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.

 

Bibliography

ARC Linkage Project (2005), The Strategic Assessment of Research Performance Indicators – a Literature Review. Canberra: The Australian National University, Research School of Social Sciences, Research Evaluation and Policy Project (REPP) Discussion Paper 05/1, 84 pp.  <repp.anu.edu.au/Literature%20Review3.pdf>

Almqvist, Roland (2006), New Public Management – om konkurrens, kontrakt och kontroll (Malmö: Liber).

Barzelay, Michael (2001), The New Public management. Improving research and policy dialogue (Berkeley: University of California Press).

Bhattacharjee, Yudhijit (2008), “New Focus – Democrat: Barack Obama”, Science, Vol. 319, No. 5859, pp. 28-29.

Bohlin, Ingemar (1998), Sken och Verklighet. Kvalitet inom Universitetsvärlden i Relativistisk Belysning. Stockholm: Byggforskningsrådets (BFR:s) vetenskapliga nämnds skriftserie.


Bondjers, Göran, Harri Vaino and Dag Thelle, The Karolinska School of Public Health – potential, visions, and implementation. Stockholm: Karolinska Institutet March 2008).

Butler, Declan (2007) ”Academics strike back at spurious rankings”, Nature Vol. 447, pp. 514-515 (31 May 2007).

Butler, Linda and Ian McAllister, “Metrics or Peer Review? Evaluationg the 2001 UK Research Assessment Exercise in Political Science” http://repp.anu.edu.au/papers/2007_ukresearchassess.pdf.

Debackere, Koenraad and Wolfgang Glänzel, “Using a bibliometric approach to support research policy making: the case of the Flemish BOF-key”, Scientometrics, Vol. 59, No. 2, pp. 253-276.

Elzinga, Aant “Science Policy in Sweden, sectorization and adjustment to crisis”,

Research Policy, vol. 9, no. 2 (April 1980), pp. 116 – 146.

Elzinga, Aant (1988), “Bernalism, Comintern and the Science of Science: Critical Movements Then and Now”, in Jan Annerstedt & Andrew Jamison eds., From Research Policy to Social Intelligence. MacMillan Press, London 1988, pp. 87-113.

Elzinga, Aant and Andrew Jamison: “Changing Policy Agendas in Science and Technology”,

in S. Jasanoff et al., (ed.): Handbook of Science and Technology Studies. Sage, London, 1995.

Elzinga, Aant  (1996), ”Shaping Worldwide Consensus: the Orchestration of Global Change Research”, in Elzinga, Aant & Catharina Landström (ed.), Internationalism and Science,

London and Los Angeles: Taylor Graham, pp. 223-255.

Elzinga, Aant (2004), ”The New Production of Reductionism in Models Relating to Research Policy”, Symposium paper presented at Nobel Symp. at Sw Royal Ac of Sc Nov 2002, in Karl Grandin, Nina Wormbs and Sven Widmalm, eds., The Science-Industry Nexus. History,  Policy, Implications, Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications/USA

pp.277-304. Fulltext:http://www.csi.ensmp.fr/WebCSI/4S/download_paper/download_paper.php?paper=elzinga.pdf

Elzinga, Aant (2005), ”Scientific Community: Development of Science Policy”,

in Sal Restivo (ed.), Encyclopedia of Science, Technology and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Elzinga, Aant (2008), “Participation”, in Hirsch Hadorn, Gertude et al. (eds), Handbook of Transdiciplinary Research. Bern & Zürich, Springer Verlag + Business Media B.V.), pp. 345-360.

Gilbert, G.N. and S. Woolgar (1974), “Essay review of the quantitative study of science: an examination of the literature”, Science Studies, Vol. 4, pp. 279-294.

Godin, Benoit (2003), “Measuring sc ienc e: is there ‘Basic research’ without statistics?”, Social Science Information, Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 57-90.

Godin, Benoit (2005), Measurement and Statistics on Science and Technology, 1920 to the Present, London: Routledge.

Godin, Benoit (2006), ”The Linear Model of Innovation. The Historical Construction of an Analytical Framework”, Science, Technology and Human Values, Vol. 31, pp. 639-667.

Godin, Benoit (2007), ”What’s Science? Defining Science by Numbers 1920-2000. Montreal: Project on the History and Sociology of S&T Statistics at the Université du Québec à Montréal. Working Paper No. 35

Greenberg, Daniel S. (2007a), “Science and Society: On the Road to Academic Greatness – A Parable”, Science Vol. 317, Issue 5843 (7 September), pp. 1328-1329.

Greenberg, Daniel S. (2007b), Science for Sale. The Perils, Rewards and Delusions of Campus Capitalism (Chicago: The University Press).

Guston, David and Daniel Sarewitz (eds) (2006), The Next Generation of Science and Technology Policy. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Hagendijk, Rob P. et al. (2005), Report on the STAGE Project: Science, Technology and. Governance in Europe. <http://www.stage-research.net/>

HEFCE (2007), (http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/circlets/2007/c106_07/).

Herbertz, H. and B. Müller-Hill (1995), “Quality and efficiency of basic research in molecular biology: a bibliometric analysis of thirteen excellent research institutes”, Research Policy, Vol. 24, pp. 959-979.

Hood, Christopher (1991), “A Public Management for All Seasons?” Public Administration, pp. 3-19.

Lane, Jan-Erik (1994), ”Will public management drive out public administration?”, Asian Journal of Public Administration, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 139-151.

Lane, Jan-Erik (1995) The Public Sector: Concepts, Models and Approaches (London: Sage 2nd rev. edn.

Marburger, John H. III (March 29, 2006):< http://commerce.senate.gov/pdf/marburger-032906.pdf>

Marburger, John H. III (April, 19 2007): <http://commerce.senate.gov/public/_files/Testimony_JohnMarburger_OSTP_ FY08JHMSenateCommerceTestimony_FINAL.pdf>

Martin, B.R and J. Irvie (1983), “Assessing basic research. Some partial indicators of scientific progress in radio astronomy”, Research Policy, Vol. 12, pp. 61-80.

Nowotny, Helga (2007), “How many policy rooms are there? Evidence-based and other kinds of science policies, Science, Technology and Human Values, Vol. 32, No. 4, pp. 479-490.

NSF (2008), (www.nsf.gov/pubs/2008/nsf08520/nsf08520.htm/

NSF (2007), Science of Science and Innovation Policy FY08 <http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2008/nsf08520/nsf08520.htm>.

Oberlin Blogsopt (2008) “Barack Obama: Pushes evidence-based science policy”. <http//oberlinsciencelibrary.blogspot.com/2008/01>

OECD Blue Sky II (2006): <http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/48/14/37483994.pdf>

Osborne, David and Ted Gaebler (1992), Inventing Government (Reading: Addison-Wesley Publ. Co.).

Pielke, Roger A. Jr., The Honest Broker. Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.

Power, Michael and Richard Laughlin (1992), “Critical theory and accounting”, in M. Alvesson & H. Wilmott (eds), Critical Management Studies (London: Sage).

Power, Michael (1997), From Risk Society to Audit Society”, Soziala Systeme, Vol. 3. H. 1, pp. 3-31.

Sandström, Ulf and Erik Sandström (2007a), “A metric for academic performanc e applied to Australian universities 2001-2004.< http://forskningspolitik.se/DataFile.asp?FileID=137>

Sandström, , Erik and Ulf Sandström (2007b), “Modell för beräkning av direktanslag till svenska lärosäten baserad på forskningsproduktion och citeringsgrad”, Bilaga 8 i Resurser för Kvalitet (SOU 2007:81), pp. 389-441. < http://forskningspolitik.se/DataFile.asp?FileID=149>

Sivertsen, Gunnar (2008), “Den norske modellen”, Forskningspolitikk, No. 1/2008, pp. 14-15.

Universitets- og Bygningsstyrelsen (2007), “Svensk model for bibliometri – I ett norsk og dansk perspektiv”, Copenhagen: Notat 12 Nov. 2007.

Stokes, Donald E. (1997), Pasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation. Washington: DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1997.

Van Raan, A. F. J. (1996), “Advanced bibliometrics as quantitative core of peer review based evaluation and foresight exercises”, Scientometrics, Vol. 36, pp. 397-420.

Weingart, Peter (2004), “Impact of bibliometrics upon the science system: inadvertent consequences?, in H. Moed, W. Glänzel and U. Schmoch (eds), Handbook of Quantitative Social Science and Technology Research. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Woolgar, S. (1991), “Beyond the citation debate: towards a sociology of measurement technologies and their use in science policy”, Science and Public Policy, Vol. 18, pp. 319-326.

Ziman, J. M. (1994), Prometheus Bound. Science in a Dynamic Steady State. Cambridge: Univ. Press.

 

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.

---

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?

Humaniora i globaliseringens æra

Af Jesper Eckhardt Larsen

I lyset af den tendentielle danske politiske konsensus om det fremmede og særligt de fremmede er der behov for humaniora. I dette korte indlæg om, hvad humaniora skal i det kommende århundrede er denne dagsorden efter min opfattelse den centrale. Tesen er, at humaniora er en vej til at se, at den fremmede måske ikke er SÅ fremmed… Dette er den gængse ide om, at viden om mennesker i fortidige og nutidige kulturer på en positiv måde kan bidrage til en større forståelse og tolerance. Denne ide var typisk fremme efter det tyvende århundredes to største katastrofer: den første og den anden verdenskrig. Erfaringer gør ondt, men man bliver også klogere. Verdenskrigene gav stødet til først Folkenes Forbund og siden hen FN. I begge organisationers virke fulgte en støtte til interkulturel viden og uddannelse, uddannelse og atter uddannelse. Men humaniora kan mere end at gøre den fremmede mindre fremmed. Den kan også få den virkning at det velkendte måske ikke er SÅ velkendt… Hvad ville en dansker fra 1980, der havde boet i isolation i 29 år sige om Danmark år 2009? Ville det være velkendte træk, der viste sig tydeligst, eller ville vedkommende studse over Dansk Folkepartis retorik, over angrebskrig i Irak og andre politiske dagligdagsfænomener? Nu kunne det måske lyde som om humaniora mest er for venstreorienterede humanister. Det tror jeg ikke. Dansk Folkeparti har støttet humaniora når den handlede om besindelse på det danske i form af viden om ikoner som Kaj Munk og viden om de venstreorienterede i den kolde krig. Det må bydes velkommen som bidrag til et kollektivt vidensprojekt. Dertil må man konstatere med et citat fra det norske humanistiske forskningråd, at humanistisk viden kan føre til mange forskellige virkninger: ”Ett og samme forskningsresultat kan også få stikk motsatte normative virkninger. Et aktuelt eksempel er at økt kunnskap om innvandreres kulturelle bakgrunn både kan slå ut i økt rasisme og økt tverrkulturell forståelse. Blant annet på grunn af slike forholdne har Området for Kultur og Samfund i foreliggende plan vært tilbakeholdent med å fastsætte konkrete kvantifiserbare mål for virkningene av samfunnsvitenskapelig og humanistisk forskning” (Området for kultur og samfunn. Strategisk plan 1994-97, 1994). For at slå koldt vand i blodet kan det være relevant at henvise til en antik stoisk filosof som indså, at det menneskelige også omfatter det umenneskelige. ”Intet menneskeligt bør være mig fremmed”, lyder humanismens valgsprog tilbage fra Seneca. Men omvendt er der vel den allerede nævnte mere optimistiske sandhed, at også menneskeheden lærer af sine erfaringer. Udtrykt ved en anden antik filosof, Cicero, er historien livets læremester – historia magistra vitæ.

Hvad er da humanioras område, hvis det ikke umiddelbart kun fører til forsoning og forståelse imellem gamle fjender? Dette er et umiddelbart udkast om de forskellige vidensområder: A) Humaniora omhandler det menneskelige i nær forstand. B) Samfundsfag omhandler det menneskelige i praktisk kollektiv forstand. C) Naturvidenskaberne omhandler det naturlige i bred forstand. D) Teknisk forskning omhandler det praktiske i teknisk forstand. Og E) teologisk forskning omhandler det guddommelige i menneskenær forstand. Der er væsentlige afkast imellem disse. Der findes teknisk forskning som rykker ved det menneskelige: som f.eks. genteknologi. Der findes humanistisk forskning som rykker ved synet på det kollektive: kritikken af den metodiske individualisme, eller psykologisk kritik af rational choice i økonomien. Der findes naturvidenskabelig forskning, der rykker ved epistemologien i alle videnskabssfærer: komplementaritetsprincippets indflydelse på al epistemologi. Denne liste kunne fortsættes meget langt. Det er bare ikke til at se disse crossovers før på lang tidsafstand. Det er en oplagt historisk indsigt, at enhver i sin samtid står i en mangfoldighed, der ikke er til at overskue. Det er først på historisk afstand, at tydelige fælles mønstre gør sig gældende. Vi er midt i en mangfoldighed rent vidensmæssigt, hvor det kan være den ubetydelige detalje, der er den mest lovende vej frem. For at underbygge denne påstand kan man se på videnskabshistorie om romantikken. Her bliver det tydeligt, at humanistiske og filosofiske ideer om ånden i verden, førte til elektromagnetismens opdagelse hos H.C. Ørsted, der dermed mente at skue en del af ånden i naturen. Vores adskillelse af vidensprojektet i kasser og discipliner yder ikke den frie vidensproces retfærdighed, hvilket netop videnskabshistorien kan lære os. Konklusionen på denne betragtning er: hvis ikke man forsker i det menneskelige i både tid og rum forbliver store mængder empirisk og teoretisk viden ude af vores søgefelt – og dermed masser af potentielle indsigter, der kan lave offspin i hele vores kollektive vidensprojekt. Humanioras felt er det menneskelige i tid og rum – og alle menneskelige aktiviteter og praksisser. Livet i bred menneskeforstand.

Men hvis humaniora angår det menneskenære er den i sagens natur mest relevant på en menneskenær måde. Dvs. at humaniora først og fremmest har en afklarende pædagogisk funktion. En dannelsesfunktion. Det menneskenære er både menneskerelevant og eksistensrelevant. Men det viser sig i en tid med tydeligere kulturmøder, at det helt menneskenære pludseligt og voldsomt kan blive kilde til samfundsmæssige og internationale konflikter. Med politiske sager om tørklæder både i et islamisk land som Tyrkiet, og i et lutheransk land som Danmark viser der sig eksempler på at det helt intime – forholdet til Gud – bliver en bombe i samfundsmæssig forstand. Derfor er, efter den kulturelle vending i megen både samfundsvidenskabelig og humanistisk teori, det menneskenære af høj relevans i et kollektivt perspektiv – uden derfor at antage en metodisk individualisme – dvs. at alt i en teori om samfundet skal føres tilbage til egenskaber ved individet. I et forsøg på at skelne imellem viden, der er relevant for de få – det Immanuel Kant kalder den esoteriske viden og viden, der er relevant for de mange – som Kant kaldte den eksoteriske viden – prøver den tyske filosof Gunter Scholtz at argumentere for en bred formidling af humaniora. Hvor det moderne menneske med teknologiens og samfundssystemernes mange tjenester kan overlade store dele af vidensansvaret til andre, der består iflg. Scholtz en række områder, hvor den enkelte ikke kan fralægge sig et vidensansvar. Den enkelte må selv tage moralske, sociale og politiske beslutninger og sådanne beslutninger, der angår hans egen lykke og må derfor have orienterende viden inden for etik, politik, historie, sociologi, økonomi osv. Han må forholde sig til sig selv og det presserende spørgsmål om grundlaget for hans tilværelse og henvises da til religion, teologi og filosofi. Han må have et forhold til de fællesskaber, han tilhører, for at leve i disse og tage beslutninger i dem, og derfor behøver han viden om historie. Han må informere sig selv og deltage i samfundets kommunikationsprocesser for at leve i samfundet og være i stand til at tage beslutninger, og derfor behøver han en sproglig kompetence, opnået gennem de sproglige videnskaber. Hvad med praksis? I nyere forskningspolitik er målet først og fremmest praktisk eller lavere sagt rent økonomisk. En dansk humanist, Johan Nikolaj Madvig mindede dog i 1832 sine samtidige realister om ikke at definere praksis alt for snævert: “Man maa heller ikke glemme, at al Handlen for det, der skal fremmes i Livet, er Praxis.” Den gamle strid imellem realisterne og humanisterne, der dengang handlede om tiden fra ca. 6. klasse og til og med gymnasiet, er i dag ført op til et absurd højt uddannelsesniveau. På højeste niveau giver denne strid ikke mening. Måske har utilitaristen Herbert Spencer ret et stykke af vejen i sin rent madnyttige definition af, hvad der er nyttig viden, men da ikke hele vejen. Hans teori byggede på, at mennesket primært skulle have mad i munden og tag over hovedet. Denne tanke, der er oversat til økonomisk vinding i dagens neoliberale teknokratiske forskningspolitik er da en unødvendig reduktion af vidensprojektet og dets håb om ”nye tanker” ”nye indsigter” og somme tider ”nye løsninger.” I denne proces er poesi – og dennes læsning, historie – og dennes fortolkning, kulturer og forståelserne af dem en del af det vidensprojekt, der alt andet lige må til for at leve op til en åndsliberal grundindstilling rent videnspolitisk. Og mangfoldighedsargumentet er det nye argument for humaniora, der bedst virker sammen med humanioras natur, om den har en sådan: ikke fordismens masseproduktionslinjer, men den botaniske have er det bedste billede på humanistisk vidensproduktion. Hvis der er nye eksotiske planter, der hentes hjem i form af frø, så finder den gode gartner et sted, der netop kan nære denne nye plante på bedst mulig måde… ikke for at den skal overtage hele haven, men for at den netop får gode vækstvilkår, ydmygt, men til stede i samlingen. Det er helt forfejlet at tænke at små fag er lig med ubetydelige fag. Det kan være, at man ved hjælp af en enkelt dygtig forsker ved et af vores universiteter kan holde en vidensproces i gang, der så at sige kan dække et helt vidensområde for Danmarks vedkommende. Det er oplagt at Danmark som et lille land har mindre konkurrence imellem specialisterne – men denne konkurrence møder disse specialister når de (som alle gør!) deltager i internationale konferencer og netværk. Derfor er små fag vores vinduer ud til en større sammenhæng, der dermed holdes åbne. Denne ”importfunktion” kræver meget små investeringer, men er uhyre væsentlig for et lille sprogområdes overlevelse.

Men hvis denne botaniske have af viden skal have ”relevans” i videnssamfundet eller være ”accountable” som det hedder i de internationale tekster om den uddannelsespolitiske udvikling, så er formidling eller forskningskommunikation kerneordet. Den formidling, der hænger uløseligt sammen med ideen om vidensmæssig mangfoldighed og en almen dannelsesfunktion er det postmoderne tagselvbord. Det er afgørende, at viden i en dannelsesproces skal ”passe til” individernes meget forskellige udviklingslinjer. Derfor er frihed og tilgængelighed nøgleord i en uddannelsespolitik, der ikke skal stivne i teknokratiets spændetrøje. Mere konkret: det skal være muligt, at ”opdage” en interesse for filosofi, kernefysik, oldindiske religioner, demokratiets opståen og alt muligt andet også senere i ungdommen og i løbet af livet. Det uddannelsessystem, der tendentielt lukker flere og flere mulige kombinationer for den enkelte, fordi der kræves afgørende valg tidligere og tidligere i uddannelsesforløbet er direkte destruktivt for et levende videnssamfund. Det skal være muligt på alle trin at kombinere alle mulige vidensområder. De nyeste adgangskrav til universiteterne er et eksempel på regeringens teknokratiske indstilling til viden: Du skal altid allerede vide, hvad du vil vide ”når du bliver stor” – og det skal være i erhvervslivets interesse. Sagt med store bogstaver: SÅDAN ER UNGDOMMEN IKKE! (Medmindre en regering som forebyggende angreb tæsker lysten og livet ud af den, som det f.eks. er lykkedes den at fjerne lysten til at blive lærer i Danmark siden 2001). I et system for højere uddannelser, som har været styret på markedspræmisser i hele det tyvende århundrede, det amerikanske college og universitetetssystem, der har valgfrihed og kombinationsfrihed være nøgleord i at imødekomme de unges behov for alsidig dannelse – et behov, der naturligt hænger sammen med ethvert nysgerrigt menneskes levende optagethed af verden – hele verden omkring sig. Dette behov er det muligt at opfylde uddannelsespolitisk ved modultanken. På et amerikansk college kan du kombinere dig frem – og både tilgodese en drøm om et fremtidigt virke samtidig med, at en nysgerrighed over for politik, litteratur, historie, musik eller noget helt femte dyrkes ved siden af. Dette passer til en tid, hvor læringen skal være alsidig og livslang. Den danske tænkning har dette element i højskolerne – men disse taber terræn og trues af lukning. Det oplagte initiativ for at skabe relevans af humanistiske fag var at udbyde ret avancerede moduler til alle studerende på universitetet og på åbent universitet for alle andre – og så give plads til, at der løbende blev givet credit for, at man tager kurser helt ved siden af ens grundfag. Man skulle naturligvis have et grundfag – som kommende læge, tekniker eller jurist er der behov for lang tids fordybelse, men dette udelukker ikke at en levende nysgerrighed kan tilfredsstilles inden for rammerne af en universitetsuddannelse. På gymnasieniveau tilgodeses denne frihed meget mere i den danske tradition – men den glemmes oftest helt på universitetsniveau. Med masseuniversitetet ville der være en pædagogisk relevans af selv de små ordkidéfag, der ellers trues af lukning. Som strukturen er nu skal de udelukkende uddanne nye specialister – og dem vil der i sagens natur kun være begrænset brug for. De skal naturligvis udbyde moduler, der har alle universitetsstuderende som marked. Ikke kun andre humanister, men også kommende politter, jurister, læger og ingeniører. Et andet udslag af misforstået teknokrati, der hæmmer friheden i en verden af viden, er tanken om, at et råd skal afgøre den hele samtidige og fremtidige relevans af enhver uddannelse på forhånd. Det statslige akkrediteringsråd lider af den oplyste enevældes teknokratiske valgsprog: vi alene vide (find gerne deres hjemmeside og læs – det er en gravplads for unge og lovende ideer – et sørgeligt minde over den siddende ministers drab på fornyelsestrang og glæde). I et opgør med denne tanke satte Wilhelm von Humboldt en ægte åndsliberalisme: Hvis i sætter vidensprojektet frit vil det opfylde samfundets behov fra et meget højere synspunkt. Eller med mine ord: hvad der er nyttigt og relevant kan kun vise sig i tidens fylde. Eller frit efter Grundtvig: glem ideen om at livet kan tænkes igennem på forhånd – giv det frit og se hvad der vokser frem i frihed. Denne frihed skulle naturligvis omfatte alle vidensområder. De studerende med humanistiske grundfag skulle vælge frit i samfundsfaglige moduler, jurafag, naturvidenskabelige moduler osv. Dette er realiteten ved amerikanske colleges, hvilket i konkret forstand beviser muligheden af en sådan frihed i en uddannelsespolitisk og uddannelsestrukturel praksis. Kort sagt: det er i orden at der kræves relevans af humaniora – men denne relevans må vise sig pædagogisk frem for teknisk industrielt.

For at afslutte dette indlæg med humanioras særlige bidrag i globaliseringens æra vil jeg vælge at tro på den optimisme, der omgærede FN umiddelbart efter Anden Verdenskrig. Og denne optimisme er mere nødvendig nu end nogensinde. Den dannende eller den pædagogiske funktion af de humanistiske indsigter bliver tydeliggjorte i en multikulturel tid, eller om man vil en kulturel konflikttid – jeg foretrækker at se det som en tid med større og tydeligere kulturelle bevægelser. En udvidet referenceramme i den vedholdende indsats for at ”finde sig selv” er nødvendig i det moderne samfund – ligesom den har været igennem de sidste mange hundrede års historie af kulturelle krydsninger og bevægelser. I globaliseringen bliver det, med den postkoloniale litteraturforsker Gayatri Spivaks ord, mere og mere påtrængende at man i humaniora beskæftiger sig aktivt med at ”læse andetheden” (”reading otherness”). Ved at læse ”den anden” – eller ”de andres” litteratur – opnås den dannende virkning som Spivak også kalder ”the displacing power of education” – at uddannelse og dannelse fører til en bevægelse ud af det velkendte – ud til det fremmede – for derefter at vende tilbage til det velkendte, der dermed kan genoptages med en ny bevidsthed – måske bliver dette en kritisk tilegnelse – men under alle omstændigheder en forarbejdet gentilegnelse af det velkendte. Humaniora må ikke kun blive videnskab for dens egen skyld. Den væsentligste rolle er at være øjenåbner for den enkelte og kollektivet – en pædagogisk funktion, eller en dannelsesfunktion. I den tyske debat har man forsøgt at kalde dette for en orienterende funktion, og skelner dermed imellem umiddelbar teknisk nytteviden (Verfügungswissen) og så en bred virkelighedskonstituerende orienteringsviden (Orientierungswissen). Hermed skal humaniora sammen med både samfundsvidenskablig og naturvidenskabelig viden være med til at orientere om samtid, fortid, os selv og de andre. Denne viden er i den grad nødvendig i en kulturel bevægelsestid som vores. Og dette kan som program omsættes i to opfordringer til humaniora i det 21. århundrede: fasthold og udvid multikulturaliteten i humanioras genstandsfelter og sørg for en formidling via alle mulige kanaler til så mange som overhovedet muligt. Der findes ikke et menneske i noget moderne samfund – eller i noget udviklingsland – som ikke kunne løftes ved kendskabet til andetheden. Vi lever i globaliseringen æra. Humaniora kan som vidensfelt, som dannende viden, løfte netop den del af den forståelsesopgave globaliseringen stiller enhver.

Humaniora opstod i klodens første demokrati – Athen i 5. århundrede f.v.t. Det blomstrer i dag i de store velfungerende demokratier. Det lider i de store totalitære stater. Som John Stewart Mill sagde er forskningsfriheden en forlængelse af ytringsfriheden. Jeg maner til kamp for, at vores regering ikke går den forkerte vej. Det kræver mod at støtte og forsvare sin modstanders ret og mulighed for at bekæmpe en. Har VK-regeringen dette mod?

The humanities in Denmark – the educational situation

By Jesper Eckhardt Larsen

 

This article seeks to cover mostly recent but to some extent also historical trends in research in and teaching of the humanities in secondary and higher education in Denmark. The focus will be on the humanities in the universities that are organized under the term “humaniora”. Therefore the article sketches the main organization patterns of research and education in the humanities in Denmark. As a preliminary observation it can be stated that a problematic tendency in Denmark is that the humanities are only seen as general culture and citizenship education until the secondary level of education. In the discussions on the humanities in the universities these issues are more or less disregarded in favour of direct labour market relevance. This one to one relation between highly specialized university courses in the humanities and the access to employment is therefore creating a deadly political pressure to close down as many programmes as possible in order deliberately to reduce the number of humanistic university candidates. This again connects closely with new trends in the cognitive and disciplinary issues of humanities teaching that go in the direction of transferable skills. As a contribution from this author to a broader re-evaluation of the humanities in the 21^st century an historical overview of the public discourse on the societal role of the humanities since WWII is presented.

 

Denmark is traditionally a strong nation on both humanistic scholarship and public education in the humanities. The Danish vocabulary copies the concept of the Italian renaissance “humaniora” which designated the (more) human studies as opposed to theology and natural sciences. The use of the concept of humaniora in some ways resembles the German use of the concept of “Geisteswissenschaften” but tends to be more narrowly defined. However the concept of science, “videnskab”, is in Danish used in the same broad sense of the word as “Wissenschaft” in German. This makes the words humanistic science, “humanistisk videnskab”, interchangeable with the word “humaniora.” Humaniora is therefore not related directly to the performing arts as in the anglosaxon world, but are purely scholarly endeavours. Humaniora is seen as separate from the social sciences and law. The university faculties dedicated to humaniora comprises now of subjects as history (with subfields of classical, mediaeval and modern history), philosophy, philology (covering Danish and other European and global languages), rhetoric, pedagogy, literature, art history, music studies, film studies, theatre studies, archaeology, ethnology etc. Fields of scholarship such as psychology and anthropology have recently been institutionally redefined into social sciences. New fields of study such as area studies, media studies and business related studies in cultural marketing and languages are sometimes also labelled humanistic studies, “humanistiske studier”. In the following, the discussion will cover this broad group of disciplines even when the English term “humanities” is used.

 

Taking a very brief view of the history of the political landscapes of knowledge in Denmark, one can see a quite early split between the bourgeois elite culture of university education and the rural counterculture of the Folk Highschool educational movements in the late 19^th century. The famous Lutheran theologian and educator N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783-1872) was himself a part of the university elite but dedicated his whole energy towards a severe critique of both the secondary humanistic Latin schools and the university in Copenhagen as towers of “dead” knowledge. Instead he promoted the forming of more national romantic learning in the Folk Highschools. Thereby a split in the functions and institutions of humanistic learning was created in Denmark that to some extent can be traced all the way to the present day. The situation became that the teaching of humanistic fields of knowledge in the university was strictly seen as an endeavour of the learned elite, whereas the broad public demands on national general culture was seen to be connected to the Folk Highschools. The transformations of the twentieth century have of cause changed the role of the universities to mass institutions and undermined the importance of the Folk Highschools in educating the people. But the negative or limited image of the universities as non popular, purely scientific or professional schools has had and still has a strong influence on the public discourse on the humanities in Danish higher education today. To put it shortly, higher education has lost any legitimate educational functions beyond the specialised training of bureaucrats and professionals. One could argue that the training of a highly qualified group of intellectuals would have an important function in a democratic society. But the group of university candidates who now specialize in history, philology or philosophy are not seen in any way as well informed citizens. Mostly they are seen as a societal problem of potential unemployment or as exploiters of public funding for self realization purposes. Whereas self realization is praised highly in the corporate world it is a key to utter public contempt when it regards students of the humanities. This leaves the institutional proponents of education in the humanities in a position where they cannot claim any importance in public education apart from catering to the creation of employable professionals. These historical reasons for the defensive role of the universities, I believe, are of quite central importance in understanding the present discussions on the humanities in Denmark.

 

1. Main organization patterns of research and education in the humanities in Denmark.

The humanities have traditionally had a central role in both secondary education and higher education in Denmark. Among the Scandinavian countries Denmark is the country with the most unbroken tradition of so called general cultivation in the higher secondary school system. In Danish this notion of general cultivation of the students is called “almendannelse” which corresponds well with both the German notion of “Allgemeinbildung” the British notion of “liberal education” and the French idea of “culture générale.” This concept has since the late 18^th century been quintessential in defining the main purpose and raison d’être of the humanities in the educational process. In the Danish Gymnasiums the concept of “almendannelse” is still of central importance in defining the goal of the three years of higher secondary education (Haue 2008).

 

The Danish educational system has the common Scandinavian model of comprehensive schooling. This includes a minimum of nine years of compulsory primary and lower secondary schooling in either public schools (“folkeskole”) or in private schools. The law does not state any obligation to attend schooling, but an obligation of any parent to supply the child with necessary education – at home or in an institution. The humanities naturally form parts of the curriculum of the folkeskole. Subjects as Danish language and literature, history and foreign languages still have a high priority in the first nine years of compulsory schooling.

 

After the compulsory nine years more than 80% of a cohort continue their education. The upper secondary system is divided into the classical gymnasium which almost takes 50% of the ones taking further education and other types of more technical or business directed upper secondary education. The classical gymnasium model has with its broad goal of “almendannelse” had a quite significant role in promoting the general interest in the humanities in Denmark. It is also a tentative explanation for the quite large discrepancies between the Danish and the Swedish situation. The Swedish secondary education is now a part of the compulsory 12 years of schooling. But already from the 1960ties the Swedish system of secondary education has been streamlined towards specific fields of employment. This means that the tradition of a humanistic content in secondary education in Sweden has been largely replaced by technical or business relevant subject matter. This may not account for the present low rates of university students in the humanistic fields, but it certainly contributes to the overall picture of a highly controlled educational policy directed towards employability and economic needs of the Swedish social democracy. Norway is in this regard closer to the Danish situation, but with recent reforms of the secondary school system into a 12 year compulsory comprehensive system Norway has also made the break with the continental tradition of humanistic gymnasiums more drastically than Denmark. These policies may account for the relatively high percentage of humanistic candidates in Danish higher education. Denmark is at par with the USA and France with about 15%-16% of all candidates in the humanities and arts. Both Sweden and Norway are less than half with 6% and 7% of all candidates in these fields (Tertiary-type A in 2005. OECD).

 

At the university level, Denmark was one of the first countries to introduce the reforms that ultimately lead to the Bologna Process in the European area from 1999. Already in 1992 the three-tier structure of higher education was introduced in the Danish system with a bachelor level of three years, a master or candidate level of two years and a PhD level of three years. As a first result of this reform the quite specialized system of long unbroken university programmes of a minimum of five years was substituted with a limited freedom of choice between different modules in a typical bachelor in the humanities and some freedom in combining bachelors in some fields with masters in other fields. Hereby a certain inspiration from the American bachelor can be seen in the Danish humanities bachelor model. The model that was developed in Denmark was however generally much closer to the highly specialized British bachelor than the broad liberal American bachelor model (for a discussion of this difference see Larsen 2006B). This now usually divides the Danish students in two groups. The one group seeks to combine only two subjects that will make them relevant for teaching positions in the gymnasiums. These two subjects may both be humanistic or they might cross over between the natural sciences and the humanities. A student can thereby become a teacher of for instance chemistry and Danish by taking his or her bachelor and master in these two fields only. The other type of students have a major subject throughout their bachelor and master, and supplement this field with one year of modules taken from other subjects – very often in other fields of the humanities. There are no requirements on the distribution of these free modules as seen in the American model. Therefore it must be concluded that students are still quite specialized in the specific field they choose as their major field. Again the contrast with Sweden is large. The Swedish university programmes allow for a free choice between large numbers of modules which makes the typical humanities student from Sweden a lot broader in subject combinations than the typical Danish student of the humanities. This fact has most likely contributed to the special discourse on employability and labour market relevance in the Danish case. To put it briefly: a humanist in Denmark is almost always a highly specialized scholar trained in research methods within a specific humanistic scholarly field. The discussion is then: what if the person cannot find exact use of these highly specialized competencies in the existing labour market? This is of cause quite another discussion than the one seen in countries were humanistic modules only form parts of the university degree. The Danish system opens a political debate governed by the question: either the whole package or non at all. And as will be shown below this is quite a deadening “catch twenty two.” In other systems of higher education the relevant question is: can modules in the humanities contribute to your personal, civic and professional life in a positive way? And this question is obviously a lot easier to answer positively. In Sweden the free choice of modules may both account for the small number of “clean” humanists, but with a cautious comparison with the United States it seems as if the free choice of humanistic modules might be a way to save the relevance of the humanistic scholarship seen from a purely educational point of view (as also argued in Larsen 2006B). In Denmark the accountability question is only towards employability whereas in these other systems the accountability issue can be interpreted as more educational.

 

To answer the question: Do humanities courses in Denmark prepare for teaching and research, tailored for the happy few? Or are they courses of mere general culture for the great many? The answer must be twofold. The higher secondary system, with a strong position of the gymnasium definitely serves general culture for the great many through high quality courses in languages, history and philosophy. But by contrast the structure of Danish higher education is through high specialization and rigid educational structures mostly tailored for the happy few that end up in teaching or research positions. The growing group of specialized humanities candidates that do not find employment in education or research are because of the mentioned catch twenty two considered a waste of space by both the current government and other actors in the political arena. This political debate deserves some attention in this article.

 

2. The relation between courses in the humanities and the access to employment

Before the great transition from elite universities to mass universities in the 1960ties and 1970ties the sole function of a humanistic university degree was either to pursue an academic career, to become an independent intellectual, if the social position made it possible, or to pursue a career as a teacher in higher secondary education, as a gymnasium teacher. Within the last 20 years or so this situation has changed so that the ratio of candidates in humanistic subject that get teaching positions in the gymnasiums is about 25%. Another 25% either stay in research or get other public or private teaching positions. This leaves about half of the candidates to find their so called untraditional roles in the labour market. The story of this group of candidates has been one of strong controvercies but must actually be labelled a total success. The high demand for labour in the present Danish economy has slowly eliminated the sometimes severe problems of unemployment for humanistic candidates. Moreover, the traditional lack of interest from the side of the employers has changed so that there is now a growing interest in the special competencies that humanistic candidates can prove. A large survey in 2007 even stated that candidates from the traditional gymnasium related subjects as history or Danish philology were quite as successful in the labour market as students from new, more business related programmes within the humanities. 

 

Nevertheless there is an ongoing war between the ministry of science, technology and innovation and the organization Confederation of Danish Industry (Dansk Industri) on the one side, and the academic community, sometimes the university boards and rectors and the organization Danish Chamber of Commerce (Dansk Erhverv) on the other side. The minister of science, technology and innovation Helge Sander has since 2005 appointed three different so called independent working groups of labour market representatives and scholars from higher education institutions to discus the relevance of the humanities for the labour market. All three groups have come up with the same conclusions that support the minister’s views on the future of the humanities. It is important in this context to pinpoint a few headlines in this discourse. The main line of argumentation is economic and employability directed. If the humanistic university programmes of education are not streamlined to serve the employment requirements of the private sector, they will have to close. The contribution of the humanities to society is in this way reduced to the contribution of the humanities to the economy. And this is not only directed towards all educational programmes that in the coming years are to be assessed by a new institution under the ministries surveillance the accreditation board ACE Denmark. It is also implemented in the research policies of the ministry. Both education and research in the humanities are in this way centrally controlled in the direction of business relevance. This is not only the case for the humanities, but for all research and higher education in Denmark especially since the Danish University Act of 2003. This act changed the management structure from a democratic peer management into a top down management with a previously unseen central power of the ministry. This gives unprecedented direct authority to the sitting government to control both research and education in the universities. In this situation the opinions of the minister becomes suddenly crucial to the entire national development in the humanities. The minister has in an article stated that the humanities are “not in any way special.” A statement, which I take to mean that in any research or education activity in the humanities, economic relevance will be the single criteria of survival in the current Danish university politics.

 

The three mentioned reports seem to be lacking in any detailed evidence on the actual situation for the humanistic candidates on the labour market. To counter this highly ideological discourse six Danish universities in 2007 initiated a large survey on the carriers and labour market experiences of humanistic candidates. The results of this report are as mentioned above striking in many ways. It shows that choosing a humanistic education is in fact no way worse seen from a carrier perspective than any other carrier choice in the present day Danish labour market (Humanistundersøgelsen 2007).

 

3. Cognitive and disciplinary issues of humanities teaching.

Two major reforms of the university sector in Denmark have taken place within the last decade. Firstly the implementation of the Bologna Process after 1999 and secondly the new Danish University Act in 2003. Whereas the University Act changed the management structures as indicated above the Bologna reforms has had the strongest influence on the way teaching in the humanities is being conceptualized. This transition is generally following the international trends from a strong focus on content and scholarly progression into a focus on the acquired competencies. The trend is thereby to stress the transferable skills of all learning in the humanities. This could be called a shift in the notion of education from material to formal learning. It is not what you learn, but what you can do afterwards that is of importance. Now the focus is on transferable skills leading to employability. Of cause this undermines the whole idea of knowledge having an orientation function in the modern world for building consciousness and qualifying for an informed citizenship. The purely formal argumentation undermines central parts of the previous argumentation for the importance of the humanistic disciplines. Generally speaking most of the teaching in the humanities has not changed, but the branding of this field of teaching has. Now it is (only) stressed that humanistic scholars are competent symbol analysts, and that they have the capacity to digest large amounts of information and disseminate it in well structured ways. The problem with this narrow conception of the humanistic competencies is that it becomes prone to criticism along the lines of the 19^th century critique of the formal qualities of learning Latin: if you only look for formal learning you can dismiss of any specific content. A representative from Danish Industry therefore stated that a humanist was always replaceable, whereas an engineer or an economist wasn’t.

 

This tendency to undermine the development and legitimacy of the disciplines is supported by the so called Mode II approach – or problem oriented research and teaching. Not the disciplines but the real world problems are to govern the development of teaching and research in the humanities. This has lead to the development of applied fields within the humanities such as humanistic studies in environmental issues, in machine person interfaces in ICT and in medicine. The humanities are in this respect considered to supply “added value” to other fields of research such as ICT or medical research.

 

4. The public discourse on the societal role of the humanities since WWII.

As can be seen from the recent debates on the relevance of the humanities for the labour market a quite narrow approach to the possible societal relevance of the humanities has governed the recent public discourse. It is not possible in this short space to account for the whole debate on the humanities in Denmark. But an outline of the broad development of the argumentation for the humanities can at least show some aspects of what has been seen as the true purpose of research and teaching in these disciplines. I believe that this broad approach shows more nuanced the true potential of the cognitive and societal relevance of the humanities (the following overview is based on Larsen 2006A).

 

From 1945 to 1957 the argumentation on teaching and research in the humanities centred on three aspects: peace, culture and values. The peace-argument was on the agenda of large international actors such as UNESCO and its associated organisations for the humanities. Like in the aftermath of World War I, humanistic scholarship and education should promote peace. The culture-argument must be understood as a reminiscence of the neo-humanism that dominated university life through most of the 19^th century. Humanistic scholarship was considered to promote the moral culture of the nations. An elitist view of a moral avant garde was connected with vague ideas of national dissemination of culture understood as high culture. The value-argument was not unlike the two other arguments but was influenced by the war experience. This meant that the humanities were understood as dealing with the realm of values, and therefore were paramount in informing individual choice, often understood in existentialist terms. The humanistic attitude was to strengthen the resolve of the individual if confronted with totalitarian ideologies.

                      From 1957 to 1968 a new consciousness of living in modernity coloured the argumentation for the humanities. The argumentation was diverse and internationally influenced by the so-called Sputnik-chock. The Soviet Union had apparently overtaken the West in the rush for modernity with its space programmes. What role did the humanities have to play, if any, in the modern world? A plea for a modernisation of the humanities inspired by empiricism and positivism can be called the science-argument. An overcoming of ideological or metaphysical nonsense should make the humanities into hard sciences in positivist or structuralist terms. The emancipation-argument was in the tradition of enlightenment promoting a modern reflection on the human social and psychological behaviour in order to free society of unhealthy traditional attitudes.

                      In 1968 the global young people’s revolt resulted in a politicized attack on bourgeois elite culture. The humanities were to a lot of debaters seen as carriers of a bourgeois ideology that had to change in light of a more egalitarian view of culture. This view also permeated official policies of the research councils. The society-argument was a result of a new demand for relevance. The humanities had to leave their ivory tower and serve society i.e. either the people or the users. The use of the two concepts depended on whether you belonged to the left or the right side in national politics. A change in research policy occurred that has both been named as a shift in paradigm or as an epistemic drift. The result was that research and education had to serve external demands and that values of autonomy and high culture were strongly contested. The consciousness-argument was mostly proposed from leftist debaters, who referred to the Marxist notion of class-consciousness. Studies in the culture of workers or farmer’s were to enhance class conscious behaviour. A somewhat softer version of historical and social consciousness was used in the argumentation of the national research councils. To speak in terms of the French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard a performative argumentation entered the debate on the humanities. To the question of the usefulness of the humanities, a frequent answer was the communication-argument. Humanistic knowledge could enhance communication in organisations, between cultures and languages and in person to person contacts. This was their most useful contribution to society.

                      During the 1980s the performative turn of the argumentation gained strength. It was expected of the humanities to produce more specific solutions to specific problems. The problemsolving-argument was connected to a new slogan: from research to invoice. The results of research had to be directly connected to an actual usage and be applicable in practice. Examples were data-linguistics or the solving of technology-produced problems. A new line of argumentation connected a diagnosis with a cure. Humanistic scholars were able to pinpoint societal problems of various kinds and suggest cures for these. A change in the view of culture occurred that suggested the primacy of culture in the development of society. From the Marxist view of a primacy of economic factors a turn towards the primacy of cultural aspects gave a turn in the consciousness-argument. Now the prefix culture was added. The culture-consciousness-argument could both be seen as connected to the communication-argument, i.e. enhance cross-cultural communication, or to help individuals in their identity work. The dannelses-argument can be seen as a neohumanistic or early bourgeois inheritance. It stresses the synthesis between individual growth and cultural socialization. As a process of self realization you assimilate the surrounding culture often understood as tradition. This argument had a downward trend in the 1970s because of its bourgeois connotations but came in vogue in the 1980s where it was sometimes connected to a post-modern version of individualization. Again the humanities where considered to be of central importance in personal cultivation. The educational turn in the discussion was also quite clear in the orientation-argument. Instead of serving utilitarian purposes the humanities were to educate the students to be able to find orientation in an overly complex and confused world. Finally a pedagogic endeavour was the driving force behind the view that humanistic scholarship should be much broader disseminated to be educationally relevant. The dissemination-argument was called a departure from the Parnassus of research in the humanities.

                      The diversity-argument was promoted during the 1990ties. The idea was that the humanities in dealing with the multitude of past and present cultures, contributed to the diversity of reflection in society. The system-theory advocates inspired by the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, found this diversity of reflection fruitful as a mechanism of variation in societal evolution. The humanities as part of the social system of science were to produce rather than reduce complexity. The dissemination-argument of the 1980s tended to evolve into a dialogue-argument. The researcher was not to speak from a privileged position down to an audience, but rather to suggest interpretations of everyday experiences in an ongoing dialogue with the people involved. A connection with action-research is obvious. In this context research had the quality of an otherness but not a privilege of truth. The pragmatism-argument has had a long history in the argumentation for the humanities. Instead of looking at the humanities as the last useless reminiscence of the ivory tower of scholastic knowledge, it was stressed that everyday problems of communication, identity-formation or socialisation served as central points of departure in the humanities. These were only viewing the everyday problems in a more advanced fashion. There was no discontinuity between reflection in action and knowledge production in the humanities. Last but not least the humanities were seen as parts of the knowledge economy at par with any other part of science. The humanities had to serve a market, and the obvious market in the eyes of some politicians was the entertainment business or the so called experience economy. The experience-economy-argument was followed by suggestions of a shift in research attention towards more popular subjects such as sports or themes relevant for the tourist industry.

 

5. Concluding remarks

The role of the humanities in the Danish society is and has been broad and diverse since WWII. There is a political will to support the broad dissemination of general culture through primary and secondary education. But in higher education it seems as though the humanities will be facing a sudden death or at least a strong reduction. The development in university policies towards both research and teaching is now dominated by new demands of relevance to the knowledge economy in general, and to business life in particular. In Denmark the minister of science, technology and innovation attempts to suggest a redrafting of the national distribution-map of research and education in the humanities – meaning a severe reduction of broad humanistic scholarship and appliance to the experience-economy-argumentation together with a focus on employability. The historical argumentations for the humanities seem to be a lot more fruitful than this political tendency for a true evaluation of the importance of the humanities also in the 21^st century.

 

Selected literature and sources:

Larsen, Jesper Eckhardt (2006A) “ “Ikke af brød alene…” argumenter for humaniora og universitetet i Norge, Danmark, Tyskland og USA 1945-2005” ( ” ”Not on bread alone…”  Argumentation for the Humanities and the University in Norway, Denmark, Germany and the United States, 1945-2005”). Ph.D. dissertation in Danish with a summery in English. The Danish University of Education, Copenhagen.

 

Larsen, Jesper Eckhardt (2006b) ”The Role of the Humanities in the Bologna Idea of a University: Learning from the American Model?” in Revista Española de Education Comparada: El proceso de Bolonia. Dinámicas y deafios de la enseñanza superior en Europa a comienzos de una nueva época, vol. 12, s.309-327

 

Sarauw, Laura Louise (2008 ) “Humanister på bestilling? Relationerne mellem humaniora og arbejdsmarked er under forandring. Men hvad med uddannelsesudviklingen?” (Article in Danish: Humanists on demand? The relations between the humanities and the labour market are changing. But what about the educational development?”)

Electronic source: http://adjunktportalen.hum.ku.dk/materialearkivet/

 

Haue, Harry (2008 ) “Allgemeinbildung. Ein deutscher Begriff im dänischen Gymnasium 1750-2007“ (Book in German) University of Southern Denmark Studies in History and Social Sciences vol. 360. University Press of Southern Denmark, Odense.

 

Haue, Harry (2007) „Humaniora i det almene gymnasium“ in „Uddannelseshistorie 2007. Humanioras fødekæde – humanistisk viden i videnssamfundet” 41. Yearbook of the Danish Society of the History of Education. S. Wiborg, L.R. Rasmussen, B. Larsen and J.E. Larsen (Eds.), Århus.

 

“Humanistundersøgelsen 2007. Humanisternes veje fra uddannelse til job. Hovedrapport” (Report on Humanistic Candidates 2007. The Way from Education to Employment for Humanists”). Report in Danish. Electronic source: http://www.ac.dk/files/pdf/Humanistundersoegelsen-2007.pdf

 

The Role of the Humanities in the Bologna Idea of a University: Learning from the American Model?

 

By Jesper Eckhardt Larsen

The humboldtian idea of a university has, for better or for worse, served as a blueprint for the past two centuries of university development in large parts of Europe. It entails the idea of a unity between research and personal cultivation (Bildung) that indeed has its shortcomings. Since the advent of a strong specialization and theorization the humanities have largely abandoned the more educational function, Bildung in its educational and ethical sense. The American liberal arts college- and university tradition on the other hand, particularly at the bachelor level, has traditionally separated the purely educational readings of a humanities ‘canon’ from the more scholarly pursuits of the humanities. Recent debates on the humanities show these differences across the Atlantic. While the highly specialized humanities in Europe have great problems proving their relevance in a modern society and job-market, the humanities in America are mostly discussed in terms of their educational accountability. Could the Bologna process be an occasion for the European bachelor to be remodelled along the lines of the American liberal arts model? Could the humanities prove their relevance to non-specialists in European higher education?

 

The recent debates on university education in Europe, centring on the Bologna process, have identified at least two central problems: the massification of higher education has led to the threat of falling standards, and its modularization has led to the threat of a fall in the acquisition of deep competences within a specific field, i.e. thorough progression. These threats are both related to an ideal of university education that is firmly rooted in the European tradition. The student is to rise to a level of competence equal to the researcher who is ‘leader,’ ‘guide,’ but never ‘teacher.’ This tradition can be seen as a form of research apprenticeship, but with a freer relationship between professor and student than in the traditional master-apprentice relationship. According to Schelling and Fichte at the dawn of the nineteenth century there were no such things as the educational rights and duties of the professor, in the sense of the professor providing a moral upbringing. The student was considered to be an adult, and learned only by dint of self-education. In opposition to this tradition stands the American one, which in some respects may be seen as the blueprint of the Bologna-process, not only in its use of the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary ‘bachelor,’ ‘master’ and ‘Phd’ but also in its educational rationale. The American residential college has traditionally had a much stricter educational function, in loco parentis, than its European counterpart. Young Americans are to be formed and educated throughout their college years, in such a way that their parents at home can rest assured of the high moral, civic and career-oriented habitus of their children resulting from the experience. A brief look at university architecture is enough to reveal this difference in educational tradition. While the American campus surroundings offer a whole life experience via their residential, social, cultural and educational buildings, the typical European university offers no more than a conglomeration of lecture halls and laboratories. These differences can only be bridged with great difficulty. Moreover, one could ask if we in Europe really want to ‘Americanize’ our institutions. This article, however, will make a friendlier examination of the possible great role model for the Bologna process. Its core argument is that the American model could help us find a broader educational pathway, not least regarding the role of the humanities in higher education in the 21st century.

 

The Bologna bachelor – British or American?

The bachelor in the Bologna idea of a university could be viewed as inspired directly by the British or the American; judging from the vocabulary and the structure it must be inspired by some part of the Anglo-Saxon tradition. This idea of possible Anglo-Saxon inspiration is to be developed in this article. What is the bachelor going to become through the Bologna process? Two distinguished researchers on comparative higher education, Sheldon Rothblatt and Guy Neave, have had private conversations on what can be expected from this bachelor. And Neave answers (with disappointment?) that he does not expect it to be any other than the highly specialized British model, serving only as the launching ramp for further master specialization. I certainly read into this conversation a wish between the two of them that the Bologna bachelor should be more like the American model. Sheldon Rothblatt writes: “Guy Neave of the University of Twente in the Netherlands cautions that the Bologna scheme, while separating undergraduate from graduate instruction, is based far more on the British three-year first degree specialist model than on anything approaching the farrago (my word (SR)) of courses customary in the United States.”[i] The massification and modularization intended in this bachelor certainly could be read as a step in the direction of the American model, but it is equally easy to see that the transitory model is that of the strong British specialization.

 

The European tradition – the marriage between Wissenschaft and curriculum

The humboldtian idea of a university has, for better or for worse, served as a blueprint for the past two centuries of university development in large parts of Europe. Universities in the German speaking area of central Europe, the Low Countries and Scandinavia are still to a large extent inspired by the Humboldt tradition. Especially the self-perception of the university staff demonstrates this tradition. The university lecturer or professor primarily considers herself as a researcher who also happens to have students whose research she guides. Attempts to reform the university teaching in the direction of broader course variety or modularization are met with the fear of turning the university into a ‘mere’ school. The term in the German debate is ‘Verschulung.’

This self-perception can in my view be traced back to the Humboldtian ideal of a university. Wilhelm von Humboldt’s vision contained the idea of a unity between research and personal cultivation (“Bildung durch Wissenschaft”). He saw profound and existential qualities in this interplay that deserve attention. The true activity of ‘Wissenschaft’ was to lead through self-directedness to self-perfection and self-moralisation (‘Selbstversittlichung’). One might call this a belief in the formal cultivational qualities of research. It could seem odd from a more direct perspective of learning, but Humboldt believed that through the process of research, the character of an individual was elevated to a new level of moral freedom, where education, in the sense of being led by a mentor, was substituted by self-cultivation. As for practical relevance, his vision was that action in and through ideas would ultimately lead to a practical mastery of the world on a much higher level than direct practical instruction.

                     As regards the curriculum, Humboldt was strongly opposed to any kind of overspecialization. Philosophy, including both the natural sciences and the study of man, was to be the prime interest for this truly inquisitive spirit that should be dominant in all students. The ‘research’ of his time was of quite a different kind than late nineteenth century positivist specialization. It was more ‘Wissenschaft’ in the sense of idealistic or romantic holism he had in mind.[ii] This brings me to a claim, which is common in the German literature; cultivation through pure research is now far from Humboldt’s visions of Bildung.[iii] Firstly positivism with its inherent specialization and secondly the advent of a strong theorization have contributed to sever the connection to a more educational function, Bildung in its original educational and ethical sense. One could come up with contemporary analogies to Humboldt’s arguments, and argue along with him for new cultivational qualities of modern humanities research. Just to mention one example, his repeated argument about the fleeting nature of the truth that was to be searched for, but never found, resembles the claims about the fleeting sense of truths in the post modern knowledge society. Looking for formal cultivation in the humanities may still prove to be a fruitful pedagogic endeavour in the knowledge society, but does the formula Bildung durch Wissenschaft, cultivation through research, show us the most fruitful way to see the role of the humanities in higher education? And do we serve the coming generations of university students best by adhering to specialization and by letting research agendas automatically also be educational agendas? Is the monogamic marriage between research and higher education the only happy one?

 

The American liberal arts college

The American liberal arts college and university tradition, particularly at the bachelor level, has traditionally separated the purely educational readings in the humanities from the more scholarly pursuits of these disciplines.

The former president of the University of California Clark Kerr’s happy concept of a ‘multiversity’ comprises a multitude of different functions all collected under the ‘university’ umbrella. He describes this plurality as a unique result of the American history: An undergraduate college of liberal arts of British origin from the time of the early colonies, a graduate school of specialized research of German origin imported at the close of the nineteenth century and a service orientation of pragmatist American land grant and federal grant origin from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Kerr states that: “A university anywhere can aim no higher than to be as British as possible for the sake of the undergraduates, as German as possible for the sake of the graduates and the research personnel, as American as possible for the sake of the public at large – and as confused as possible for the sake of the preservation of the whole uneasy balance.”[iv] This balance is by no means maintained, in idealist terms, by a common purpose; rather the individual parts exist, flourish and decay without any traceable impact on the life of the other functional units.

More than once Kerr states, that the ‘three cultures,’ i.e. natural sciences, humanities and professionals each prefer their own part of this multiversity. Where the scientists prefer the graduate specialization and the professionals the contact with the real world, the humanists tend to flourish in the undergraduate liberal arts colleges. But what do they find there? A German observer in the late nineteenth century didn’t know what to make of these institutions. He said: ”I confess that I am unable to divine what is ultimately to be the position of the Colleges, which cannot become Universities and which will not be Gymnasia. I cannot see what reason they have to exist.”[v]

This viewpoint can be complemented by two contemporary diagnoses of American college education. The German professor of comparative literature at Stanford University, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, considers the college years to incorporate the true idea of Bildung in the original German sense. He describes how the humanities are more thoroughly incorporated into the curriculum even among students with technical and natural science majors than in Europe. He quotes the president of the University as saying that he expected all undergraduates at Stanford at some point in their college years to read Plato’s The State. As a European observer, he has grown quite impressed with what the college offers its undergraduates.[vi] Sheldon Rothblatt seems to think that the American liberal arts college serves as an adjustment or cure for the poor condition of the American primary and secondary schooling. In Europe the Gymnasiums, Public Schools and Lyceums take pride in serving a broad personal cultivation, but this does not happen to the same extent in the American High Schools. Apart from this critique of the American secondary education it is a somewhat pessimistic view of the United States that Rothblatt is presenting: “The function of universities and colleges was to educate young men and women to recognize the serious deficiencies in American culture and to use liberal education to ‘correct’ them.”[vii]

                      There are two aspects of this characterization. The one is that the American college serves double purposes. It has to serve both the extension of the general educational functions of primary and secondary education, and the preparation for later specialization on the master level. Sheldon Rothblatt characterizes this situation in the following way:”The undergraduate curriculum is competed for by both schools and graduate school. Overlap with the former continues, while the graduate school presses down upon the undergraduate curriculum and forces the departmental major towards pre-professional work”[viii]

The key word of the other characteristic is that of liberal arts. This tradition is commonly reconstructed in American educational debate as going back to the ancient Greek and Roman education. Historians dismiss various new interpretations of the word liberal as referring to the liberation of the mind and soul, and argue that the etymology only is based on the distinction between the education of free men and slaves in the ancient western civilisations. The American historian Bruce Kimball separates two competing traditions, as indicated in the title of his work Orators and Philosophers. This dual tradition he finds himself able to discern from the ancient origins, through the Middle Ages, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and into post-war America. The first of these traditions he calls the artes liberales tradition, connects it with the orators, and describes it as committed to the moral and rhetorical learning through a literary canon. The other he calls the liberal free tradition, connects it with the critical inquiry of the philosophers and associates it with a research affinity of the curriculum. Later in history the first is more oriented towards the humanities, the latter towards the natural sciences. Kimball describes these two traditions as follows:

”In the artes liberales ideal, a presumption of certitude underlies the identification of virtues and standards reposited in classical texts; and commitment is thereby demanded, identifying an elite who embrace the virtues and preserve them as leaders of society. The foundation of the curriculum lies in the study of language and letters, required in order for the student to fathom the texts and then to express their lessons in public forums as advocates, statesmen, preachers, or professors. In the liberal-free ideal, sceptical doubt undermines all certainty, casting individuals entirely upon their own intellect for judgements that can never finally be proven true. Consequently, the views of others must be tolerated and respected equally, while all beliefs must change and develop over time. Logic and mathematics, which hone the intellect, and experimental science, which teaches the honed intellect to turn old truths into new hypotheses for further testing, form the core of the curriculum designed to graduate the scientist and researcher who loves knowledge and therefore pursues it without end.”[ix]

 

This opposition is carried right into the twentieth century American discussion, which goes to show that the German university tradition, as described above, has been a continuous part of the discussion on the liberal-free side. One could therefore argue that for a curious European looking at the Anglo-Saxon liberal arts, the artes liberales tradition is most exotic and therefore most interesting. Kimball mentions Matthew Arnold as a great proponent of the artes liberales tradition. His definition of a true liberal education was that it should be comprised of ”The best that has been thought and said in the world.” [x] This statement leads to a canonical thinking that, for better or for worse, has dominated the discussion in America to this day. A canon, a ‘core- curriculum’ based on the great books of western civilisation has been advised by educationalists since the beginning of the twentieth century. In this discussion the qualities of the great books lie less in their scientific relevance, and far more in the educational functions of the reading. Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Shakespeare and Blake are on the list because they can educate the reader, not because they should be the objects of scholarly pursuits.

                      One might argue that the canon discussion actually only is possible because of the unique institution of the Anglo-Saxon college. Of course it is still possible to discuss a canon in Europe relevant for the primary and secondary level, but not at a level comparable with that of a higher educational institution. So the function of the liberal arts college is broad and gives a special role to the humanities as being inherently educational as opposed to scholarly. This is, I think, the reason that the American philosopher Richard Rorty recently could state that German politicians did not know what a university was there for. They had just cut the humanities by half of its staff in Hamburg.

 

The American college and the relevance of the humanities

Two optimistic views of the functions of the American college are presented in two documents produced almost sixty years apart: The Harvard report from 1945 and the panel report of the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Greater Expectations from 2002.

The Harvard report envisaged America as the true heir of ancient western civilization, equally excelling, but now democratized: ”The primary concern of American education today is not the development of the appreciation of the ‘good life’ in young gentlemen born to the purple. It is the infusion of the liberal and humane tradition into our entire educational system. Our purpose is to cultivate the largest possible number of our future citizens to an appreciation of both the responsibilities and the benefits which come to them because they are Americans and are free.”[xi] So the ambition of the liberal arts college was to further western civilisation: ”The task of modern democracy is to preserve the ancient ideal of liberal education and to extend it as far as possible to all the members of the community.”[xii]

                      The humanities are ascribed several different functions in the recommendations of the Harvard Report. The liberal arts as a whole are supposed to compensate for the centrifugal forces of specialization in the modern society. The broad education is supposed to give the coming citizen an opportunity to “…grasp the complexities of life as a whole”[xiii]  The report distinguishes between three areas of knowledge – natural sciences, social studies and the humanities with each their specific educational relevance: “The study of the natural sciences looks to an understanding of our physical environment, so that we may have a suitable relation to it. The study of social sciences is intended to produce an understanding of our social environment and of human institutions in general, so that the student may achieve a proper relation to society – not only local but also the great society, and by aid of history, the society of the past and even of the future. Finally the purpose of the humanities is to enable man to understand man in relation to himself, that is to say, in his inner aspirations and ideals.”[xiv] It is obvious to consider this statement and the stress on the historical and sociological knowledge in the light of the war experience, but for our purpose it is clear that what the authors had in mind was an education of a much broader quality than mere specialization for employability.

                      The concept of a liberal arts college education has played the role of a panacea concerning expectations to future citizens. Every societal problem was supposed to get its fair share of attention in this curriculum. And this tendency has certainly not diminished in the recent rhetoric on the objects of liberal education. In Greater Expectations a new mirror of societal concerns is being presented. Several objectives are outlined in the preamble. College should lead to “successful careers” and a “knowledgeable citizenship,” it should create a “just democracy, cooperation among diverse peoples, and a sustainable world.” The students are to be “empowered, informed and responsible.” All these headings include quite a bit of what has traditionally been labelled humanities. To be ‘empowered’ among other things includes that students should learn to: “effectively communicate orally, visually, in writing, and in a second language – understand and employ quantitative and qualitative analysis to solve problems – interpret and evaluate information from a variety of sources – transform information into knowledge and knowledge into judgement and action.” To be ‘informed’ includes learning about “the human imagination, expression, and the products of many cultures – the interrelations within and among global and cross-cultural communities – means of modelling the natural, social, and technical worlds – the values and histories underlying U.S. democracy.” Lastly to be ‘responsible’ includes “intellectual honesty – discernment of the ethical consequences of decisions and actions – deep understanding of one’s self and the complex identities of others, their histories, and their cultures.” Apart from being an employee and a citizen, the student also learns for life: “Preparation for a fulfilling life, as well as a rewarding career, comprehends learning about the world, culture, and the arts. College education offers an understanding of the past, concepts for grappling with fundamental human and scientific questions, and tools to continue learning throughout life.”[xv]

                      A definite shift from the Harvard report can be observed here: From a focus on Western culture to global awareness. The former academy “studies majority Western cultures, perspectives and issues,” but “to respond to the plurality of the modern world, worldwide problems, and interdependence” the new academy “ALSO learns about cultural complexity, a range of cultures, and global issues.” This is global awareness seen from America. The college is in the light of 9/11 to “produce ethical and compassionate graduates, courageous enough to act on their convictions and reflective in shaping society’s larger values”[xvi]

The view of what counts as important knowledge has changed in a direction, which can be described in the terms of Lyotard; from a speculative to a post modern performative narrative of knowledge.[xvii] This transition is described in the following terms: “Formerly the academy saw the curriculum predominantly as a conveyor of well-established knowledge,” but “in recognition of the worlds diverse complexity” the new academy “ALSO interprets education as an informed probing of ideas and values.” And the performative narrative of knowledge is expressed even more clearly as follows: The former academy “values learning for learning’s sake,” but “to acknowledge the new role of higher education in U.S. society” the new academy “ALSO celebrates practical knowledge.”[xviii]

Greater Expectations is less specific about what subjects are to form a part of the curriculum, but rather stresses the value of curriculum for life in its broadest sense. From a Danish perspective one could say that the educational agenda of an American liberal arts college education is a crossover between a gymnasium, a folk high school and a university. And this opens for a very broad educational agenda.

 

The role of the humanities in post-war European discourse.

This broad agenda of educational needs must somehow also be present in Europe – but where, when not in the higher education debate? The logical setting for a part of this debate would be on the secondary level, where we find the term general culture (German: allgemeine Bildung or Danish: almendannelse), which does carry some of the features of the American concept of a liberal education. The humanities do have a prominent place in the curriculum of all students on the secondary level. Until recently, ancient Greek culture was a required course for all students of the Danish Gymansiums, and foreign languages along with history and the national philology are still very important parts of the curriculum. The Danish scholar Harry Haue has argued convincingly that the concept of almendannelse, which entails significant reference to the humanities, has established a red thread through the whole of the history of the Gymnasium from the beginning of the nineteenth century until the present day.[xix] This varies somewhat from country to country, the traditions are stronger in Germany and Denmark than in Norway, but a broad ‘liberal’ educational agenda, to use the Anglo-Saxon concept, is an important part of European secondary education in most countries.

                      Another place to look for a discussion of the role of the humanities is in the research policy agenda. Here we have a Nordic tradition of national humanities research councils dating back to World War II. An analysis of their arguments shows quite a few parallels with the liberal arts agenda of the US.  Examining the discourse of the national research councils for the humanities in the post-war period to the present day in Norway and Denmark we find a chronology of answers to the question: Why do research in the humanities? This chronology of arguments are briefly described below.

From 1945 to1957, the culture argument was dominant. This entailed the obligation to study the humanities of a culture-nation (‘Kulturnation’), considering the humanities to be a part of high culture, but also a part of the cultivation of the national cultural heritage. From around 1957 to 1965 the compensation argument gradually entered the discourse. The argument was ascribed to the German philosopher Joachim Ritter, but occurred simultaneously in the Norwegian debate. The argument was that one had to study the humanities to compensate for the misfortunes of the modern development. The technical and material culture was becoming so dominant that a moral rearmament was needed. This rearmament was to come with the help of the humanities to compensate for schizophrenic tendencies in modern identity building. [xx] From 1968 to 1980 the society argument dominated the discussion. In both leftist and rightist political discourse, a new contract was introduced between research and society. In this line of reasoning all research was to be directly useful for societal concerns. This entailed a whole new line of arguments for the utilitarian aspects of the humanities, e.g. in communication or in datalinguistics. From the left, the cry was that research should be “for the people,” indicating that the highbrow elitist content of much humanities research should be discarded in favour of research into the ‘ordinary’ lives of women, workers or farmers. Finally a change occurred ca. 1980 to a double agenda of both a problem solving argument and a dissemination argument. In a Lyotardian language the problem solving argument can be called a performative view of legitimacy of the humanities. According to this view one should study the humanities for solving problems of cultural clashes along with the older arguments about enhancing communication. On the other hand a new acknowledgement of the resources for individual identity-work in the humanities was seen. The central dissemination argument of the 1980’s in the Nordic countries was that the humanities should reach out to every single individual. The goal was again to educate the public, but now understood not as groups (farmers, workers, women etc.) but as Kierkegaardian absolute individuals.

The Nordic countries and Germany thus have had a functional equivalent of a liberal arts agenda throughout the post-war period. But it was never closely connected to the debate on the curricular politics of the humanities in higher education. Many examples of argumentation for the educational qualities of the humanities can be found in this literature, but somehow these arguments have not entered into the debate on higher education to the same extend as in America.

 

The Humanities in Europe – the current situation from Hamburg to Copenhagen.

Recent debates on the humanities show substantial differences across the Atlantic. As we have seen in the above reports on the objectives of a college education, the humanities in America are mostly debated in terms of their educational accountability. In contrast to this the humanities in highly specialized higher education programs in Europe are mostly discussed in their narrow relevance to the business sector strangely separated from the broad educational discussions on the secondary level and in the research policy agenda outlined above.

In a reform initiated by a commission under Klaus von Dohnanyi of the University of Hamburg in 2004 the criteria for survival for the humanities in a quite severe cut-down was the relevance of the individual studies to business life. The cutbacks were based on a simple analysis of what the business sector would demand of its employees in 2012.  If the subject was relevant for the cities’ major source of income, i.e. trade, it survived; otherwise it was cut dramatically, sometimes fully abolished. Now, the focus in Hamburg is on languages, preferably the languages of large new business partners as China, and media studies, with immediate marketing relevance. In fact the humanities at Hamburg University have been reduced to a business school. As mentioned above, this cut-down made Richard Rorty, a frequent guest of the German universities, ask the rhetorical question: Do German politicians know what universities are there for? And the answer he gave was a resounding NO. His argument was along liberal educational lines. The high level of German secondary and tertiary education would suffer dramatically under these cuts. In a comparison with the American scene Rorty stated that it would be considered “a bad joke” if some U.S. state government was to suggest a similar cut of the humanities at any higher education institution.[xxi]

The Danish politicians have not yet gone as far as their Hamburg colleagues. A recent report issued by the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, which is responsible for the universities, deals with an overview of the developmental prospects of the humanities in higher education.[xxii] The affinity to Hamburg nonetheless shows itself on the very first page, where the committee signalizes the nature of this ‘overview’; all references to humanities research or to the job market in education (more than half of the job market) are excluded from the report, which is supposed to inform the ministry on future policy in the field. This signalizes a strong focus on what is referred to as transferable skills in the British debate. The report constructs the humanities as dealing with the manipulation of ‘meanings’ (‘betydning’), and focuses on this aspect of business life in the future knowledge society. It is explicitly stressed that the ideas of ‘human qualities’ and ‘soft competencies’ of the humanities are based on deep misunderstandings. These subjects are just as ‘hard’ and ‘formal’ as the natural sciences. The result is a severing of any educational function of the humanities apart from transferable “meaning” exercises. This in my opinion is what comes out of an unhappy marriage between ‘Wissenschaft’ and business life.

                      The original ministerial commission actually asks far more visionary questions than the report answers. There is a plea for comparative research, for the committee to investigate the functions and developments of the humanities in countries we tend to compare ourselves with along with questions of the possibility of non-humanist students taking modules in the humanities. These aspects are not touched at all in the report. If this report is to serve as the guidelines for future Danish humanities policy it certainly does not look too good from a broader educational viewpoint. For the purpose of this article, however, it is interesting to note that the humanities are discussed in strict employability terms and only one area is discussed: the employability in the business sector.

 

Concluding pros and con’s

Could the Bologna process be an occasion for the European bachelor to be remodelled along the lines of the American liberal arts model? Could the humanities prove their relevance for non-specialists in European higher education?

                      The Norwegian university historian Fredrik Thue commented that the American model was based on two important features of the American society. Firstly the plurality of society and also its institutions of higher learning gave rise to a broad variety of educational rationales pursued by individual institutions. The whole picture seemed less attractive to Thue than the usually selected elite examples, in that the humanities were not too well of in a lot of undergraduate programs. One could add to Thues argument the diagnosis of a national report on the humanities in higher education by William J. Bennet, To Reclaim a Legacy:  often the required courses in western civilisation decayed into mere ”bus trips of the west.”[xxiii] Secondly, Thue stated that it can be difficult to copy traits of the American scene to the European arena, because of the high level of educational and civic idealism in the American tradition. The counterpart of this in Europe would be “Americanisation through the state,” which would not result in the same civic response as in America.

                      There are nevertheless interesting examples of how to create liberal arts colleges in the midst of Europe. At the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands there are both a truly ‘American’ residential college and a program of liberal arts in the existing university. These examples show that it is not necessary to implement the whole of the American model to achieve some of the advantages of the liberal arts model.[xxiv]

                      One comment made in the Danish report mentioned above may be true. The self- perception in the Danish humanities may prove to be an obstacle to valuable reforms. The insistence on the high scholarly level of all offered courses could make the humanities unattainable for anybody other than highly specialized future researchers and secondary level teachers. The vision to be proposed here would be that of a much wider scope of students taking electives in the humanities even though they were majoring in business, law, medicine or any other fields. If the broader view of the American higher education vision is adopted, there would be no problem in showing the enormous relevance of the humanities in higher education for all in the future knowledge society.

One suggestion in this direction would be to reconsider the strict connection between ‘Wissenschaft’ and the curriculum. Ethical and political concerns could be dealt with without being ‘Wissenschaft’ in the narrow sense, and still be very relevant in the creation of a broadly reflective citizenship. Nevertheless, it is important to keep an eye on the quality of the curriculum, which the European research affinity seems to have ensured quite successfully. Greater Expectations points to undergraduate research as one way to enhance quality in American colleges. A solution could be a compromise: to keep a close contact between research and curriculum, but also take into account other more ethical and educational concerns in suggesting valuable parts of curriculum for the individual student. One could adopt a more material sense of relevance of the humanities; What they teach is relevant to life and work, not only how they teach. The view on the humanities could be educational as opposed to narrowly research oriented, but of course research and/or scholarship should continuously be a part of any university scholar’s duties and rights.

The British scholar on higher education Gerard Delanty noted that he much preferred the continental transformative view of curriculum to the Anglo-Saxon reproductive.[xxv] This application of (value-laden) adjectives is certainly to be taken seriously. Firstly, however, I would prefer to see both kinds of curriculum as potentially transformative. The reading of a classic does not have to be strictly reproductive, but rather, in the understanding of the German philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer, be a totally new event in both the personal history of a student and in the general development of society. Gadamer uses the phrase the merging of horizons to clarify that what happens in the interpretation of a classic is certainly not only reproduction, but a genuine productive and transforming reception in time of a specific work of thought (‘Wirkungsgeschichte’).[xxvi] Secondly, there can be distinguished between formal and material cultivation. I would call the transformative aspect the formal hallmark of the Wissenschaft-curriculum and the reproductive aspect a material aspect of true scholarship. In this use of concepts there is something to be said for both kinds of cultivation. Where the formal cultivation supplies method and rigor the material cultivation supplies contextualization, and establishes a broad outlook or world view in the student.

In the American liberal arts colleges, we have institutions that take on themselves an educational role far beyond mere professional employability, a fact that has been eagerly acknowledged by American educational and societal thinkers. The college institution tries to carry a large burden of leading to civic engagement, moral responsibility and lately also global and environmental awareness. In 1963 Clark Kerr stated that the American ‘multiversity’ would become a model for the world, “This is said not to boast. It is simply that the imperatives that have molded the American university are at work around the world” and since Bologna he could appear to be right.[xxvii]

To recapitulate the arguments, there are quite a few good reasons to get inspired by the American model. At its best, the American liberal arts college facilitates a breadth of cultivation, what some consider true Bildung, it is relevant for life rather than just for work, it has a broader agenda than Wissenschaft alone and it includes ethics, civic engagement and the instilling of a global outlook in its students. Moreover, it seems to give back to the humanities their inherently educational function inspiring all students.

 

Literature

Arnold, M. (1932 (1869)). Culture and Anarchy. London.

Bennett, W. J. (1984). To reclaim a legacy. A report on the humanities in higher education. USA: National Endowment for the Humanities.

Buck, P. H., Finley, J. H., Demos, R., Hoadley, L., Hollinshead, B. S., Jordan, W. K., et al. (1945). General Education in a Free Society. Report of the Harvard Committee. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard College.

Gadamer, H. G. (1990). Wahrheit und Methode (6 ed. Vol. 1). Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).

Gumbrecht, H. U. (2004). The Task of the Humanities, Today. In H. J. C. Jensen (Ed.), The Object of Study in the Humanities. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum.

Haue, H. (2003). Almendannelse som ledestjerne. En undersøgelse af almendannelsens funktion i dansk gymnasieundervisning 1775-2000. Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag.

Hesseldahl, M., Nørregård-Nielsen, H. E., Øhrgaard, P., Holm, I. W., Lauridsen, K. M., Kyndrup, M., et al. (2005). Humanistiske kandidater og arbejdsmarkedet. Rapport fra arbejdsgruppen om de humanistiske universitetsuddannelser og fremtidens arbejdsmarked. København: Ministeriet for videnskab, teknologi og innovation.

Kerr, C. (1963). The Uses of the University. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Kimball, B. A. (1986). Orators & Philosophers. A History of the Idea of Liberal Education. New York: Teachers College Press.

Lyotard, J.-F. (1984 (1979)). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Marquard, O. (1958). Skeptiche Methode im Blick auf Kant. Freiburg-München: Karl Alber.

Ramaley, J. (2002). Greater Expectations. A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College. National Panel Report. Washington DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Ritter, J. (2003). Die Aufgabe der Geisteswissenschaften in der modernen Gesellschaft (1963). In Metaphysik und Politik: Studien zu Aristoteles und Hegel. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Rorty, R. (2004, 31.08.2004). Wissen deutsche Politiker, wozu Universitäten da sind? Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, p. 35.

Rothblatt, S. (1993). The limbs of Osiris: liberal education in the English-speaking world. In S. R. a. B. Wittrock (Ed.), The European and American university since 1800. Historical and sociological essays (pp. 19-73). Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Rothblatt, S. (2003). The Living Arts. Comparative and Historical Reflections on Liberal Education. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Schelsky, H. (1963). Einsamkeit und Freiheit. Idee und Gestalt der deutschen Universität und ihrer Reformen. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt.

 

 

---

[i] Rothblatt, 2003

[ii] Schelsky, 1963, p.79f

[iii] Schelsky, 1963

[iv] Kerr, 1963

[v] Kimball, 1986, s.164

[vi] Conversations with Gumbrecht at Stanford University January 2005, and Gumbrecht, 2004

[vii] Rothblatt, 1993, s.60

[viii] Rothblatt, 1993, s.57

[ix] Kimball, 1986, s.218f.

[x] Arnold, 1932 (1869) s.6 og s.70.

[xi] Buck et al., 1945, p.xiv.

[xii] ibid p.53

[xiii]  ibid. p.54

[xiv] Buck et al., 1945, s.58f

[xv] Ramaley, 2002, s.4

[xvi] Ramaley, 2002, s.5

[xvii] Lyotard, 1984 (1979)

[xviii] Ramaley, 2002, s.44

[xix] Haue, 2003

[xx] Marquard, 1958; Ritter, 2003

[xxi] Rorty, 2004

[xxii] Hesseldahl et al., 2005

[xxiii] Bennett, 1984

[xxiv] For the university program see http://www.las.uu.nl/onderwijs/gep.shtml and for the residential college see http://www.ucu.uu.nl/

[xxv] Conference homepage: http://ugle.svf.uib.no/admorg/default.asp?strId=4173&kategori=35

[xxvi] Gadamer, 1990

[xxvii] Kerr, 1963, p.86