We are at the edge of a radical change in the structure of higher education, at least as radical as the development of higher education which began at the turn of the present century. The emergence and development of the modern university is part and parcel of the nineteenth century history of modern industry and the modern nation state. This last radical change can be summarized briefly.

First, there occurred a symbiosis of science, industry and the state--in this century an essential attribute of the basic mode of production of a modern economy. Prior to the middle of the nineteenth century, "science" went on almost completely outside the University. Men like Cavendish and Joule could afford private laboratories and Count Rumford, founder in 1799 of the Royal Society could assure Davy and Faraday the freedom to pursue their inquiries. The establishment in France of the Ecole polytechnique during the 1790s provided a critical precondition: the breaking down of the barriers which had separated the "classical" mathematical sciences from the Baconian and applied sciences: chemistry, magnetism, and heat. But the Germans, late modernizers, will most fully exploit this new opportunity. In marked distinction from the Universities of Britain, Italy and France whose roots were medieval, the "new" University of Berlin (1810) had established the institutional background for a new kind of university in which "institutes" would provide "particular knowledge" as well as "general philosophical education." By the mid-nineteenth century, German science, especially chemistry, mathematics, physics, and physiology had eclipsed all others. Self-conscious modernizers, the Bismarkian state promoted industrialization and applied science. Aniline dyes (1856), cellulose derivatives: lacquers, photographic plates and modern plastics (1868), synthetic resins (1909), chemical fertilizers and poison gas were but some of the discoveries. At the same time, electricity, the self-executed electromagnetic generator, the ring dynamo, and the incandescent lamp, were developed by leading German industrial firms which were quick to cash in. By the turn of the century Badishe Anilin, Hochst, AGFA and others had 90% of the world market in the new wonders of chemistry. Seimans was a world leader in applied electrical innovation. Not only had science and scientists acquired a kind of authority formerly reserved only for shaman, but its advancement could be secured institutionally: in the new University. In a 1862 address, Helmholtz brilliantly summarized the new ideology. Since "all nations are interested in the progress of knowledge for the simple reason of self-preservation, men of science form...an organized army labouring on behalf of the whole nation, and generally under its direction and at its expense, to augment the stock of knowledge as may serve to promote industrial enterprise, to adorn life, to improve political and social relations, and to further the moral development of individual citizens (1971: 40).

Second, industrialization and urbanization (and in the US, immigration) created "the social problem." And as suggested by Helmholz's remarks, it was clear enough to well-placed educational entrepreneurs that "scientific knowledge" could be directed to aiding in its solution. Alongside traditional education in the "humanities," a conception of a technocratic social science emerged. The British, the first nation to confront "the social problem," responded for the need for "social research" with institutions which were totally independent of their traditional elitist Universities. Oxford could continue to cultivate "gentlemen," while the Manchester Statistical Society whose council "often looked like a subcommittee of a Whig cabinet" would do what it could "to assist in promoting the progress of social improvement" (Manicas, 1987).

The Germans, however, were able to integrate new "institutes" which addressed social issues into the universities. But it will be the Americans who will quite literally invent most of the specialized social science "disciplines" now taken for granted in every major research university in the world. There were special conditions which made this possible (Manicas, 1987), but critically is the fact that until the founding of Johns Hopkins in 1876, America did not have a university. The existing "colleges" of the US, Harvard, Yale, etc. offered no graduate education and the undergraduate curriculum emphasized the "moral sciences," rhetoric and a smattering of "natural philosophy."

Indeed, the modern research university as we today know it derives most directly from the innovations constituted in the new American universities, created and funded by the fortunes of the Carnegies, Rockefellers (Chicago): Hopkins, Cornells, Stanfords and Vanderbilts, and then appropriated by the traditional colleges of America, and ultimately, by even the oldest of the world's universities.

Finally, "democracy" and the accelerating demands for specialized knowledge and a qualified workforce required that the old elitism of the pre-nineteenth European universities and American "colleges" give way to the idea that higher education should be available to all who were able (Bowles and Gintis, 1976). McClelland (1980) reports that in 1870 the student population in Germany stood at 14,000. By 1900 it was 34,000 and by 1914, it had reached 61,000. But the US growth far outuns these increases. By 1890 there were 154,300 undergraduate students and 2,400 graduate students; by 1920, 582,000 and 15,600 and by 1930, there were 1,053,500 undergraduates and 47,300 graduate students in the US. England, an early modernizer without a modern "revolutionary" past, was the last to "democratize" education. Of course, from WWII to the present, growth has been both continuous and remarkable. In 1995, there were some 14,261,781 students enrolled in US colleges and universities. Some 2,954,707 of these are enrolled in four-year private institutions; about half of all those enrolled in public institutions, some 5.5 million were enrolled in two-year colleges (Chronicle of Higher Education, Almanac Issue, 29 August 1997). Higher education continues to be hostage to political economy and the state. But the conditions which produced the modern research university (and two-year community college) have been profoundly altered. Again, three features are fairly obvious. First, globalization has undercut the idea that states can underwrite development by fostering the sciences in the universities. This is a consequence of a number of factors: There is world-wide accessibility of scientific information, itself due to new communications technologies, both innovation and the training of qualified technical workers is now globalized, the newer technologies do not generally require massive infrastructure and investment, and most critically, corporations are global: their achievements do not necessarily redound on the nation where their headquarters are located.

Following on this, the social sciences have lost their authority. The tons of "findings" produced by social science researchers have contributed little or nothing to the solution of social problems which are also at least part product of global influences not controllable by the state. Indeed, if anything, by disavowing the search for underlying causes, most social science research distracts us from real solutions. Small wonder that most citizens get a bit bleary eyed when they are told that, e.g., we do not know what causes crime or poverty or what can be done to prevent environmental disaster! Similarly, currently fashionable "postmodern" thought in the universities is a symptom of the loss of authority of social science as it was constituted in the university.

Second, higher education is no longer affordable. The Commission on National Investment in Higher Education reported that higher education will have a $38 billion dollar shortfall by 2015 and that to sustain current spending, tuition would have to double. Tuition in private schools is already astronomical--with the heavy support it already gets, and state budgets have decreasing funds for increasing costs. (Arguably the best system of higher education in the world, California is now putting more of its funds into prisons than into the colleges and universities of that state.)

Finally, computer mediated technologies, now only beginning to be introduced, provide a highly cost-effective way to increase access.

The Commission report was entitled, "Breaking the Social Contract: The Fiscal Crisis in Higher Education." It called for a radical restructuring of universities. But because the problem is not only fiscal, it suggestions were modest. There is simply no reason not to believe that in the very near future, most post-secondary education in the advanced capitalist democracies will be electronically delivered. It is very inexpensive, it can do what is asked of it, and it guarantees increased access.

The largest private university in the US with some 40,000 students is the University of Phoenix. It has no campus, but rents space in cities across the nation for its on-site instruction. Not a place "to discover the eternal verities of the Western tradition," "it offers B.A.'s and M.A.'s mostly in business and in fields like information technology, health and education" (New York Times 15 October 1997). Phoenix, like the National Technology University which is a virtual university, is a for-profit university--"a kind of HMO of education." But very distinguished institutions, NYU, Vanderbilt, Stanford, e.g., are also moving in the direction of providing both for its regularly enrolled student body and for "distance learners" courses wholly offered on the net. Public institutions are also moving in this direction, if slowly. Thus, the Colorado Community College system will offer a new two-year degree that students can take entirely on the Internet--and there are many others either starting up or being planned, e.g., the Western Governors University.

"Traditional" residential universities will not, of course, simply disappear, but those that survive will offer students what they cannot get in the virtual university, and likely, they will be highly selective and very expensive. As suggested, they will offer a mix of on-site and internet instruction with the mix varying considerably. Large public universities, if they are sufficiently agile and creative, will survive, but they will be very different than they presently are. Perhaps they will need to be allied with one another (as the Western Governor's University), or perhaps they will be forced to adopt something like a Phoenix arrangement with only seminars, tutoring, dance and theater and laboratory courses given on campus .

There are no forces on the horizon to prevent this. Viewed from a class perspective, most people will accept--as they now do-- a highly differentiated system of higher education. The possibility of increased access and convenience--whatever the quality, will assuage most people.

Nor is the idea that the quality of higher education for most people will deteriorate a viable response. First, very few undergraduates currently accept the idea of "learning for its own sake." In both private and public universities, as in two-year colleges, almost all students are vocationally oriented: they are there for the credential. They know that any degree is better than no degree--even if they fail to realize that with increased access degrees are less meaningful. Moreover, if we put aside the networks established in prestigious private colleges and universities and the benefits in quality of life to be derived from a liberal arts education (now available to but a few), it is wrong to suppose that current graduates of less-prestigious institutions, including Phoenix, are inadequately prepared for the labor market. Indeed, AT&T has contracted with Phoenix for employee training. We can expect much more of this.

Second, that the quality will deteriorate is not a foregone conclusion. Higher education is currently of a very poor quality--especially in Carnegie 1 research institutions where faculty and administration have little interest in undergraduate education. Moreover, surely in response to much of the foregoing, everywhere "traditional" curricula and teaching arrangments are under attack. Students are demanding, impatient, independent and hard to convince. Faculty have lost confidence in the idea that they know what is good for the student.

This, of course, contributes the loss of credibility of higher education and is, accordingly, contributing to its imminent restructuring. On the other hand, if the key agents in higher education, the faculty, were to take control of education, the newer technologies, properly employed, could enhance learning. Instead of being "credential mills," schools might become "learner-center environments where learners actively participate in the act of learning" (Odin, 1997). This is not farfetched. Some of the new technologies have remarkable potentials for active learning even if these are now being realized by but a very small minority of those who are using them. Indeed, most faculty are not only blithfully ignorant of any use of the new technologies, but they also assume, remarkably, that the traditional setting for instruction--itself a fairly modern innovation, is not only effective but the only possible one.

The foregoing suggests the only possible force to prevent or to shape these outcomes: the faculty. Given that the "traditional" university is highly labor intensive and that the new technologies are not, restructuring will eliminate many positions. Faculty are bound to resist this, but "downsizing" is already occurring and will, other things being equal, continue to occur. Moreover, faculty unions, like other labor unions, seem perfectly willing to engage in the losing game of trying to preserve jobs--at the expense of highly exploited part-timers, without realizing that they should, instead, be trying to re-secure control over the education of their students.

That is, given the imperatives of the globalized political economy, soaring tuition costs, the problems of maintaining, still less of extending access, the widespread disquiet among the tax-paying public, faculties and students, and the already radically changed character of both students and their motivations, faculty will not be able to resist restructuring. They may, accordingly, capitulate to the worst possible outcomes: a tiered educational system which provides basic and vocational skills to most students. Or they may fully accept the challenges of information technology and put them to the best possible use. If education for the many is not to be reduced to competency, if it is to preserve the older--and already severely compromised--ideal of Bildung, then faculty themselves will need to educate themselves to the possibilities of the new technologies. And they will need both clarity of purpose and organization. Present experience suggests that none of this will be forthcoming. But indeed, the great promise of pessimist futurism is the fact that history is full of surprises.

Peter T. Manicas Director, Liberal Studies

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Updated: 18 February 1997