The University of the 21st Century: Challenges

Introduction

Second to the Church, the University is the oldest European institution, and one that has enjoyed a striking continuity. Despite numerous changes, a cluster of constants connects the initiatives taken at the end of the 12^th century AD, those at Bologna, Paris, and Montpellier, later those at Oxford, Salamanca, Halle, or Crakow, to the university of our times: the focus on higher education, the recruitment of top specialists as professors, a cultivation of the quest for truth, the awarding of the highest qualifications, and so forth. In Histoire des universités françaises et étrangères des origines à nos jours, Stephen d’Irsay evokes these fertile initiatives as “the model of all analogous efforts” (1933, p. 121).

It is only in the 19^th century that a veritable new threshold in the evolution of the University is reached. If in the Middle Ages, universities were legally legitimated initially by the Holy See, and consequently by the ecclesiastical authorities in general, in the 19^th century it is the State that confers legitimacy (Marga, 2006a). Universities are parts of the national cultural projects promoted primarily through the institutions of the State. Each of the three major European initiatives—“the Humboldtian university,” the “Napoleonic university,” and the “civic universities”—brought significant changes: the link between education and research, the connection of education to the needs of the administration, and the connection of education to industry, respectively (Marga, 1994). Equally important changes were afoot in “the American university,” which succeeded in producing a synthesis between the tradition of the English colleges and Humboldt’s ideas (Veysey, 2006), which effectively turned the universities into engines of modernization (Bok, 2006). The European universities entered the 20^th century with the legacy of their medieval traditions, after having undergone the four innovations, and committed to the front of rationalizations brought about by modernization.

The 20^th century recorded several experiences that mark our reflection upon the university to this day. Among these we could mention: the expansion of positive knowledge and the emergence of the relation between knowledge and meaning as a theme of reflection; the undermining of the university’s autonomy and its ideological instrumentation; the dissolution of the unity of sciences and the rise of relativism; the globalization of knowledge, communication, economy, and the involvement of universities in a market competition. We are nowadays moving in the environment created by these changes (Marga, 2005).

At the beginning of the 21^st century, several more changes have occurred. Some of them are long-lasting, such as: the “global warming,” which has come about earlier than predicted, and with deeper effects than initially thought; “the migration of populations” toward developed countries, which has taken on a new dimension; “the spreading of terrorism” as a major danger to civilization; “the erosion of multiculturalism,” which has sometimes been reduced to the co-existence of insular cultures; the increasingly tougher “competition of universities” in the context of globalization; “the demise of the metanarratives of the world” under the pressure of the need for valuing commodities on the global market; “the cultural turn,” according to which “culture” becomes the predominant factor (as opposed to others such as geography, economy, or politics) that shapes the performance of people (Tenbruck, 1990).

All these changes brought about real “challenges” for the university. In my present keynote, I will briefly address such challenges as: the implementation of the Bologna Declaration (1999) in Europe; globalization; sustainability and the identity of a university; autonomy; quality assurance; the phenomenon of “brain drain”; the issue of multiculturalism of leadership; climate change; the overcoming of relativism; the recuperation of a vision based on knowledge. I will express my personal points of view, including what has been formulated in my previous research (on the theory of comprehensive reform, the delimiting of the types of actual reform, the idea of multicultural organization, etc.), without developing in detail; I will rather attempt to profile solutions to new problems. My purpose here is thus to identify the new...