World Yearbook of Education 1971/2

Higher Education in a Changing World

Brian Holmes, David G. Scanlon, W.R. Niblett, Brian Holmes, David G. Scanlon, W.R. Niblett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136168130
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Published in the year 2005, the World Yearbook of Education 1971/2 is a valuable contribution to the field of Major Works.

Section I: Introduction

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Higher Education and Society

Brian Holmes

While it is not easy to identify models of society in which the first universities were born it is less difficult to describe, as Hastings Rashdall has done, some of the main features of the latter. It was hoped that in this section some analysis would be made of the relationships which philosophers have thought ought to exist between institutions of higher education and the rest of society. Contributors have not speculated on what kind of society we are today looking for except incidentally. In this section the attention of contributors was drawn to a model of the university based upon traditional concepts. These were that the university ought to be a community of scholars dedicated to a search for knowledge for its own sake. Another concept is that the university community, because of the functions it serves, ought to be free to express radical opinions and yet be protected. It ought also to be free to formulate academic policy without interference from church or secular authorities who should recognize the privileged position of the university community. Again within the community of scholars, academic freedom has been taken to mean that individual professors ought to be free to accept or reject students as they think fit, to discourse on subjects of their choice in a way they think best and pass or fail students on the basis of their own criteria of scholarship. By the same token the tradition has granted to students freedom to come and go as they please, to attend from a wide range of subjects and to express their displeasure in a variety of ways.

Against the backcloth of modern society will these concepts of the university any longer suffice?

A nostalgia for the past (Montague, pp. 15–26) continues to inform the more conservative elements among senior members of the university. The constant threat to university autonomy and academic freedom (Limiti, pp. 27–35) is a reality in many countries today, as was evident during the nineteen-fifties when the search for subversive elements was carried into universities in the USA. The evolution of a national style in this country (Brick, pp. 36–61) and some present dilemmas facing the universities serve to illustrate in what ways some of the medieval concepts of the university have been and are now being challenged. The English tradition has also deviated from the original model in some respects. The inclusion during the nineteenth century of technological studies within the university framework (Armytage, pp. 62–74) has given to present discussions (Burgess, pp. 75–89) a particular English flavour. Everywhere there is a search for solutions which will do violence neither to common traditions nor to unique national practices.

Some of these national differences can be understood more readily against the theoretical models based on concepts of society, man and knowledge (Cowen, pp. 90–107). Comparative articles (Cerych and Furth pp. 108–119, Suchodolski, pp. 120–134, and Froese, pp. 135–146) illustrate how in their own ways academics and philosophers are trying to formulate effective new policies for the universities and with statesmen are striving to give to these proposals practical expression.

One thing is certain; until some of the present issues regarding the societal role of the university have been resolved the development of higher education is bound to show paradoxes.

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The Historic Function of the University

H. Patrick Montague

There has never been, in the long history of the university, so much dissent, so much discussion, so much pessimism regarding its future, as there is today. Current events tend to overshadow its past, and sooner or later, those who express most concern about its present situation, and are least optimistic about its future, may find it rewarding to examine more closely what there is in its past which we are lacking today. Like so many other great institutions, the university evolved as a mighty instrument designed, by its very nature, not only to shape itself to the requirements of contemporary society, but to act as the corrective for a society which may be in process of losing its way.

If the university has a function, it must be stated, and if its function is to be stated, then it can only be against the background of its history. This, it will be said, has been done many times, but there are two important factors to be borne in mind in expressing reserves as to the merits of a further inquiry. One is that even such illustrious university historians as Hastings Rashdall¹ clearly identify the beginnings of the modern university with the recognition of the Studium Generate in Bologna and Paris in the twelfth century, whereas, in fact, the traditions which lay deep in the thoughts of the students of Bologna who launched the Universitas, had more than seven centuries of life before that event.¹

The second factor is that the universities of today clearly reveal a variety of functions. By contrast, the dissent within the universities shows a homogeneous pattern, a fact which makes it seem constructive to return once again to its origins, not, in this case, of the student University of Bologna, nor of the Masters' University of Paris, but of the schools from which they sprang. Only in this way is it possible to see exactly what the founders of the Universitas were so eager to preserve, and what it was that they wanted to hand on to posterity.

Clearly, in their day, they were interested in preserving the function of the Studium as it had been understood for seven centuries. Equally, eight centuries later, mankind may reasonably want to know what this function was, and how, and where, it still operates. One thing is certain, that it is not universally accepted. Until we decide what it was, we cannot hope to decide what it is, and until we decide what it is, we cannot hope to reach a solution to the problems of the modern university.

The Studium

It is specially important to record the fact that when the students of Bologna formed their Universitas, they did not initiate a school of higher scholarship in Europe. That was already there, in the Studium of Bologna, one of a number of centres of learning. What these students did was to form a guild of students to safeguard their privileges and rights, a historic decision which undoubtedly led to a series of events which created the university and put the Studium for ever after into the class of those institutions which Hastings Rashdall tells us were the particular genius of the Middle Ages.

The records of Bologna University² show that there were about 10,000 students in their Studium when they formed the Universitas late in the twelfth century, a fact which gave the Studium the promise of continuity. When one considers that in Italy alone, there was another Studium, of great renown and greater antiquity than Bologna, at Salerno, and many others, it is easy to accept the fact that the actual launching of the Universitas was not the beginning of higher scholarship in Europe. It is also a fact that the schools of Paris and Oxford had a vigorous existence and were moving towards a solution to similar problems as those of the Studium of Bologna when the students there made their move. The schools of Paris were not the only schools, nor the oldest, in France. The schools of Oxford were not the only schools, nor the oldest, and possibly not even the greatest in England.

The antiquity of the Studium, the collection of schools each under a teacher, is a matter of precise record. A series of eminent scholars, notably the Germans, Kuno Meyer, Strabo, Wattenbach and Zimmer, and French medievalists, such as De Jubainville and Darmesteter, have stated that the scholarship represented by the Studium, not only began, but was sustained for centuries, by the schools of Ireland, a fact which gives the Studium a continuous history back to the fifth century, and possibly even earlier. Moreover, these schools sent their scholars to found and sustain many others throughout Western Europe.

Seamus McManus, in The Story of the Irish Race, quotes one European authority after another in this account of the debt that European scholarship owes to those Irish schools, two of which had even in the early centuries as many as 7,000 students each. One of the most generous tributes ever paid by the scholars of one country to those of another was when, in 1844, the heads of the German Colleges presented an address to Daniel O'Connell in which they expressed the debt of gratitude of the German people to the Irish scholars who rescued Germany from barbarism and ignorance. A still more striking tribute came from a French medievalist who declared that the Renaissance began, not in Italy in the twelfth century, but in Ireland in the fifth. The city of Armagh, he says, was by virtue of its schools the metropolis of civilization.³

It is, obviously, a profitable exercise to examine briefly the function of these schools and what traditions they embodied which the scholars of the twelfth century were intent on preserving. There is, fortunately, a source of information which makes it possible to define the role of the teachers and students in these ancient schools more so, perhaps, than it has been later. For the Brehon Laws of Ireland contain specific references to the system, which indicate that the privileges of the scholars were guaranteed. Such were the freedom to study, and the autonomy of the schools. The relationship of teacher and student was protected and, by law, the student was obliged to support his teacher even in sickness and in his old age.

There can be no question that, even in those days, society had a positive role for the scholar. He was not only allowed to travel, but he was encouraged, and trained for that purpose. The universality of the Studium was written into its very origins.

Consistent with this purpose, not only did the students move freely from teacher to teacher, a process which indicates the origin of our modern courses of study, but also from school to school. It was also consistent with the universal purpose of the schools that students came from many lands. Perhaps the most significant feature of these early centres of scholarship, in the context of our modern concept, was that professional training was a declared purpose from the beginning. For these schools were both lay and religious. They had both lay and religious teachers and students. They taught both rich and poor, and the Brehon Laws made provision for the latter. They attracted students from virtually the entire known world. Their purpose was to produce what we would now call graduates, but it was also their purpose to encourage their scholars to attack the frontiers of knowledge.

It is not relevant in this study to pursue the story of these prototypes of the Studium. By the time the Universitas was formed in Bologna, there were such schools all over Western Europe, not only of Irish origins, notably in France, Northern Italy and Western and Southern Germany. The traditions were firmly established, and it was these traditions that the students of Bologna and the masters of Paris sought to perpetuate in the universities which arose after the launching of the Universitas.

The Student and the Masters' Universities

The Studium of Bologna, a group of schools, known as Societates, was internationally famous for studies in civil and canon law and attracted to the city students from as many as sixteen recognized nations. It was, indeed, the prestige of the Studium and its importance to the city, which sparked off the dispute which led to the momentous events of that period. For the Commune of Bologna represented a new element in European affairs, and certainly a new element in the long history of the Studium. The citizens of Bologna regarded the Studium as a major asset to their city, and they intended to curb the privileges of the scholars as a preliminary to bringing the Studium under the control of the Commune.

They were obviously unaware of the strength of the traditions of the Studium. The freedom of movement was written into its very origins, and the citizens of Bologna were dealing with something quite different from civic affairs when they attempted to impose restrictions on movement out of the city to prevent what was called the migratio, especially of teachers, since this would undoubtedly mean the loss of students as well. The foreign students were the first to react, by forming the associations known as nationes, out of which, incidentally, arose the Rector, elected by the students, and destined to become the first head of the university. The second move was the formation of the Universitas, the guild of students. Thus the Commune of Bologna was presented with two problems both serious in those times. One was the determined attitude of the foreigners, many of them rich and of noble families. What happened to them was quite likely to attract to Bologna the attention of one or other of the universal authorities, the Pope or the Emperor, both of whom were beginning to view with some concern the ambitions of such as the citizens of Bologna.

It was the second problem, the Universitas, which brought about exactly what the Commune wanted to avoid, a more or less open confr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Editors
• Editorial Board
• Contents
• Editors' Introduction
• Universities, Higher Education and Society
• Section I Higher Education and Society
• Section II Factors Influencing Policy in Higher Education
• Section III National Policies
• Section IV Selected Bibliography
• List of Contributors
• Index