Professor Alexander Schmidt (Friedrich Schiller University)
What can German debates on university reform around 1800 teach us for the ‘future university’?
This project aims to shed some new light on the current discussion
about the future of Higher Education by re-assessing the debates on
university reform in Germany around 1800. These debates are usually
considered as the starting point of what was later described as the
Humboldtian model of the German university, which, for more than a
century, had successfully combined teaching with research in ‘solitude
and freedom’ (Wilhelm v. Humboldt). As is well known this model had a
considerable influence on nineteenth-century university reforms across
Europe. Now that this model, eroded as the modern mass university
developed, has been decisively abandoned through the recent reforms
instituted by the Bologna Process it might be fruitful to take a fresh
look at the origins of modern university. The aim is challenge some of
the utilitarian orthodoxies of current university policies, such as
(European) standardization, commercialisation, and international
competitiveness, by recovering foundational reflections on the ends of
learning with respect to human development which played a central role
in designs for a new university around 1800. The project will mainly
address two aspects of the debate: ideas about the role of the
university in society; as well as concepts of the nature of man and
human reason as the philosophical foundations of science and learning.
I will question how these authors reflected on the tension
between the well acknowledged division of labour as a feature of
modernity on the one hand and the neo-classical ideal of integrated
personality as the aim of Bildung on the other. How did they try to
amalgamate the differentiation of disciplines with concepts of a
unified knowledge as basis for university research and learning? What
role did they attribute to the state in the management and sponsoring
of the university and how did they try to limit its authority with
respect to freedom of opinion? What solution can university education
provide for the ills of modern civilization such as social inequality
and the pursuit of luxury?
