TRENDS AND TENDENCIES

UNESCO Higher Education

Round Table
University at the Crossroads
Integration or Fragmentation
8-9 May, 2009

04/11/21 daxner (c) Unesco Zagreb TREN

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 OVERVIEW
MAIN ASPECTS
• Global versus local networks. One culture!
• Decrease of nation state‘s impact
• Institutional Autonomy
NETWORK  INTEGRATION FRAGMENTATION
• Rules & Norms
• Rewriting PPP I: public private partnership
• Rewriting PPP II: Pleasure Payment Prestige
• Academic Freedom Ranking

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 GLOBAL VERSUS LOCAL
NETWORKS
• Higher Education will become as global as
science already is:
Conventions on recognition, licenses,
authorization
Local exchange between expert & lay-
cultures
Disconnection of profession and
qualification, but:
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 GLOBAL VERSUS LOCAL
NETWORKS
• Participation in h.e. will increase  75%
• EACH INSTITUTION WILL HAVE TO
POSITION ITSELF WITHIN SEVERAL
NETWORKS
• Relations with the science system will
change: return of research to the
university networks

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 NATION STATE‘S DECAY
• Despite growing nationalism, the role of
the nation state in steering big institutions
is over:
 supra-national and global norms &
cultures + local rules more public
ownership, less state ownership
 Governance >> delivery of common
goods by the state: SCIENCE AND
STUDY ARE NO CLUB GOODS
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 Institutional autonomy
• Legislation reduced to principles,
framework and supervision
• Universities act as enterprises, but never
as businesses (and they should not act
like businesses)
• Under the unity of law (preferrably
european law) each university is one legal
entity with rights to ownership, academic
freedom and ist self-determined profile
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04/11/21 daxner (c) Unesco Zagreb TREN
DS AND TENDENCIES 20090508
 Network Integration
Fragmentation
• Many positions in several networks for
each university (The university decides on
which profiles will be implied to a network)
• Representation, trust, recognition and
„network“ability“ will decide over the
relative position  institutional capitals in
relation to the „power“ and „impact“ of an
institution  attraction of students &
research

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DS AND TENDENCIES 20090508
 Integration I
• The university must decide, which disciplines,
subjects, degrees and social environment it
advertises and takes care of. The subunits of the
university have their own disciplinary cultures,
but no institutional culture: weakness of
fragmentation!
• The function of the university as a holding of
several units under ONE interest: To serve their
mission (principles from human rights, equality,
progress to qualification and recognition
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 Integration II
• Synergy of external relations (no barrieres
of individual exchange & mobility)
• Internal balance of assets (there are
marketable and non-marketable studies,
both are needed.
• (Examples: Wall Street MBAs, Croatian
History, Philosophy)
• Research contract must follow institutional
rules and not private interests
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 Fragmentation
• A faculty does never have the capacity to
create an efficient and effective
interdisciplinary system‘s environment
• A faculty can never speak for science, only
for a professional segment and then, it is a
professional school which needs not to
belong to a university
• A faculty will not be part of an effective
supra-national network
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 Norms and Rules
• Universities are principled institutional
actors accountable to a certain culture
(you don‘t violate its rules without
sanctions!)
• Diversity can only occur if the internal
competition (over riches, influence
andpower positions is secondary to the
university‘s position in the network:
solidarity and synergy >> private interest

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PPP I Public Private Partnership
• Not a bad idea, also for the future, but the
rules must be clear: universities function
differently from profit-oriented enterprises
• Loosely coupled systems
• Slow systems
• Principled legitimacy of operations
• Public means the people, not the state,
private means principled stakes
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 PPP II Pleasure Payment Prestige
• The rules of the game: institution topples
disciplines and their cultures
• Pleasure  social responsibility, working
environment, non-essential qualities of the
institution
• Payment: must not privilege whose
disciplines are stronger on the market! (cf.
Wall Street example)
• Prestige: the immaterial asset of academia
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 ACADEMIC FREEDOM
• AF is the right to expression and
information + Quality
• It is not only an individual right, but also an
institutional privilege and condition
• It must depend on the relative power-
position of a subject, a nobel-prize winner
or a faculty
• It creates the trust universities need to find
their place in the network
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 THANK YOU
• Michael Daxner
• President emeritus University of
Oldenburg
• University of Oldenburg and Free
University Berlin
• michaeldaxner@yahoo.com

04/11/21 daxner (c) Unesco Zagreb TREN

DS AND TENDENCIES 20090508