The University, the Market, and the Geodetic Engineer

Stubkjær: The University, the Market, and the Geodetic Engineer

The University, the Market, and the Geodetic Engineer - or: Norms for academic Communication

Erik Stubkjær Department of Development and Planning Aalborg University, Denmark [email protected]

Abstract In Europe, universities have existed for more than 800 years. The university is the place in society for higher learning and related research. Through the ages, the universities have enjoyed a remarkably freedom relative to religious and secular powers. In recent years, the objectives and practises of universities have changed profoundly, largely due to an increased emphasis on market norms. The changes within university teaching of geodetic engineers may be seen from the above per- spective. Several fora for deliberations on the education exist, including the Commission 2 of the International Federation of Surveyors (FIG), and The European Council of Geodetic Sur- veyors. However, the paper takes its point of departure from the activities of the Joint European Project "Education in Land Information Systems", co-ordinated by Faculty of Geo- detic Engineering, Delft University of Technology, and a subsequent project, which concerned the education of geodetic engineers in Slovenia. The body of the paper presents a selection of ideas that shaped the university through the centuries, with a view to balance the present in- terest in advancing market-directed behaviour.

1. Introduction The Department of Geodesy at Thijsseweg 11 is a reference point in the academic landscape of the geodetic surveyor. From here, research and graduates goes to all places of the world, and the institution attracts students and colleagues to participate in its activities. During the late 1980s, when the socialist countries gave in to a market economy, the Depart- ment of Geodesy had lively contact with colleagues in Poland, notably at the Agricultural University of Olsztyn. The department was instrumental in arranging Polish-Dutch symposia on geodesy. I had the pleasure of being invited to the second of these seminars: "Data collection for GIS (LIS) and their application" that took place the 2 - 5 April 1991 at the premises of the department. It appeared that this was only the beginning of a long period of co-operation. Already next year, we were summoned for the first of a series of yearly seminars on Educa- tion in Land Information Systems, or ELIS for short. The EU supported the seminars in terms of a TEMPUS Joint European Project. The purpose of the ELIS project was to "support education in Land Information Systems in countries of Central and Eastern Europe by combining expertise and technological capability available within the supporting countries of Western Europe with knowledge of needs and specific LIS problems within the supported countries" (Bogaerts and Gazdzicki, 1992, Preface). Because of the relative high frequency and stable participation, the seminars, and the project generally, provided a very supportive frame for co-operation. Kindly directed by the person of today's celebration, and organised by Prof. Jerzy Gazdzicki and the omnipresent Elfriede, the project became for me both an apprenticeship and an occasion to get and meet very good friends. The seminars and the related course activities and mutual visits taught me the new feature of university networking, before the term became as established as it is today. I am

1 of 8 2001-05-03 Stubkjær: The University, the Market, and the Geodetic Engineer happy to have this opportunity to acknowledge my gratitude for being invited to this network. The apprenticeship is more than a metaphor: In fact I picked up the trick of managing a network. From 1996 to 1999 I was the co-ordinator of a network, which aimed at improving the education in Slovenia of geodetic engineers. During this period, I could still benefit from the ELIS seminars through comments on project methodologies (e.g. Stubkjær, 1997). Also, I would like to mention that one of the 'sons' of the Department of Geodesy, Ir. Jaap Zevenber- gen successfully supported the overcoming of the usual frictions of curriculum change. The nice outcome of the Slovenian project has been reported elsewhere (Sumrada & Stubkjær, 2000). 2. Universities and the market What I would like to develop upon in the following is the role of the market, which in many respects dominated the scene during the 1990s: Firstly, the countries of transition wanted to establish a market economy, including a market in real property. Secondly, this change in- duced new demands on university education, as we experienced it in the ELIS and Slovenian projects. We from the West became the proponents of market thinking within the universities. Finally, the idea of the superiority of the market penetrated European governmental prefer- ences and allocation patterns. This had as consequence that researchers and universities to an increasing degree now have to operate under market conditions. Are the universities gradually becoming merchants in knowledge? Having a Danish cadastral background, the common belief in the benefits of market forces eventually appeared to me as too simplistic. The general benefit of the operation of market forces is not quested. However, it is not obvious to me, why the market of commodities and services shall serve as the model for organisation of knowledge production. The emphasis on market, including a market in knowledge-based services, questions the idea of the professions, including the profession of geodetic surveyors, who take responsibility for the competent settlement of a specific class of societal tasks. The learning process that is needed to arrive at genuine, societal solutions demands time and certain stability. Put in other words, it demands rather permanent institutions. The professions are institutions for the accumulation of societal knowledge within a specific discipline. Likewise, especially universities of the classic (von Humboldt) type perform this task. The institution of the university is unique in the world, because during its more than 800 years of history, the university remained relatively independent from political as well as from religious powers. Until recently, this institution operated without the norms of the market. Yet the universities became a market place of ideas, and of patterns of thinking, well before eco- nomists described a market in commodities. Through the periods of Enlightenment and Liber- alism the originally academic practice of exchange of ideas and solutions was extended to political circles, and national Parliaments emerged as the formal market place for solutions of societal problems, and for the trading of political power. In recent years, the objectives and practises of universities have changed profoundly. It has been stated that the changes from the 1980s are of a different order from that of the previous generations, and that the qualitative change is so radical that the justification for even using the term may be called into question (Wasser, 1990). However, it would be a sad story to demonstrate this in detail, and not appropriate for the present occasion. In stead, I want to mention of some of the ideas - different from the idea of competing in a market - that have shaped the institution of the university through the centuries. I refer to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and Paulo Freire. In doing so I hope to balance the idea of the market with other norms of social behaviour.

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3. The joint search for truth In football games, we say that you shall 'go for the ball, not for the man'. In academic circles, the same norm tells us that we shall focus on the issue concerned, and not on the status or party of the participant of a debate. Furthermore, we shall value the views not only of those we agree with, but also the views of our opponents. This norm is ancient; in fact it goes back to the origin of the university. For example, Aristotle in his Metaphysics states it:

Now it is only right that we should be grateful not merely to those whose views we agree, but also to those who until now have spoken in a superficial way; for they too have made some contribution, because they have made use of the habit which we now exercise. ... Thomas Aquinas adds, in his Commentary to the above (1961, p. 106, 110):

He [Aristotle] shows how men assist each other to know the truth; for one man assists another to consider the truth in two ways - directly and indirectly. ..

One is assisted directly ..

One is assisted indirectly insofar as those who have preceded us and who were wrong about the truth have bequeathed to their successors the occasion for exercising their mental powers, so that by diligent discussion the truth may be seen more clearly. .. these men too have given us something because they have shown us actual attempts to discover the truth. At other occasions, Thomas returns to this concern for the contribution of the opponent, when he admonish his students to listen to and rephrase the argument of the opponent, with the view to fully understand the position of the other, before they present their own contention of the issue. The scholar of the High Middle Ages demanded openness towards the contributions of others. He demonstrated this faculty himself, for example through communications with scholars of other denominations: Mohammedans and Jews. This communication was needed to overcome the mistakes of translation of Aristotle's works. The works had been translated from Greek to Syrian to Arabic to Latin. Through translation schools in Muhammedan quarters, Aquinas could base his works on texts in Latin that were directly translated from the Greek source. Thereby, he could clarify misunderstandings that were taught at the University of Paris. I often return to these views, because one of the golden hours of my study time was taking part in a seminar, where these principles were made topical. The discussion took place between a senior and a junior, and the audience was surely on the party of the senior. How- ever, the senior showed a gentle curiosity towards the views of the other party, without giving in of his own views, and thereby created a mood of searching - as far as possible - for a common understanding of the issue. Of cause, I have tried myself to implement such a mood of academic debate. My experience is that it is far from being easy, and that it is so, even if you come with good intentions, and are surrounded by frank colleagues! I have arrived at the understanding that you need to be gran- ted a substantial amount of authority to chair such meetings. Participants may have good reas- ons to protect themselves for what they consider are personal attacks. So it need much care to encourage them to get out of their shells, and much strength to protect them from misunderstandings in their vulnerable state. 4. Organising the accumulation of knowledge While the University of Paris with its teaching of theology is considered the model for universities of the Middle Ages, the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin holds this status for the restructuring of universities during the 19th and first part of 20th century. The University of

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Berlin, established by 1809, marked the end of a change from seeing religion as the dominant frame of reference to a secularised curriculum and administration. The person behind the re- vised conception of the European University was Wilhelm von Humboldt, who was minister of education during the inauguration and first years of operation of the university. Wilhelm von Humboldt left a number of letters and other writings. From this legacy you get the impression that he was very much concerned that the economic base of the university was separated from the purse and directions of the absolutist monarch and conservative circles around him.

The section of public education [headed by WvH] is concerned, gradually to relieve the royal purse of the burden of all of the educational system, and to support it by own means and through contributions from the nation. .. (Scurla,1976: 339) After developing on the benefits of this idea, he suggests that certain rents from crown land are appropriated to the university and its departments, and that the remainder needs are ac- quired by secularising church land. Also, he united a handful of research institutes into one, with a view of creating an institution that would attract bright students from all over Germany, not only from the Kingdom of Prus- sia. Thus, the Academy of Sciences, the institutes of anatomy and medicine, respectively, the Royal Library, the botanical garden, the collections of natural history, and the museum of arts, all were moulded into one unit, while granting them a certain autonomy. Moreover, he succeeded in attracting a number of eminent professors to the university, and directed their work in a quite elaborated way. To explain his ideas on how university work should be structured, he discerns between academies and universities. The academies are soci- eties where members are engaged in the same issues, and where individual members are sub- ject to the opinion of others. The relations among teachers at the universities are different: Here the teachers relate mutually only in issues of general matters, and remain exclusively re- sponsible within their own field of expertise. Discussion of a matter of expertise takes place only at the discretion and invitation by the professor in charge. (Scurla, 1976: 342) Finally, he distinguishes between the general formation of the person, and the acquisition of commercial/ professional qualifications. The task of the university is to provide the former, to let the student participate in scientific enquiry that hasn't got a complete grip of the issue, to make them aware that they must endure this imperfection, and yet incessantly search for what remains incomplete (:374). I met these norms of university life firstly, when I was researching literature on the quality management of universities in the early 1990s. An OECD report described universities as 'bureaucracies' (1987), and that was a surprise to me. I have been employed within the Danish ministry of Finance, and do have a sense of bureaucracy. However, 'bureaucracy' was not the appropriate term for the life of the newly (1973) established Aalborg University. Having visited other universities through the ELIS network, I got a better understanding of the idea of installing a professor, an officer of knowledge, in a hierarchy much like the Uni- versal Decimal Classification of scientific literature. The officer is commissioned by society to collect and validate new clusters of knowledge, and to arrange this new insight into the knowledge structure of his domain. This idea dominated for more than a century, and with great success, until it was dethroned by Thomas Kuhn's notion of competing paradigms, and by the idea and practise of multidisciplinary research. The above account of the efforts of Humboldt towards a university reform has not mentioned one important feature of the new university conception: The concern for relating theory with praxis.

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In fact, one of Humboldt's biographers, Herbert Scurla, attributes Humboldt with a humanist- ic, if not idealistic conception of science, (1976: 345, quoting Rühle, 1960; cf. 1976: 317- 318), and sees Humboldt's main contribution in this respect in establishing a liberal basis for research. The experimentation in laboratories, and other advanced empirical research is pointed out by e.g. Encyclopaedia Britannica (2001) to be part of the new university conception. Possibly it appeared most outspokenly at the French inspired 'Polytechnika' of the first part of 19th century (Polytechnischen Schulen in Karlsruhe 1825, München 1827, Stuttgart 1829, Hannover 1831), and at the 'Technische Hochschulen', which flourished in the second part of the 19th century. 5. Leaving the chair to learn and renew A colleague with whom I discussed a draft of the present paper commented: "You are coming from Aalborg University, and you tell about von Humboldt!" Yes, I do so, because his ideas explain the structures, which we met during the ELIS and other projects, structures we at times had to bypass, and hopefully for sufficient reason. However, I am now going to offer some remarks on the new university pedagogy that was introduced in the 1970s at two new Danish universities, in Aalborg and in Roskilde, respectively. The mostly quoted and influential sources of the new pedagogy are the Germans Oskar Negt, who developed a basis for political workers' education, and carried out theoretical work to- gether with Alexander Kluge (e.g. Andersen, 1996). Often, also the work of Brazilian Paulo Freire (e.g. 1973) is mentioned. I will restrict myself to the latter, and even so be selective. Paulo Freire heralds the problem-posing concept of education by contrasting it with the 'banking' concept of education. The 'banking' concept of education sees the learner as a 'container' in which the teacher deposits his knowledge. The knowledge is a gift bestowed on the ignor- ant and in that respect a characteristic of the ideology of oppression.

The more the students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world (Freire, 1993: 47). The liberating alternative is to realise that the world is there to be changed, to be re-created. Man, whether s/he is teacher or learner, is not only a possessor of consciousness, a possessor of an empty mind that is open to the deposits of reality from the world outside.

Liberation is praxis: the action and reflection of men upon the world in order to transform it. (:52) The reflection focuses on the problems of men in their relations with the world. In this reflect- ive context, the students, informing the teacher of their experiences, becomes student-teachers (:53), while the teacher becomes a learner as well. The investigation of the world is a unique effort, as it has to identify the 'contradictions' and 'limit-situations' that prevail among the inhabitants of a specific area at a specific time. Next, the inhabitants' awareness of the limitations of their opportunities has to be assessed, and on that basis only, the teaching programme can be devised. In an Aalborg setting, the 'inhabitants' may be the staff of a department of a municipality in the neighbourhood. An analysis of their 'limit-situations' and awareness reveal that their opportunities would expand, if they had access to a new or better Geographical Information Sys- tem (GIS). Consequently, a project is carried out as a means to support the staff. In principle, the project is structured in a way that staff is taught on how to use the new system, students learn of GIS and GIS implementation, and teachers learn too, at least from the specific cir- 5 of 8 2001-05-03 Stubkjær: The University, the Market, and the Geodetic Engineer cumstances of the project. This is not the place to evaluate the contributions of Paulo Freire in general, nor to assess the problem-oriented and project-organised educational system of Aalborg University. I do mention Paulo Freire, however, because with his teaching concept, he introduces also a conception of the world that extends the objective world of von Humboldt and enlightenment, a conception that includes the construction and re-construction of social reality. The concern of Paulo Freire to engage in and communicate with 'real' people, to teach and learn with the oppressed, has a specific bearing for those of us, who are concerned with cadastral development. An author from the same continent as Paulo Freire has evidenced this. I think of Hernando de Soto from Peru. In his last book, he calls attention to the fact that formal law, and the protection of property rights by formal law, is in operation only in the West. Yet his research shows, that extralegal social contracts on property not only exist, but have also managed to govern the trading of assets in a local setting (de Soto, 2000: 155). The extralegal, social contracts of the scattered villages and city neighbourhoods has to be related to national law, to the language of the oppressors in Freire's terms. In order to build a legal and political structure that transforms extralegal relations into a uni- fied formal property system, you do need to relate the university teaching of formal law to the reality, that is: to the way the individuals in far off places handle and trade their assets. This is precisely the kind of pedagogy that Paulo Freire invites us to apply. 6. Conclusion From the times of Aristotle, university people have realised that they build on the efforts of their predecessors. So I invite you to reflect upon some of those, who shaped the way we look at our university and our missions: Thomas Aquinas, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and Paulo Freire. How do we dispose of the legacy of these men? Do we sustain the institution that we call a university? I raise this issue to celebrate my dear predecessor and role model in university networking. Restructuring university activities like von Humboldt, the Dean of Department of Geodesy with his staff established a new forum, the ELIS seminars, and created a setting for academic exchanges among researchers from both sides of the divided Europe. Finally, like Paulo Freire, he acted as a consultant to other countries, learning and renewing. My sincere congratulations with your achievements!

References Andersen, Anders Siig (1996) Interpretation and Experience. Dissertation, Roskilde Univer- sity. Monographs from the Adult Education Research Group. No. 40, Viborg 1996. Aquinas, St. Thomas (1961) Commentary on Aristole's Metaphysics. Book II. The search for truth and causes. Lesson 1, section 287: Now it is only right Freire, Poulo (1973) Pedagogy of the oppressed. Penguin. 153 p. OECD (1987): Universities under scrutiny. Paris. Rühle, Otto (1966) Idee und Gestalt der deutsche Universität. Tradition und Aufgabe. Berlin. Scurla, Herbert (1976) Wilhelm von Humboldt - Werden und Wirken. Claassen Verlag.660 p. de Soto, Hernando (2000) The Mystery of Capital: Why capitalism triumphs in the West and 6 of 8 2001-05-03 Stubkjær: The University, the Market, and the Geodetic Engineer fails everywhere else. Bantam Press. 243 p. Sumrada, Rados and Eric Stubkjaer (2000): Outcome of the Phare-Tempus project: Education on Environment and Infrastructure. Paper presented at the Second European GIS Education Seminar, Budapest, Hungary, 2000. http://geoinfo.cslm.hu/eugises/papers.htm Stubkjær, Erik (1991) Cartographic communication, graphic sign systems, and meaning. Pa- per presented at the 2nd Polish-Dutch symposium on geodesy: Data collection for GIS (LIS) and their application, 2 - 5 April 1991, Delft, organised by Faculty of Geodesy and Rural Land Development, Agricultural-Technological University of Olsztyn, Poland, and Faculty of Geodesy, Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands. Proceedings, Delft, 1991, p 155-166. Stubkjær, Erik (1997) Restructuring of Study Programmes on Geodetic Engineering. In: ELIS' 97, European Land Information Systems - Proceedings, Sixth Seminar of the European Co-operation Network for Education and Research in Land Information Systems (EUROLIS), Sept 1997, Bratislava / Fendel, E M; Gazdzicki, J (Eds). Delft, University of Technology. pp 1.1 - 1.8. Wasser, Henry (1990) Changes in the European University: From traditional to entrepreneuri- al Higher Education Quarterly 44 (2) 110-122

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3.600 words ----

Social learning traditionen er ret beset ikke een teoretisk skole, men flere beslægtede. Indenfor

Kritisk teori vil jeg fremhæve politisk pædagogiske bidrag af Reich 1973 (opr. 1934), Negt & Kluge 1974,

Negt 1975 og zur Lippe 1978. I USA må dels den pragmatiske filosof John Dewey s erfaringspædagogiske teorier (Dewey 1974 (1938)), dels socialpsykologen Kurt Lewin og den af ham inspirerede organisationsteoretiske skole (fx. Donald Schön og Chris Argyris) regnes til social learning traditionen (jfr.

Friedmann 1987 kap. 5). Uafhængig af disse skoler må Paulo Freires arbejde med politisk aktivering og frigørende læring i den 3. verden desuden fremhæves (jfr. Freire 1973).

Transportrådet, Mobilitetsbehov - kulturelle læreprocesser og bæredygtighed. Notat nr. 99-03. p 57

"The teacher confuses authority of knowledge with his own professional authority, which he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students" (Freire: 47)

Wasser,Henry:Diversification in Higher Education. Kassel:Wissenschaftliches Zentrum für Berufs-und Hochschulforschung der Universität Gesamthochschule Kassel 1999 (Werkstattberichte;56)

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