Peder Saether Symposium (March 9-10, 2000)
Professor Thorsten Nybom Presentation
Prof. Thorsten Nybom, History, Uppsala University, Sweden; Stiftungs-Professor, Humboldt University, Berlin
On Universities, Revolutions, and ICT: Some personal thoughts
In my brief intervention, I will at least try to stick to my professional trade, which is history. Thus, this will be a brief and certainly simplistic introductory discussion on a couple of key concepts that are both central to human historical development, in general, and to historical research, in particular. I do this mainly because these very concepts have always been used and misused as unproblematic analytical and descriptive tools and categories whenever mankind and human institutions are going through what they consider to be an era of rapid, irreversible, and fundamental change.
Whenever this happens in politics, art, technology, or communications, we almost instantly start to talk about "x-revolutions", "x-quantum leaps", etc. By doing so, we are not only indicating that we are experiencing a decisive qualitative change in our daily private and professional lives, but we are also convinced that the impacts of these processes will be extremely rapid and far-reaching. Those among us who are the most naive, and usually lacking even the most rudimentary form of historical knowledge (i.e., economists) will even maintain that they can predict the precise outcomes of these revolutionary processes in practically every walk of life.
My short exercise should be considered primarily as a humble reminder of the fact that concepts like "revolution", "change and continuity", and "speed" are notoriously tricky to implement and use in the actual analysis and explanations of historical events, actors, and processes, and hence they are also intensely and almost perpetually debated among historians. For instance, historians have not even reached a moderate or provisional form of consensus on the matter of when a process of change in politics, economy, culture, or technology should be defined as a "proper" revolution.
In my deliberations, which certainly will be coloured by my own European-continental background, I will furthermore try to stick to the main theme of this conference, in so far as I will concentrate on fundamental changes in (Information-Communication) Technology and higher education, and the possible interdependence between these two phenomena. More precisely, I will try to discuss if, and if so in what way, previous fundamental changes in higher education had anything to do with leaps in (information-communication) technology, as far as its fundamental organisational and curricular structures, pedagogy, main societal obligations, and basic self-understanding are concerned.
I will start with one well-known, and never really disputed, revolution in the field of Information-Communication Technology, which I believe Peter Gärdenfors mentioned in a previous session of the conference: Johann Gutenberg's invention, or rather development, of the printing press in Mainz in the 1450s. As Peter pointed out, this path-breaking innovation in information-communication technology did not have any visible or substantial effect or impact on the existing mode of teaching and pedagogy at the university – at least not for another 350 years. Nevertheless, it did, in a fundamental way, change the content of education and also the role and self-understanding of the university teachers. For the university professor, one could say that this marked the final step from pure "information service" to original knowledge production. From now on, the professor had to produce his own lectures. So, even if he still was using the traditional form of lecturing, he was not supposed to just read from old scriptures and canonical books. Now his main obligation had become to make comments, and preferably intelligent ones, about texts that were already available to, and sometimes even read by, his students.
In the era of the emerging nation-state and the emancipation of the university from the church, this fairly quickly changed the role and the (self-)understanding of what a university, a university professor, and a university student were, or should be. To take the latter, for instance, without Gutenberg's innovation it would be quite impossible to understand and explain the "student revolution" of the late 15th century, instigated at the Wittenberg University by that notorious young theologian Martin Luther, and which soon became the prime mover of Protestantism.
Even if the new ICT of the mid 15th century obviously played a decisive part in changing the societal role and standing of higher learning, curiously enough, it neither had any visible effect or impact on the overall organisational, institutional, and curricular structure of higher education nor, and perhaps even more surprising, did it lead to any substantial reforms of the pedagogical content of higher learning. As I already mentioned, the actual delay from Gutenberg's invention to the introduction of pedagogical forms made possible by that very technology was roughly 350 years, i.e., until the modern seminar was introduced as a central form of teaching and instruction.
In the last two centuries, one could identify at least three major revolutions in the history of the university. But none of those revolutionary changes had anything to do directly or primarily with rapid (information) technological change. The first and perhaps still most famous of these seminal shifts occurred in 1810, at my present university in Berlin. The immediate driving forces behind this truly "revolutionary" break in the history of the university, which has gone down in history as the establishment of the so called Humboldt University, can be found in the chaotic political situation in virtually all European countries – and particularly in Germany – after the Napoleonic wars. Another fundamentally important source of inspiration was, of course, an elaborate ideology, or rather philosophy of knowledge and education, grounded in German Idealism and Neo-humanism.
The second "revolution", the emergence of the modern research university, which in reality brought about a gradual restructuring and reorganisation of all university systems (at least in the so called Western world), took place in the period between 1870 and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. The driving forces behind these fundamental and simultaneous changes came from within science and scientific theory itself. With the emergence of the modern natural sciences, it became virtually impossible to define the scientific endeavour and profession as "the pursuit of curious individual gentlemen of ingenious minds". After Einstein, Planck, Bohr, Rutherford, et al., modern science had turned into a collective task or "intellectual industry" which demanded scale, organisation, and, perhaps above all, money.
But even if technological innovation per se cannot be said to have played an important role in this process of restructuring university life, the short- and long-term technological consequences of this internal scientific revolution were to become almost "cosmic". From this point on, and increasingly so, "Big Science" did not only become heavily dependent on modern, sophisticated technology, it also became the absolute necessary prerequisite for, and power-house of, this path-breaking new tool, soon to be called "high tech". Or to put it differently, as John D. Bernal realized already in the 1930s, and Vannevar Bush feared in the 1940s, the demonstrated tremendous impact, or obvious and immediate "social function of science" had ultimately made science and scientific training too important a matter to be left to the scientists. I just want us to contemplate the undisputed historical fact that without the boys and girls on the rivers Cam, Spree, and on the banks of Öresund – a little bit later, also, on the banks of the San Francisco Bay and Lake Michigan – we probably would not have had the good fortune of attending this conference at this illustrious university, which in itself can serve as one of the best illustrations there is of the impacts and outcomes of "the research university revolution"!
The third university revolution, which Martin Trow in his classic article from 1973 already defined as the ultimate shift from elite to mass higher education, and which started in the US after World War II and arrived in Europe in the 1960’s and 1970’s, was a purely externally driven process and had also very little to do with changes in (information) technology. It was primarily caused by growing demographic and democratic demands and by the immediate intellectual and professional needs of the emerging welfare state. In ten years time, this revolution had changed, or in some cases even destroyed, a substantial number of the European higher education systems – with the possible exception perhaps of the English.
If there was any kind of interrelation between technology and the ordinary European universities in this entire process, it was perhaps primarily a negative one. From this point on, and increasingly so, the sophisticated branches and producers of the emerging information communication technology and other high tech branches, at least partly, stopped interacting with the European university. This process of estrangement, together, of course, with other interrelated political, economic, etc. factors, is certainly not unimportant when trying to explain the constantly widening technological gap between the US and Europe after the Second World, and particular from the 1960s onwards. Nowadays, even educated people seem to forget that if there was a gap in technological and scientific know-how in 1945, then it was probably to Europe´s advantage – it was actually the US lagging behind. To deny, like many European academics still do, that the quality and performance of the respective higher education systems played a crucial role in bringing about this rapid and massive shift in the distribution of intellectual power, is not only a sign of historical ignorance but also an example of institutionalized continental arrogance, or even sheer stupidity!
Finally, I have come to the present and at least partly ICT-driven revolution of the early ‘Twenty Hundreds’, as we say in Sweden. And now I am getting into even deeper waters, simply because I am talking about the present and about the future, fields where the historian can claim no particular competence. But in order to make it a little bit less risky, I will restrict my comments to deliberations on the present European situation.
One obvious observation is that the ICT revolution is coming at a time when several of the European higher education systems are in all kinds of political, structural, institutional, and financial trouble. First, during the last 15 years there has been a sharp rise in student enrollment, which means that several of the European higher education systems have become almost universal higher education systems. Second, in many cases this has happened without any fundamental changes in the existing, often unitary and inflexible, European state systems. Accordingly, this growth has caused substantial structural, institutional, and intellectual dysfunctions and deficits. Third, and to make things even worse, this rapid growth of the student body has been accompanied by unchanged or, in many cases, even reduced levels of state funding. This could be seen as an indisputable indication of the European states' and central governments' gradual retreat from their traditional obligation to be the ultimate guardian angel of their national higher education institutions. In the last 15 years, European central governments have turned into just another "stake-holder" who is primarily treating the universities not as a public good as such, but rather as just another political means for achieving all sorts of political ends. It is, for instance, quite clear that European governments have expanded their higher education systems in the 1990s primarily because they want to reduce the unemployment level among young people.
Against this background, one could very well start wondering if the sudden and unqualified euphoria among European politicians and higher education bureaucrats over the alleged unlimited possibilities opened up by the introduction of ICT in higher education has anything to do with a serious will to promote the pursuit of qualified knowledge. Rather, one could suspect that they primarily see ICT as the magic tool to reduce costs in higher education or as an excuse to avoid the necessary, and long overdue, fundamental reforms in most European higher education systems. In the worst of all possible cases they – together with their allies in academia – will succumb to the illusion that a massive introduction of ICT will make it possible to keep the existing unitary and inflexible higher education system which, in reality, has been more or less obsolete for over 25 years. This "traffick" does not become more palatable from the fact that it is often carried out under the fraudulent label of "Preserving the Humboldtian legacy".
Finally, in view of the present, "revolutionary" situation and also after listening to what has been said at the conference, I would like to remind you all of the fact that the answer to revolutions in higher education is not always – and has not been – to expand the numbers of tasks, duties, and obligations performed by the university. I have the slightly worrying impression that we, being caught in a curious type of a-historic and simplistic analogy-thinking, have a tendency to believe that the developments of the 1960-70s are forever true and relevant. In short, when, and if, the university has to respond to "new challenges" or is asked to "reformulate its agenda" or "mission", we (the universities) tend to conclude that it must take on any new task or responsibility "society", on an almost daily basis, suggests or demands. This is not true, simply because "society" very seldom actually knows what it really "needs"!
The two first "revolutions" mentioned above, which thoroughly reorganised and rejuvenated the Euro-American universities and turned them into the real intellectual and industrial powerhouses of their societies, had nothing to do with expansion for at least two centuries. Quite the contrary. Wilhelm von Humboldt's exceptionally successful institutional reforms of 1810 in Berlin meant retraction and "purification". The establishment of the modern research university at the turn of the previous century also meant that the universities defined their core mission in a much more restricted way than they had previously done. So, when we are today discussing how to respond to the "new challenges and demands" and to "redefine our new role/mission" in society, we should perhaps also remember that all great universities have, at the same time, been institutionally adaptive, intellectually creative, and ideologically conservative institutions.
Doomed, as we all are, to live in a post-modern era, where every other form of human creative activity – whether in politics, art, media, entertainment, or business – seems to implode into a common superficial "globo-cultural" mish-mash, it is probably more important than ever that we do our utmost to preserve the university as the last remaining independent, institutionalised critical force of modern western society. And I am not at all sure that the best way of fulfilling that obligation is by succumbing to almost every possible popular, political, social, economic, etc. demand that is being put forward by all kinds of usually self-appointed "representatives of society".
But in the pursuit of this our worthy, nay noble, mission we should, of course, implement, develop, and use ICT as extensively and intensely as possible. After all, we invented the damned thing in the first place!
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