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Matthias Doepke
Humboldt's University - Now and Then
My statement today is about Humboldt's university. When I speak about Humboldt's university I do not mean the actual Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany. Rather, I am talking about the ideal of a university that Wilhelm von Humboldt developed in the early 19th century, and which became the blueprint for the new university in Berlin and later many other universities in Germany, the United States, and throughout the world. My personal interest in this topic derives from the fact that I started my studies in Berlin at the university that carries Humboldt's name, whereas now in Chicago I study at a university that is, I believe, a Humboldt-university in spirit. In the five to six minutes that I have left I would like to briefly discuss what a true Humboldt-university is like, whether Humboldt's concept still fits into our modern times, and if so, what can be done to move actual universities closer to this ideal.
Now what exactly is Humboldt's ideal of a university? Given the limited time, I will mention only two essentials. The first indispensable feature that comes to mind is the unity of teaching and research. Research and teaching are to be done by the same people, instead of allowing for specialization. Since teaching is done by researchers, lectures are about research, or about how to do research. This implies that the Humboldt university is decidedly non-practical. Applied knowledge or technical skills that are useful for certain trades and professions have no place at a Humboldt university. The aim is education in a general sense, not specific training for a specific occupation.
The second key ingredient of a Humboldt university is freedom. This entails freedom for the professor to decide on which topics to do research and which material to teach. But it also entails the freedom of the student to decide on his own program of study and work at his own pace. Humboldt's university does not know credit-point systems or required programs of study.
Now lets turn to the real world and see what happened to Humboldt's ideals in practice. Initially, his new concept of a university was an unqualified success story. The newly founded Berlin University grew to instant fame and greatly influenced reforms elsewhere. That is especially true for the United States. The invention of the Graduate School at Johns Hopkins university was inspired by the German, Humboldtian system. Later, Humboldt's ideals influenced further developments first here at the University of Chicago and then at many other research universities.
Today, however, Humboldt's ideals are under attack. While German universities are officially still signed on, in practice the swelling of the student body has made the close cooperation of student and teacher that Humboldt imagined impossible. When I first came to the Berlin Humboldt University in 1993, for a short time the university lived up to its name. Class sizes were small, professors showed unusual interest in students, and the city government of Berlin seemed willing to provide the necessary resources. By now times have changed - the number of students has multiplied, and for lack of money Berlin stopped to replace professors who left for other universities. Today the Humboldt University is just as far from Humboldt's ideal as any of the crowded West-German universities.
In the United States the picture is different. In the college or the professional schools, with their required programs of study, credit-point system, and often large student-to-faculty ratios, education is just as far from Humboldt's ideal as in German universities. With the graduate school, however, the American system has a place where Humboldt's ideals flourish still today. In graduate programs, especially on the Ph.D. level, teachers generally teach what they want, which is their own research. Instead of a credit point system, many programs have comprehensive exams that are not always closely linked to the content of specific courses. Students work closely with faculty and are gradually led to their own research. Indeed, the American graduate school is the best representation of Humboldt's ideals that we can find today.
Having seen how Humboldt's university is doing in practice today, we are ready to ask the central question: Does Humboldt's university still belong into our times? My answer is an unqualified yes. As an economist, I am lucky in that I do not need to go into detailed arguments, but can just point to the tremendous demand for Humboldtian education and the success of the universities that offer it. The American graduate school is a major export article and a magnet for talented students from all over the world. Many graduate programs here recruit one half or more of their students from foreign countries, and in doing so they usually have the luxury of selecting from hundreds of applications. To speak of my own experience, out of the maybe 35 students I went to school with in Berlin seven are now getting a Ph.D. in the United States, five alone here at Chicago and Northwestern. Humboldt's university is perfectly fitted for academic research and academic education, which has been demonstrated by the success of German universities before the war, and American universities ever since.
Despite the apparent success of Humboldt's university, we also need to realize that Humboldt's ideals are not right everywhere and for everyone. Research and truly academic education make up only a small fraction of the demands placed on modern universities. Humboldt's university is not very successful at what it was never designed to do, namely training of large masses of people for a specific occupation. Unfortunately, just this demand is the dominant one in the universities of our times. The majority of today's students wants a solid foundation for their future professional work. Only a small minority takes the deep interest in science and research that is necessary for Humboldt' university to succeed. The American system reacts to these divided interests by dividing higher education into undergraduate and graduate education. In the College, students are taken by the hand and go course by course through a program of study. This part of American higher education is decidedly un-Humboldtian. At the same time, since most students finish their education with a College degree, the system ensures that only students with deeper academic interests enter the graduate school, which specializes in serious scientific work. In this way, the American system identifies students with different needs and creates different environments for them. This creates a niche in which Humboldt's university can flourish.
The German system also makes a distinction between students with more practical and more academic interests. The Fachhochschulen specialize in more practical, job-oriented training, while the Universitäten, supposedly, are still equally devoted to teaching and research, in pursuit of Humboldt's ideals. In practice the system never worked very well. The Fachhochschulen are often looked upon as inferior, and their graduates often have worse job prospects than university graduates. Therefore most students still turn to Universitäten, even though many of them are not really looking for the type of education that a Humboldtian university can offer.
What can be done to reestablish Humboldt's university? First of all, Germany has to realize that there are students with different needs and demands, and Humboldt's university is only a good fit for a small number of them - those who take an interest in research and science that goes beyond practical training for a career outside academia. If Humboldt's university is to be reestablished for those students, there will have to be centers that specialize in a Humboldtian education, and these centers should be able to select their own students, just as American graduate schools do. At the same time, there should also be offers for students who are looking for a different kind of education, as implemented by the professional schools in America. The easiest way to implement this would be to put more emphasis on the Fachhochschulen, both in terms of financial resources, and acceptance on the job market. To start, the government should stop to discriminate against graduates from Fachhochschulen when filling top jobs.
In summary, the key step towards reestablishing Humboldt's university is to acknowledge that different students have different needs, and to design the educational system such that specialized offers are made to these different students. Money, by the way, is not an important issue here. In fact, the current financial crisis in the German academic system seems to have many positive effects. In many universities complacency has been replaced eager action, motivated by the desire to escape the next round of spending cuts. Some indications are the spreading use of English in instruction at German universities, and the new B.A. and M.A. degree programs that are introduced all over the country. Never did so much change in such a short time at German universities, and lack of money is a main driving force behind this change. There is also a historical precedent: The university in Berlin was founded right after Prussia lost a war to Napoleon and was basically bankrupt.
Compared to Germany, the United States was luckier and has a working separation of Humboldtian universities, i.e., the graduate schools, and training programs, i.e., college and professional schools. The only problem is that to study at a Humboldtian university, one has to pass through the college first, which is often not the best preparation for graduate work. In many disciplines, graduates of American colleges have more trouble adjusting to graduate school than students who received their first degree abroad.
Humboldt's university is alive and well in some parts of the world, but much remains to be done to put it back in its deserved place - especially in its home country Germany.
Matthias Doepke (28) hails from Hannover (Germany) and is a Ph.D. student in economics at the University of Chicago, Illinois, USA. He earned a Diplom in Volkswirschaftslehre at Humboldt-Universität Berlin and spent a year at the University of Minnesota on a Fulbright Scholarship.
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