Download link: essay “The Nightmare of Humboldt – Greatness and Misery of the University” (145 pages)
All the data and scripts used for plotting the figures of this essay can be found on my github page.
Summary
How has the university, meant to be the temple of reason, become a hub of irrationality? Why is innovation the key focus of university leadership? What causes the most outrageous theories to proliferate there?
Throughout its thousand-year history, the university has faced numerous crises. The university of the Ancien Régime disappeared during the revolutionary wars at the end of the 18th century. It gave way to the Humboldt university, which combined research and teaching to educate students based on current knowledge and a changing world. While the Industrial Revolution was driven by technological advancements in businesses, nothing would have been possible without progress in fundamental sciences. The Humboldt university adapted to significant changes in the 20th century, sometimes hesitating and questioning itself (notably during the social protests of the 1960s): the continuous increase in the number of students, the state’s control over major research areas, the tertiary transformation of the economy, and the demand for graduates.
From the 1960s onwards, a new narrative began to emerge: economic growth is the result of technological development. This narrative remained largely unheard for a long time, yet it influenced public perception. Several processes contributed to its establishment as the dominant ideology: globalization and market openness, computerization, politicians’ distress in the face of stagnant economic growth since the oil shocks, “disenchantment with the world,” triumph of technology, and the construction of the European Union.
Through more or less brutal reforms, European universities changed their model, drawing heavily from the American model of technological universities. Even the humanities were shaken by the emergence of a movement (known as postmodernism) that questioned the foundations of Western science (truth, objectivity, reality). The new university emerged in the late 1990s, built on the promise of a return to growth. Twenty-five years later, the results are mixed. Huge sums have been invested by governments, yet the economic situation has not improved. The commercialization of the university has kept major issues (such as the climate crisis or the type of society we wish to develop) under the radar. It is undeniable that the new university serves powerful interests, primarily those of its extensive bureaucracy. The question remains whether we should continue to fund a model that has turned its back on its original missions.