Being a University

Ronald Barnett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136906008
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

There is no single idea of the university. Ever since its medieval origin, the concept of the university has continued to change. The metaphysical university gave way successively to the scientific university, and then to the corporate and the entrepreneurial university. But what, then, might lie ahead?

Being a University both charts this conceptual development and examines the future possibilities for the idea of the university. Ronald Barnett pursues this quest through an exploration of pairs of contending concepts that speak to the idea of the university – such as space and time; being and becoming; and culture and anarchy. On this foundation is developed an imaginative exposition of possible ideas of the university, including the liquid university and the authentic university.

In the course of this inquiry, it is argued that:

• Any thought that the idea of the entrepreneurial university represents the end-point of the evolution of the idea of the university has to be abandoned. The entrepreneurial university is excessively parochial and ill-matched to the challenges facing the university
• A responsibility of the university is precisely that of working out an imaginative conception of its future possibilities. The boldest and largest thinking is urgently required
• The fullest expression of the university's possibilities lies in a reclamation of the universal aspirations that lay in earlier ideas of the university. The ecological university represents just such a universal aspiration, suited to the unfolding demands of the future.

Being a University will be of wide interest, to institutional leaders and managers, higher education planners, academics in all disciplines and students of higher education, in educational policy and politics, and the philosophy, sociology and theory of education, and indeed, anyone who believes in the future of the university.

Part I
Critiquing being

1
The metaphysical university

Introduction

For two thousand years or more, we were in the presence of the metaphysical university. This was a university that was informed by large ideas as to the relationship between – successively – man and God, man and the universe, man and the State, and man and Spirit. In the West, from the Greeks onwards, but in other traditions of higher learning as well (in Persia, India and China), a full encounter with knowledge was felt to open up new forms of human being. Typically, pure knowing was felt to free one from ignorance and illusion so that one could see the world as it really was. Plato’s metaphor of the cave offered a stark image of such a view: being confined within a cave, one had no way of knowing that one’s perceptions of the world were but a flickering shadow, without substance, of the world as it was. But with knowledge, one could come into the light. The university came to be understood as an institution through which individuals could come to stand in a new and surer relationship with the world.

Over time, as stated, an encounter with knowledge was variously held to open up a relationship with God, or the universe, or the State or even being itself. The university was the institutional and pedagogic embodiment of such ideas: the university offered salvation in one or other of these forms. These are large and abstract ideas. They are, indeed, metaphysical ideas: they conjure images of entirely new relationships with the supra-sensible order of things. Intellectual activities promised a displacement from the immediate world into a different world, not ordinarily even glimpsed. One might even be tempted to speak of the grand narratives of the university. Here are the big ideas that supplied a legitimacy to what, in largely illiterate societies, were arcane sets of activities.

But what, if anything, might such ideas hold for us today? Can ‘the metaphysical university’ be helpful to us in the twenty-first century? Surely, such a way of thinking of the university should be abandoned? After all, that whole way of understanding the university was in large part the clerkly class legitimising itself and its activities. Strangely, perhaps, it is just possible that that way of thinking about the university does not have to be abandoned entirely.

Metaphysical or transcendent?

Connected to the idea of the metaphysical is the idea of the transcendent. It could even be suggested that, strictly speaking, instead of ‘the metaphysical university’, we should rather speak of ‘the transcendent university’. ‘The metaphysical university’ and ‘the transcendent university’ are overlapping ideas but each has some relevant nuances.

In ‘the transcendent university’, through his own cognitive efforts, the scholar not only can glimpse an entirely new mode of being above and beyond the immediate world in a non-physical universe but also, through his own cognitive efforts,¹ can embark on a journey into such an ethereal world. The scholar can transcend this rather base world, with its impurities and corruption, and ascend into a pure untainted world of ‘scholastic reason’ (Bourdieu, 2000); and a world that is ethically superior at that.² ‘The major philosophical goal of the medieval university … was “the pursuit of [divine] truth and learning”’ (Scott, 2006: 6–7).³

To speak of ‘the metaphysical university’ can also conjure this sense of transcending human experience. However, metaphysics is a broader idea than transcendence. In one of its many meanings, it denotes an ‘investigation of the nature, constitution and structure of reality’ (Audi, 1999: 563). So the idea of the metaphysical is less value-laden than the idea of the transcendent; it does not presuppose an elevated state of mind although it allows for that to emerge as one possibility. In this sense, metaphysics is a narrower term than transcendence. But it is also a larger term than transcendence in that it conveys a sense of a relationship being opened out with the world as a whole, or at least very large entities in the world. Here, the very term ‘metaphysical university’ gains weight from its affinity with ‘universe’, in implying the aim of gaining a cognitive state that is in unity and harmony with the whole universe. The unity of the metaphysical university corresponds to the unity of the universe, for this kind of university is a space for inquiry into every aspect of the universe.

The term ‘the metaphysical university’ is more helpful, therefore, than ‘the transcendent university’. ‘Transcendent’ presumes the outcome of the (metaphysical) inquiry before it starts, namely that it will offer an elevation into a purer state of mind. On the other hand, the term ‘metaphysical’ conveys a sense that the non-physical realm to which the university was going to grant access was all-encompassing and is less value-laden than ‘transcendent’. I shall, therefore, continue to speak of the metaphysical university.

Where is the mystery?

Why is it that writers have struggled for two centuries or more to elucidate the idea of the university? Even the nature of the task is not clear: is it an exercise in institutional history, in philosophy of education, in sociology, in value judgements, in personal wishful thinking or even perhaps in a poetic prose? What it is to engage in reflection on the idea of the university is an enigmatic matter, at once bewitching and elusive. The very idea of the idea of the university has become problematic (Rothblatt, 1997).

One reason for the problematic nature of reflection on the idea of the university is that the nature of the university is partly mysterious. Wherever universities are to be found, the idea of the university speaks to large, even if unspoken and unformulated, ideas as to the nature of man, of being, and of man’s relationships with the universe. Furthermore, these ideas may clash. The idea that gaining knowledge and understanding leads to insight into pure forms of being stands in stark contrast to a belief that gaining knowledge and understanding enables man to intervene in the world so as to control it to his own ends. It is, accordingly, impossible to give a full and unambiguous description of the entity that is a university. Hence, the philosopher, Gilbert Ryle, in his giving an allegedly non-explicit response, when asked by an overseas visitor in Oxford ‘Where is the University of Oxford?’ A university is not to be caught either by a list of its buildings or even – in a straightforward way – a list of its activities. A university is not even to be caught by a more discursive treatment, even by allusion to ideas, sentiments and hopes. It is not that these ideas, sentiments and hopes will clash – which they will – and that no agreed description of the university can be given. (Is the university an engine to help drive the economy forward or is it a major institution to promote enlightenment?) The fact that no consensus can be reached as to the purposes of the university is not the point here. Ultimately, a university is not the kind of entity that can be cashed out fully and adequately in language; it transcends language. It has an ineffable quality about it.

How is this? It is that a university has being. A university has its possibilities; and they are infinite. It has multiple options. Each university could be other than it is. But yet there are boundaries to what a university might be. Those boundaries have widened and are widening; and are becoming more open to negotiation. But still there are limits. Or, at least, the term ‘university’ has its place amid a horizon of ideas of university being. These ideas would include knowledge, truth, discussion, inquiry, authenticity, care, understanding, veracity, application, persons, critique, development and action. Strata of being overlay strata. Newer understandings of the university are caught by new clusters of sentiments, as to money, wealth, society, growth, control, problem nets, property, and power. Yet other understandings have formed of late around a sense of rules, regulations, audit, risk, procedures, systems and processes. And yet other understandings can be seen emerging, variously implied by life chances, the digital revolution, public engagement and citizenship.

There are layers attaching to the university’s being, therefore. And these layers have time horizons associated with them. The title of Heidegger’s ([1927] 1998) magnum opus, Being and Time, applies directly to the university. The university’s being is in time, backwards and forwards; the past, the present and the future.

There is mystery here. Our words, however poetic, cannot be adequate to this complexity of being. The university eludes us. Descriptions of what it has been and what it is are difficult enough. But the university has its possibilities ahead of it. Being possible (Heidegger, 1998: 183). But what is its being possible? How is it to go forward? How might it go forward and still do some justice to the very idea of the university? There is a double mystery here. There is mystery in the colloquial sense. ‘It’s a mystery’ can mean simply that the matter at hand is too complex for our cognitive powers to comprehend it. That has to be the case here. But there is a deeper mystery. The mystery of the university is that the sentiments, ideals and even practices with which it engages are in themselves mysterious. How is it that new ideas are formed? How is genuine teaching possible, so that students become themselves in new ways? How is it that students by and large maintain their will to go on learning? How is it that academics in different disciplines on occasions detect some rare thread that connects them to colleagues working in other fields such that universities are more than a collection of isolated departments? For all the understanding that we have of these matters, ultimately there is mystery here. In each case – and the cases could be multiplied – we are drawing in fundamental matters of human being, of life, of value.⁴ These are not matters that are ever going to be completely susceptible to the empirical study of higher education.

The mystery of the university is ubiquitous, therefore. Wherever we can honestly call an institution ‘a university’, we are in the presence of mystery. Those fortunate enough to work or to have worked in universities surely know this. The university doubtless falls short of realising its possibilities in every moment but yet they can be glimpsed daily. The university conjures both limits and limitlessness all at once. New ideas appear; students become themselves in new ways and know that that is the case; worthwhile acts are undertaken and played out, without sense of any monetary return. Hovering in the background is a value framework of truth, discovery, service, becoming, friendship, hospitality, care and solicitude, a value background that is seldom articulated or put to the test. And so universities have their being, move from one day to another, on the basis of trust, trust not only between individuals but also as a form of institutional trust that there is substance to this value background. There is mystery in all of these dimensions of the life of universities.

Ending the mystery

Why this reflection on mystery in a chapter on ‘the metaphysical university’? The connection is straightforward. In the metaphysical university, it was understood that its being was mysterious; that aspects of its being were beyond formal description and certainly beyond measurement. It was understood that the constitution of the university was layered. Yes, it had a physical presence, with its buildings; and yes, there were persons, masters and scholars, visibly present. But it was also understood that there were non-material presences associated with the university. It is unlikely that the popes and the kings who gave backing to the early universities in the West could have given an articulated account as to their understanding of ‘university’.⁵ It is true that that the individual colleges of the ancient universities were founded for specific purposes, but they were but a part of the larger university. And there, connotations of God, of service, of new understandings, and of contractual relationships with the wider realm had their presence.

The metaphysical university, therefore, almost by definition, was ultimately mysterious. It was seen as valuable, was granted value, even though full descriptions of it were out of range. They were out of range, admittedly, because in a semi-literate society, few possessed the cognitive and conceptual wherewithal even to essay a description. But anything approaching an articulate description of the metaphysical university was out of range, too. Its accompanying sentiments and insistent murmurings were too large and fuzzy to permit a clear description – a hinterland of God, Spirit, culture, being and the State forbade precision. And these presences worked their wonders to behold. How God, culture, being and the State came into play was never clear. But they were powerful presences none the less; presences that gave not just an extra-mural but an extra-worldly legitimacy to the university. All of that is lost; or almost so.

This is an age of explicitness. Matters have to be susceptible of measurement, of precise descriptions, and of rules, performance against which can be ascertained with objectivity. The assumption at work is that the world is completely available to man’s purview: ‘transparency’ becomes a watchword of this order.⁶ It is assumed that, given enough time – though time is seldom on one’s side – a full inventory of the world could be made. No entities should or need be left unattended. All can come into our descriptions and measurements. The whole world, the whole universe indeed, can be accounted for.

This is both a modern (that is, post-seventeenth-century) way of understanding the world and man’s relationship to it, and it is a particularly Western mode of thinking. On both counts, it is also associated with a scientific outlook and the rise of secularism. In all of this, there is a certain arrogance, with its sense that man can be the measure of all things; that nothing can or should escape his gaze. There need not be nor should there be any mystery left in the universe.

If this holds for the natural world, then it assuredly holds for man’s invented social institutions such as universities. The very idea of mystery is repudiated.⁷ It has been expunged from our formal language. Universities are now matter-of-fact places. Missions have explicitly to be set out; learning outcomes have to be stated; assessment rules have to be made fully transparent; likely employment routes have to be specified; the impact of research has to be spelt out even in advance of conducting the research; accounts have to rendered and risk has to be computed. Universities are no longer permitted to be places of mystery, of uncertainty, of the unknown. The mystery of universities has ended.

The loss of mystery

This passing of mystery is a double loss. Anyone seeking to suggest that the university is connected with ideas and sentiments that are beyond our descriptions is in for a hard time of it. They will be made to feel uncomfortable as their language discomforts the centres of power. Even talk of ‘values’ discomforts these days. There is a linguistic power structure at work that rules out a language that is not fully cashable in overt performance and measurement. The ‘performative university’ rules and with it comes a closing of the categories through which we might comprehend the university.

But this loss of metaphysics and mystery has a further aspect. In this closing of the language through which we can speak of the university, ...

Table of contents

• Foundations and Futures of Education
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Critiquing being
• Part II Contending concepts
• Part III Becoming possible
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Subject index
• Name index