Democracy and higher education: A Tocquevillean Debate

How does democracy shape higher education? What kind of education does a democratic citizenry need? These questions are at the heart of the current debate, raging on both sides of the Atlantic, about the future of the university and the purpose of higher education. The focal point of this debate is the role of the humanities, often regarded as the core of the liberal arts curriculum, whose status as an essential part of university education has come under intense scrutiny.

On one end of the controversy is the insistence that higher education should serve society’s needs: accessible to all, it ought to impart the knowledge and skills that will prepare students for professional careers, and help them become successful members of society. In other words, university education should be democratic in the sense of being affordable and pertinent. It should be useful to the individuals who receive it and to society as a whole.

Viewed from this perspective, the 4-year liberal arts degree that has epitomized US college education, and continues to be the envy of the world, is seen as both elitist and irrelevant, much in the way that humanistic studies are viewed in Europe. Increasingly unaffordable, this kind of study claims massive funds to teach subjects that have little or no connection to the world in which students will soon have to blaze their professional paths. Not merely useless or unworldly, it is harmful: by stirring up intellectual ambitions it distracts young people from their most important task – i.e. learning how to earn a living and advance their career.

On the other side of the controversy is the argument that thinking about education in terms of narrow utility is prejudicial not only to the academic enterprise but to society as a whole. Ever since the founding of Plato’s Academy, the aim of the university, its core aspiration, as its name suggests, has been universality. More than training workers, or serving the needs of the national and global economy, the university’s role should be to educate human beings by cultivating their individual faculties and expanding their horizons. The university should serve God, not Mammon, even if God has been draped in secular garb.

Moreover, in the context of rapid global change we cannot know whether what seems useful and relevant today will be so tomorrow. To be prepared for the challenges of the future, alongside specialized professional knowledge young people need a broader outlook, best acquired in learning across disciplines and widening their cultural and historical vistas.

Thus, rather than bowing to the people’s understanding of utility, the university should enlighten that understanding – that is how it can best serve the people. To do this university education should aim to question received truths and common assumptions by confronting them with alternatives, both past and present. And for this the study of the humanities is the sine qua non.

Alexis de Tocqueville was deeply concerned about the relationship between democracy and education. If he devoted far more space in Democracy in America to Americans’ informal political and associative education than he did to America’s nascent institutions of higher learning, he nevertheless provided insights into the purpose of higher education in democratic societies that can help focus our contemporary debates. Of course, as the following pieces demonstrate, the meaning of those insights is itself debatable.