Higher education and citizenship: 'The full range of purposes'

Abstract

This article discusses citizenship education in the context of the purposes and roles of higher education. The social and political changes in Europe of the last two decades have had an immense impact on the understanding of these roles and purposes, defining the university's mission and steering the national systems of higher education. The dichotomy of economic competitiveness and social cohesion has been transferred into higher education discussions and provoked new dichotomies like the 'Europe of the euro' versus the 'Europe of knowledge'. A call from the 2007 London Communiqué to focus on the 'full range of purposes' of higher education is taken as an indicative statement in recent policy debates and analysed. For this reason, four 'archetypal models' of understanding the purposes of higher education are developed against the historical background of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Napoleonic, Humboldtian, Newmanian and Deweyan. Dewey's criticism of the 'educational state' in the early twentieth century is confronted with the later decline of the nation state, and with the processes of the internationalisation and globalisation of education and education policy. We are witness to the progressive instrumentalisation of higher education, but higher education's potential contribution to citizenship lies beyond this: in recognising the 'full range of its purposes'.