1.1 Introduction
Universities have never before (in human history) been so significant (Collini 2012). The role of universities has also been a perennial question in the field of higher education. In defining and encapsulating the idea of the university, Wilhelm von Humboldt at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and John Henry Newman in the mid-nineteenth century made invaluable contributions. Humboldt’s idea of the university, as Holford puts it, ‘is freedom of scientific research and autonomy in teaching: for Newman, students, and their liberal education and character information, are at the heart of the idea of the university’ (2014, p. 13). An assumption they both shared is that the purpose of universities should be the pursuit of knowledge for individuals. The social role of universities was given attention, but with a greater focus on the individual contribution to society.
In today’s world, however, ‘modern information technology is spreading information more widely than ever before in history’ (Nye 2004, p. 1). The connections among both nations and industries have been largely increased. The commercialisation of higher education is being pushed ahead by governments worldwide (Bok 2004). As a result, the purpose of universities has changed in accordance with increasingly knowledge-driven economies, indicating that knowledge is required in order to make their contribution to society. This demands that degree courses need to be developed with the market’s needs in mind to ensure a good match between graduates’ competence and employers’ requirements (Schäffner 2012). This has also been the case for the translation programmes in both China and the UK.
In view of the above scene-setting, this chapter will introduce the roles of universities in history, and the changing roles of universities in the global climate of economic neoliberalism, and will then analyse how educational content and professional needs are balanced in degree courses and in the case of translation programmes. Moreover, as the foundation of the whole book, this chapter will also discuss how Translation Studies has been recognised as an academic discipline in both the West and China, and will also introduce the selection of the research objectives—case translation programmes—in this book.
1.2 Abstract and Situation: The Relationship Between Academia and Profession
1.2.1 The Roles of Universities in History
In history, academia was rooted in the ‘liberal arts of the historical trivium and quadrivium of Middle Ages’ (Kearns 2008, p. 187). The trivium included grammar, logic and rhetoric; while the quadrivium consisted of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. This scheme was then developed by the process of Renaissance humanism in the nineteenth century, leading to a greater emphasis on research than teaching alone (ibid.). The German educationist Wilhelm von Humboldt is a typical representative. University education was thought to foster research-type talent according to Humboldt (1809/1990). He also advocated the ideal of combining instruction and research. In short, the ideals of Humboldt formed the basis of our system of higher education. In the twentieth century, both teaching and research were emphasised as mass education and innovation are equally important. Humboldt’s idea is crucial to both Western and Eastern modern university education, and he at least suggests that there should be a link between theory and practice. Many other scholars have also expressed opinions on the ‘roles’ of universities. Newman, for example, proposed that the rationale for a university was the provision of a liberal education to contribute to the cultivation of the mind, as education is the application of philosophical rationality (Newman 1927). In other words, the perceived role of universities in society is as educators in the humanistic tradition (Anderman and Rogers 2012, p. 65). The essence of their activities, as Duderstadt (2002, p. 5) argues, can be summarised as ‘critical thinking, moral reasoning and judgement’. This represents education as being related to personal achievement, growth and fulfilment and the promotion of education for the social good (Lambert et al. 2007, p. 526). In short, traditionally the university has focused on the development of individuals. It tended to produce knowledge, to educate young generations and to spread culture and values, to name but a few goals.
1.2.2 The Changing Roles of Universities Under Neoliberalism
1.2.2.1 The Introduction of Neoliberalism
In the last two decades of the twentieth century, however, there have been dramatic changes in the nature of higher education since the arrival of neoliberalism, which first emerged in the 1970s as a new form of managerialism and governmentality 1 (Davies and Bansel 2007; Manteaw 2008), and was built on the belief that ‘market forces will bring prosperity, liberty, democracy and peace to the whole of humankind’ (Scholte 2000, p. 34). As defined by Harvey (2005, p. 2), neoliberalism is,
…a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedom and skills within an institutional framework, characterised by strong property rights, free markets and free trade.
This specifies that the key principles of neoliberalism are ‘market deregulation, state decentralisation, and reduced state intervention into economic affairs in general’ (Campbell and Pederson 2001, p. 1). Despite criticism, it is acknowledged that neoliberalism has been regarded as the reigning policy framework in contemporary globalisation (Scholte 2000, p. 35) and still influences today’s political, economic and cultural systems.
1.2.2.2 Major Changes in the HE Sector Caused by Neoliberalism
Although neoliberalism was primarily associated with the socio-economic domain, the scope of neoliberalism is not restricted to the economic sector, but has also been expanded to other spheres of life (e.g. political, cultural or ideological). The policies and practices that follow from neoliberalism have also influenced the purpose of higher education. According to Olssen and Peters (2005, p. 313), the predominance of neoliberalism during the 1980s and 1990s ‘has produced a fundamental shift in the way universities and other institutions of higher education have identified and justified their institutional existence’. To be more precise, neoliberalism takes educational systems out of state control and into the global marketplace (Stromquist 2002; Frake 2008), which causes a changing relationship between universities, the government, students, employers and the market.
The application of neoliberalism to the HE sector has three main aspects. Firstly, the traditional view of the HE sector as primarily a public good is transferred to the new view that the HE sector is principally a private good (Jiang 2005). In particular, the HE sector was largely funded by the state or public authorities, but the neo-liberal market-driven strategy has resulted in cuts to public spending on the HE sector by many governments (e.g. the UK, New Zealand, Australia). So universities are mainly funded by their direct beneficiaries (students themselves and their future employers) (ibid., 2005), and they need to diversify their revenues by building up partnerships with the business sector, which gives rise to burgeoning relationships between universities and private industry (Lambert et al. 2007).
Secondly, education is now defined as a tradeable service worldwide. For example, according to a UNESCO estimate, education was a $2 trillion global ‘industry’ in 2000 (Kathleen 2006, p. 6). In this sense, the HE sector has become a tradeable commodity in the new borderless HE market in which the student is now the ‘consumer’ or ‘client’, and higher education is the ‘supplier’ or ‘provider’ (Frake 2008; Jiang 2005; Jameson et al. 2012). HE, on this account, has become commercialised and commodified. Therefore, higher education nowadays has been metaphorically described as the ‘Tesco’ model of education ‘where learning is packaged and sold to suit economic need and consumer demand’ (Foster 2002, cited in Jameson et al. 2012, p. 25), and it is more about the development of human resources and economic prosperity (Lambert et al. 2007, p. 526).
Thirdly, neoliberalism brings about a new institutional relationship between the HE sector and wider society in respect of research, teaching and learning. As regards research, many universities began to consider the broader impacts of their research beyond academia including the impact on the economy, society, health, the environment, policymaking and culture. In terms of teaching and learning, despite debate, the idea of embedding employability into the curriculum has been recognised in most universities. With market and global forces, the HE sector is now required to supply suitably skilled graduates to the workplace. Therefore, the strategy of enhancing the skills of students in order to meet employers’ recruitment requirements has now been put on the agenda (Hills et al. 2003, p. 211; Rodríguez de Céspedes 2017).
According to Lambert et al. (2007, p. 526), the commercialisation and marketisation of education is a ‘global’ phenomenon, albeit the effects may be displayed in different ways due to different national educational systems. The HE sectors in both the UK and China, 2 the two subjects of this study, have also been affected by this global economic development in recent years.
The period since the introduction of neo-liberal values has witnessed numerous changes to UK universities, including the expansion of higher education as well as the strengthening of the higher education market in a global context (Krause 2009). These changes come from many directions. Firstly, ‘an opening up of the student recruitment market is spiced by a sense of consumerism among those who will pay higher fees (or strictly, higher graduate contributions)’ (Greenaway and Rudd 2014, p. 1). Secondly, students request that greater employability skills be taught in academic classroom hours (Atkins 1999; Boden and Nedeva 2010; Jameson et al. 2012), which pose...