IV.5 Knowledge, Engagement and Higher Education in Europe
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While European universities have much to at an early, peripheral phase, and the central offer European society in the field of commu- challenge is in placing it at the heart of IV.5 nity engagement, there is an urgent challenge university life. KNOWLEDGE, to improve their current performance. A great ENGAGEMENT deal is demanded across all walks of society AND HIGHER for the knowledge emanating from universi- SOCIETAL ENGAGEMENT IN EUROPE EDUCATION IN ties, and for the exchange and co-production of knowledge with universities, and a failure European universities have been inextricably EUROPE to respond will undermine popular support tied up with their host societies since their for the sector. University work in engagement foundation, and universities’ institutions http://www.guninetwork.org/. Paul Benneworth and occurs against a range of competing forces, and ideas have evolved along with their host Michael Osborne including modernization, internationalization societies. Universities have always faced a and budget cuts. As a consequence, universi- dependency on sponsors, which has influ- website ties are faced with having to make strategic enced their relationships with society. As their choices and are being overloaded with Biggar (2010, p. 77) notes: on missions; seemingly less important missions [email protected]. risk becoming peripheral within this scenario. Right from their medieval beginnings, Nonetheless, there is much that is [universities] have served private purposes contact outstanding in European universities in terms and practical public purposes as well as Innovation of community engagement, and in this chap- the sheer amor scientiae [‘knowledge for for ter we provide a historical and contemporary knowledge’s sake’] … popes and bishops please background as well as many examples of needed educated pastors and they and kings exemplary practice. Covering a territory needed educated administrators and lawyers Network within which there are so many countries, capable of developing and embedding and indeed regions, with distinct policies national systems. permission, and practices is a challenge, and much has inevitably been omitted. That being said, we The scope and scale of engagement has University believe that, in most societies, the community subsequently increased from producing elites request to engagement of universities in Europe is still to working closely with firms and citizens, Global wish The TABLE IV.5.1 you Universities between autonomy and dependency – a historical perspective by If Social change Sponsor urgent desire ‘Idea’ of a university University societal only engagement Agricultural revolution Reproducing religious Cloister (11th-century Establishment religious elites use administrators Italy) for Emergence of nobility Educating loyal administrators for Free cloister (12th-century Religious elites, both establishment infringement. courtly life France) and dissenting Urbanization Educated administrative elite to Catholic University of Temporal elites and regulators manage trade Leuven (15th century) authorised is Sustaining national Validating the state by imagining Newman’s idea (from National cultural elites ‘imagining’ copyright communities the nation 17th century onwards) the nation a is Creating technical elite Creating a technical elite Humboldtian Industrial elites overseeing national alongside the administrative elite (19th-century Germany) industrialization projects Promoting progress Creating economically useful Land grant universities Mass industrial expansion through document knowledge (19th–20th-century USA) extension posting or Supporting democracy Creating elites for non-traditional Dutch Catholic Universities Political elites leading/underpinning This societal groups (20th-century Netherlands) corporatist settlements Deliberative Equipping citizens with knowledge Robbins era plate glass Mass democratic expansion and GUNI. Copying democracy to function in a mass democracy universities (1960s UK) participation © Source: Pinheiro et al. (2012). KNOWLEDGE, ENGAGEMENT AND HIGHER EDUCATION IN EUROPE 219 as universities have developed relationships with lighted the variety of institutional approaches to commu- and duties to religious powers, temporal authorities, nity engagement; CERI’s typology (Table IV.5.2) cultural communities, industry and latterly civic soci- remains useful for understanding those activities. ety. This evolution is summarized in Table IV.5.1. Universities’ contributions to social progress have shaped their evolution. Some engagements have TABLE IV.5.2 University engagement with societal collectives long-standing links with social movements including Way of Mechanism for delivering service European popular education in the late 19th century providing service (Steele, 2007). Continuing education brought knowl- University puts Use of equipment, premises and laboratories edge to excluded groups (at that time, the working facilities at the Use of teachers and students to make direct classes and women), providing ‘enlightenment’ of disposal of the contribution community the masses. This emphasis on liberal adult education, Drawing on the community in delivering occupational training based on a model of knowledge transfer from the http://www.guninetwork.org/. Execution of orders Offering training as occupational, continuing elite to the masses, rather than on a co-production placed by community education or cultural of knowledge, has contributed to the decline of University receives a payment from community continuing education in the 21st century (Osborne for delivery of a service website and Thomas, 2003). A near private contract between the buyer and the vendor their This has partly been functional, with universities Analysis of needs of The university comes into the community as an on becoming part of the ‘establishment’ through their community outside expert [email protected]. relations to their patrons (Daalder and Shils, 1982). The university provides services for the But universities’ engagement with marginal communi- community with some reference to an ‘order’ by the community ties has also driven experimental practices that have contact Analysis of problems University engages at community request in Innovation changed society. Cambridge University was formed at request of developing solutions for when a group Oxford scholars left dissatisfied by the community University has the autonomy and freedom please religious restrictions they faced. The VU University to suggest a range of solutions away from overarching pressure Amsterdam was formed by orthodox Calvinists facing University delivers a The university delivers a service for the Network discrimination from the Lutheran mainstream, so that solution on behalf of community which is compatible with its they could educate their future leaders. The Sorbonne the community institutional status permission, in Paris and the Maagdenhuis in Amsterdam were Source: Benneworth et al. (2013) after CERI (1982). flashpoints for strikes and wider social unrest driven by University growing social tensions in the late 1960s regarding the request closed nature of post-war society (Daalder and Shils, to CERI reported the tendencies of universities to Global 1982). These struggles left us with several essential work with nearby communities, whether based on a wish engagement repertoires such as science shops or proximity that was geographical, ethical (for example, The you community engagement (Gnaiger and Martin, 2001). by a common confessional position) or mission-based If (for example, businesses). The report presented the only best practices of university engagement, including KU use APPROACHES TO ENGAGEMENT WITHIN EUROPE Leuven R&D and the North East London Polytechnic Company. Different practical examples of institutional for Contemporary university engagement in Europe began arrangements were presented for promoting univer- infringement. with the late 1960s ‘democratic turn’, in which Western sity–business engagement, urban regeneration and European universities became highly engaged with community development. However, all approaches society in many different ways and by many different authorised is implied that public engagement was an adjunct activity copyright mechanisms. Alongside the 1970s’ general pessimism, to the universities’ core activities, within the ‘develop- a is the ‘spirit of 1968’ engendered much grassroots activ- ment periphery’ (Clark, 1998). ism, this positivity driving many different kinds of From the 1980s onwards, European higher educa- innovative university engagement activity, exemplified document tion (HE) was increasingly centralized through posting by the Netherlands’ science shops (Mulder et al., 2001), or strategic modernization, with payment-by-results and This to activism and community work, through continuing new managerial autonomy introduced to improve the and worker education, to policy advice and business productivity and efficiency of public spending (Kickert, GUNI. Copying consultancy. The early 1980s’ report from the Centre 1995). This profoundly affected relationships between © for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) high- universities and society by: 220 HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE WORLD 5 ●● framing universities’ activities’ value in cash terms; of Oveido adopted the proposal of extensión univer- ●● ranking different kinds of university activities on siteria. What began as bringing community education their strategic importance; to local industrial populations quickly