The Changing Boundary between the State and Higher Education

The relationship between the university and the state is one of crucial importance and abiding interest, not least to those in universities. It is, of course, by no means a new preoccupation. As early as 1798, the philosopher Kant sought to provide a suitable model to balance, on the one hand, the necessary independence from bureaucratic intervention that constitutes the sine qua non of scholarship, and on the other, the requirement that the state have some measure of control over those professions that an American political scientist, David Easton, has termed the value-allocating bodies in society-in effect, law, theology and medicine 1. These three professions, Kant argued, were the legitimate area for state regulation, since they affected its well-being and influenced the thinking of its citizens. Philosophy, by contrast, did not fall into this category. Concerned with the pursuit of scholarship and truth, not only was it free to judge the teaching of other faculties, but because Man is by nature free and thus not under any constraint but the one of that pursuit, state regulation in such an area was inappropriate 2. In short, the Kantian model was one in which the relationship between the state and the university was based on a fundamental dualism, expressed not so much in the field of teaching and learning as in the distinction between those areas where the state might intervene and those where it might not. The counterpoint to this model was provided by the Humboltian concept of the university. In theory, it did not distinguish between areas of state intervention, but rather sought to develop a totality of non-intervention expressed in the form of freedom for teaching and research. As many writers have pointed out, this ideal did not easily adjust to the growing requirements for the professional training of business and administration that emerged in the course of the 19th century. The establishment of research organisations, generally under state supervision in 19th century Prussia, organisations usually outside or on the periphery of the university 3, in fact, gave rise to a situation nearer to the one suggested by Kant than that incorporated in the early days of the University of Berlin. In short, the development of professional schools and research institutes in 19th century Germany, and the growth of similar bodies in the form of the Grandes Ecoles in France, underlined the fact that the notional independence of the university was possible only at the price of setting up either a parallel sector, legally distinct from the university, or a series of affiliated organisations attached to it, in regard to which state intervention was seen as reasonable.