The Social Role of Higher Education

Comparative Perspectives

Ken Kempner, William G Tierney

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138337930
• eBook ISBN: 9780429807923
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Originally published in 1996 The Social Role of Higher Education is an anthology of nine papers, it presents cases studies showing how culture influences the social role of higher education in various nations. It examines how environments get defined and how they shape universities, and how knowledge and academic work interact in national contexts. This book focuses on how both developed and developing countries' systems of higher education are affected by their own culture and their place within the larger global context.

Chapter One

Academic Culture in an International Context

Ken Kempner and William G. Tierney

Institutions of higher education are socially constructed realities that in part develop from their own sociocultural histories and traditions. The content and structure of colleges and universities also are shaped by the external cultural environment and a nation’s place within the “international knowledge networks” (Altbach et al. 1986). How national and international cultural contexts affect the role of higher education in a society and their institutions of higher education provide the focus for this book.

For the purpose of this text, we define organizational culture byway of five
key terms. Organizational mission provides meaning and definition to the organization’s participants. As the overarching ideological apparatus of an organizations culture, the mission underscores the social relations at work in an organization. Symbolism pertains to the manner in which things get done, the signals employed to display particular meanings, and the communicative framework for the organization. Strategy relates to the unique decision-making structure of the organization. The organizational structure, the style of the leadership team, and the avenues employed to create plans to reach decisions all highlight the culture of the organization. The environment situates the organization within specific local, national, and international contexts. A social constructionist view emphasizes the interpretive and dynamic nature of the organizations environment. Finally, analysts of organizational culture investigate how knowledge gets constructed. Whose interests are served and who are silenced by the definition and manner in which knowledge gets constructed are key areas of investigation. These five terms—mission, communication, strategy, environment, and knowledge—provide key areas for studying academe from a cultural perspective (Tierney 1994). Although we will touch on all of these themes, for the purpose of this book the authors focus most of their attention on (a) how environments get defined and how they shape universities, and (b) how knowledge and academic work interact in national contexts. Our intent is to highlight these areas in order to develop a comparative perspective about particular facets of academic culture.

Because culture and knowledge do not flow only from the dominant, core countries to the periphery, the contributors to this book focus upon unique cultural circumstances and how higher education institutions and the faculty and students within them are affected by these circumstances. Both developing and newly industrialized countries have rich cultural traditions that contribute to innovations in learning and research unique to the social and cultural moment of a country and its institutions of higher education. Unfortunately, the contributions to knowledge from the periphery, and those making these contributions, are not always valued in the international networks. The knowledge and the scientists constructing this knowledge from the periphery are often considered too parochial, nationalistic, or “local” compared to the more worldly “cosmopolitans” of the core, to use Gouldner’s (1954) terminology. As Marcos Valle (1994) has noted, however, the goal of knowledge production should be to “decenter the periphery” and make the superhighway a “two-way street.” Valle encourages social scientists, in particular, to reconceive the notion of what constitutes the core by accepting the knowledge produced in the periphery into the core.

Insuring that knowledge flows to and from the core and questioning whose and what ideas actually constitute the core are at the essence of comparative research. Comparative research is helpful because it allows scientists to look back upon themselves from a holistic perspective, best accomplished by standing on the outside looking in. Merely looking, of course, is not sufficient to explain social reality, and it is for this reason the contributors to this volume focus upon culture as a key to understanding a nation’s system of higher education. We propose here that a comparative and cultural perspective is helpful in recognizing the place of higher education in a nation’s development, and how knowledge is created, defined, managed, and valued. Through individual and comparative case studies, the contributors to this book offer illustrative examples of how the cultural context of each country shapes the structure, function, and place of higher education in a particular society.

The authors question in each chapter the social function of higher education and how knowledge is constructed and disseminated in a specific country or between countries. Because, as Fay (1987) notes, “we live in a world in which knowledge is used to maintain oppressive relations,” the authors are guided by the perspective of “critical postmodernism,” as proposed by Giroux (1992) and applied to higher education by Tierney (1993). Critical postmodernists combine critical and postmodern theories by framing their investigations in a cultural perspective that addresses the inherent oppressive nature of social reality. From this perspective the effects of culture are central to understanding what and whom are valued and devalued in a society.

To understand how culture affects the role of higher education in a society and how culture both enables and restricts new ways of thinking, transmitting, and constructing knowledge, the contributors to this volume draw upon their comparative research in developed and developing countries. Rather than offer merely a “travelogue” that chronicles what a nation’s educational system is, the authors consider why the system looks as it does. Similarly, rather than evaluating education only by assessing inputs and outputs of institutions, the contributors to this volume are guided by the perspective that culture is a key to understanding why a nation’s educational system is structured as it is.

Educational inputs and outputs have meaning only when considered in relation to the larger cultural context that defines a nation’s social structure and its educational system. Understanding culture is necessary to accomplish comparative educational research in order, as Noah (1986, 154) suggests, to “help us understand better our own past, locate ourselves more exactly in the present, and discern a little more clearly what our educational future may be.” To truly understand why the present looks as it does, what the “future may be” in education, and how knowledge is produced, Kelly and Altbach (1986, 312) note that comparative education must be guided by a larger, more integrative understanding or “world systems analysis.” This larger analysis enables a greater recognition of the dependent relationships among nations not only in the typical realm of economics and politics but also of education and the creation and exchange of knowledge. Assuming the flow of knowledge and culture is only from the developed to the developing nations denies the dignity of “other” cultures and enables only “First-World” solutions to “Third-World” problems. The interdependency of knowledge creation and exchange should not be bound by nationalistic or geographic boundaries.

Certainly, there are strengths and weaknesses to our predominantly single case inquiries in this book. While all the authors attempt to be comparative, we are each trapped by our parochial focus on the nations we know the best, even though we have attempted to view them from “offshore.” While our perspectives may limit the integrative and comparative view of culture we seek, we attempt to overcome these limitations through the number of languages we speak and the different cultures in which we have lived. This book provides cultural interpretations from the perspective of our accumulated knowledge, however parochial it may be, because we all recognize the limitations of our own personal lenses. Yet, to provide a deeper interpretation of educational systems than mere functional explanations of inputs, outputs, or budgets can offer, we have all attempted to look deeper into a nations educational system for cultural explanations that define structures and policies. Of course, the individual chapters here cannot suggest definitive explanations of the cultural effects on a nation’s entire system of higher education. The chapters do, however, attempt an assessment of how specific aspects of higher education are influenced by unique social and cultural circumstances. Even though “national culture” is a social invention, the authors attempt to understand how national and international cultural circumstances give the form to academic institutions. The distinctive strength of our mutual efforts is this recognition of the cultural complexity responsible for defining a nation’s education system. Yet our equally distinctive weakness is our inability to explore the greater depths of this complexity than a single chapter, or single volume, allows.

Although all the authors in this volume have attempted to understand higher education by probing beyond surface-level explanations, there are many layers left unexplored and await further analysis. We have not, for example, looked at concepts within a particular culture; we have, of necessity, forgone some of the comparative assessment of the whole. In a number of the chapters, however, we have sought a greater comparative integration by joining international colleagues: a Japanese author with a U.S. author (Makino and Kempner), a Brazilian with a Chilean (Valle and Figueroa), a U.S. author with an Australian (Rhoades and Smart), and a U.S. author with Thai scholars (Fry, Bovonsiri, Uampuang). What we have gained through this collaborative effort is a book that integrates cross-cultural perspectives on higher education that each author could not manage individually. Through our collaboration, we make no attempt to provide a comprehensive worldwide coverage but focus instead upon case studies that illustrate the significance culture plays in defining specific facets of a nation’s higher education system.

In our particularistic focus on specific nations, we have attempted to expose the underlying cultural effects that give meaning and definition to higher education. We rely, therefore, on the book as a collection of case studies that together offer a comparative analysis of the unique and individualistic effects culture has on a particular system. What links these chapters and the authors’ collective perspectives together is the reliance on culture to explain the inherent and persistent differences between and among seemingly similar systems of higher education. Rather than assuming ideas and conceptions of higher education easily travel across national boundaries, the basic premise among the authors is that differing cultural contexts yield equally different structures, problems, and solutions for higher education.

By presenting a range of case studies, we illustrate a variety of cultural circumstances and their individualistic effects on higher education. These case studies are not meant to be representative of specific prototypes or geographic regions of higher education but, rather, demonstrate the cultural circumstances of each unique case. Similarly, other countries and other systems have their own unique circumstances that must be recognized if we are to truly understand the social role higher education plays in a particular country. For this reason we rely, as well, on the larger context of comparative work and on the reader’s own cultural context to assist in bringing meaning to the individual investigations presented here.

We begin our survey of the cultural effects of higher education in chapter 2 with William Tierney’s investigation of the academic profession. Tierney suggests that there are fundamental differences between what he calls the “traditional perspective” and the cultural view that is advanced here. He uses interviews from five Central American universities as the scaffolding for analyzing the role that organizational and national cultures play in knowledge production. Tierney argues that we need to move away from traditionalist assumptions that suggest a metanarrative exists where international disciplines are the sole arbiters of what counts as knowledge. Instead he discusses national and regional roles in the advancement of science policy; he reasons that knowledge production is not simply a scientific process but one that has political and ideological implications as well.

Tierney’s interpretation of knowledge production is followed by Kempner and Makino’s assessment of how Japanese culture has shaped its system of higher education in chapter 3. Kempner and Makino question the relevance of the modernistic principles that guide contemporary higher education in Japan. In particular they address current reform efforts and consider the implications the modernistic structure has for the future development of Japans higher education. The authors argue that because the current system of higher education provides more a rationing function than an educational one, higher education has not provided Japanese students with the “cognitive maps” they will need to guide themselves and the nation in the future.

After this consideration of the cultural effects on Japanese education, we turn in chapter 4 to how Thai culture influences its system. Varaporn Bovonsiri, Pornlerd Uampuang, and Gerald Fry provide a historical context for the study of contemporary cultural issues that continue to shape and influence higher education in Thailand. By drawing upon their collective experience in Thai higher education, the authors offer both historical and cultural examples to analyze the social function of higher education and how knowledge is constructed and transmitted in Thailand. In their analysis the authors use a “triangular model” that overcomes the tendency in studies of higher education to emphasize a Western approach and values. This model recognizes the importance of indigenous culture, the influences of Western culture, and their amalgamation into the creation of a unique Thai system of higher education distinct in its own way from the Japanese, Mexican, and Chilean systems considered in this volume.

In chapter 5 Rollin Kent situates how recent socioeconomic changes in Mexico impacted on how public universities define their purpose, and what societal agencies such as the federal government see as the changing role of the university in the waning days of the twentieth century. Kent begins his analysis with an overview of the changes from elite to mass higher education and then outlines how the severe economic crises of the 1980s in Mexico redefined the culture and structure of the universities. In effect the universities’ external environment—government policy, changing public perceptions, the international scientific community, and the consumers of higher education—has shaped the internal dynamics and structures of the universities.

Susan Twombly makes an exploration in chapter 6 of how academic and national cultures shape institutional roles that is consistent with Tierney’s and Kent’s chapters. However, Twombly analyzes the position of women at the University of Costa Rica. She asks why women have assumed a comparatively high percentage of leadership roles in a university in a society that many think of as machista. She locates her analysis by way of life history interviews of eighteen women in senior administrative positions and argues that individuals exist as subjects and objects within the organization. They are capable of creating change, yet they also must function within cultural webs that constrict and define options for change.

In chapter 7 Gary Rhoades and Don Smart turn our attention to the entrepreneurial aspect of higher education and the market for international students by comparing educational policy toward foreign students in Australia to the United States. Rhoades and Smart argue that although the United States is typically portrayed as the “exemplar” of entrepreneurial culture, the Australian higher education system eclipses U.S. higher education in its entrepreneurial policy toward foreign students. Whereas Australian federal policy encourages universities to actively recruit foreign students, Rhoades and Smart explain U.S. policy is based on considerations of “economic dependency, domestic human resources, and national security.” From their analysis of primary documents at the national level and secondary sources at the state and institutional policy levels, the authors find that Australian policy characterizes international students as “products” in the global marketplace whereas the United States lacks a clear, identifiable policy. Through their analysis the authors contrast the cultural differences between these two Western countries that yield differing policies within their system of higher education. Rhoades and Smart’s findings contradict the prevailing functionalist perspective in comparative higher education that presumes the United States is the most advanced and well-adapted global society.

Following the comparative assessment of student policy, in chapter 8 Claudio Figueroa and Marcos Valle offer a case study of the conflicting cultural and political definitions of “decentralization” in Chile. As Rhoades and Smart focus upon the cultural influences between the United States and Australia that yield differing policies regarding international students, Figueroa and Valle look at the effect political culture has on defining the meaning of decentalization in education. By contrasting the meaning and policy development of the same concept—decentralization—under the Allende and the Pinochet governments, the authors illustrate how the unique Chilean cultural context affected the social outcomes in education, similar to the distinct Thai and Japanese systems examined earlier in this volume. Figueroa and Valle not only consider ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Chapter One Academic Culture in an International Context
• Chapter Two The Academic Profession and the Culture of the Faculty: A Perspective on Latin American Universities
• Chapter Three The Modernistic Traditions of Japanese Higher Education
• Chapter Four Cultural Influences on Higher Education in Thailand
• Chapter Five Modernity on the Periphery: Expansion and Cultural Change in Mexican Public Universities
• Chapter Six Culture and the Role of Women in a Latin American University: The Case of the University of Costa Rica
• Chapter Seven The Political Economy of Entrepreneurial Culture in Higher Education: Policies toward Foreign Students in Australia and the United States
• Chapter Eight Educational Decentralization in Latin America: The Case of Chile
• Chapter Nine Private and Public Intellectuals in Finland
• Contributors
• Index