1.1 Theorising the university
Few institutions in modern societies are as taken for granted as universities, which pursue advanced teaching and research in the arts and sciences, graduate ever wider and more diverse populations of students, and occupy extensive acres and buildings at considerable public and private expense. Even as student tuition fees and debt skyrocket, and governments and businesses encourage more technology and innovation to stimulate economic growth, and students, administrators and faculty try to balance the pursuit of social justice with freedom of speech and enquiry, the following questions are rarely asked: Why do universities exist in the first place? Where did this institution come from? And, why does it exist in its current form?
We will address these questions historically and sociologically â that is, processually â noting that the university has gone through a series of phases in several national contexts. Each of these historical moments left an imprint on the content and character of this fundamentally âmodernâ institution. Indeed, I will argue that the emergence of the modern university was at least as important in establishing the conditions of modern society as the industrial and democratic revolutions. Further, this was no accident, for the university resolved a number of tensions, contradictions and conflicts surrounding the dramatic social, economic and political transformations of the 19th century in Europe and America.
The long-term rise of the university must therefore be considered a central process within the broader shift from traditional, medieval societies to contemporary, modern (or postmodern) societies. Since 1800, we can trace the contours of an âacademization processâ that occurred in two phases: first, the shift from a medieval university to a modern, elite university; and second, the shift from an elite to a mass university. Of the two phases, the former established the structure and culture of the modern university, while the latter reproduced and extended the paradoxes and contradictions embedded in the former.
Many factors contributed to this transition, which began in the 19th century, but the most important were:
- Changes in class structure â in particular, the rise of the bourgeois middle classes and the decline of the aristocracy, resulting in a ânew classâ of academics and professionals.
- Displacement of religion â in particular, the decentring of the clergy and Theology as the core profession and discipline in the university, resulting in the overall secularization of abstract knowledge.
- Imperial competition â in particular, intra-imperial competition within the âcoreâ imperial states, especially those fearful of the rapid rise of the German Empire, whose academic system was emulated isomorphically.
- Changing status of women and children â in particular, the consolidation of the educated, adult male as citizen and resistance to this designation by suffragists and others, especially those involved in social work, public health and philanthropy.
- Rise of science and technology â the prevailing influence of industrialism, medical science, engineering and related activities was undoubtedly important in justifying and resourcing the modern university, but this investment should also be understood in relation to the other dynamics, particularly professionalsâ interest in claiming the authority of âscienceâ.
We will explore each of these factors in detail within the chapters below. Undoubtedly, other dynamics were significant as well. However, following a review of the present, common-sense understanding of what universities are and were for, which tends to imply that only factor 5 (science) was historically significant, we shall see that the rise of the modern university was an emergent phenomena of several unplanned social processes interacting with one another to produce, initially, an elite university dedicated to specialized research and advanced teaching within a range of professions and, subsequently, a widened, massified university system that tries to include ever more populations. All the while, universities and politicians have remained unreflective about the limits of this project due to the consolidation of the elite university system at the end of its first phase of development.
The risk of any generalization is that it is incomplete and glosses over particulars. This is all the more risky for a generalization about the entire history of modern academia, which is almost equivalent to claiming to account for the history of modern thought tout court. No single scholar can ever obtain such a quantity of knowledge him or herself. Thus, outside the history of the early modern era (Burke 2000), the historiography of universities has tended towards either specific national cases (Geiger 2014; McClelland 1980; Weisz 1992) or compendiums of multi-author, multi-volume edited collections recounting the range of activities that have occurred within universities (e.g., Brock and Curthoys 1997; RĂźegg 2004). These are remarkable resources for historians and sociologists and have been consulted in making the proposed generalization; however, many remain rooted in mid-20th century metanarratives, as we shall see. It is, however, worth admitting from the start that, while historical, the present book is not a work of history; rather, this is historical sociology and, even more specifically, a work of historically grounded sociological theory. Other scholars have defended this form of research from critics (Mann 1994; Mouzelis 1994; MĂźnch 2000) insofar as our goal is not necessarily to add new historical data to the picture, but rather to develop new ways of thinking, heuristic frameworks and conceptual tools through which we might re-approach the relevant historical and archival material anew. The historical references should therefore be considered as indicative examples encountered in the course of developing the theory, which suggests further interrogation of these issues, events and processes would be useful in filling out and potentially revising aspects of the theory and our view of the past, present and future.
Unlike popular notions of âtheoryâ as something akin to an âopinionâ, one should recall that even a theory like Darwinâs analysis of evolution does not stand or fall on a single or a few observations (Putnam 1981). Rather, the value of the theory lies in its capacity to produce generative hypotheses; whether a range of old and new observations can be usefully drawn together and explained within the general theoretical framework thereby encouraging the accumulation of knowledge. The âacademization processâ theory elaborated below is by no means as general or revolutionary as that of natural selection; rather, it provides a âmiddle-rangeâ explanation for the emergence and dynamics of particular institution â the university â in the context of modern societies, which it co-produced alongside the capitalist economy, national states, mass media and so on (see Merton 1957 on middle-range theory). Accordingly, the book should be understood as the beginning of a scientific process of discovery rather than a culmination of an extended careerâs worth of historical scholarship. Indeed, such grand theorising is not normally the province of early career scholars, who, like myself, cannot know everything there is to know about a field as large as modern university history. Still, as the discussion below will reveal, both within the specialized field of higher education research and as an academic profession generally, we often retain today a woefully inadequate picture of the major macro-sociological dynamics that produced the institution in which we work, which continues to expand in influence and centrality across our contemporary, globalised, knowledge-based economies and societies.
Indeed, working within the emerging field of Critical University Studies (Petrina and Ross 2014), I have encountered a range of early career scholars coming from several interdisciplinary backgrounds â English, History, Theology, STS, Philosophy, Politics and so on â who began researching a particular topic in their disciplinary field. In my case, this was the history of sociology, which led to a question about universities as an institutional context and a realisation that the central metanarratives surrounding universities (especially about the 19th century) have not been substantially revised since the post-war era. Each of us in our own specialist spheres turned our attention from an original topic of interest to the history of universities in general, uncovering a range of activities and phenomena that have hitherto been largely ignored or, if studied, have been disconnected from mainstream accounts of what universities are and were for. Since the early 2010s, scholars have designated this emerging field as âCritical University Studiesâ (Morrish and Sauntson 2019; Newfield 2011; Petrina and Ross 2014); however, we might more broadly define it as ânew university studiesâ â or simply âuniversity studiesâ â including the processual approach offered here as well as post-critical, civic and historical sociological modes of analysis and more (Hodgson et al. 2020; Stevens and Gebre-Medhin 2016).
For we desperately need new ways of thinking. From the point of view of theory, we are still using the spectacles and lenses crafted in the mid-20th century for more or less ideological purposes. This does not make such observations entirely untrue; but in turning our heads from one horizon to another, we confront the hazy outlines of a much wider field of vision in our periphery. In doing so, we realise that we may have hitherto mistaken a single effect of the multidimensional academization process â the rise of science, technology and innovation â for its core and central cause.
1.2 The triple revolution since 1800
Sociologists and historians are familiar with the notion of a âdual revolutionâ that began in Europe, especially Britain, in the late 18th century. In his Age of Revolutions, Hobsbawm traced the contours and effects of the French Revolution of 1789 and the contemporaneous British Industrial Revolution, suggesting that these shifts toward democratisation and the industrialisation of state and society gave birth to the modern world (Hobsbawm 1969). Similar notions informed the mid-20th century debates over âLate Capitalismâ versus âIndustrial Societyâ. For example, Giddensâs âpost-Marxistâ critique of historical materialism suggested the two major forces of modernity were the nation-state and capitalist market (Giddens 1985; Adorno 2003; Dahrendorf 1959). Political sociologists have since articulated refined theories of the state from both Marxian and neo-Weberian perspectives to emphasize the ârelative autonomyâ of state institutions from the dominant economic class of bourgeois capitalist owners (Block 1994; Poulantzas 1969; Mann 1993; Evans et al. 1985). Indeed, a further âthird waveâ of historical sociologists have added the cultural dynamics that influenced politics and society in their new interpretations and analyses of the modern world (Steinmetz 1999; Adams et al. 2005; Reed 2011). Within this âcultural turnâ, one might include insights drawing on the work of Bourdieu, postcolonial scholars and Science, Technology and Society (STS) scholars, drawing our attention to the role of knowledge and various forms of expertise that have informed the Westâs hegemonic domination of the rules of the game within and beyond nation-states (Bhambra 2010; Bourdieu 2015; Gilman 2007; Go 2013; Gorski 2013; Steinmetz 2013; Zimmerman 2012).
These lines of research are essential to our understanding of âmodernâ market societies, states, culture and knowledge as well as the dynamics linking these to one another in interdependent, but relatively autonomous ways. However, I wish to return to the premise of the âdual revolutionâ and make a more radical claim insofar as the dual revolution was, in fact, triple. In addition to the democratic and industrial revolutions, there was a third emergent process â called here âthe academization processâ â in which the modern university system was established beginning in the 19th century, which provided core elements, structures and agents of modern society irreducible to either industrialisation or democratisation. Indeed, the modern university system has played a fundamental role in integrating and mitigating the contradictions of democratic industrial societies. This functional role explains the tremendous growth in higher education since its origins at the University of Berlin in 1810 to such an extent that, at present, around 2.8 per cent of the worldâs population is currently enrolled in higher education (UNESCO IIEP 2017); meanwhile, vast amounts of professional training, human rights and social justice work, and economic and technical innovation are mediated through interactions within what scholars have termed the âtriple-helixâ, or âgovernment-university-industryâ complex (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 1996, 1998; Block and Keller 2009; Slaughter and Rhoades 2009; MĂźnch 2014; Bromley and Meyer 2015; Meyer and Bromley 2013). My argument here is that we cannot understand âmodernityâ as such without including the constitutive role the univers...
