Monday 28th January 2013, 4.30-6.00pm
Michael Young, Emeritus Professor of Education, Institute of Education, University of London
The challenge to the disciplines and the past and future of the University
UELT seminar room
Canterbury Campus
The Centre for the Study of Higher Education invites you to our first seminar of the new year, a joint event with the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain South-East Branch.
All are welcome to join us. Refreshments will be available, so please let us know if you are coming by emailing
cshe@kent.ac.uk.
Find us at J7 on the campus map: http://www.kent.ac.uk/maps/canterbury/maps.html?tab=campus-map
Discipline-based knowledge has long been integral to the research and teaching of universities, in the more established professional/vocational fields no less than in the sciences , humanities and arts. This assumption is increasingly questioned by governments in the UK and elsewhere which emphasise the human resource and innovation purpose of universities. This shift is paralleled by the efforts of governments to shift the financial costs of university education from grants to fees paid by students. In this paper I will draw on Durkheim’s sociology of knowledge to argue that the weakening of the disciplinary basis of teaching and research not only undermines the role of universities as institutions of ‘public’ higher education, but will progressively reduce their capacity to act both as sources of social and economic innovation and to be the primary location for a society’s conversation about its future.