Higher Education and East Asian Knowledge NTU Lectures 5

John Lie

June 2014

So far

• Social Theory, its triumphs and limitations • Focus on Eurocentrism / ethnocentrism

• The absence of viable alternative frameworks • The irrelevance of nativist discourses

• The failure to make sense of “society” or Western modernity

• Nationalist thought • Modern invention, formally Western

• The social sciences • Inevitably Western

• Why?

A Simple Answer

• The dominance of the university • Center for educating the elites

• State apparatuses, economic organizations, cultural institutions etc.

• Similarly for doing and disseminating research • Knowledge production and distribution

• Conquest of alternative arenas • The diminution of the public sphere

• Jűrgen Habermas, Strukturwander der Ö ffentlichkeit (1962)

• Potentially open, democratic

• Look backwards to the Western university

The Medieval University

• Hierarchy of Faculties: Divinity, Law, Medicine

• No Research: Commentary and Classification • The authority of the classics

• Truth within the Limits of Religion

• Cosmopolitan: Catholic/Latin Universalism

• The Scholarly Ideal: The Monk

Two Conflicting Visions

• John Henry Newman (1889) University as “Teaching universal knowledge”

• Clark Kerr (1963) Multiversity as “Social service station”

The Research University

• Wilhelm von Humboldt and the University of Berlin (1810) • The Rise of Liberal Arts

• Research as Pure Knowledge Creation • Colonizing Academies (the previous centers of research)

• Theory Valorized

• Methodological Rigor

• Academic Freedom: Lehrfreiheit / Lernfreiheit

• Nationalist: National Language and Student Body

• The Scholarly Ideal: Bildung & Beruf • Servants of the State

• Subterranean Longing for Power

Different in Practice Pragmatic Turn: Applied Knowledge and Professional (Vocational) Schools Rapid Growth & Differentiation - Hierarchy of Institutions - Proliferation of Disciplines - Multitude of Functions

Same in Theory Pure Knowledge, Academic Freedom, Nation Building, and Bildung

The Research University: The American Century

The Missions of the Multiversity

•The Idea of the Multiversity • Clark Kerr and the University of California

•The Proliferation of Goals and Functions • The Rise of Credential Society (Diploma Disease) • Diversifying functions

• Not Just Library and Labs but also Creative Writing, Art Practice, Field Stations, Museums, Symphonies etc.

• Students: Not Just Teach but also Sports,

• Housing, Counseling, Special Needs etc.

The Multiversity: The Primacy of Research

• Hierarchy of Faculties: The Dominance of Wissenschaft but also Applications and Professional Schools

• Research as Original Contribution to Knowledge

& Societal Advancement (Innovation: e.g. Bomb, Laser)

• Truth Unbound

• National / International

• The Scholarly Ideal: Protean

- The Primacy of Research

- The Rise of the Scholar-Manager: e.g. J Robert Oppenheimer

A New Hegemony?

• The dominance of the US model • Especially in the post-World War II period

• Direct interventions

• Creating “American” universities

• Encouraging emulation

• Americanization of German models

• Especially true in Japan and Japanese colonies

• A new push in the past decade towards the globalization of higher education • Generic globalization?

• Cultural emulation and institutional isomorphism • Foreign study etc.

Newsweek: Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Caltech,

Berkeley

上海交通大学: Harvard, Cambridge, Stanford, Berkeley,

MIT

Times Higher Education Supplement:

Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Yale

Globalization: World Rankings

Problems

• Incommensurable • Different types / functions of colleges and universities

• Difficult to measure “effectiveness” or “productivity” (e.g. teaching / mentoring)

• Ethnocentric • US-based model of “excellence”

• Primacy of research • The centrality of English-language journals and related journal indexes

Consequences

• Reification of ranking

• Shock Wave • Especially in Germany and Japan but also elsewhere

• State intervention

• University reforms

• Fundamental Reorientation • “Globalization”

• “Excellence”

Illustrating the problem: UC Berkeley

• Democratic commitment • “public”: openness and access

• Part of not only the UC system but also the three-tiered system

• The home of the multiversity

• The primacy of research • Stress on graduate education

Top Graduate Programs

UC Berkeley

• Engineering (3)

• Economics (3)

• English (1)

• History (2)

• Psychology (1)

• Sociology (1)

• Biological Sciences (2)

• Chemistry (1)

• Computer Science (1)

• Geology (3)

• Applied Mathematics (5)

Source: US News & World Report

Harvard University

• Engineering (20)

• Economics (3)

• English (1)

• History (4)

• Psychology (5)

• Sociology (8)

• Biological Sciences (2)

• Chemistry (2)

• Computer Science (20)

• Geology (7)

• Applied Mathematics (21)

Yet….

• Relative neglect of undergraduate education

• Crumbling infrastructure

• Escalating costs (esp. tuition)

Sources of US Dominance

Yet safe to say that US universities are “stronger”

Why?

Money? People? System?

Money

Tuition

Gifts

People: Meritocracy & Diversity

The Curious Paradox of the US Educational System

General mediocrity, individual creativity

Importing Talent

free rider

Globalization of the Academic Labor Market

Faculty Pool

Cf. Germany, Japan vs. Australia, Singapore

Student Pool

The Survival of the Fittest

• Competition • Internal / external

• Recruiting struggles over the best faculty

• Same for students

• Meritocratic • Achievement over Ascription/Credential

• Increasing Inequality

Faculty Diversity Sampling of Electrical Engineering Faculty

Venkat Anantharam

Babak Ayazifar

Ahmad Bahai

Jose M. Carmena

Constance Chang-Hasnain

Nathan W. Cheung

Leon O. Chua

John Chuang

Laurent El Ghaoui

Chenming Hu

Tsu-Jae King

Ernest S. Kuh

Edward A. Lee

Ali Niknejad

Borivoje Nikolic

Abhay Parekh

Albert Pisano

Kameshwar Poolla

Kannan Ramchandran

Anant Sahai

Alberto L. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli

S. Shankar Sastry

Sanjit A. Seshia

Costas J. Spanos

Vivek Subramanian

Norman Tien

David Tse

Pravin Varaiya

Martin Vetterli

Avideh Zakhor

Other Factors

• Historic strengths • cf. Oxford / Cambridge

• Infrastructural strengths of the multiversity • Cf. Paris

• English as lingua franca

• The sheer fact of leadership • Defines research excellence

• Elite networks

• Dictates reputation • The structure of opinion makers

The New Global University

• Model / System • US multiversity

• Fundamental mechanism • Emulation

• Institutional isomorphism

Modes of Emulation

• State Project • Tokyo Imperial University; KAUST

• Colonialism • National Taiwan University

• “Missionaries” and Consultants

• Converts (Study Abroad)

Agents and Facts of Globalization

• English as Lingua Franca

• Universal world of science / scholarship

• Prestige structure global in science / engineering

• Increasingly so in professional schools and even the humanities

• e.g. globalization of student body / professoriate

• Global rankings

• Institutional structures, organizations, titles

• Departments, degrees etc.

• rectors to presidents

• chaired professors to US-style professors

The Global (Research) University: Capitalist-Intellectual Complex

• Hierarchy of Faculties: Professional and Technical Fields

• Research as Pragmatic (Translational) Innovation

• Truth within the Limits of Capital

• Cosmopolitan: Like Global, Transnational Corporations / English as Lingua Franca

• The Ideal: The Scholar-Entrepreneur

Why Globalize?

• State project (Developmental State) • National competitiveness in a globalizing world

• “Global competence” and global competition

- Faculty, students, alumni all united

• Pride and Prestige

• Fashion or Trend • Most acute among the administrative elite

Diffusion / Globalization

• Institutional isomorphism • Emulation / consultation

• Globalized standards • Worldwide associations / accreditations

• The silent compulsions of “publish or perish” • The rigid hierarchy of journals and publishers

• The primacy of precedence

• e.g. University of Chicago in US Sociology

• Converging expectations

Globalization of Credentials

• Global dissemination of university prestige • Global corporations/employers

• Shaping paths of upward mobility

• Global dissemination of “desirable” degrees • Proliferation of professional degrees

• J.D.? Persistent national context of the professions

• Global University part and parcel of a globalized regime of credentials

Counter-globalization?

• Weight of Tradition • Usually, inertia borne of wealth constraints

• Cultural practices (though often quick to evaporate)

• Political convictions (state policy to social movements)

• In fact, no counter-hegemonic ideals • Americanization of Cambridge and Oxford

• Nothing like Newman’s idea of the university

In Summary: Hegemony

• Hegemonic because natural and necessary • Unquestioned, no alternatives, strong demand

Most critically, no one has any cogent idea about how to be an “excellent” or “elite” university in the age of globalization (only to be more like Harvard or Stanford)

• Student Demand

The Erosion of Meaning

• No ideals except bureaucratic, meritocratic, or technocratic criteria

• No universalistic ideals

• The ultimate criteria of rankings (and the triumph of money)

Instead of Bildung and Beruf, we have “professionals” and a soulless system

Hence, convergence between business management and university governance

Returning to Knowledge Creation

• Having monopolized legitimate knowledge production (certainly dissemination), ensconced in a globalized system

• The entrenched and enhanced power of the returning global elites • Bringing back the latest and the best from the elite centers

• Reproducing the structures of inequality and asymmetry

• At times abdicating the traditional function of producing the next generation of professors • Marginalized to less prestigious national-level institutions

• Not surprising that resistance or alternatives are almost non-existent