The Constitutive Crisis of Universities: Born to Be for Few, Challenged to Be for All

Abstract

Since their historical origin European universities appear in the beginning of the post-Medieval Age of Enlightenment to amplify the offer of educational qualification, that was until then limited to the claustrum of monasteries. It seems that Charlemagne in 814 determined this high-level educational role for the Church. Evaluation in contemporary universities is a pervasive, global idea that is central to universities all around the world. Evaluation is directly linked to competitiveness, and competitiveness is the condition to the maintenance of universities. Evaluation, on the other hand, is the way through which society and its political instances can influence university profile and targets. Universities historically were born in the context of paradoxes—this is the main source of their historical, political and cultural interest. The paradoxical movement of opening the arena of debate to all those able to offer a good idea, together with the protection of a specific community by the establishment of admission and career criteria, is in fact constitutive of universities, across time and geography. Global competitiveness is, once more, a context where paradoxes are present.