At the national level the White Paper called the Resource Inquiry (or Brändströmska utredning) on financing forms for universities’ activities (SOU 2007:81) reflects a certain enchantment with the British experiences with the RAE-system and the discussions regarding its replacement, at least in part, by “robust” indicators. The White Paper criticizes the Norwegian model for being too costly and cumbersome because it involves local university based staff to manage researchers self-reporting of publications into a national database that needs to be continually upgraded and validated. To circumvent this ”subjective” element the ”Swedish model” accordingly proposes a quasi-objective mode of measuring performance at an aggregate level that will allow a comparison of individual universities in this country. The methods proposed would only make use of existing information regarding publication counts, relative performance levels above or below a world norm calculated for 23 different classes of journals (systematically excluding journals in non-English languages) registered and indexed in the Thomsen/ISI database Web of Science (WoS). The characteristics of the model are:

1)       the numerical value the model pins on a university is obtained by focusing on publications in given disciplinary areas;

2)       calculating productivity by translating the actual number of publications to a virtual number of middling-level of averagely productive researchers that for each disciplinary-specific area would be required to produce the same number of publications;

3)       calculating the citation-value by looking at the average number of citations received by the publications in question and dividing this by the expected compiled value (number of citations one would expect the corresponding number of middle-level averagely productive researchers to receive (field normalization));[1]

4)       multiplying the productivity value with the citation-value for each disciplinary area for the various universities reviewed.

                      A position paper appended to the White Paper (Sandström & Sandström 2007b) argues that the advantage with this model is that one does not need to collect raw data from the universities. One gets the raw data directly from the database of the ISI/WoS. This procedure, it is argued, is much less costly than having to rely on universities’ databases that require competent staff to provide and manage local inputs that are constantly upgraded and validated. The other advantage emphasized is that application of techniques to achieve field-normalised indicators allows comparisons to be made across different disciplinary areas like technological science, medicine, natural sciences, social sciences & humanities as well as between sub-classes within these broad areas, something the Norwegian model is purported unable to do.

         The foregoing line of argument also appears in some work of the aforementioned bibliometrics group at the Australian National University (see above). In 2007 two of this team revisited and evaluated the political science portion of the 2001 UK/RAE. The outcome of the original review panel assessment (RAE 2001) was compared with the results of a new evaluation for the year 2001 carried out by the Australian bibliometricians using only quantitative indicators accessible in international databases. The conclusion reported is worth citing here because it may have influenced the thinking of Ulf Sandström (cf. Sandström & Sandström 2007a) who is the main author of the model outlined in the Swedish White Paper. The authors of the Australian report (Butler & McAllister 2007: 14-15) write:  “Our findings presented here suggest, unequivocally, that a metrics-based model, using objective, transparent indicators drawn from a range of readily-available measures, will yield results which are very close to those of a peer-based evaluation model /using review panels/. Such a stronger reliance on quantitative indicators, of which bibliometrics is a central measure, will, most importantly, obviate the need for a large peer review committee and the consequent indirect biases that it introduces into the system. And not least, such an approach would help to reduce one of the most oft-quoted criticisms of the RAE, namely the cost in university resources and academic staff time.” 

 

Four prongs in a possible Swedish inter-university (re-)distribution key

 

The main text of the Swedish White Paper however seems to shy away from adding citation frequency measurements as an additional indicator in the first round of funding using performance measures. Instead the idea is to give universities block grants, half of which will be stable while the other half will vary in accordance with the computation of an inter-university distribution key. The first prong of the distribution key is the number of teachers and researchers who have doctorates. It counts for 5%. Added to this is a prong for the number of women professors, which also counts for 5%. A third prong of the inter-university distribution key computes the ability of universities to attract external funding, which counts for another 20% in the new budget. The final 20% of budgetary allocations will be on the basis of the productivity indicator. A computation of the effect in the state budget allocations of the Fiscal Year 2007 to universities as derived from the fourth prong if the Swedish productivity and citation model were fully deployed shows that the Stockholm School of Economics (HHS), the Royal Technological Institute in Stockholm (KTH), Chalmers Technological University in Gothenburg, University of Lund, the Agricultural University (), Uppsala University and Karolinska Institutet would be winners, while on the losing end we would find the universities of Umeå, Gothenburg, Luleå, Linköping and many of the smaller universities. The latter either stand still or get less money. The two right hand side columns in the Table (SOU 2007:81, p. 415) indicate first the percentage of the national budget going to universities in line with the model’s recommendation (Procent Summa 2007), and then what the percentages actually are in the present system in operation today (direkt anslag). Within any given university also, the humanities are at a disadvantage since they do not figure as well in the international science citation databases as do the natural, technological and medical sciences. In the implementation of the model in Sweden there was a suggestion that articles in the humanities, since they are fewer, should be boosted by multiplying each with a factor of five. Since there were objections to this it was finally decided that a multiplier of two (2x) will be employed in counting performance in humanities disciplines. The joke however is that if a researcher published no article that is visible in the international databases, then zero times two (0×2) is still zero. Consequently it is it is not wrong to conclude that the introduction of evidence-based science policy entails a strong skew, a systematic miscounting of performance in the humanities that translates into perceivable disadvantages in terms of future funding to departments in these fields.   

 

Tabell 6  Jämförelse i procent mellan antal artiklar, Waringvärden och

SUMMA sorterat efter SUMMA-värdet (kolumn H)

 

 

 

 

 

The Flanders model

 

The model proposed in Bilaga 8 of the Swedish White Paper has also been referred to as a modification of the Flanders model since it incorporates aspects of the bibliometric approach elaborated by the Leuven-group. Its task is to support research policy making in the Flemish part of Belgium. A central unit is situated at Leuven University. It involves a consortium of all Flemish universities and some government agencies, called Steunpunkt O&O Statistieken (abbreviated SOOS). The consortium wwas set up in 2002 to construct indicators for R&D policy purposes. Its task was to reconfigure the distribution of funds from a special portfolio for research (Bijzonder Ondersoeksfonds, or BOF) to the six Flemish universities (which amounted to 90 million Euro in the fiscal year 2002), making it more output oriented. Until 2002  the BOF-key consisted of three general prongs: the number of PhDs produced by the universities over a four year period prior to the year in which the computation is done. It counts for 50% of the distribution key. PhDs moreover are weighted on a scale of 1-3, so that one in physics it requires more instrumentation might weigh 3 points while a PhD in economics only weighs 1 point. 35% of the BOF-key was based on computing the number of graduates at each university during the same four-year period, and 15% of the BOF-key was based on something equivalent to the ability to attract external grants. Each university then received a fraction of the BOF-money in accordance with its relative share on the three indicators.

                      From 2003 onwards an additional criterium has been added to the distribution key: each university’s share in the total Flemish academic publication and citation output in the Science Citation Index (extracted from the expanded WoS/ISI Thomson) over a shifting period of ten years. Initially this indicator counted for 10% of the BOF key, but it is expected that in the coming years the proportion will grow to 30% while 70% will continue to rest on the older sets of indicator. At first a lot of data cleaning was needed to construct the Flemish WoS-SCI universe over the ten-year time window. This was validated with the help of the universities themselves by letting institutions do manual checks on its own downloads (48 000 “raw” publications filtered and distributed across the 6 universities), a process that led to further improvements as well as providing transparency and greater legitimacy in the eyes of those to be affected. Further refinement of the methodology is still going on. A question mark seems to remain regarding the usefulness of including certain areas in the humanities and social sciences since it is recognized that publications from these areas are insufficiently represented in the international databases. (Debacker & Glänzel 2004).

 

 

 

 

 

Tabel 8.7: Evolutie van de gemiddelde geobserveerde (observed average citation frequency -MOCR) en verwachte (expected citation frequency – MECR) citatiefrequentie voor Vlaanderen en elf Europese referentielanden (alle vakgebieden samen; bron SCIE)

 

 

Norwegian criticism of the Swedish White Paper prompts debate

In reply to the criticism of the Norwegian model found in the Swedish White Paper Norwegian authorities have pointed out that the Swedish investigatory group did not take contact with Norwegian experts to actually find out what the Norwegian model can and cannot do (Universitets- og Hogskolerådet i Oslo till Utbildningsdepartementet i Stockholm, brev av 6 jan 2008, ref. 08/4-1).[2] For example it is stated that contrary to the claim made in the Swedish report that the Norwegian model does not lead to a redistribution of funds that is disadvantageous to engineering sciences (more specifically NTNU in Trondheim).

                      Also the Swedish report claims that the indicator relating to completed doctoral dissertations rewards humanities doctorates with three-times as much money as medical doctorates. This is also shown to rest on a misunderstanding and insufficient knowledge about the workings of the actual Norwegian system. Further the Swedish investigators are criticized for giving a false picture of the changes in the inter-university distribution of money for the Fiscal year 2005 based on the model. The Norwegian experts also deny that the implementation of their model is very labour-intensive and therefore costly. The main bone of contention in the discussion that emerged after publication of the Swedish White Ppaper however concerns the question of transparency and therewith legitimacy of the redistribution of funds in the eyes of the researchers that are affected. Using input from researchers’ own self-reports on publication activities to their universities’ databases also gives the research community a sense of ownership over data for the assessment, an aspect that is absent in the Swedish model which may therefore be perceived as more alien (and alienating – compare the comments Nowotny and also Weingart above on reification of numbers).

                      The Norwegians argue that since the Swedish model that has been proposed makes use of very advanced and non-transparent methods for correcting quality measures relating to data sets for the different universities taken only from ISI/WoS sources it may be difficult to gain acceptance as to the model’s fairness as an instrument for reconfiguring future flows of research funds. In this context it may be noted that in the US recently there has been a revolt of scientists who are protesting against injustices caused by indicator-based rankings of universities, arguing that these are based on dubious methodology and spurious data, but nevertheless have a huge influence (Butler 2007).

                      The Danish Ministry responsible for Science has also closely studied both the Norwegian and Swedish (SOU 2007:81- Bilaga 8) models (Universitets- og Bygningsstyrelsen Notat 2007) and has made the following observations: ”The Swedish indicators take to a high degree their point of departure in impact measures such as are especially used in the health science, technological and natural sciences areas. Therewith the model will in the short term gain greater acceptance in these disciplines. By the same token it will meet greater criticism from social sciences and humanities than the Norwegian model. The Swedish model moreover uses rather advanced methods of estimation that however can be very difficult to see through and interpret (gennemskue og fortolke) by university leaderships as well as politicians. The very advanced Swedish impact-method chosen is at the cost of overview, legitimacy and being up-to-date (aktualitet) which /on the other hand/ are some central advantages on the part of the Norwegian model” (ibid.). The Danes therefore except that except for a few computational experts who do the estimations, the Swedish model will be a kind of ”black box”. Apart from its transparency the greater legitimacy of the Norwegian model is also found to derive from its inclusion of other publication channels than those indexed by ISI/WoS. For this and other reasons the Danes say they are more inclined to choose the Norwegian bibliometric setup and modify it for Danish purposes.

                      A further viewpoint relevant to the current discussion comes from Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm which otherwise does well on both productivity and citation scores compared to world averages in health and medical research.  A recent evaluation of research in public health at Karolinska Institut in Stockholm covering thirteen departments and research centres has found some serious discrepancies when comparing data in the ISI/WoS and Medline databases with researchers’ self-reports of publications. The researchers’ self-reports gave a 25% higher figure for original articles and larger reviews than the number found in the international database. Thus 25% of significant publications lay outside the indexed population. Also, on the other hand, 25% of the works the researchers thought were not indexed could actually be found in KI’s library databases. The conclusion drawn was that even in the area of medicine, especially when one is looking at an inter- and trans-disciplinary field like ”public health research” it is necessary to complement information drawn from standard international databases with data reported by researchers themselves (Bondjers et al. 2008).                

 

Systemartic Now I want to consider a broader perspective to make sense of onslaught of bibliometric methods and indicator reviews as a means of generating an evidence-base for policy.

 

Broadening the perspective: New Public Management and Audit Society

During recent times some of the discussion on science policy has come to incorporate the fashionable words “participation” (Elzinga 2008) and “governance” (cf. Hagendijk et al 2005; Guston and Sarewitz 2006) which link back to a perspectival shift in thinking around public management theory and practices. Thus there is a relationship – seldom taken up – between the current ”science of science and innovation” trend and the New Public Management (NPM) movement that had its heyday in the 1990s (Lane 1994; 1995). Underlying the new bibliometric methods to guide R&D resource allocations lies the philosophy of shifting from input- to output control, clearer contractual relationships between funder and performer (agencification, contractificiation) and making explicit a market of products (publications), their quality (citation levels) and economic rewards that are supposed to follow international recognition (symbolic capital). One can identify the same kind of redefinition of the relationship between those who finance research and those who perform it (agencification) as advocated by NPM thinking. An important element in the implementation of the new management philosophy when translated to the organizational domain has been to bring about changes in mechanisms for allocating funding and experimentation with the introduction of particular measuring instruments (or metrics) that allow decision-makers to evaluate more stringently what has happened as a result of the use of those resources. In general terms one can refer to a shift from a focus on inputs to a focus on outputs or outcomes. While the reigns on academic research are loosening on the input side methods of evaluation and assessment of outcomes are becoming more intrusive.

                      As already indicated, in the changed landscape public institutions are also to follow up and control the outcomes of investments at levels both of policy-making and implementation. Thus there is a shift from accountancy of resource inputs to evaluation and assessment of outcomes or outputs as a necessary corollary to the fundamental change in doctrine relating to accountability for public sector institutions. Former trust in the wisdom and non-opportunism of civil servants and professions is replaced by mistrust and thence a demand for external control by means of externally initiated evaluations and assessment or auditing procedures. Micheal Power and Richard Laughlin (1992) called this “accountingization” (“critical theory and accounting”, cited in Almqvist 2006:24).  CHECK post-PMN lit (Hanne Foss Hansens ref, & Olaf Riepers ref “performance management” systems to be in place to be able to get certified in health etc….)

 

Accountingization

“Accountingization” refers to a strivance to make visible, break down and categorize costs in areas and endeavours where such costs earlier or traditionally were aggregated or more or less undefined. Steering, follow up and evaluation or auditing are thus emphasized, predicated on a buyer-seller or principal-agent contractual and cost-cutting nexus that replaces former trust in providers and administrators of welfare tasks to serve citizens or provide public goods. Citizens are no longer, they are now clients and consumers and we get privatization and commodification of former public goods including portions of scientific knowledge (qua intellectual property). Functions and mechanisms for dividing public resources are thereby supposed to move from the realm of politics to that of the marketplace.

                      Padoxically though, the quasi-markets are still created by political decisions. But now it is no longer called government but governance, i.e., a multi-level chain of delegations and decentralization in the process of orchestration and steering in tune with signals form the market. The new mode of accountability calls for reliable and hopefully fine-grained metrics of performance measures in terms of various quantitative indicators. Rewarding actors on the basis of measures of performance, some studies on health care have shown, however, may not lead to lower costs because the generation of some forms of health care that is not really necessary gets prioritized since profit-driven health care makes it competitively advantageous to encourage fairly healthy individuals to make quick extra visits to the doctor. This proves to be more profitable for the health care provider than does involvement with elderly patients with chronic illnesses, for example. The quest for profit gains thus appears to introduce a skew that is not counted in economic cost benefit measures.  

                      Summing up – three main ingredients of the NMP narrative are: first of all competition, secondly, agencification, i.e., introducing contractual relationships, and thirdly, accountingization. A more complex schematism based on the review of the literature will include further key words.

 

Brand names and other fashions

A lasting influence of NPM is already the attention and energy that have been expended by universities to fine-tune mission statements, visions, making visible profiles and strategy documents. I think we all recognize the efforts of university bureaucracies during the past decades. Public relations and alumni fundraising are also part of this picture. It signifies further the cosmetic changes effected by new and fashionable conceptions of governance. Ultimately one has to ask how much will be ritual and how much will cut into the bone. Robust research institutions probably will have no difficulty under stricter accountingization regimes to turn new number-grinding exercises to their own advantage. It will become a natural ingredient in reputation management. Control of control as Micheal Power calls it is a ritual whereby in the situation where trust gets lost, the principal gets reassured by introducing a second order control, one wherewith the task becomes that of verifying if a system of control is in place (supposedly internalized in the working environment of the agent). One is no longer concerned with the actual detail or content of the performance per se, but rather in the existence of second order routines as a proxy. In Sweden one example of this is the procedure of quality assurance audits periodically carried out by the National University and Colleges Authority (Högskoleverket).

                     

                                                Control of control

Organization management>>internal audit>>external audit  >>state inspection

 

                   Symbols of compliance (assurances)……………………….>>

 

                        <<………………………………………..Delegated control

 

                      The cynical view is the one expressed by Daniel Greenberg (2007a, also cf. his 2007b) in his article in Science where he suggests that the ultimate name for a typical university running with the trend of the times ought to be “The University of Avarice” (the article is illustrated with a nice cartoon). External relevance pressures, marketization, commodification of public goods and subsequent accountingization bring with them cultural changes in the hallowed halls of academe, to be sure.

 

-          a culture of compliance

-          a culture of profiling, corporate branding, trade-marking and conscious reputational management and identity management

                     

                      Apart from orchestrated self-regulation via the inducement of a compliance culture one also by extension one gets practices of reputation management whereby institutions try to enhance their image. To do well in the universe of citation indicators publication behaviour in research communities, it has been speculated, may also undergo change to adapt to new computer-aided models for redistributing funds between competing universities and departments within them (Debackere & Glänzel 2004: 273-274). Reputation becomes a key asset on which providers trade. In our universities we see a manifestation of reputation management in the practice of trade-marking and brand names as well, and disputes about how the university’s traditional logotype should be modified to make it in tune with the times. According to identity consultants a logotype is much more than a pattern on a paper or letterhead, it is a symbol that embodies a metaphysical means to unify actors around a mission as well as attract customers.

 

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Appendix

 

Standard Bibliometric Indicators:

 

Used by UCWTS/Leiden to rank the100 largest universities in Europe (Anthony F. J. van Raan ”Bibliometric statistical properties of the 100 largest European universities: prevalent scaling rules in the science system”) 

 

 

• Number of publications P in CI-covered journals of a university in the specified period;

• Number of citations C received by P during the specified period, without self-citations; including self-citations: Ci, i.e., number of self-citations Sc = Ci – C, relative amount of self-citations Sc/Ci; 

• Average number of citations per publication, without self-citations (CPP);

• Percentage of publications not cited (in the specified period) Pnc;

• Journal-based worldwide average impact as an international reference level for a university (JCS, journal citation score, which is our journal impact indicator), without self-citations (on this world-wide scale!); in

the case of more than one journal we use the average JCSm; for the calculation of JCSm the same publication and citation counting          procedure, time windows, and article types are used as in the case of CPP;

• Field-based worldwide average impact as an international reference level for a university (FCS, field citation score), without self-citations (on this world-wide scale!); in the case of more than one field (as almost always) we use the average FCSm; for the calculation of FCSm the same publication and citation counting procedure, time windows, and article types are used as in the case of CPP; we refer in this article to the FCSm indicator as the ‘field citation density’;

• Comparison of the CPP of a university with the world-wide average based on JCSm as a standard, without self-citations, indicator  CPP/JCSm;

• Comparison of the CPP of a university with the world-wide average based on FCSm as a standard, without self-citations, indicator CPP/FCSm;

• Ratio JCSm/FCSm is the relative, field-normalized journal impact indicator. 

 

Bibliometric indicators – definitions and usage at Karolinska Institutet

  

Denotation index

P  Total number of publications

PISI  Number of publications in Thomson ISI indices

PTJ Number of publications in top journals

Pf5% Number of articles among the top 5% most cited in the field, of the same age and

article type

p Relative share of publications

pf5% Top 5% – share of articles among top 5% most cited in the field, of the same type

and age

pu Uncitedness – share of uncited publications

px Co-authoring – share of publications co-authored with another unit

pw CEST field-based world share of publications

C Total number of citations

ci  Number of citations to a single publication i 

c  Average number of citations per publication

fc   Item oriented field normalized citation score average

Cf Total item oriented field normalized citation score

[ ]fc  CWTS field normalized citation score (crown indicator)

[ ]lnfzc   Item oriented field normalized logarithm-based citation z-score average

[ ]jc  Journal normalized citation score

jc  Item oriented journal normalized citation score average

[ ]jpc  Journal packet citation score

cs Self citedness – share of citations from the own unit

μf  Field reference value (field citation score) for articles of the same type, age and in

the same field of research

fμ  Mean field reference value (mean field citation score)

τf5% Top 5% threshold value for the field; i.e. articles of the same type and age in the

same scientific field

μf5% Top 5% reference value for the field; i.e. articles of the same type and age in the

same scientific field

μf50% Top 50% reference value for the field; equals the median of the field

μj Journal reference value

h h-index

IISI ISI journal impact factor

If  Journal to field impact score

ιf Field reference value for journals, based on a specified time window

Bibliometric indicators – definitions and usage at Karolinska Institutet

 

Activity indicators used in the recent review of Public Health research at KI

 

Scientific publications

(a)     peer-reviewed original papers, major reviews

(b)    non-peer-reviewed articles

 

Non-scientific publications

·         books, chapters and monographs, such as dissertations, conference papers and proceedings, scientific-technical reports, project reports, etc.

·         other material (newspaper articles, teaching materials, health information, basis of laws and regulations, policy documents and guidelines)

·         electronic material (CD-ROM), papers and monographs on the web, databases

 

Other activity indicators

·         scientific collaboration (meetings, conferences, scientific organizations, educational tasks, expert and advisory tasks, supervision of dissertations and assessments

·         societal collaboration (expert and advisory tasks, governmental tasks- authorship of White Papers), media contact

---

[1] One combines measures of publication-class normalized publication counts with measures of the relative quality captured via proxy measures of relative impact of a university’s publications overall and within given classes of the perdiodical literature using standardized techniques that in each case display the analyzed unit’s level above or below what a relevant community of ”normal” researchers in the Nordic countries would achieve. Such a measure is arrived at by a mathematical-statistical formula and the outcome is expressed in a number that is either larger or smaller than the ”norm”. This number can then be used as a multiplication factor to adjust budgetary allocations to a given university upwards or downwards depending upon the ”quality” of its performance.

[2]  I want to thank Gunnar Sivertsen of NIFU/STEP in Oslo for supplying me with documentation from both the Norwegian and Danish (see below) agencies that have commented on the Swedish model.

Workshop

Enacting social sciences and humanities within contemporary science policy landscape

CALL FOR PAPERS

Venue: Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences, Prague, 
Czech Republic
Date: May 22–23, 2009
Deadline for applications and abstracts: April 10, 2009
Deadline for papers: May 15, 2009.
http://www.sshstudies.net

Science has always been entangled with politics. Since WWII the political influence on science has been taking a form of an ever stronger policy intervention. While the timing and scope differ for countries the general tendency is clear: science policies strive to measure impact and effectiveness of research, enhance and channel  mobility of researchers, stimulate collaborations and knowledge transfer between the academy and industry. Like other neoliberal policies science policy pretends to be apolitical and care solely about “excellence” and “effectiveness”. We would like to disclose and analyse the politics – of knowledge and social order – implicated in the policy interventions by starting from the observation that while the measure and quality criteria employed are most often formulated as universal for science as a whole many of them prioritise the model of knowledge production and career in (certain) natural sciences and technical disciplines. We want to take up the double marginality of social sciences and humanities (SSH) – with regard to the modern objectivist pretension to exact and causal knowledge on one hand and the neoliberal pretension to instrumental and marketable knowledge on the other – as a standpoint from which we could analyse the dominant science imaginaries and practices.

The goal of the workshop is to map the diversity – or uniformity – of policy treatments of SSH in different countries; to investigate some of the implications these polices have for knowledge production and research careers in SSH; and to think about implications current polices have for so called “knowledge society” we are living in. We want to focus specifically on two dimensions of science policies. First, we want to analyse the concept of “impact”, both academic and societal, implied in science policies and the possibilities of assessing it. To give an example, in the Czech Republic only technological outputs count as a legitimate form of societal (non-academic) impact of science which has implications for SSH as its articulations in society take different forms. Second, we want to look into research priorities – how they are constructed and legitimated, and to what sort of society SSH are encouraged to contribute. We invite papers based on empirical study including auto-ethnography.

We would like to arrange a meeting of collective in situ thinking. In order to keep the space for discussions during the workshop, we ask participants to send in advance a paper (5-10 pages) including a brief sketch of science policies in their countries concerning SSH with a focus on “impact” and “research priorities” and a short “case study” discussing one issue in greater detail. Participants from the same country can coordinate a partially shared paper or one of them can look at EU policy. Abstracts containing contact address should be sent to policies@sshstudies.net to the organisers of the workshop Alice Červinková  and Tereza Stöckelová (Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic), Katja Mayer and Veronika Wöhrer (University of Vienna, Austria) who are associated in http://www.sshstudies.net .

We would like to prepare a special issue with contributions of participants including collective conclusions (may we arrive at them).

Venue: Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences, Prague, 
Czech Republic
Date: May 22–23, 2009
Deadline for applications and abstracts: April 10, 2009
Deadline for papers: May 15, 2009.

The humanities in a time of changing demands, boundaries and reconfigurations

Article by Prof. Aant Elzinga, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

 

A major role of scholarship in the Humanities has always been to reflect upon civilization changes – some of them drastic – and to provide society with the means to cope with or adapt to these changes, while drawing from and appraising the knowledge of the past. The following are some recent external events or trends presently changing the role of the Humanities:

 

-          globalization: it has led to greater internationalism, and it is evoking countervailing trends in which national and ethnic identities (often with potential ‘balkanisation’ tendencies) sometimes confronts cohabitation-style multi-cultural diversity. Globalization also introduces new mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, noticeable also in the uneven development of resources for research and asymmetric patterns of collaboration and interconnectivity in the global landscape of so-called knowledge production;

-          geopolitical re-arrangements of boundaries in the world and subsequent human reactions;

-          environmental problems and global approaches to these;

-          unprecedented media development, entailing excessive commercialization, short-sighted fixations, oversimplification of world events;

-          advances in communication technologies (e.g., ‘cyberspace’ and communication highways), with their downsides of informational overload and emerging ethical and political issues relating to personal integrity and freedom of speech, etc.;

-          advances in medical technologies with ethical implications, and likewise with nanotechnology where ethical, legal and social aspects (ELSA) are also increasingly recognized;

-          the spreading of literacy/illiteracy and the need to promote widespread scientific literacy as a prerequisite for public understanding and governance of science, which has become an important policy issue for education at various levels, including the university.

 

A central thesis that emerged in the course of an evaluation of 11 humanities disciplines across all universities in Switzerland already some ten years ago (commissioned by the Swiss Federal Research Council in Bern)[1] was that the humanities are in the process of modernization. The Swiss higher educational and research system in the realm of the humanities was particularly old fashioned, whence the trends identified manifested itself in striking fashion in comparison. On the part of the natural sciences, conceptually and ideologically this modernization manifested itself earlier in discourses over “two cultures”, a notion introduced by the British writer C.P. Snow during the 1950s when he contrasted what he found to be progressive features of the natural sciences with backward ones in the humanities.

                      As Stefan Collini writes in his Foreword to a recent edition of C.P. Snow’s book The Two Cultures, the great division between the natural sciences and the humanities is not a product of the Enlightenment. Rather, it emerged first towards the end of the eighteenth century and becomes explicit during the mid-nineteenth century, about the same time as the words “science” and “scientist” appear. “…the Enlightenment’s great intellectual momentum, L’ Encyclopédie, did not represent human knowledge as structured around a division corresponding between the ‘sciences’ and ‘humanities’”.[2] Today, Collini argues, the problem is not so much the division between two cultures, but with increasing specialization over the past thirty years and more we have a multiplicity of disciplinary cultures and creative diversity of views – hence one might as well speak of two hundred and two cultures, or on the other hand fundamentally one culture. In the present epistemic landscape what used to be called humanities therefore face a challenge that goes far beyond the role of the individual disciplines; the challenge of communication and representation.

                      In the face of commercialization and consumerism, and with these trends towards the dominance of an instrumentalist rationale for knowledge production, it has become even more important to go back to and give new content to some of the traditional values associated with scholarship in the humanities. Or as Collini puts it, “…the utilitarian public language of modern liberal democracies, which is intensely suspicious of non-demonstrable judgements of quality and intolerant of non-quantifiable assertions of values, makes it easier to justify fundamental research in the natural sciences, with its promise of medical, industrial and similar applications, than to justify what is anyway with some awkwardness called ‘research’ in the humanities”. To this one might add that the “audit gaze” promoted promoted when methods of New Public Management move into one societal realm after the other is now also pushing the universities to what Daniel Greenberg calls campus capitalism. New regimes of perceptibility and (ac)countability fix only on what can be measured in would-be-quantities, i.e., spurious numbers, and the metrics determine who and what is “seen” and therefore “counts”. In this respect the specialist’s disdain for communicating to a wider audience may, as we move along to the end of this first decade in the twenty-first century, have – again in Collini’s words – more practically damaging consequences for the well-being of the humanities than of the sciences. By extension, this is also damaging for society at large.

                      On the other hand, many humanistic disciplines such as archeology, history, art history and theology enjoy a general public audience, which most other disciplines (perhaps with the exception of psychology) are lacking. This shows a broadly felt need for information about cultural phenomena – especially those contributing directly to a society’s sense of community – and the capability of specialists to express themselves about their research in a generally understandable narrative. The undervaluation of this social function of the humanities by many utilitarian-minded authorities is at odds with the sales figures of books and the demand for cultural tourism, which reflect these public needs.

                      In the light of the foregoing, a rationale for the humanities as seen in the prism of the modern (and post-modern) Kulturwissenschaften  (as distinct from the older term Geisteswissenschaften) may be summarized in a few points:

 

-          self-reflexive, critical sciences which are profoundly hermeneutical, i.e., related to interpretation and assignment of meaning to human life;

-          concerned with values and criteria for choices affecting agency, action and behavior;

-          profoundly enriching in contributing to personal growth (Bildung), the education of the “human spirit”, the celebration of life and the enhancement of persons and communities:

-          Centrally dealing with communication systems (words, artifacts, and signs).

 

According to the authors of the much-debated book by Michael Gibbons et al., The New Production of Knowledge (1994), what we are seeing is a change in the mode of scientific knowledge production. The centre of gravity of research in some cases appears to be moving out of the universities and to institutions outside, where the distance between producer and consumer of new ideas and practices, is smaller or non-existent. This tends to play into the reconfiguration of knowledge production, its primary structures, career and reputational systems, as well as prestige. In the natural sciences strategic brokers try to promote research environments that are at one moment competitive and at another collaborative, and this process is spilling over into the domain of scholarship. Networking has now been a buzz-word for some time, in the belief that the ability to mobilize and control resources count for more than actual capacity to produce knowledge at its site of “ownership” in the traditional sense. This is having an effect on the social conditions of academic research and its epistemological thrust. Epistemic landscapes are changing, with more emphasis being placed on transdisciplinarity, at least by “users”, if not by academic scholars themselves.

                      Disciplinary and faculty boundaries are not only the result of a division of labor in a learned mapping of various dimensions of reality. They are also a consequence of complex histories of vested interests, financing, entrepreneurial opportunities and academic coalitions and leading personalities. In other words there is an element of culture and cultural shaping in the social and cognitive dynamics of academic disciplines when these are viewed over time.[3]

                      The humanities have for a long time been left out of consideration in OECD research policy documents and the like. However now they are being recognized as having a utilitarian potential, even if it is mostly left to the European Science Foundation and the newly created European Science Council to try to stimulate multi-national projects and research programs in our fields. The authors of The New Production of Knowledge devote a whole chapter to the place and future of the humanities, noting among others that interaction with the natural science, engineering and medicine will increase. To be sure, during times of budgetary expansion, public accountability tended to be forgotten, and it became natural for academic scholars to perceive their positions as a kind of entitlement. In times of contraction (simultaneously as numbers of scholars increase), as relevance and accountability pressures are brought into the foreground, one may find a variety of responses from the side of academe. What we have found in the course of diagnostic evaluations of the Swiss landscape of humanistic scholarship is three ideal-typical responses. On the one hand there are those who argue that the humanities are part of a country’s cultural heritage and pride, on which no other utilitarian measures should be placed than that they are for the good of our soul. Humanities should be promoted on their own premises, without having to be legitimated in terms of societal usefulness. This may be called the traditionalist approach. Ultimately here a variety of fields of scholarship, like Byzantine studies, Sanskrit and others whose fortunes have declined during the past fifty years, would be defended as disciplinary species that should be protected from extinction. In other words one might argue in such cases for a policy of conservation of threatened species, along lines similar to what one finds in the realm of Nature preservation – epistemic diversity as an analogue to bio-diversity. Another, more utilitarian line of thought here is to see the humanities as having compensatory potential. In a society full of stress and dehumanization under pressure of modern machine culture, the humanities are thence held to provide a breathing space, a vehicle to escape to other values. When developed into a more instrumentalist direction this “theory of compensation” (as it has been called in the German-speaking academic world) provides a basis for promoting the humanities as a palliative.

                      A second approach to the humanities is the overtly pragmatic one. Here one emphasizes the instrumental utility of research in the humanities, history for the tourist industry, language to meet the challenge of a Europe in transition, computer linguistics for machine translation and contributions to cognitive science, ethnology for its importance in understanding cultural identity creation processes, etc. The basic assumption is that the humanities need to be revitalized in order to play a more prominent role in social, economic and cultural life. Interaction and competition with natural sciences, engineering and medicine is no stranger to this approach.

                      A third point of view we found in debates about the humanities is that of “critical theory”. Emphasis in this case is on the social responsibility of scholarship with regard to its significance for society’s critical self-understanding, and to people’s emancipation from every form of suppression, both of body and mind. In this respect scholarship in the humanities is valued not only for its retrospective interpretations of past historical events, but also in how such narratives may provide guidelines for a democratic future, encompassing ourselves and “the other”. Critical thinking is given a special place. Exponents of the approach may be found in the wake of research inspired by Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism, as well as amongst feminist scholars in various fields.

                      Of course the three approaches referred to here do not stand out as separate and distinct doctrines or policy justifications. In practice, within university institutions and even in ourselves as scholars all three of these motivational strands may be found to a greater or lesser degree. At the institutional level the mix is more complex.

                      Going back to the distinction between Geisteswissenchaften and Kulturwissenshaften in the discourse in the German-speaking academic world, it may be interesting to note how the conceptual framework associated with the former categorization of humanities was shaped by epistemological boundaries laid down in the nineteenth century by German philologists, and in the quest of scholars that sought to distinguish themselves from the natural sciences by invoking a distinctive method of their own, hermeneutics.[4] If so, does this imply an elitist ideal of scholarship, which was once defined by and belonged to a socially and culturally privileged group? And, to what extent, seen in retrospect, did it carry the signs of an anti-technocratic escape hatch out of Modernity? By contrast the later concept of Kulturwissenschaft does not automatically equate modern industrial society with “mass society” and the dominance of the technical world, a theme intensely debated in the 1920s during the Weimar Republic. Instead it seeks to understand the process of modernization in all its dimensions. In this perspective, modern mass societies are seen as both products and producers of culture. At the present time, this concept is central to a critical discourse of reflexive modernity, which in turn has become the subject of some controversy.

                      As some critics have argued, also, the definition of Orientalism as it emerged qua discipline within the Geisteswissenschaften, for example, because it was constituted in the nineteenth century in tandem with a self-conscious nationalism, assumed (more or less tacitly) an idea of Western progress and evolution, tied to imperialist supremacy expressed by more overt means. Today, new forms of nationalism and large power hegemonism (including in the EU) once again can draw on earlier cultural goods for sustenance. It was in such a past context too that anthropology had its origins in certain countries, practically and epistemologically. One finds, when looking back, a coincidence of social and epistemic orders. Some writers in the field of science and technology studies have introduced the co-production thesis when referring to similar resonances between science and society at ideational (conceptual and metaphorical representations) and practical instrumental levels.

                      One may well ask, is there historically speaking an inertia or cultural lag, and if so to what extent do Geisteswissenshcaften as a category with a past history of managing epistemic boundaries between different disciplines within the humanities and between them and the natural sciences, implicitly or perhaps even subliminally, still influence current conceptualizations? Do they still have a similar function, and if so does this have a bearing on their epistemic kernel and limit their interpretative flexibility even today, referentially or hermeneutically? The concept of Geisteswissenschaft presupposes an opposition between science as a life of ideas and material sciences, a dichotomy which belongs to the past. On the other side, as we could see in the course of our evaluations, the concept – and the denomination – of cultural sciences/Kulturwissenschaften takes into account the recent developments of technology in society and of the very broad interdisciplinarity demanded for humanism in the 21^st century. The older idealistic concept diminishes the social responsibility of critical knowledge, which today is fundamental to democratic societies. The semantic field and meaning of the concept Geisteswissenschaft has thus significantly shifted since the nineteenth century, and the disciplines to which it refers have also considerably changed and been transformed.

                      The cultural sciences can and have to develop an interpretation, not only of the patrimony accumulated during the past, but also of the actual and often conflicting tendencies, which are leading to the future.

                      We don’t want to overemphasize the concept of “material culture”, which in any case in some instances should be replaced by the concept of “material evidence of culture”.

                      It appears to be very important also to reject a dichotomy based on the human sciences on one side, and the natural sciences, engineering or technical sciences and medicine on the other.

                      Developments in the natural sciences, engineering and medicine during the past three decades have rendered C.P. Snow’s notion of Two Cultures obsolete, at least in practice; even though we are sorely aware how the division remains in the mentalities and still tends to trigger heated and endless discussion whenever it is mentioned in contexts dominated by mainstream scientific practitioners and scholars.

                      The challenge posed by anthropogenically caused climate change, the calls for sustainable ecological development, but also sustainable cities and urban landscapes, artificial intelligence, patenting of genetically engineered forms of life, the screening for genetic diseases (even before one is born), and the advent of new industrial materials such as composites, new ceramics, or adhesives based on advances in surface chemistry and physics, reconfigurations of functional materials coming out of nanotechnological laboratories, all these are prompting critical events that (should) bring the two communities, the natural sciences and the humanities, closer together.

                      We see it reflected in new trends in philosophy, religious studies, history and social studies of science, ethnology, feminist studies on ethics of reproductive technologies. Ethics of research is something that concerns not only the natural sciences, but equally the humanities and social sciences. Other areas of partial convergence are through methodological rapprochement in archeobotany with paleoclimatology, or in archeometry, and in the interface between cultural studies, cognitive science, and art. Art history and architecture ought to interact more intensely in future. New materials are having an impact on architectural design and music that must be taken into consideration by some of the aesthetic disciplines. New computer aided visualization techniques, data-mining, and simulation modeling, are having an impact that cuts across many domains, both natural scientific ones and humaniora. In recent research on the brain the effects of drugs are being monitored by careful targeting and proxy visualisation on computer screens, as scientists search for the neurochemical basis of human emotions and experiencing or self-identity. What remains of the authenticity of self-reflection when psychiatry offers us pharmaceutical means to change not only our feelings but even our whole personality at will, as one does with changes of clothing style and body-cosmetics to suit the occasion?[5]

                      The reductionism immanent in modern brain research as well as molecular biology falls back on a biological materialism that, philosophically, has long historical roots back into the history of ideas and culture in the West.[6] Indeed the very concept of what it is to be human is impacted by such developments, increasing the need for self-reflexivity of the kind traditionally associated with the humanities. Understanding the social history of technologies is one particular aspect that is worth mentioning in this context, especially since it is an area largely absent as an academic discipline in some countries. Like the history of science, this discipline can play an important bridging role in the gap so often construed between the so-called “two cultures”. In the same spirit a possible opposition between cultural sciences and social behavioral sciences seems to us problematical, because culture is based on social life and is therefore not unfamiliar to sociological methods of enquiry.

                      When asking for a rationale for the humanities it is also necessary to ask in what context such the question is being posed.[7] Does it come from academe, from governmental agencies and research planners, or from those concerned with business and industry or the accumulation of economic wealth in society? A forth possibility is that the question reflects the concerns of people involved in social movements or in short, civil society. Thus we may conceive of the co-existence of multiple, competing forms of rationality, sustained by different forms of social cohesion and ideology, whence analysis of policymaking may locate the interaction between science and politics in four main “policy cultures”: academic, bureaucratic, economic and civic. These coexist in industrial countries, competing for influence and resources, and seek to steer science and technology, as well as scholarship in a broader sense, in different directions. Each policy culture has its own doctrinal assumptions, its images and ideals of science, and its own political constituencies. In this model, a policy framework is the outcome of the mutual conflict and accommodation among contending policy cultures, some of which are strong and others weak (i.e., the civic policy culture). Thus the civic culture’s interest in democratizing the governance of science and learning by allowing more diverse inputs or by making it more socially amenable and accountable resists and seeks to overcome the bureaucratic culture’s insistence on making policy more rational, scientific or rule-bound, or the academic culture’s predilection for unchallenged autonomy and self-regulation at the behest of professional academic oligarchies.[8]

                      In the coming together of four “policy cultures”, several relationships between scholarship in the humanities on the one hand and society on the other may be at issue. Let us distinguish at least three such relationships along the lines suggested above (p. 2) in terms of three different responses to external relevance and accountability pressures:

 

a)      a symbolic ornamental relationship;

b)      an instrumental relationship, and,

c)      a democratic relationship.

 

Different aspects of the three dimensions of the “science-society-contract” concerning the humanities may, furthermore, be distinguished. In each dimension a different interpretation of the humanities is at stake (see Table).

                      When the symbolic interest is prominent, the humanities can be seen as studying and inquiring into the symbolic capital of society. In case the instrumental talk of humanities is underlined, their symbolic function is supposed to be useful for the economic and social development of society. And when the critical or emancipatory interest comes to the fore, a normative task can come in view as well: the humanities can now contribute to the establishment of a more democratic and just society.

                      It may be clear that in the three cases the humanities are serving different kinds of groups. In the first case mainly traditional elites come into view. In the second case it is a question of new kinds of clients, from the world(s) of government, business, medicine or mass media, whereas in the third case civil society (“all citizens”…) in general may become relevant.

 

                      In the three dimensions we are also faced with different (though in some respects overlapping) attitudes of the scholars concerned, related to the different kinds of accountability.

                      In the first dimension their attitude may be mainly traditional and their accountability likewise: existing disciplines are protected and the way things used to be done is directing the way future tasks are fulfilled.

                      In the second dimension this may not be enough. New tasks that are advocated from the part of society may open up new research topics and even stimulate the formation of new fields of scholarship. Here, the attitude of the scholars concerned may (ideal-typically) be more pragmatic than exclusively traditional and their accountability may be local and sectored. The new clients are supposed to have a say in the establishment of research priorities and benefit from its eventual outcome. “Participation” and “governance” have become favorite buzzwords in this context.

                      However the humanities should not become completely dependent on the interests of existing agencies. There are also general interests which they are supposed to respond to (concerning various kinds of “commons” that go beyond particular interests, i.e., beyond particularism), like they have done sometimes in the past, fulfilling tasks, which now, in hindsight may be described as traditional. A post-traditionalist society with a lot of conflicting social and economic interests is in need of means and instruments to discuss and direct its general course and to compare democratic legitimations with social reality itself. Here the humanities have a critical task to fulfill and their accountability is general instead of local. By taking care of these general democratic interest (countering both particularism and reductionist tendencies) are not becoming dependent, as is sometimes thought. On the contrary, precisely in this way, their scholarship can preserve a certain intellectual autonomy by studying and discussing things nobody asks or pays for and by putting forward questions that those in power don’t always regard as opportune.[9]

                      The three dimensions referred to above are also taken up in critical theory (Adorno, Horkheimer, Habermas, etc.), which however tends to depict them as mutually exclusive and totalizing. For our part, as is already evident from the foregoing presentational scheme, the three dimensions highlighted to not have to be mutually exclusive, rather they can be seen to combine and interplay.

                      Of course, one can serve the interest of traditional elites in such a way that there is no space for more pragmatic or even critical activities. However, if one travels in our scheme from the other direction and starts at the bottom, the relation between the three dimensions changes drastically. It does not make sense to forget your traditional stock of knowledge when you are required to accept new tasks and the same goes when it comes to responding to the democratic responsibility of scholars (not only qua intellectuals) in our fields.

                      In other words a readiness to be accountable in a general way, and to accept that there are some problems of democracy and of justice in one’s society, can help to assess and to evaluate also more traditional and pragmatic task, for example by contextualizing and introducing some mode of reflexivity. Ideally the three dimensions we have referred to – the symbolic, the instrumental and the democratic or emancipatory – can become, at least partly, integrated, notwithstanding the fact that the establishment and acknowledgement of a new dimension.

 

                                                                 Göteborg, February 2009

 

[1]  The evaluation involved a panel of 24 academic experts from various European countries, led and coordinated by Aant Elzinga. The present paper builds in part on the introduction to our final report.

[2] Stefan Collini, in C.P. Snow, The Two Cultures  (Cambride University Press, Canto Edition Cambridge 1993), p. x.

[3] For a philsophical perspective on the emergence, structuration and function of different university faculties in Europe, at about the same time as Vannevar Bush in the U.S.A. was writing his bleuprint for national science policies implemented in the post-war era, see Karl Jaspers, Die Idee der Universität (Springer-Verlag, Berlin 1946) which is an update of his booklet with the same name from 1923 (reprinted by Springer-Verlag, Berlin/New/York 1980).

[4]  Of course hermeneutics has also undergone a series of shifts of meaning since its inception in the nineteenth century, from Schleiermacher to Dilthey, and the subjective turn to Heidegger, followed in our own day by the controversy between Gadamer (accenting tradition) and Habermas (emphasising critique) and the extension to a hermeneutics of ’suspicion’ by Paul Ricoeur. For a review of the idealist heritage of the concept of Geisteswissenschaften in an historical perspective see W. Frühwald, H.R. Jauss, R. Kosseleck, J. Mittelstrass, and B. Steinwachs, Geisteswissenshaften heute. Eine Denkschrift (Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M., 1991), esp. pp. 22-44; here the notions of Kompensationstheorie, Ackeptanzwissenchaften and other issues (like the mythological character of C.P. Snow’s ”two cultures” thesis) in the German debate of the latter half of the 1980s is also taken up. Also see Peter Weingart et al., (Hrsg.), Die sogenannten Zukunft der Geisteswissenschaften (Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M. 1991).

[5]  This manipulation of feelings is also referred to as ”cosmetic psychopharmacology” – see Peter D. Kramer, Listening to Prozac (Viking Penguin Books, New York 1994).

[6]  For a critique of reductionism in brain research see Steven Rose’s book, Lifelines. Life Beyond the Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2003), Ch. 10,, ”The Poverty of Reductionism”.

[7]  The French philosopher Michel Serres reminds us that a new ”social” contract in the case of knowledge production is insufficient. For the natural sciences, he argues, it is urgent to introduce a contract between humankind and Nature, a contract predicated on bioethical and ecological principles that does not privilege ”man”. Cf. Michel Serres, Le contrat naturel (Ed. F. Bourin, Paris 1990). This implies a different image of nature and therefore also of science, bringing once again the natural sciences and humanities or cultural sciences closer together.

[8]  Cf. Aant Elzinga and Andrew Jamison, ”Changing policy agendas in sc ience and technology”, in Sheila Jasanoff et al. (eds.), Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (Sage, London 1994), esp. pp. 527-529.

[9]  For a discussion of democracy and the critical role of the scholar qua intellectual see some of the essays in the anthology by Lolle Nauta et al., De rol van de intellectueel (Van Gennep, Amsterdam 1992). Nauta was a philosopher of science in the Netherlands (now deceased) who held the chair of philosophy at the University of Groningen from where he inspired a new generation of critical scholars in the history, philsoophy and social studies of science.

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The Use of Humanities – Strong debate in N.Y.T.

 

If you are interested in the debate on the role of humanities in present America, take a look at the columns of Stanley Fish in New York Times. The debate is very lively and has attracted more than 500 comments.

 

“Will the Humanities Save us” (January 6, 2008,)

“The Uses of the Humanities, Part Two” (January 13, 2008,)

“The Last Professor” (January 18, 2009,)

 

Humaniora for alle

Af Jesper Eckhardt Larsen,

Humaniora er i krise. Alle, der har forstået Helge Sanders planer for humaniora ved, at der er krise, og at regeringen ønsker at detailstyre universiteterne ud af denne krise. Derfor er der grund til at diskutere de reelle løsninger. Mit bud er, at humaniora skal være for alle universitetsstuderende! Så kort kan kriseløsningen formuleres. I stedet for at betragte de humanistiske fag som rene specialistuddannelser fortjener langt flere studerende at få del i de indsigter, humaniora tilbyder. Diskussionen om humanioras berettigelse i et videnssamfund har frem for alt fået formidlings- og dialogargumenterne frem. Humanistisk viden er ikke egnet til at forblive i elfenbenstårnet – den vil ud, diskuteres og benyttes. Krisen er udelukkende en formidlings- og dialogkrise.

Først er der i denne diskussion grund til at se til USA. Den amerikanske collegeuddannelse, det vil sige de første fire år på universitetsniveau i USA, omfatter det, man kunne kalde en højere almendannelse. Det amerikanske liberal arts college kan med danske øjne ses som en krydsning imellem en fortsættelse af gymnasiet, en folkehøjskole og et universitet. Man lærer ikke kun om sit specialfag, sit major, men har en bred vifte af muligheder for at udvide sin horisont inden for såvel humanistiske, samfundsvidenskabelige som naturvidenskabelige, kreative og handelsrelaterede områder. Det, denne institution formår i USA, er at være en kreativ og dynamisk ramme for unges selvrealiseringsønsker, samtidig med at man i løbet af de fire år også får afklaret sig fagligt og forberedt sig på en erhvervsrolle efter college. Oven på de fire år er der talrige varianter af kortere eller længere masteruddannelser, der mere specialiseret rettes imod professioner og erhvervsfunktioner. Også kommende jurister, læger og ingeniører skal igennem den brede almendannende collegeuddannelse i USA. Dermed undgår man, at disse unge som i Danmark får deres intellektuelle horisont drastisk indsnævret allerede i 19-års alderen, hvor de går ud af gymnasiet og ind på en specialuddannelse. Hen imod slutningen af de fire år på bachelor bruges mere og mere tid på hovedfaget, og man forbereder sig mere målrettet imod sin fremtidige karriere. Hvor den europæiske universitetsuddannelse er specialiseret fra start til slut, bevæger den amerikanske sig altså fra bredde til dybde. Og hvad man bruger af tid på bredden, er snart vundet i faglig motivation og modenhed, når specialet er valgt.

En dansk udgave af denne model ville med det nuværende høje faglige niveau på alle universiteterne sikre forskningsbaseret undervisning i alle fag, også i de tilvalg, der ikke hører til de studerendes hovedfag, men til de obligatoriske spredningskrav. Man ville altså kunne udnytte den solide reelle faglighed – som regeringen efterlyser så stærkt i hele uddannelsesforløbet – i stedet for at tillempe og udtynde humaniora, som det somme tider sker. Den store popularitet af humanistiske fag f.eks. på Handelshøjskolen i København (CBS) bygger jo på den faglighed, som de populære undervisere – man kunne nævne filosofferne Ole Thyssen og Ole Fogh Kirkeby eller tyskfilologen Per Øhrgaard – har opnået på de klassiske humaniorauddannelser. Ud over handelshøjskolerne har både sundhedsuddannelserne og de tekniske uddannelser allerede lidt af denne slags humaniora. Det er al ære værd, at man formår at bygge bro imellem den humanistiske kernefaglighed og så erhvervslivets problemer, og samtidig viser dette eksempel, at vi som nation eller enkeltindivider ikke kan undvære den rene vare.

Hvad skal vi med den humanistiske viden i et videnssamfund? Modsat anklagen om forældelse udmærker humaniora sig ved i den grad at være relevant for enhver. Blot et kig på debatterne om synet på Anden Verdenskrig viste med al tydelighed, at alle må have en så dyb indsigt som muligt i landets historie for at kunne tage stilling til, hvordan vi ønsker at forholde os til store moralske dagsordner. Og modsat statsminister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, som i debatten havde en meget afvisende holdning til en dialog med sagkundskaben, vil jeg fremhæve, hvor helt uundværlige faghistorikernes bidrag var i denne sammenhæng, noget som allerede filosoffen K.E. Løgstrup påpegede i den tidlige efterkrigstid. Men humaniora er mere end dette. Alle livets praksisområder – at kommunikere – at tage moralsk stilling – at være kreativ – at afklare sig sit verdensbillede – har hver sin fordybelsesviden inden for humaniora. Humaniora vokser ud af det levede livs problemer. Humanistisk viden er derfor i realiteten uomgængelig for enhver. Spørgsmålet er blot, om vi som land skal give plads til at forhøje refleksionsniveauet for alle borgere via et mere intimt møde med forskere, der har brugt et liv på at fordybe sig – eller om vi som statsministeren skal vende ryggen til fagligheden i et forsøg på at styrke den liberale selvtillid. Den bredere almendannelse, der ville blive et resultat af en liberal arts model for alle universitetsstuderende ville fremme det, der i pædagogiske kredse diskuteres som medborgerlig dannelse – eller citizenship education. En liberal arts almendannelse på universitetsniveau ville være en væsentlig styrkelse af den medborgerlige dannelse i Danmark. Vi har brug for reflekterede og veloplyste borgere – langt ud over dels gymnasiets bidrag til denne dannelse, dels de specialiserede studerende vi nu har f.eks. i historie. Den danske tradition har skilt princippet om at lære for livet ud af sine højere uddannelsesinstitutioner. Denne store tanke, som Grundtvig fremhævede med stor virkning, blev forvist til de nu ligeledes kriseramte folkehøjskoler i den danske kontekst. I USA er denne formel blevet integreret fuldstændig med de højere uddannelsesinstitutioner. På et amerikansk liberal arts college lærer man både for livet og for erhvervslivet! I de første år på et college er der mulighed for at opgradere sine evner til regnskabsføring og ved siden af tage kurser i kinesisk filosofi og spille skuespil om aftenen sammen med sine medstuderende under vejledning af en kyndig kapacitet. Denne livsform på college giver mindre anledning til sabbatår, frafald og fjumreår. Da jeg selv efter gymnasiet brugte et år på et liberal arts college i USA, følte jeg, at jeg blev taget alvorligt som et helt menneske ved siden af at være en fremtidig jobindehaver. I Utrecht i Holland har man indført en liberal arts bacheloruddannelse efter amerikansk forbillede integreret i et klassisk europæisk universitet. Og denne uddannelse er blevet utrolig populær. Dette viser, at ideen sagtens kan implementeres i en europæisk kontekst. Regeringens politik er i øvrigt helt i tråd med den amerikanske collegetanke. De sidste par års kanon-initiativer viser en ærlig og dyb interesse for at styrke den generelle almendannelse – særlig med hensyn til den nationale kulturarv. Og dette er prisværdigt. Men regeringen lader til at glemme, at uden humanistiske forskere og studerende vil omgangen med denne kanon højst blive et diskret vip med hatten – før man haster videre til livets egentlige sager. Kanondebatten er speciel, fordi den lader til at forene de politiske modsætninger imellem højre og venstre. Langt de fleste er enige i, at det bedste, der er tænkt, sagt og skabt – for at citere den engelske pædagog Matthew Arnold – fortjener at komme alle til gode. Men det er også oplagt, at kanondebatten stammer fra en tradition, som råder over en helt central institution til denne form for almendannelse – den angelsaksiske collegeuddannelse. I Danmark lader det til, at kun gymnasiet kan tjene den almene dannelse. Dette er i lyset af videnseksplosionen og princippet om livslang læring en helt uholdbar indstilling. Den almene dannelse skal naturligvis følge med hele livet – og hvad er mere oplagt end at udbyde almendannende kanonkurser på institutionen for den højeste viden – universitetet? Dette skal naturligvis ikke være alt, hvad universitetet har at tilbyde. Af hensyn til hele uddannelsessystemets kvalitet skal der udbydes alle de samme humanistiske fag på masterniveau som nu – og måske flere. Men dette skal være et tilbud for dem, der vælger denne type profession, eller dem, der er så videbegærlige, at de er indstillede på at studere et fag, hvor jobbet ikke nødvendigvis passer én til én med uddannelsen. Disse mennesker er ikke tabere i videnssamfundet, men stærke videnstilegnere, der er utrolig godt rustede til videre- og genuddannelse, når det viser sig nødvendigt. En misforståelse, der næsten vækker associationer til industrisamfundets fordisme-tænkning – er den, at man kan rationalisere ved at skære de små humanistiske fagmiljøer bort i et forsøg på effektivisering. Humaniora er ét skridt videre – og har på denne måde foregrebet videnssamfundet. Her er mangfoldighed en kvalitet i sig selv. Spændvidden på den hjemlige faglighed – altså også specialisterne i de helt små sprog- og kulturfag spredt på institutionerne i landets regioner – er en rigdom for refleksionens bredde og dybde på en gang. Man vinder intet ved at nedlægge små fag – tværtimod kræver det utrolig små investeringer at opretholde en meget bred kompetenceprofil på den danske scene. Det danske videnssamfund kan nyde godt af en så ‘bredbåndet’ kontakt til udenlandske vidensmiljøer som muligt, der netop sikres ved få, men dygtige repræsentanter for selv meget eksotisk viden. Vi udspænder sammen et net af viden – og det er bredden af dette net, der udgør vores kollektive mulige tankebredde, som igen ruster os til at møde det uforudsete – det uforudsigelige i den historiske udvikling, der ligger foran os.

Men hvor mange studerende har vi brug for inden for de forskellige faggrupper? Masseuniversitetet er et barn af 1960′erne, men med et stadig stigende studentertal helt frem til i dag. I Danmark tager nu 29 procent af aldersgruppen fra 25 til 34 år en lang videregående uddannelse. Men hvad læser disse mange studerende da i dag? For de egentlige universitetsuddannelsers vedkommende var fordelingen blandt kandidaterne i Danmark 2001 den, at medicin- og sundhedsfagene var de største fag med 30,8 procent af de studerende, efterfulgt af samfundsfag, jura og handelsuddannelserne med samlet 24,2 procent af de studerende, humaniora og de kunstneriske fag udgjorde14,4 procent af de studerende, de pædagogisk rettede fag 11 procent, ingeniørerne 9 procent, biologi, fysik, matematik og it samlet 7,1 procent (OECD 2003). Hvad siger disse tal? De fortæller, at universiteternes uddannelsesfordeling som helhed har fulgt udviklingen i det funktionelt uddifferentierede samfunds behov for kvalificeret arbejdskraft. Langt de fleste universitetsuddannelser er før som nu tydeligvis rettet imod særlige samfundsfunktioner. Den præcise strukturtilpasning er naturligvis et yndet spørgsmål for regeringen, og her beder man til højere magter om, at færre dog ville læse humanistiske fag, flere ingeniørvidenskab, naturvidenskab og handel. Og der bliver henvist til Sverige, som har minimeret sit ‘spild’ ved bare at have 5,7 procent kandidater inden for humaniora og de kunstneriske fag. Dog er denne andel hverken særlig stor eller lille i Danmark i forhold til OECD-gennemsnittet på 12,0 procent. En ud af syv studerende læser humaniora eller et kunstnerisk fag; det har vi vel råd til som samfund! I USA og Storbritannien er andelen på henholdsvis 14,2 procent og 16,8 procent. Erfaringen viser derudover, at man må være varsom med at planlægge ud fra ekstrapolationer af arbejdsmarkedets aktuelle behov. Tidligere satsninger på f.eks. ingeniører og læger har ført til store pukler af arbejdsløshed inden for disse fag. En tommelfingerregel kan derfor være forsigtighed og bestræbelser på at bevare mangfoldigheden i arbejdsstyrkens kvalificering. Videnskabsministeren er tidligere blevet mere vildledt end vejledt af en rapport om de humanistiske fag. Rapporten blev til under et ministerielt kommissorium, som i sig selv var relativt åbent og visionært. Arbejdsgruppen, der overvejende bestod af folk fra handelshøjskolerne, valgte dog selv udelukkende at beskrive det mindretal af kandidater, der bruger deres uddannelse til at få job i det private erhvervsliv. Ved at skære hele roden til de humanistiske fags eksistensberettigelse bort formår rapportens forfattere at gøre ægteskabet imellem ‘tomme’ formelle kompetencer og businessrelevans til eneste berettigelse for de humanistiske uddannelser. At indsigt i og kvalificeret debat om politiske, etiske og filosofiske forhold angiveligt ikke skulle give deltageren et mere kvalificeret syn på etik, menneskelighed og bløde værdier er også en påstand, der skriger til himlen. Hvorfor vil vores statsminister og med ham regeringen ikke have tillid til historikere eller andre, der har ofret tid og kræfter på virkelig grundigt at sætte sig ind i fortidige og samtidige politiske, moralske, kulturelle, etiske, æstetiske eller filosofiske forhold? Hvad er det for en frygt? En relevant frygt kunne være, at når ‘eksperttyrannen’ har talt, så kan alle andre ikke være med i debatten. Der bliver en status- og videnskløft. Men hvad skal man gøre ved en sådan kløft? Afskaffer man den ved ikke længere at gå i dialog med ‘eksperterne’, dem, der har fordybet sig, så kan det være, at operationen lykkes, men patienten, videnssamfundet, dør. Målet med humaniora må være kommunikerende forskning, dialog. At hæve det almene niveau, for at alle kan gå i dialog med forskerne. Og én passende institution for denne dialog er universitetet. Det både almendannende og kompetencegivende universitet. Vågn op, universitetsbestyrelser!

Hvorfor er Dansk Industri den mest fantasiforladte organisation i kongeriget Danmark?

Af Jesper Eckhardt Larsen

Direktør Lars B. Goldschmidt fra Dansk Industri ved noget om forskning: enten forsker man i stumfilm fra 30erne og oldgræsk eller også forsker man i nanoteknologi. Dette standpunkt fremgår af kronikken d.4. november i Politiken. Og så har han et regnestykke, der går ud på, at der hvert år udklækkes 120.000 kemi-ingeniører i Indien og ”kun” knap 3000 i Danmark. Man kunne følge hans tanke videre. Hvis nu 3-4 % af alle danskere holdt op med at tage på højskole og læse om demokratiopfattelsen hos Hal Koch og Grundtvigianerne under besættelsen, eller om menneskerettigheds-diskussionerne efter den franske revolution og i stedet uddannede sig om som ingeniører, ja – så ville Danmark med bare 5 millioner indbyggere have lige så mange ingeniører som et subkontinent. Dansk Industri længe leve. Dette er tanker fra den visionære danske industris fremmeste talsmand. Et alternativ til disse tanker kunne lyde sådan her. Et mere fantasirigt scenarium fremskriver de udviklingstendenser som de sidste 30 års globale arbejdsdeling lægger op til: efterhånden er den industrielle produktion lagt ud til de nye økonomier i Kina og Indien. Med de både negative og positive følger for disse lande, som man kan læse om fra avisernes korrespondenter. Og hvad er da blevet ”vores” opgaver i denne nye verdens arbejdsdeling? Et kort svar er videnstung, kompleks, symbolmanipulerende og kreativ innovation. Og næste spørgsmål er så, i hvilke samfund sådanne arbejdskræfter trives bedst i? Ja, gæt selv – i vidensglade, mangfoldige og levende intellektuelle kulturer, hvor man tænker på andet end jernindustrien – ikke for at undervurdere Nakskov Skibsværft, men er det dét Danmark skal leve af i 2050? Næppe!

To steder hvor nye vidensvirksomheder blomstrer op globalt set er både omkring de store levende byer i USA og i centraleuropæiske byer som Zürich. Her samles hjerner fra hele verden i firmaer som Google og Microsoft, og udvikler dagen lang – for om aftenen at nyde tunge diskussioner om betydningen af det (oldgræske) demokrati for USA’s selvopfattelse efter Anden Verdenskrig, eller om historisten Ranke havde ret i, at krige i længden fører til moralsk udvikling af menneskeheden? I dette selskab tror jeg at Lars ville sige: ”jo – jeg spiller da Golf, men ellers er mine interesser penge, penge og penge. Jeg interesserer mig kun lidt for, hvad de går til, det er for nemt!” (en samfundsøkonomisk prioritering imellem atomvåben eller bred og kritisk uddannelse kunne f.eks. være et interessant spørgsmål at stille Lars). Altså: kære danske industriledere og industriudviklere: hvad vil i helst have at Danmark bliver: en forstad til Stalins utopi om en tung jernindustri? Eller til et levende og ”klogt” sted a la Seattle og Zürich? Jeg ved godt, hvad de fleste danskere ville svare. Og også, hvad de mennesker, der endnu ikke ved, at de skal være danskere senere i deres liv vil svare! Dansk Industri – tag jer sammen!

I kunne jo besøge et af de globalt ledende universiteter i USA og spørge om ikke de snart nedlægger deres afdelinger for filosofi, globale kulturstudier, politisk tænkning og vestlig civilisationshistorie. De ville stille og roligt vise jer døren. I er da for kedelige og dertil fuldkommen fantasiforladte. Det tegner ikke godt for dansk konkurrenceevne, hvis dette er refleksions- og innovationsniveauet for – ja ”Dansk” industri….

USA’s multikulturalitet er en dybt forankret motor bag flere former for humaniora. Den ene side af denne tendens er ønsket om at skabe, hvad der ikke findes historisk: et fællesskab om et sæt af historiske erfaringer, der binder et stort demokrati sammen. Altså den vestlige politiske historie siden Atnens demokrati, over Rom og frem til oplysningstidens menneskesyn, der har dannet grundlag for USA’s selvforståelse i 200 år. Den anden side er det, man med den tyske filosof Joachim Ritter kunne kalde den kompensatoriske og erindrende funktion af humaniora. I den realiserede moderne utopi, hvor alene materielle goder og politiske rettigheder definerer medborgerskabet, der får den enkeltes og den større eller mindre etniske eller religiøse gruppe den funktion, at den danner et ”Gemeinschaft” midt i det nivellerende ”Gesellschaft.” Derfor sponsorerer det islandske selskab i USA en lærestol ved et amerikansk universitet i islandske studier og kultur. Eller en bulgarsk rigmand giver penge til, at et universitet kan støtte en lærestol i bulgarsk. Altså ideen om, hvad man tager med på en tømmerflåde eller en øde ø af åndelig føde og minder fra ophavslandet. Danmark har en anden historie. Det nationale fællesskab blev defineret etnisk og sprogligt efter tabet af den multikulturelle og flersprogede helstat. Og herefter er det blevet taget for givet – til absurde situationer i 2008, hvor ministeriets undervisningsmateriale om demokrati hedder ”Demokrati på dansk” og på forsiden bærer et billede af en tørklædeklædt muslim. Demokratiet, fællesskabet og ophavet er og skal i evighed være danskheden. Dette kan intet rokke – og intet skal rokke det. Realiteten er, at Europa også mht. flersproglighed og multikulturalitet konvergerer med den amerikanske udvikling. Dette er hverken et politisk håb eller et ønske – men en politisk og demografisk realitet. Trods recession er der behov for indvandring, som DI da også erkender. Vi skal kunne tiltrække folk der ikke har Grundtvig med i bagagen. Hvad vil disse mennesker, ud over lave skatter og billige biler ønske af det danske kulturelle, politiske og uddannelsesmæssige fællesskab? De vil mindst kræve, at man lærer om andet end Danmark i Danmark. Et simpelt og kort ønske – der dog kræver en del investeringer og offentlige og politiske tiltag for at realiseres. Et lille og ydmygt ønske er, at DI erkender dette som et reelt behov. Professor i sprog ved DPU, Århus Universitet Anne Holmen argumenterer for en erkendelse af den reelle flersproglighed også i Danmark. Jeg tillader mig at tilslutte mig med et ønske om en erkendelse af den reelle globale sammenknyttethed – også inden for dette lille lands grænser. Vi hænger sammen med Pakistan, UK, Japan, Korea, Somalia og Tyskland på måder, som gør at et velfungerende globaliseret videnssamfund også har behov for viden om disse landes kulturer, ophav, historier, forskelle og ligheder. Det er out-dated at mene som visse østrigske kommentatorer at negrer ikke egner sig til Vesten. Det er lige så out-dated at mene som DI – at al udvikling er teknisk og teknokratisk defineret. Husk på, at menneskene følger med. Så kort kan det udtrykkes. Humaniora, multikulturalitet og flersproglighed er ikke en del af problemerne i globaliseringens tid, de er en del af løsningerne.

Flere temaer kunne være relevante at bringe op i denne sammenhæng: er en rent teknokratisk uddannelse en dårlig uddannelse? Hvorfor er socialdemokrater (som Lars B. vist nok er en særlig eksponent for) særligt fantasiforladte? Hvorfor følger de borgerlige i Danmark denne socialdemokratisme? Hvor er f.eks. den dannede borgerlige opposition til dette? Hvor er den samfundskritiske og kulturkritiske tanke i socialdemokratismen? Hvor er den historiske bevidsthed hos Lars B.? Hvad er gået galt i uddannelsen af danske erhvervsledere?