The Transformation of Humanities Education: The Case of Norway 1960-2000 from a Systems-Theoretical Perspective 9783839443071

Citation preview

Vidar Grøtta The Transformation of Humanities Education

Global Studies & Theory of Society  | Volume 3

Editorial Since the 18th century society is world society. The book series documents research which explores this hypothesis with particular focus on the polity, religion, science and higher education as four global function systems. All these systems are based on inclusion, everybody can and should participate in them, they are all responsive, they observe their environments and produce problem solutions. They are extremely diversified and at the same time claim to be singular: Studies of the emergence of these systems, as well as comparative perspectives, challenge the theory of modern society, its unity and diversity. What are the problems that can be solved only by the polity, religion, science and by universities? Die Gesellschaft des 18. bis 21. Jahrhunderts ist Weltgesellschaft. Die Buchreihe dokumentiert Forschungen, die diesen Befund vertiefen, insbesondere im Blick auf die globalen Funktionssysteme Politik, Religion, Wissenschaft und Hochschulerziehung. Alle diese Systeme ruhen auf Inklusion, jeder kann und soll an ihnen teilnehmen, alle sind responsiv, sie beobachten ihre gesellschaftliche Umwelt und produzieren Problemlösungen. Sie sind extrem diversifiziert und postulieren zugleich ihre eigene Unverzichtbarkeit: Studien zur Entstehung und zum globalen Vergleich dieser Systeme werfen für die Theorie der modernen Gesellschaft die Frage nach Einheit und Diversität auf. Welches sind die Probleme, die nur durch Politik, Religion, Wissenschaft und Universitäten gelöst werden können? The series is edited by Adrian Hermann, David Kaldewey and Rudolf Stichweh.

Vidar Grøtta, born in 1969, holds a graduate degree in comparative literature and a PhD in educational research. He works as a policymaker, alongside various teaching and writing assignments, at the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research.

Vidar GrØtta

The Transformation of Humanities Education The Case of Norway 1960-2000 from a Systems-Theoretical Perspective

Funding for this publication has been provided by the Department of Education at the University of Oslo.

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de

© 2019 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld Cover concept: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-4307-7 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-4307-1 https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839443071

Contents

Preface | 7

PART ONE: THEORY 1 2 3 4 5

Introduction to part one | 13 Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory | 23 Key concepts in systems theory | 27 Comparing theories for higher education research | 51 The use of theory in this study | 71

PART TWO: ADMISSIONS 6 Introduction to part two | 75 7 The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955–1975 | 123 8 Stagnation in humanities education, 1975–1987 | 177 9 The second expansionist period, 1987–2000 | 191 10 Conclusions to part two | 221

PART THREE: CURRICULA 11 12 13 14 15 16

Introduction to part three | 231 History | 273 English studies | 303 General literature studies | 331 Philosophy | 359 Conclusions to part three | 389

PART FOUR: CAREERS 17 Introduction to part four | 407 18 The period 1960–1975: Humanities education as teacher education | 429 19 The period 1975–1985: The transformation | 449 20 The period 1985–2000: Humanities education and “boundaryless” careers | 483 21 Conclusions to part four | 507

PART FIVE: CONCLUSIONS 22 Conclusions to the study | 515

Afterword, 2000–2018 | 523 Appendices | 539 References | 547

Preface

Books on the humanities are mostly written by people with a strong engagement in humanist disciplines, often in order to discuss and demonstrate their value, not seldom as an apologia in the face of a real or presumed attack. Personally, I share the enthusiasm for the humanities that usually informs such contributions. Like so many in my generation of middle class Norwegians, I have since adolescence had a keen interest in literature, philosophy, history, the arts, and – not least – popular culture. Pursuing these interests, I spent my twenties as a humanities student in Norway and abroad, eventually graduating from the University of Oslo in 1998 as a magister in literary studies with a dissertation on William Wordsworth. Hence, I know from personal experience how enriching the academic study of the humanities can be. Experiences then and since have also convinced me that in addition to the personal benefits reaped by the humanities students and their teachers, the existence of, and public support for, strong humanities research and education is a precondition for a well-functioning society in general. No less. Still, the book presented here is not primarily a celebration of the humanities; nor is it a meditation upon their nature. As will soon become clear, the approach is analytical rather than normative, and structural and institutional issues take center stage more often than philosophical reflections regarding the familiar issues of Bildung, critical thinking, etc. Furthermore, the study does not place itself within the theoretical or methodological traditions of the humanities themselves, at least not primarily. As explained in part one, the book is a piece of historical sociology, and in that capacity it offers, at least to some extent, an outside view of the humanities. It should also be underscored that this study does not primarily address the current state of affairs, but traces the genealogy of modern humanities education during the period 1960-2000. While I hope it can be useful as a backdrop for the ongoing humanities debates, the primary ambition of the study is to understand an historical development. However, in order to offer a comprehensive overview of

8 │ The transformation of humanities education

modern Norwegian humanities education I have supplied an afterword which brings the account up to date and discusses some of the latest developments. In the first part of the study I argue that reflexivity is particularly important in studies of higher education and research. When academia puts itself under the microscope, so to speak, the self-reference involved should be acknowledged and triangulated with reference to other viewpoints. This is mostly a theoretical concern, but it also has implications at the level of the individual researcher. Regarding myself as a researcher, and as the author of this book, I should therefore inform the reader that I have had occasion to observe its object of study – Norwegian humanities education – from various angles. In addition to my already mentioned viewpoint as a humanities student during the 1990s, I have seen humanities education from the perspective of the labor market when I served as the director of the Careers center at the University of Oslo in the early 2000s, and from the viewpoint of politics and administration during my time with the Ministry of education and research from 2006 to 2010. Working on the PhD dissertation on which this book is based from 2010 to 2014, I had the pleasure of being affiliated (as a research fellow) with the Department of education at the University of Oslo, as well as with a humanities research program at the same institution entitled “Cultural transformations in the age of globalization (Kultrans),” which allowed me to observe the humanities from the point of view of research. Since 2015 I have again been employed by the Ministry of education and research. Of course, I make no claim to special insights by virtue of these experiences and viewpoints; I mention them only because, arguing for increased reflexivity, I should practice as I preach and be forthright about my affiliations. Many people have helped me in the process of researching and writing this study. My thanks go first, as always, to my parents, Magnhild and Oddbjørn Grøtta, for their unending support. My main supervisor for the PhD dissertation this book is based upon, professor Helge Jordheim (Department of culture studies and oriental languages, University of Oslo), has freely shared his great learning, intellectual curiosity, and enthusiasm. I thank him again for his support. I also thank professor Peter Maassen (Department of education, University of Oslo), the co-supervisor, for his competent advice and helpful comments to the dissertation. The members of the adjudication committee for the dissertation were professor Rudolf Stichweh (Forum Internationale Wissenschaft, Universität Bonn), professor Sverker Sörlin (Division of History of Science, Technology, and Environment, Royal Institute of Technology) and professor Torill Strand (Department of Education, University of Oslo). I thank the committee for their insightful evaluation of the dissertation, and for an intellectually rewarding debate during my doctoral defense in May 2017.

Preface │ 9

In addition, the following people have read parts of the dissertation manuscript and offered expert advice in the most generous and helpful way: professor Fredrik W. Thue (Center for the study of professions, Oslo Metropolitan University), professor Bjørn Stensaker (Department of education, University of Oslo), and my sister, associate professor Marit Grøtta (Department of literature, area studies, and European languages, University of Oslo). Of course, none of these can be held responsible for any remaining faults or shortcomings in the study. I have received help with retrieving archival material and statistics from the following people: records manager Åse T. Trandheim (Faculty of humanities, University of Oslo), senior adviser Sissel Myrvang (the Archives, University of Tromsø), senior researcher Terje Næss (NIFU), and too many people at Statistic Norway to mention by name. I thank them all for their valuable professional services. I am grateful to the Ministry of education and research for a leave of absence which allowed me to undertake this project, especially since the topic of the project was freely chosen by myself, and had no direct bearing on the areas I was then working on. I thank the Department of education at the University of Oslo for their financial support of the publication of this book. I also thank the many kind and helpful people at this departement, and at the research project Cultural transformations in the age of globalization (Kultrans), for making my period at the University of Oslo an enjoyable learning experience. Most of all, my gratitude goes to my three children, Oskar, Siri, and Lise, for their love and inspiration. Asker, June 2018 Vidar Grøtta

Part one: Theory

1

Introduction to part one

During the last four decades of the 20th century, humanities education in Norway was transformed. By the year 2000, not only the curricular content and the scale of this form of education, but also the overall educational aims were fundamentally different from what they had been as late as in the 1960s. However, neither the “humanities debate” nor the research literature on higher education in Norway has provided a thorough analysis of this transformation.1 The reason is, or so I will argue in this study, that both kinds of contributions have silently identified the humanities with humanities research, and have considered humanities education from that viewpoint. In other words, humanities education has mostly been seen as a cart that follows wherever research may lead. In this perspective there is nothing peculiar about the kind of humanities education we have grown accustomed to since, say, 1980 – nothing which demands further analysis. The curriculum of an educational program is believed, almost by definition, to be the reflection of the current state of research in a corresponding discipline. But as the present study will demonstrate, the research-orientation of humanities education is actually a quite recent phenomenon in Norway. It is one of the most striking outcomes of the transformation that began in the 1960s. In order to be more precise already at the outset about what is in need of an explanation, a brief and provisionary outline of the transformation of Norwegian humanities education may be useful. Prior to 1960, humanities education in Norwegian universities viewed itself and was viewed by the general public as a form of teacher education. About two thirds of the candidates ended up as teachers in

1

There are some exceptions, in particular the contributions of the historian Fredrik W. Thue. This study owes a substantial debt to his work on the humanities in Norway, published mostly in the form of university histories.

14 │ The transformation of humanities education

secondary school.2 The curricular design was intended to further the students’ appreciative immersion into various aspects of the cultural heritage, the framing of which was largely nationalist, and overwhelmingly Eurocentric. The specific professional aim (in many cases very explicitly stated) corresponded in large measure with the societal aim of humanities education in general, namely that this cultural heritage, or at least the essentials of it, should be further disseminated to younger generations when the humanities graduates embarked upon their teaching careers in secondary school.3 The students attending the humanities programs were a highly select group whose futures were of great concern to the Norwegian society – whether it was as respected school teachers, or in even more prestigious positions at the university, in museums, or – for a fortunate few – in the national broadcasting company. By the year 2000, after the transformation which is the topic of this study had been completed, the share of humanities graduates who became schoolteachers had

2

NAVF, Prognose over tilgangen på og behovet for filologer i årene 1960-1975 (Oslo: NAVF, 1960). This report finds that 70 per cent of the total number of humanities graduates became teachers. This is the only reliable figure I have been able to find for 1960. However, since we know that a sizeable share of the female graduates around 1960 did not seek employed work, the share of employed graduates who worked as teachers must have been significantly higher than seventy percent – probably as high as seventy-five or eighty percent. A quote from a 1950 student handbook, written and published by student organizations, illustrates the dominance of the teacher profession in philology in the period before 1960: “The philological program [which was then the formal name of the humanities degree] first and foremost qualifies for teaching positions in secondary school. Librarians, archivists, and conservators are also to a large extent graduates from the philological program. The national broadcasting company and the publishing industry have a few positions where philologists are preferred. Journalism also offers some opportunities. But it must be underscored that only very few [forsvinnende få] graduates from the philological program find employment outside secondary school.” Studenthåndboka 1949-1950 (Oslo: Universitetets studentkontor, 1949) 159. My translation. Throughout, translations from Norwegian are my own, unless otherwise stated.

3

Regarding the term “professional,” I refer to the discussion of its conceptual history in part four. In postwar Norway the expression “vocational education” [yrkesutdanning] was in use for higher education also (often to highlight the function of qualifying students for working life) but in order to avoid confusion with the more restricted application of this term to secondary education during the last decades, I use “professional” whenever the particular Norwegian historical context is not crucial.

Introduction to part one │ 15

dwindled to 30 percent.4 The great majority, about two thirds of the candidates, were now scattered across a wide variety of careers, many of which (probably most of which) did not require an education in the humanities. The curriculum was also fundamentally altered. In all disciplines traditional approaches had given way to a research-driven, critical engagement with a much more diverse set of cultural materials than previously, of which the better part had little direct relevance for school teaching. At the same time, the number of students had risen dramatically. Although a vague cultural remnant of “elitism” seems to have prevailed in the collective identity of humanists, each graduate was no longer perceived as a part of, and no longer had any experience of belonging to, an exclusive group in society. What is particularly interesting about this trajectory is that the increasing orientation towards specialized, research-driven curricula, without any particular professional aim, goes hand in hand with massification. It is this phenomenon which the present study aims to investigate and explain. More specifically, the ambition is to investigate, by way of policy document analyses, the dynamics and rationales behind the massification of humanities education; to examine curricula documents in search of general trends regarding curricular change; and to use available statistics to trace patterns of change in career trajectories for humanities graduates. The overarching question, wherein all three of these subtopics are united, is whether the societal functions of humanities education in Norway have changed during the forty years from 1960 to 2000, and, if so, how these changes can be understood. Investigating the development of Norwegian humanities education involves, as it turns out, raising some fairly large questions. For instance: How does policymaking in the field of higher education actually happen? Why has the Norwegian political system depended so strongly upon committees of inquiry in higher education policymaking, and why has admissions to programs like the humanities been such a tricky issue? Speaking of “higher education,” when does that refer primarily to education, when does it include research, and how have the two tasks been related in the Norwegian humanities? Which criteria have been used to fix the content of humanities education? What does it mean to say that humanities education is a form of “general” (or “liberal”) education? Questions of this kind have

4

Figure provided by NIFU, personal communication. As will be discussed in part four, NIFU’s published reports on the results from their regular first destination surveys (Kandidatundersøkelsen) has since the mid-1990s grouped the humanities together with theology and certain performing arts. The figures for “humanities and aesthetical disciplines” in these reports are therefore not directly comparable to earlier figures for the humanities (previously called “philology”).

16 │ The transformation of humanities education

rarely been raised in previous research on Norwegian humanities education. Partly because of the theoretical frameworks employed, the interest has lain elsewhere. Before I move on to theory and its application to the abovementioned research questions, I should say a few words about how the humanities are defined in this study. For the most part, my definition will be pragmatic, with specific reference to the context of Norway in the period 1960-2000. All disciplines that have been represented at the humanities faculties of two or more of the four oldest Norwegian universities in this period are considered to belong to the category for the purposes of this study. This definition excludes psychology, (social) anthropology, film studies, and several other disciplines that are sometimes included in the humanities in an international context. In addition, it should be acknowledged that the study has little to say on the specificities of certain disciplines that are clearly covered by the definition but are nevertheless atypical in certain respects – such as archaeology and music. Throughout, the discussions will mostly apply to the “mainstream” of the academic humanities. Unlike many studies of the humanities, I shall not offer a detailed discussion of what characterizes this group of disciplines as such, what their common identity is, or what distinguishes them from e.g. the social sciences.5 Historically, the humanities can be understood as the heir to the medieval philosophical faculty, more precisely as what remained of this branch of study after the natural and social sciences had been out-differentiated and were allowed to establish their own faculties in the 19th and 20th centuries – in addition, of course, to all the things that later grew out of these remains. As regards identity and primary characteristics, I am content to say that the Norwegian humanities in the period covered here typically have engaged themselves with history, communication, and culture, using primarily interpretative methods, although many exceptions to this can be found. I shall have more to say about the Norwegian humanities (and particularly about four

5

There is an extensive literature on what characterizes the humanities and what their societal value is, particularly by Anglo-American writers. Se for instance Stanley Fish, Save the World on Your Own Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Martha Nussbaum, Not For Profit. Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010); Louis Menand, The Marketplace of Ideas. Reform and Resistance in the American University (NY: Norton, 2010); Stefan Collini, What Are Universities For? (London: Penguin, 2012); and Helen Small, The Value of the Humanities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). In particular the last item gives a good overview of the different positions in this debate. In the Norwegian context, cf. Helge Jordheim and Tore Rem, eds., Hva skal vi med humaniora? (Oslo: Fritt Ord, 2014).

Introduction to part one │ 17

disciplines selected for further study: history, English studies, philosophy and general literature studies) in part three. The first part of this book consists of a theoretical discussion running through four chapters. The reason for this rather heavy emphasis on theory is that the ensuing empirical investigation will not be based on the most familiar and prevalent theoretical frameworks in the social sciences or in the sociology of education, such as neo-institutionalism, Bourdieuan field-theory, rational choice theory, etc. Nor will it rest (at least not primarily) on the middle-range theories developed within the more specialized field of higher education research. Even though it concerns itself with historical material, neither the framework nor the methodology of the book will confirm to the standard narrative and actor-oriented approach found in most historical work. Instead, its overall theoretical framework will be sociological systems theory in the tradition from Niklas Luhmann. This choice seems to call for an explanation. Why is such a heavy machinery from theoretical sociology brought to bear upon the seemingly straightforward research questions outlined above – questions of a kind which have for the most part been asked within the predominantly applied field of higher education research, or within the highly specialized but not very theory-driven sub-discipline of university history? The reason is that I think higher education research often conceptualizes the object of study – “higher education” – in ways that I think underplay several important distinctions.6 A major problem, which was hinted at above, is that the coupling of higher education with research is often under-theorized. So is the relationship between “academia” (i.e. research and higher education) on the one hand and the systems of politics and the economy on the other. These conceptual problems are connected with another problem, namely that research on higher education very rarely problematizes the self-reference involved in attempting to describe the relationship between such domains as “higher education,” “politics,” “the market,” and “research” – from the viewpoint of research. The result is that analyses of higher education, even those by specialized higher education researchers or histori-

6

A prominent example is the work of Burton R. Clark, and a more recent example is the theory strand called “institutional logics,” both of which are analyzed in some detail later in this part. As for the use of “higher education” as a generic term that includes more or less all academic activities that takes place in “higher education institutions” (HEIs), it seems to me endemic not only in the field of “higher education research,” but also among policymakers and other experts.

18 │ The transformation of humanities education

ans, are often academic insider reports written for an implied audience of peers, which makes triangulation difficult.7 Of course, systems theory cannot cure the condition of self-referentiality or neutralize bias. Research on higher education – even if it is often organizationally demarcated from its object of study – cannot escape its status as research, its participation in the research system, and thus its inability to view the coupling between research and higher education, or their mutual coupling with the political system, from the “outside.” But systems theory offers concepts that can help to disentangle the various dynamics that are involved in the conglomerate we usually refer to as “higher education.” Three features of systems theory are of particular relevance for this task: •

• •

It has a theory of the functional differentiation of modern society that stresses the fundamental difference between societal subsystems, specifying the societal functions, operational logics, and characteristics of (and conditions for interrelation between) each of the systems that matters most to higher education research, namely research, education, politics, and the economy. Its offers a conceptual framework for study of the structures and processes of formal organizations – such as universities and ministries. It has a reflexive approach which takes the perspective of the observer into account, allowing the self-implication of higher education research (i.e. the academy studying itself) to become available for analysis.

Two more general aspects of systems theory should also be mentioned. First, it provides an exigent analysis of the concept of “system” – which is a frequently used

7

In addition to writers in the tradition of systems theory, this problem has been addressed by several prominent philosophers and sociologists, e.g. Gaston Bachelard, The Formation of the Scientific Mind (Manchester: Clinamen Press, 2002); Robert K. Merton, “Insiders and outsiders: A chapter in the sociology of knowledge” American Journal of Sociology 78 (1972), 9-47; and Pierre Bourdieu, Science of Science and Reflexivity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). As far as I can see, the problem is rarely addressed in the field often referred to as higher education research. There are some exceptions, such as Martin Trow, “The Public and Private Lives of Higher Education,” Daedalus 104.1 (1975); and more recently, Paul Trowler, Researching your own institution, British Educational Research Association, online resource (2014). Without claiming to have read all of the relevant literature, the examples I have found of explicit discussions of self-reference amid the massive output in higher education research are surprisingly few, however.

Introduction to part one │ 19

term in higher education research also, albeit more as a catch-all phrase, perhaps, than a concept in a strict sense. A thorough analysis of this concept is important because it is frequently used to frame, albeit tacitly, the very object of study in higher education research. Secondly, systems theory conceptualizes social processes as communication rather than as action, and thus offers an opportunity to avoid many of the paradoxes resulting from the binary opposition between agency and structural constraint which has plagued the social sciences since the nineteenth century. Admittedly, it is very difficult to escape the actor-structure mindset in practice, especially in extended arguments, since it is so ingrained in Western thought and hence also in previous research. Most often there is no need to, either. But at crucial junctures, when agency-focused models creates problems, it is helpful to have access to an alternative model. In sum, I believe systems theory might help higher education research move beyond what I shall call the received view in this field (which, as I see it, is essentially a strongly normative, Humboldtian view of the university), and to do so without having to resort to the equally normative notions implicit in formulas like “mode 2” or “the triple helix.”8 In contrast to such contributions, systems theory offers neither nostalgia nor speculative futurism, but rather posits an analytically enriched understanding of the many sets of distinctions with which “higher education” (or “the university”) constitutes itself and its particular view of its societal environment. It thereby enables a more realistic assessment of the strains and stresses involved in its various operations, as well as recognizing its legitimate societal functions and merits. No defense of “the idea of the university” (or assault on same) is attempted, and the question of its future and the future of higher education and research in general is deliberately kept open. Since the material under consideration in this study is historical while the theoretical framework is taken from sociology (and moreover a tradition in sociology that is informed by diverse other disciplines, such as evolutionary biology, anthropology, communication studies, philosophy, etc.), the result is probably best classified as transdisciplinary. While transdisciplinarity has its advantages, it also incurs the risk of confusing and perhaps disappointing more clear-cut, disciplinary expectations. On the other hand, there is actually some precedence for a study such

8

Michael Gibbons & al., The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies (London: Sage; 1994) and Henry Etzkowitz and Loet Leydesdorff, Universities and the Global Knowledge Economy: A Triple Helix of University-Industry-Government Relations (London: Pinter, 1997).

20 │ The transformation of humanities education

as this in the social sciences. The strand it most resembles, and perhaps should be judged in the light of, is the tradition of historical sociology, broadly considered.9 More specifically, the aims of the study are on the one hand to contribute new ideas to the theoretical debate within the strand of systems theory (especially as regards the conditions for structural coupling between function systems), and on the other hand to bring to light new historical material concerning the Norwegian humanities (regarding for instance the roles of the research councils in Norwegian higher education policymaking in the 1950s, forty years of incremental changes in humanities curricula at Oslo and Tromsø, and the prevalence of “boundaryless” careers among Norwegian humanities graduates in the 1990s). In addition, it is an aim in itself to provide the first comprehensive analysis of humanities education in Norway. Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, the study aims to let the framework of systems theory guide the formulation of research questions as well as the interpretation of empirical material (policy documents, curricula, statistics), thus simultaneously testing theoretical assumptions against historical evidence and providing a different and hopefully richer account of Norwegian humanities education than we have previously had. Another aspect of the study that needs to be mentioned (even if it is rather obvious), is that it is written in English with an international as well as a domestic audience in mind, while it deals with historical developments that have been documented and researched almost exclusively in the Norwegian language. An obvious advantage of writing in English is the “distancing effect” it has had on me as a Norwegian while writing it, denying me tacit appeal to common preconceptions, helping me to abstain from more or less subtle hints, subtexts and allusions to the Norwegian debates on higher education and related affairs, and forcing me instead to explicate and make clearer (to myself, not the least) the premises on which conclusions are based. The accommodation of an international readership has, however, necessitated descriptions and analyses of the Norwegian context (for instance the Norwegian degree system, certain quirks in our parliamen-

9

Of course, Niklas Luhmann’s work in many ways joins this tradition, particularly his monographs on the various function systems of modern society. Other famous names commonly associated with it are Max Weber, Ferdinand Tönnies, Karl Polanyi, and Norbert Elias. Since the 1970s, Charles Tilley has made an effort to revive historical sociology in the Anglo-American world. In the fields of higher education and science studies, writers like Joseph Ben-David, Randall Collins, John W. Meyer and Andrew Abbott have contributed works that could be included in this category, while Rudolf Stichweh is perhaps the major current example of someone contributing to the tradition of historical sociology using the theoretical framework of systems theory.

Introduction to part one │ 21

tary procedures, particulars of the Norwegian school teacher profession, etc.) that have caused the manuscript to expand beyond the length it would have had were it written in Norwegian for a Norwegian audience. Hopefully, the “distancing effect” will prove useful to the Norwegian readers as well. A few words on the organization of the book is in order. Following the introductory first part on theory, the main body of the book is organized in three parts on the topics of admissions, curricula, and careers, respectively. A perceptive reader may see a resemblance between the order of these three topics and the much-used model of input-process-output. I confess that this model has played a part in the outline of the book, but only as a heuristic device. Admission of students can indeed be seen as an input; curricula can be seen as prescriptions for the educational process, and careers can be considered, at least from certain perspectives, as the societal output of humanities education (or perhaps outcome, if one should want to make a further distinction here). Obviously, this is nowhere near a perfect model of how higher education actually operates, and certainly many representatives from the humanities would consider such a conception “instrumentalist” and very alien to what they are trying to accomplish. Each of the three aspects – admissions, curricula, careers – surely condition each other, and there is in reality no logical point of departure for an investigation such as this. This is also evident from the fact that the first issue we encounter when examining the policies for capacity building and admissions in the humanities in part two of the book, is the question of forecasting labor market demand, which is analyzed in more depth in part four. When I have decided to follow the order of input-process-output, this is chiefly because in the actual historical evolution of Norwegian humanities education there seems to have been a striking absence of feedback loops from careers and back to admissions and curricula, with the exception of the very first years covered in this study. A hypothesis is therefore that the two first elements are more independent of the third than the other way around. Nevertheless, there are by necessity many cross-references between the three of them. Since familiarity with systems theory cannot be presumed, the first chapters in part one offer a general outline of its main tenets, emphasizing the aspects that are of particular relevance to higher education research. Thereafter I compare the systems theoretical approach to higher education with the perspective of a highly influential figure and also, I believe, a representative figure in the field of higher education research, namely Burton R. Clark.10 In addition, I discuss the theoretical

10

A sociologist by training, Burton R. Clark is a representative figure in higher education research in the sense that his work has had a formative influence on this field since its emergence. A citation analysis of 17 English-language specialized journals in “higher

22 │ The transformation of humanities education

contribution of new institutionalism to higher education research, especially the branch known as institutional logics, which has some similarities with systems theory, but which I argue falls short of solving some of the most pressing problems that a study like the present one raises. In the last part of part one I discuss some recent contributions to the study of higher education within the paradigm of systems theory, and, by way of a tentative conclusion, assess more precisely how systems theory can be utilized in this study to frame the research questions outlined above regarding policymaking for admissions, curricula development, and career trajectories in the Norwegian humanities – which are the topics in the remainder of the book.

education research” outside North America from the year 2000 found that Burton R. Clark was the most cited author, and that his book The Higher Education System was the most cited item (along with one other book) after the Dearing report. See Malcolm Tight, “The structure of academic research: What can citation studies tell us?” Academic Research and Researchers, eds. Angela Brew and Lisa Lucas (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2009) 56.

2

Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory

The starting point for sociological systems theory is that particular social processes, like teaching and learning at a university, or higher education policymaking, can only be understood if we have an adequate theory of the society that is the ultimate context of these processes. In this sense, systems theory is “grand theory” – it begins with the big picture.11 It does not, however, pretend to base its theoretical architecture on foundations beyond the reach of time and space; neither does it attempt to deduce from the level of theory to empirical reality. It explicitly distances itself from idealism. On the other hand, it also takes a critical stance on most forms of empiricism, including the Mertonian idea of theories of the middle range based on induction from empirical work. If we had to indicate where systems theory locates itself on the map of the philosophy of science, we could describe it as a constructivist theory which, as Luhmann has formulated it, “incurs the responsibility of testing its statements against reality.”12 The constructivist stance of systems theory has important epistemological consequences, in particular as regards the issue of reflexivity, which I shall return to below. But systems theory as developed by Luhmann is not primarily a philosophical venture. Its aim – to develop a “theory of society” – is stated within the disciplinary context of sociology, and enters the century-long debate within that discipline about the major characteristics of modernity.13 Like Durkheim and Parsons before him, Luhmann argues that what makes modern society different from its predecessor, l’ancien régime, is that the primary organizing principle of society is no longer stratification, but functional differentiation. Since the late eighteenth century, it has

11

Much of the following discussion is based on Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems, (Stanford: Stanford University Press).

12

Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems, 12.

13

Niklas Luhmann, preface, Theory of Society, Vol. 1, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012).

24 │ The transformation of humanities education

become increasingly irrelevant to conceive of society as made up of fundamentally different sets of people (estates, classes, or any other form of fixed strata) which together form a whole which can be adequately expressed or “reflected” from the viewpoint of society’s top or center. The stratified form of society was gradually undermined in the Early Modern period and finally dismantled in the aftermath of the French revolution. Although stratification obviously still exists, making it meaningful to speak of “élites” or “the underprivileged” in particular contexts, society can no longer legitimize using permanent differences between groups of people as its organizing principle, according to systems theory. Stratification is therefore treated either as an unintended consequence which may to some extent be tolerated, or else as a dysfunction in need of a remedy.14 Modern society as we have come to know it is understood by most people – after a transitional period in the 19th and early 20th century when societal structures were still interpreted by obsolete schemata – as differentiated into different “fields” or “spheres” of action – or, as Luhmann prefers to call them, “function systems.” Rather than defining themselves by particular groups of people who are assigned to them by birthright, function systems offer roles for individuals, e.g. professional roles and client-roles, which are in principle open to all comers.15 Provided that one is willing and able to accept the premises on which the different function systems are based, anyone can partake of an economic transaction, become a priest, subscribe to a newspaper, run for political office, get married, etc. Or, equally important, one can (with a few exceptions) refrain from participating.16 This optionality means, ultimately, that individuals relate to function systems as placeholders,

14

See Niklas Luhmann, “Globalization or World Society? How to conceive of modern society,” International Review of Sociology 7.1 (1997): 67.

15 16

See Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems, 315f. Of course, one might be reminded here of what Anatole France said about the law, which “in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” (The Red Lily, ch. 7). That is to say, “equal opportunity,” although guaranteed by law in modern society, might still be illusory. However, the claim in systems theory that function systems provide roles that are in principle open to anyone, is not, as some critics seem to believe, to deny that in practice some people, through no fault of their own, are unable to join in. In systems theory, this problem is discussed under the concept of “exclusion,” rather than “domination” or “exploitation.” I will not be able to discuss this important issue here, but cf. Niklas Luhmann, “Globalization or World Society? How to Conceive of Modern Society.”

Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory │ 25

which is why systems theory conceives of individual human beings as strictly speaking not belonging to function systems at all, but to their environment.17 Unlike for instance Parsons’ AGIL scheme, the function systems as laid out by Luhmann’s systems theory are not deduced from theoretical axioms, and therefore not fixed in number.18 How many there are in any given historical period, and how they are demarcated from each other are empirical questions, but there is no real disagreement about the established status of the following nine systems in our time: politics, law, the economy, the arts, religion, education, research, the media, and the family/intimate relations. There is also a high degree of consensus within sociological systems theory concerning the systemic nature of health care and sports, whereas social work, tourism, and the leisure complex are examples of possible additions to the list which are still debated.19 Give or take a few, this list is comparable to the categorizations of many other sociologists and social theorists, and in fact does not depart significantly from terminology employed in, say, the news media.20 Thus, the radical departure of Luhmann’s brand of systems theory from both mainstream sociology and ordinary language usage lies not in the observation that there exists in modern society an economic system which is different from, say, “the world of politics”, or the arts, but in his conceptualization of how these systems operate, and how they relate to each other and to society as a whole. To perform his analysis of functional differentiation, Luhmann developed a whole set of concepts that are all anchored in the concept that gives his theory its name –

17

See Niklas Luhmann, “How Can the Mind Participate in Communication?” Theories of Distinction: Redescribing the Descriptions of Modernity, ed. William Rasch (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002).

18

Regarding the AGIL scheme, see Talcott Parsons, The Social System, (London: Routledge, 1970); for a discussion of the historical contingencies of function systems, see Niklas Luhmann, The Theory of Society, Vol. 2 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013) 65f.

19

See Rudolf Stichweh, “The History and Systematics of Functional Differentiation in Sociology,” Bringing Sociology to IR. World Politics as Differentiation Theory, eds. Mathias Albert, Barry Buzan, and Michael Zürn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

20

Cf. for instance the concept of “value spheres” in Max Weber, “Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions,” From Max Weber, eds. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, (NY: Oxford University Press, 1958), and the concept of “fields” in Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, 1984).

26 │ The transformation of humanities education

“system.” Before I can say much more about function systems, therefore, I must run through some of the most important of these concepts, starting with the core concept of system.

3

Key concepts in systems theory

3.1

SYSTEM AS DIFFERENCE

The concept of “system” in systems theory is highly abstract and has a wide range of applications, but for the sake of brevity I shall skip discussion of such system types as biological organisms, machines, and psychological systems (consciousnesses), and concentrate on the systems that are most relevant to higher education research, namely social systems. It should be noted, however, that even if we stick to the social domain, the concept of “system” is applied on different levels, as when an “interaction system” (i.e. a communications system that is based on the copresence of the interlocutors, for instance a meeting) emerges within an organization (another kind of system), which operates within a function system, which is part of society (the all-encompassing communications system).21 But before we can address various types and levels of social systems, we must first ask the more general question: What is a social system, in Luhmann’s sense? The first thing to note is that a social system is defined not as an essence, but as a difference, more precisely as the difference system/environment.22 The best illustration of this is perhaps a formal organization, which draws a sharp distinction between itself and its environment, but which is, for obvious reasons, unable to say what it is other than by reference to its environment. What is achieved by the system in making the distinction between itself and the environment, is the ability to build up internal complexity by simultaneously reducing its ability to register environmental complexity. Put more simply, a system takes form as it specializes or concentrates on something (a particular task or topic or function), but it can only do so by paying less attention to everything else. System formation is thus both a way

21

Niklas Luhmann “The autopoiesis of social systems,” Sociocybernetic paradoxes, eds.

22

Niklas Luhmann, Social systems, 16ff. As an inspiration for this conceptualization

F. Geyer and J. van der Zouwen (London: Sage, 1986) 172-192. Luhmann often cited George Spencer-Brown, Laws of form (London: Cognizer, 1994).

28 │ The transformation of humanities education

to deal with social complexity, and a way to increase it (for other systems, and for society as a whole).23

3.2

COMMUNICATION

According to systems theory, social systems do not consist of human beings, or of actions, but of communication. Communication in this context is not a metaphor for action (as some versions of speech-act theory would have it), but rather a phenomenologically inspired device designed to short-circuit the Cartesian subject-object distinction which is implicit in most communication theory, including the “transmission” theory of Roman Jacobson.24 In opposition to this tradition, communication is defined in systems theory as the combination or synthesis of utterance, information, and understanding. Communication takes place when an utterance (say, the format of a research article) is combined with some selected information (new knowledge) which is then understood by somebody. Only with understanding (which includes misunderstanding, or rejection) is the unity of communication accomplished. We cannot go deeply into the details of the communicative process here, but it is important to realize that communication in this sense is not something that can be attributed to the “actor” or “speaker” alone, nor can it be attributed to the recipient(s) as suggested in some versions of reader-response theory. In systems theory, communication is a genuinely social phenomenon. Consequently, individuals cannot be said to communicate. As Luhmann repeatedly formulated it, “only communication can communicate.”25 This may seem paradoxical or even nonsensical against the background of standard usage, but the important implication of this conceptualization is that focus is shifted from (ultimately futile) speculations about motives, values, and norms pertaining to the speaker or the recipients, to what matters from a social point of view, namely the possibilities for continuing the chain of communication under various circumstances. As we shall see, this has important and interesting consequences when we come to communication occurring within and across organizations.

23

Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems, 26ff.

24

See for instance Niklas Luhmann, “What is communication?” Communication Theory

25

Niklas Luhmann “What is communication?” 251.

2.3 (1992).

Key concepts in systems theory │ 29

3.3

AUTOPOIESIS

A third feature of a social system is autopoiesis. Borrowed from biology, this concept is used to signify that social systems achieve autonomy (to use the more common term) by reproducing themselves by means of elements (i.e. communications) which they themselves produce.26 In the process of autopoiesis there are no imports (or inputs) from other systems, and consequently no exports (or outputs), in the sense envisioned by early forms of cybernetics. In Luhmann’s terms, an autopoietic social system is “operationally closed.”27 While radical in its theoretical implications, this notion is not as odd or impossible as it may seem to those accustomed to the traditional input-process-output model. In fact, it is already implied in the conceptualization of a system as a distinction between system and environment, which means not only that a system must have a border, but that it must be able to maintain this border with the use of its own communicative resources. If we were to formulate this in the terms of the input-process-output model, we would have to say that the process of a social system uses its own output as input. A few examples may help to clarify this. The economic system cannot avail itself of e.g. political decisions to effectuate economic transactions, but must make use of its own elements, which is the balance of previous economic transactions. If political decisions were to be accepted in lieu of monetary instruments in regular economic transactions, the boundary between politics and the economy would break down, and with it their ability to operate as separate, autopoietic function systems. The fact that politics can (and must) regulate the economy via the legal system is another issue, which is handled in systems theory under the heading of “structural coupling”, which I return to below. A more straightforward example with relevance for higher education research would be the observation that a scientific report, no matter how “applied,” cannot be employed directly as a political action plan. Of course, much of the report may reappear almost verbatim in a white paper, or even in a budget proposal or a bill, but in crossing the boundary between research and politics it will have become re-contextualized, and thereby communicatively transformed. For the political system, it will no longer be scientific, but political communication – and as such (and only as such) can it engender continued communication in the political system. This has important consequences for how we conceptualize policymaking, for instance in the second part of this study, where I discuss the use of research in forecasting labor market demands and

26

Cf. Humberto R. Maturana and Francesco J. Varela, The Tree of Knowledge. The

27

Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society, Vol. 2, 49ff.

Biological Roots of Human Understanding (Boston: Shambhala, 1992).

30 │ The transformation of humanities education

the uses of this research in policymaking regarding admissions policies for humanities education in Norway.

3.4

CATEGORIES AND LEVELS OF SOCIAL SYSTEMS

In Social Systems, the most thorough discussion of his conceptual apparatus, Luhmann distinguishes between three different types of social systems, based on how they draw their boundaries towards their environments: 1) interaction systems, defined by co-presence and mutual observation of interlocutors, 2) organizations, defined by membership roles and operating on the communicative form of decisionmaking, and 3) societies, defined as the most extensive reference for communication, which today only exists in the form of one comprehensive world-society, and which excludes everything which does not operate in the mode of communication.28. In addition, Luhmann sometimes speaks of function systems as “social systems”. However, function systems are conceptualized with direct reference to society, as the elements of its internal differentiation, and despite their ability to distinguish themselves from each other on the level of operations they are therefore more properly viewed as subsystems of the societal system than as a separate category of social systems. The abovementioned categories of social systems operate at different levels of abstraction – interaction systems being the most basic, and society the most abstracted of them. As hinted at above, this hierarchy of levels allows for a system at a lower level to emerge within a system which operates at a higher level. A particularly important distinction regarding system levels, a kind of threshold, should be noted. It is only at the “lower” levels of interactions and organizations that it is possible to attribute “agency” in the processes of communication.29 At the

28

Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems, 2ff. In later writings Luhmann added a fourth category, namely social movements (defined by adherents, and operating on the basis of protest communication). However, this last category is a belated, somewhat grudging, and underspecified addition on Luhmann’s part, which I will not discuss in any detail here. See Niklas Luhmann, Risk: A Sociological Theory (London: Transaction, 2008) 125ff., and Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society, Vol. 2, 154ff. I will return briefly to the topic of social movements in part three, in my discussion of curricula change in higher education in the humanities.

29

Since I have underscored that systems theory is not based on the concept of action, I should perhaps stress here that the introduction of “agency” at this point does not alter

Key concepts in systems theory │ 31

level of interaction systems the roles of “speaker” and “listener” in communication can be attributed to particular persons, and at the level of organizations, it is individual formal organizations (or identifiable subunits) which occupy these roles. At the “higher” level of society and its function systems, however, such attribution is not possible. Neither function systems nor society as a whole can bring the complexity of all their communicative operations under such a restrictive concept as agency, at least not under the societal conditions of modernity. It is inconceivable that any entity could speak for the economy as such, or for world society. Strictly speaking, it is therefore meaningless to say that a function system or society “acts.”30 Viewed historically, it seems fairly obvious that interaction systems were the first social systems to emerge.31 Changed several times over by new communication technologies (writing, printing, postal services, tele-technology, electronic media), their basic systemic form (“double contingency,” to use Parsons theorem) has persisted, and there is no decline in their importance for societal reproduction. The societal importance of organizations, while not unknown in other forms of society, is closely associated with modern society, especially as viewed by the Weberian

this fact. The roles of “speaker” and “listener” refer to aspects of communication conceived as a unified process, and viewed theoretically they cannot be separated from this concept. However, this conceptualization does not contradict, nor seek to counteract, the empirical fact that in real interactions persons attribute agency to each other, and also view organizations as performing “actions.” For reasons I cannot discuss here, the notion of “agency” (and related terms) is probably all but indispensable in actual communication, although what it refers to in each case can obviously never be empirically established. As Luhmann formulated it, “[s]ystems […] operate under the illusion of having contact with the environment – at least as long as they only observe what they observe, and do not observe how they observe.” Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society, Vol. 1, 50. Thus, every attribution of agency is a proposition made by an observer, and as such it reflects the observer’s point of view, not an objective connection between an “actor” and a particular communicative meaning. 30

This insight is hard to practice, however, since subject-verb-constructions are so ingrained in our language. Hence, there will be many formulations throughout this study indirectly attributing agency to for instance the economy, or politics. It would probably be unbearable to write, let alone read, the whole thing in the passive form in order to be theoretically consistent.

31

Niklas Luhmann, “The Evolutionary Differentiation Between Society and Interaction,” The Micro-macro Link, ed. Jeffrey C. Alaxander (Berkley: University of Califoria Press, 1992) 112ff.

32 │ The transformation of humanities education

tradition, and for very good reasons.32 It is only through the social systems of organizations that it has been possible to organize sufficient internal complexity to allow functional differentiation in society. Without organizations like chartered companies, churches, or universities, we would hardly have had the function systems of the economy, religion, or education in anything but rudimentary forms. I will return to the importance of organizations, as well as interaction systems (and the associated concept of networks) in a discussion of governance and policymaking in part two.

3.5

STRUCTURAL COUPLING

Precisely because a social system is viewed by systems theory as operationally closed, a closure which necessarily entails a measure of neglect for the operations of other systems, the theory must provide an account for the innumerable and absolutely essential relations between social systems as well. For this purpose Luhmann over the years tried out and discussed several terms, but the concept which emerged as most useful, at least for my purposes in this study, is structural coupling.33 Like autopoiesis, this concept is borrowed and significantly modified from the theoretical biology of Maturana.34 It is based on the observation that all systems must build up a form of order to handle their own internal complexity over time. This is also a precondition for their ability to observe themselves and each other. Such ordered complexity is called structure. More precisely, the structure of a social system is defined in systems theory as its “selective constraint on relational possibilities” – i.e. the internal “rules” the system develops regarding admissible communicative combinations.35 It should be noted here that this concept of “structure” is very different from the usage in e.g. structuralism. In particular, Luhmann takes great care to distance himself from the tradition which conceptualizes structure as stasis and leaves dynamism to the companion concept of “process,” creating the impression that it is possible to handle one without reference to the other. Rather, Luhmann seeks to bring the synchronic aspects (actualized relations between elements at a given point

32

See Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, ed. Talcott Parsons

33

Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society, Vol. 1, 54ff.

34

See Humberto R. Maturana and Francesco J. Varela, The Tree of Knowledge, 75ff.

35

Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems, 285.

(NY: Free Press, 1964) and Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society, Vol. 2, 141ff.

Key concepts in systems theory │ 33

in time) and the diachronic aspects (temporality/process/change) under the same concept by conceiving of the system’s elements (the combinations of which are regulated by structure) as events which exist in time.36 With this modification the structure of a system can be conceptualized as the set of internal rules which limit the acceptable relations between communicative events. In a formal organization this concept of structure would be more like the procedural rules for decisionmaking than the organizational diagram with boxes and arrows which merely indicate elements and static relations between them. It is the fact that a system has a structure in this sense which allows it to “align” itself both diachronically and synchronically with the structure of other systems in its environment through “structural coupling.” Because of the lack of parallelism and transparency between the complexities of the systems, coupling cannot happen by point-for-point connections between them at the full ranges of their operations. Luhmann speaks in this connection of the need to “digitize analog relations.”37 By digitizing – i.e. by relating at a structural rather than an operational level – much information is lost in translation, so to speak, but enough is preserved to allow the two systems to influence each other mutually. Such influence Luhmann terms “irritation,” again in compliance with theoretical biology, to underscore that because of operational closure there cannot be any question of external influence by one system on the actual operations of another.38 Each system decides for itself how is will handle interferences (“irritations”) made by other systems through structural coupling. As I will return to in my discussion of the relationship between political institutions and the university sector, this is why there can be no actual steering by one system of another at the level of operations (in the case of the university, education and research) – although one system can certainly, through structural coupling such as the use of legal and economic instruments, restrict the structural variety of another. Concluding this brief discussion of structural coupling, it should be mentioned that Luhmann uses the term “interpenetration” (modified from Parsons) to conceptualize a special case of structural coupling, namely situations when two systems have co-evolved in such a way as to become virtually inseparable.39 Luhmann’s main example of this is human consciousness and society, of which neither can

36

Ibid., 289ff.

37

Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society, Vol. 1, 55.

38

Ibid., 67.

39

Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems, 210ff.; Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society, Vol. 1, 60; Niklas Luhmann, Introduction to Systems Theory, ed. Dirk Baecker (Cambridge: Polity, 2013) 196ff.

34 │ The transformation of humanities education

exist separately, because they constitute each other through language. In part two of this study I will examine whether or not the concept of interpenetration is suitable for what may seem like a durable structural coupling between education and research in universities.

3.6

REFLEXIVITY: FIRST- AND SECOND-ORDER OBSERVATIONS

According to systems theory, a social system gains knowledge about its environments by “observing” it.40 “Observation” in this context means a communicative operation taking place within the system. This operation is by necessity selfreferential. It carries along with it the operative distinction of system/environment, and conditions all its observations with it. This has significant epistemological consequences for systems theory. Most importantly, it means that all social systems construe their environments differently. Moreover, it means that a social system shares the predicament of the “subject” in the Cartesian tradition: it cannot observe itself directly, because it cannot observe the distinction it uses for making observations while using it. Rather than pursuing the many epistemological questions raised by this, I will have to limit myself to one point here, a point that I take to have particular interest from the point of view of higher education research. Simply put, it concerns a system’s capacity to “adapt” to its environment. If we accept the view that the observations a system makes of its environment are bound to be “partial” or “biased,” we should expect, when partiality aggregates on the societal level, severe difficulties (ranging from incomprehension to open conflict) in inter-systemic relations. But even though this indeed seems to be the case in many instances, there are also inter-systemic relations which seem to function fairly well. How can systems theory account for such variations in adaptability? The answer lies in social systems’ ability to learn from their own previous operations. Although they cannot observe themselves directly while operating, they can observe their previous operations by use of their memory function. In itself, this is hardly satisfying however; remaining within the circle of self-reference cannot provide sufficient reflexivity to enable adaption to the environment. Fortunately, social systems have an additional possibility. They can observe how they are observed (or rather, how they have been observed) by other systems in their environment. This will not give them direct access to an external viewpoint, but usually

40

Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems, 9.

Key concepts in systems theory │ 35

enough information about other systems’ observation of oneself can be gathered to allow for a comparison between self-observations and other-observations, which can then be fed into the system in question as its own observations, what Luhmann calls second-order observations.41 In this way social systems can learn about their relations to their environments. Whether they actually do so, and in what ways, to what extent, and for which purposes, are empirical questions. A systems theoretical hypothesis in this context would be that social systems which practice second-order observations methodically run into fewer problems in adapting to their environments than those who do not.

3.7

FUNCTION SYSTEMS

After this sketch of general key concepts in systems theory, I now return to the issue of the function systems of modern society. In what follows I will give a brief exposition of what function systems are, and how they operate. I will then outline more specifically the four function systems which are of particular interest for higher education research: research, education, politics, and the economy. As mentioned above, function systems are social systems, and thus most of what I have said about social systems in general applies to function systems, too.42 They are autopoietical and hence operationally closed systems, and they reproduce themselves by adding communication to previous communications. Unlike interaction systems and organizations, function systems operate on the societal level, and therefore they do not enlist other systems directly, i.e. they do not consider persons (or more precisely, psychic systems) as members, nor do they consist, as one may easily come to believe, of a particular set or type of organizations. The educational system does not consist of teachers and students, nor is it equal the sum total of all educational organizations in the world – not even if we also included those who only have education as one of their functions. The political system is not made up of politicians and bureaucrats, or confined to organizations such as those attached to the three branches of government. Function systems exist only in the form of communication, and do not include or exclude particular persons or organization as such.43 How, then, do function systems

41

Niklas Luhmann, Introduction to Systems Theory, 119ff.

42

On the functional differentiation of modern society, see Niklas Luhmann, Theory of

43

The fact that particular persons and organization may attach themselves to a particular

Society, 65ff. function system (or to several, as academics and universities do) is another issue, which we return to below.

36 │ The transformation of humanities education

attain autopoiesis, i.e. self-regenerative ability? How does a function system like the economy distinguish between what is an economic operation and what is not? From an empirical perspective, this is a rather easy question to answer – at least for the example of the economic system. A communication is economic if and only if there is money (or monetary instruments) involved. From a theoretical point of view, however, this leads to further questions: What, then, is money? If money is what defines an economic communication, what are the functional equivalents to money in other function systems? For almost all of the function systems these questions are answered in systems theory with the use of two interlinked concepts: “symbolically generalized communication media” and “codes” – both of which are taken over from Parsons, albeit in a substantially changed form.44 Only for education and a few others (notably health care), Luhmann must turn to another conceptualization: “contingency formulas.” I will discuss the latter concept under a separate section on education below. But first a few words on the more general issue of “symbolically generalized communication media” – from which “codes” are derived. In systems theory, communication is conceived as bifurcated process.45 A communication can be accepted as a basis for further communication, but it can also be met with rejection. Rejection in this sense has nothing to do with incomprehension or (recognized) miscomprehension, which pertain to whether a communication is achieved at all. Rejection means active or passive (i.e. silent) refusal to continue communication on the premises of the former communication. In face-toface communication, interlocutors have a whole range of subtle techniques at their disposal (both verbal and nonverbal) to calculate the risk of such rejection, and to handle it when it occurs. As long as societies existed on the basis of interaction systems, these techniques apparently sufficed. However, with the advent of writing, printing, and other “dissemination media” – in particular after the invention of the printing press – the conditions of communication changed. Opportunities for communication grew exponentially, but at the same time the process of communication became much less transparent. Consequently there arose a need to improve the likelihood of successful communication over long distances, spatially, culturally, and even temporally. It is against this historical background that Luhmann sees the invention of “symbolically generalized communication media” like money. The increasingly complex use of such communicative instruments then evolved, over the centuries, into societal function systems. Luhmann’s theoretical discussion of

44

Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society, Vol. 1, 190ff.

45

Niklas Luhmann, “What is Communication?” Theories of Distinction, ed. William Rasch (Stanford: Stanford University Press) 163.

Key concepts in systems theory │ 37

how these media work, and how they evolve, is too intricate to outline in any detail here, but the following quote captures the conclusion: “Symbolically generalized communication media establish a novel link between conditioning and motivation. They gear communication in a given media area, for example, in the money economy or the exercise of power in political office, to certain conditions that enhance the chances of acceptance even in the case of “uncomfortable” communication.”46

So far, I have used the economy as an example, simply because money is such a tangible, concrete medium. At least it seems to be, as long as we associate it with coins and notes, or even with the long abandoned gold standard. But of course money in the modern world is a highly abstract medium, which does not keep it from functioning. The media of the other function systems are more overtly abstract, but have similar symbolic functions, for instance: truth (research), power (politics), beauty (the arts), transcendence (religion), and love (the family/intimate relations). They all serve to orient communication within their function systems. The unitary form of these symbolically generated communication media is useful in actual communication for drawing attention to their strongly positive valuation as seen from the point of view of prospective “actors,” and therefore stimulates and motivates participation. However, from the point of view of the actual operations of the function systems, the negative sides (rejection, as in non-payment, or falsification in research) are obviously as important as the positives sides. To handle this perspective in systems theory, the concept of “codes” is introduced.47 For most intents and purposes codes are simply the symbolically generated communication media formulated as binary pairs: truth/untruth (research), payment/non-payment (the economy), etc. However, for the few function systems without a symbolically generalized communication medium of their own, such as education, it is also possible to articulate a “code.” Although no unitary formulation of a positive communicative attractor has evolved, it is still necessary for the educational system to distinguish between communications which belong to it, and those which do not. It has to be possible, somehow, for education to identify its purpose – even though it necessarily differs in each case, and is inherently contingent upon circumstances beyond its control. I shall return to how this problem is conceptualized in systems theory in the section on education below.

46

Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society, Vol. 1, 121f.

47

Niklas Luhmann, Ecological Communication (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989) 36ff.

38 │ The transformation of humanities education

3.8

FUNCTIONS AND PERFORMANCES

Even if a function system is operationally closed, and even if this closure forces it to disregard the full complexity of its environment, a system’s continual borderwork (its reproduction of the difference system/environment) nevertheless makes it acutely aware of and dependent upon this environment. As Luhmann stresses, the widespread conception of autonomy as an antonym for dependency is not only without foundation; it is more often the opposite which is the case, and for very logical reasons.48 One basic form of dependency concerns the relation of a function system to society as a whole, and is conceptualized in systems theory as function.49 Simply put, under conditions of functional differentiation each system becomes dependent upon all of the others for fulfilling the other societal functions and thereby avoiding societal problems. In earlier theories of societal differentiation (most prominently in Durkheim) this mutual dependency was believed to produce a form of solidarity (”organic solidarity”) with the capacity to integrate society via morality.50 Luhmann dismisses this idea as illusory.51 While it is true that grave problems may arise in one system because of the societal malfunctioning of another (as when the financial crisis in 2008 indirectly created many kinds of problems in the system of education), it does not follow that we can expect from another function system (e.g. education), or from particular organizations which attach themselves to this function system (e.g. universities), sufficient awareness or “moral” motivation to adapt their mode of operation to avoid such problems in advance, out of solidarity with society as a whole. That they are forced to adapt after the fact is of course true, but trivially so. According to systems theory there is therefore no self-steering on the societal level in modern society, neither via morality nor by centralized planning. Each function system looks out for itself (i.e. its own reproduction through continued communication), and adapts to its environment post hoc. Furthermore, there is no way any of the function systems can claim preeminence over any of the others, or for the whole of society. Religion and politics have both occupied that position, but that was before the advent of modernity. Today priests and politicians as well as churches and parliaments have only limited influence on society. To some this is as it should be, but in view of the Enlightenment project of

48

Niklas Luhmann and Karl-Eberhard Schorr, Problems of Reflection in the System of Education (NY: Waxman, 200) 59; Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems, 204.

49

Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems, 299ff.

50

Cf. Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society (New York: Free Press, 1997

51

Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society, Vol. 2, 5ff.

[1893]) 68ff.

Key concepts in systems theory │ 39

societal progress – whether in bourgeois or Marxist versions – Luhmann’s conclusion about the totality of the modern world-society may seem rather bleak: “Society is not in control of itself.”52 The other form of dependencies which function systems incur are established through bilateral relations, and concern the particular performance(s) they need and expect from other function systems, and which it cannot easily substitute for – as when the legal system is dependent upon politics to legislate, when the economy is dependent upon the production of a skilled workforce from the educational system, or when the news media are dependent upon politics to be able to produce news.53 Obviously, dependencies of this kind in modern society are so numerous as to defy mapping. They vary in importance, though. In some instances, like the first example above, the performance is so essential that were politics to fail (as it does in “failed states,” and as it almost did in Belgium some years ago), the legal system could not continue operating for very long. In other cases, functional equivalents are not so hard to find. If the educational system fails to produce candidates of one particular type, the labor market can usually train some “on the job.” It should be noted that although such dependencies are frequently thematized in the communications of concerned function systems, it is usually very difficult to regulate the supply in relation to the demand because, as we have repeatedly underscored, each “performing” function systems is operatively closed, and does not “take orders” from outside. And besides, the “demand” cannot be fixed either quantitatively or qualitatively in any unambiguous way, but will always depend upon the point of view of the observing system, which in actual communication will be either organizations or interaction systems. A case in point is how the economy is unable, as a function system, to articulate in advance its demand for the various categories of graduates. Usually regulation of performances is attempted through some form of structural coupling at the level of organizations or interaction systems (committees, for instance). I will analyze how this happens in detail in part three of this study. I now turn to the four function systems which are most essential to this study. In what follows I will outline their major characteristics. I begin with research, not with education which is my major concern in this study, mainly as a matter of didactic convenience.

52

Niklas Luhmann, “Globalization or World society: How to conceive of modern society?” International Review of Sociology 7.1 (1997) 74.

53

Niklas Luhmann and Karl-Eberhard Schorr, Problems of Reflection in the System of Education, 41ff.

40 │ The transformation of humanities education

3.9

THE SYSTEM OF RESEARCH

According to systems theory, research is a system which enlists all communications which make use of “truth” as a symbolically generalized medium of communication, and only those. Historically, research was out-differentiated as a separate function system in the early modern period. Rudolf Stichweh has outlined how research emerged as an activity centered on collecting and organizing knowledge from a variety of sources, but then increasingly restricted itself, especially since the mid-18th century, to knowledge which was produced according to certain methodological constraints of research’s own making.54 In this way, modern research eventually achieved autopoiesis by only accepting self-produced knowledge, certified through the peer-review process. Otherwise, the historiography of research according to systems theory is fairly traditional, and on many issues does not depart significantly from the now standard views of, say, Robert K. Merton or Joseph Ben-David.55 Thus, it is recognized that the system of research co-evolved with certain organizational forms, without which it would be hard to envision research in the form we have it today. The scientific societies were crucial, but even more so the Humboldtian university, which from the 19th century became the “home of the scientists.” Of course, in a sociological framework based on communications theory, the role of printing technology, including formats and genres such as the scientific journal and conventions for referencing previous research, are stressed. Particular attention is also paid to the function of scientific disciplines, the emergence of which was the most important precondition for the explosive scientific growth in the 19th and 20th centuries, according to Stichweh.56 I will return to this topic in part three. The most noticeable departure of systems theory from other theoretical approaches to research is perhaps its unsentimental view of it. Not only are the truth claims of research considered to be self-referential or “constructed” (and in this, systems theory does not exempt itself); its customary privileged position vis à vis other function systems regarding the overall functioning of modern society (for

54

Rudolf Stichweh, “Self-Organization and Autopoiesis in the Development of Modern Science,” Selforganization: Portrait of a Scientific Revolution, eds. Wolfgang Krohn, Günter Küppers, and Helga Nowotny (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990).

55

Cf. Robert K. Merton, The Sociology of Science, Theoretical and Empirical Investigations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979); Joseph Ben-David, The Scientist’s Role in Society (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1971).

56

Cf. Rudolf Stichweh, “Differentiation of Scientific Disciplines: Causes and Effects,” Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (Paris: UNESCO, 2003).

Key concepts in systems theory │ 41

instance as the stronghold of the Enlightenment project of rationality) is also undercut by paying attention not only to the amazing accomplishments but also to the severe limitations of its perspective, which disregards all practical, political, economic, and moral issues, and exposes society to increasing risks and uncertainties.57 The performances of research in modern society, whether they are viewed as beneficial or problematic, emerge in its structural coupling to other function systems, such as the economy (coupled via e.g. patents), politics (coupled via various forms of expert advice), and education (coupled via curricular content in the popularized form of textbooks). It is important to recognize that these performances are not conceptualized as “outputs” from research, or “input” to other function systems. Research cannot enter other function systems without ceasing to be research. What happens when politics is exposed to research via expert advice is not that research takes the place of politics, but that political communication to a certain extent lets itself be conditioned by research – all the while remaining political, i.e. centered on “power” and decision-making. I mentioned education and the coupling to research via textbooks. In the case of higher education, the structural coupling with research is of course more comprehensive than for schooling, and goes beyond provisions of content. Luhmann even speaks in this connection of “incomplete” differentiation and “overlapping domains” between research and education in universities.58 However, it is mainly on the level of formal organization that the coupling is uncommonly tight, especially in the double functions carried out by individual staff members and departments at universities, both of which participate in the system of education as well as that of research. As we shall see in part three, though, the difficulties arising from such an arrangement have increasingly been solved by prioritizing research at the expense of higher education. It is important to recognize, however, that the systems remain operationally closed even when structurally coupled, and even when one function is subordinated to another. Research publishes “truth” whereas the business of higher education, as we shall see below, is the transformation of individuals.

57

Cf. in particular Niklas Luhmann, Ecological Communication, ch. 12.

58

Niklas Luhmann and Karl-Eberhard Schorr, Problems of Reflection in the System of Education, 60ff.

42 │ The transformation of humanities education

3.10 THE SYSTEM OF EDUCATION Rudimentary forms of organized learning obviously go back to pre-historical times, but education considered as an autopoietic function system differentiated from the family, from religion, and from politics only emerged in the western world in the 18th century, according to Luhmann.59 In line with most educational historians, Luhmann observes the staggering simultaneity of this shift in Europe: In the course of only a few decades around the mid-19th century the idea took hold that not only the nobility and people with particular occupations or functions but everybody needed to gain access to certain types of knowledge in order to function in society.60 The resulting national school systems varied significantly in structure, but their societal functions were principally the same. The educational system achieved autonomy partly as result of the teachers’ professionalization (which for many purposes has turned out incomplete, however), and partly because of its rather loose coupling with research which furnished curricular content without asking for much in return, as already mentioned. Thus in the modern world the educational system has been granted a monopoly of educating people, although learning of course takes place in many other contexts as well. The distinction between the educational system and learning that takes place in its environment is upheld by use of the specification “formal education” – which is sharply demarcated from informal learning with the use of certain legal instruments (credentials). Considered from a systems theoretical perspective, education differs from many other function systems in lacking a symbolically generalized medium of communication – such as money, truth, power, etc. – which could provide a fixed point of orientation for its communication. According to Luhmann, such symbolically generalized media of communication emerge only in “functional areas in which the problem and the success aspired to lie in communication itself.”61 In education, communication – however important – is not where the overall aim is to be found. The aim of education lies, according to Luhmann, in changing the consciousness

59

Of course, politics and religion continued to influence education (and still do), but only by providing frames and certain restrictions. Niklas Luhmann and Karl-Eberhard Schorr, The problem of Reflection in the System of Education, 30ff.; Niklas Luhmann, Samfundets uddannelsessystem (Copenhagen: Reitzels, 2006) 135ff. This section is mostly based on these two works.

60

What is new in this period is that the idea of education is realized by legislation and capacity building. Cf. Raf Vanderstraeten, “The Social Differentiation of the Educational System,” Sociology 38.2 (2004) 255-272.

61

Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society, Vol. 1, 246.

Key concepts in systems theory │ 43

structures of human beings.62 This, of course, is made difficult (and potentially impossible) by the fact that consciousness is also autopoietic, and chooses for itself when and how to participate in learning. Because of the intransparent relationship between means and ends that characterizes education, Luhmann approaches it differently from the other function systems. He notes first that in primary education the “medium” of all operations is the generalized notion of “the child.” In a more comprehensive view of education, however, Luhmann finds that “the life course” should be considered education’s medium.63 The aim of education is to give a form to this medium. Not, of course, the same form for everyone, but a form that satisfies certain criteria. If successful, the outcome of the process will be what Luhmann subsumes under the concept of a “person.” A person is, in distinction to a mere human being, someone who is (in varying degrees) capable of social connectivity – not the least in the context of society’s various function systems. Of course, education cannot know in advance the potential each student holds, nor can it calculate the future contexts of application for the knowledge and skills it seeks to instill in each student. In other words, not only are the means (communication in classrooms) highly problematic, but the outcome is contingent upon so many exogenous factors that the system’s trust in its own rationality threatens to break down. In order to continue its operations under such degrees of uncertainty, the system of education has developed what Luhmann calls a “contingency formula.”64 Traditionally, “Bildung” has served this purpose, but increasingly the idea of “learning to learn” is replacing it as the paradoxical formulation of education’s overall aim. One of the most interesting and original insights in Luhmann’s writing on education is that education serves two societal functions which stand in a strained relationship to each other. The first I have already mentioned: Education aims to increase students’ potential for social connectivity by providing them with certain knowledge and training certain skills. But in addition, education functions as a selection mechanism regarding further education and career opportunities. The problem is that the second function seems to restrict the connectivity which the first produces. As Luhmann points out – and as is plain for everyone to see – the system of education, and especially the teacher profession, tends to dislike the latter

62

Niklas Luhmann, Ecological Communication, ch. 15.

63

Niklas Luhmann, Samfundets uddannelsessystem, 107ff.

64

Niklas Luhmann, Problems of Reflection in the System of Education, 66ff.

44 │ The transformation of humanities education

function.65 The whole machinery of assessment (exams, grades, certificates, etc.) is often viewed as if forced upon education from the “outside,” and as spurious to what education is “really” about, namely opening up possibilities. However, on this issue Luhmann’s macro-sociological perspective allows us to see what the system of education tends to close its eyes to, namely that even though selection (regarding further education, career, establishing a family, or whatever) certainly restricts future connectivity, it is also a precondition for increasing connectivity within the selected context. From the viewpoint of social action, this is quite obvious: In order to get anything done, a specific site must be chosen (to the exclusion of everything else). It is only from the restricted viewpoint of the educational system that being suspended in an ever-increasing potentiality can be construed as beneficial for students. I shall have occasion to return to the limitations of the educational perspective in part four when discussing changes in the career patterns of humanities graduates in Norway.

3.11 THE SYSTEM OF POLITICS In the conceptualization of systems theory, politics serves the societal function of producing collectively binding decisions.66 In democratized modern societies, politics is no longer the permanent prerogative of the prince, but is organized in a temporal sequence wherein public elections mandate political actors (parties and their representatives) according to the distinction government/opposition. The symbolically generalized medium of politics, “power,” is closely associated with the government side of this distinction, but it is also a more general attribute of all communications which are engaged in the process of political decision-making. A full discussion of the formal organization of politics (parliaments, cabinets, ministries, political parties, etc.) is not needed here. Instead, I will concentrate on a few aspects of systems theoretical perspective which departs from conventional views, and which will feed into the discussion of policymaking in the field of higher education in part two of this study. According to systems theory, the systemic functioning of politics is differentiated into “party politics,” “administration,” and

65

Niklas Luhmann, Samfundets uddannelsessystem, 89ff.; Niklas Luhmann, Problems of

66

The following is to a large extent based on Niklas Luhmann, Political Theory in the

Reflection in the System of Education, 274ff. Welfare State (New York: De Greuter, 1990).

Key concepts in systems theory │ 45

“the public.”67 In conventional political theory, these three (often in slightly different conceptualizations such as the legislature, the executive and the electorate) form a cycle of political influence in which the public conditions party politics through elections, whereas party politics conditions the administration by parliamentary decisions, which in turn conditions the public via the implementation of politics (effectuated by legal or financial instruments).68 In broad terms, Luhmann accepts this conventional view, but adds that political communication in reality is made much more complex by the operation of a counter-cycle, whereby party politics condition the public (e.g. by nominating candidates), the public conditions the administration (e.g. by corporatist arrangements and protest movements), and the administration conditions party politics (e.g. by organizing policymaking procedures).69 This means, for instance, that Luhmann does not accept the traditional view of the administration as politically neutral; nor does he consider the public to be without political impact outside of elections. According to Luhmann, the counter-cycle is intimately connected with the transformation of the political system into what, since WWII, has become known as the welfare state. In the welfare state, politics incurs the responsibility for all citizens in an increasing number of areas, and is therefore burdened with levels of complexity that cannot be handled by the “primary” cycle alone. In addition to these internal dynamics, the political system is coupled to other function systems via a variety of mechanisms. Most prominently, the legal system, which has achieved autopioesis on the basis of autonomous court decisions, and is therefore treated by Luhmann as a separate function system, serves as a coupling mechanism between the political system and all other systems, such as for instance the economy. But there are also more specialized bilateral coupling mechanisms. As we shall see in the next part of this study, a much used coupling mechanism between the system of politics and academia (which is itself a coupling of research and higher education) is the governmentally appointed commission of inquiry. Appointing “representatives” from the concerned function systems when interdependencies have caused problems and the need for reform has arisen, is a way for the political

67

Ibid., 46ff. For some reason, Luhmann uses the term “politics” to refer to the first of these three sub-systems, while continuing to use the same term to refer to the overall system of politics. To avoid confusion, I use the term “party politics” here when the narrow sense (i.e. one of the three sub-systems) is meant.

68

Note that since the judiciary is considered by systems theory to be an autonomous function system in its own right (although structurally coupled to the legislature), this triangle does not correspond to the traditional “tree branches of government”.

69

Niklas Luhmann, Political Theory in the Welfare State, 49.

46 │ The transformation of humanities education

system to search for structural alternatives which can ensure the continued operation of all of them – including politics. The most unorthodox aspect of the systems theoretical approach to the political system is perhaps the refusal to conceive of politics as the apex or center of society. In l’ancien régime, the king could claim to be the head of the body politic, and to represent the totality of it in his royal “body,” but modernity, according to systems theory, is characterized precisely by its head-lessness, and by the fact that politics is just one function system among many.70 It can restrict the operations of other function systems, but it cannot replace them (politics as such cannot educate, produce scientific truth, etc.), and it cannot legitimately make them operate in ways that are incompatible with their basic function system logics. This, as we shall see, has consequences for how policymaking in a field like higher education can occur.

3.12 THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM The economy is perhaps the most obviously systemic of the function systems. The reason it seems so is probably that its symbolically generalized medium of communication – the payment of money – has proven to be tremendously effective in a wide variety of areas of modern society, while also being sharply demarcated from the communication media of all other function systems. It seems almost trivial to us, therefore, that the transfer of money, especially in the tangible form of banknotes and coins, forms a circuit of its own. Actually, however, money is a highly abstract medium, and Luhmann has quite a lot to say about how it functions by mirroring the scarcity of goods without being directly tied to it, thus allowing the economy to operate autopoietically in modern society.71 I shall not go into the particulars of Luhmann’s theory of money here. More relevant to the topic of higher education is what systems theory has to say about markets. As we know, higher education can be seen – and has increasingly come to be seen – as standing at the intersection between two markets: the market of higher education itself (where universities offer programs of study to students) and the labor market (where candidates offer the competencies they have acquired – partly – through their studies to employers). Whether the first of these is actually a market in the economic sense at all is debatable, especially in a country like Norway where universities have always been publicly funded and no tuition is charged from students. And the second, although it involves money, is surely not a typical

70

Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society, Vol. 2, 209.

71

Niklas Luhmann, Ecological Communication, ch. 10.

Key concepts in systems theory │ 47

market. Nevertheless, viewing higher education from a “market” viewpoint is necessary to get a comprehensive picture. Especially in the last part of the study, which deals with patterns of change in the careers of Norwegian humanities graduates, the framework must to some extent reflect the market perspective of the graduates, as well as of their employers. So, what is a market? Traditionally, a market has been conceived as a site where prices are established and trade enabled through continuous weighing of supply and demand. Luhmann criticizes this view as too idealized to be useful. With reference to the work of American sociologist Harrison C. White, he instead conceptualizes a market as the horizon of expectations for suppliers within a particular segment of the economy.72 In the words of White, “[m]arkets are tangible cliques of producers observing each other. Pressure from the buyer side creates a mirror in which producers see themselves, not consumers.”73 If this is an adequate conceptualization, it alerts us to three important things. First, it makes little sense to speak of “the market” in the singular, other than as a metaphor, perhaps, for the code of the entire economic system. Second, the significant others for a producer in an established market turn out to be not the customers, but the competitors. To think that a market is at the mercy of the customers (“the customer is always right”) and that prices and the other conditions of transactions are established to a large extent by demand, may therefore be illusory, at least as a general principle. Third, the notion, popular in neoclassical (social) economics as well as in the tradition of functionalist sociology focused on “equilibrium”, that the function of a market is to achieve a “matching” between supply and demand is thus abandoned – or, rather it is seen as tautological and therefore of little analytical value. To the extent that transactions in a market continue, one might say that “matching” or “equilibrium” is attained, but there is no position within the economy from which one can judge whether prices and conditions therefore are “optimal.” It is sometimes argued that complaints (consumers who think prices are outrageous, or producers who say they are losing money and threaten to lay off workers) indicate market failure, but this is not an economic judgment. From the point of view of a particular market, high prices are not problematic as long as customers find ways to finance the costs, and as long margins are such that they continue to attract investors. Even the bankruptcy of companies is not in itself regrettable, since

72

For a summary of this argument, cf. Ivan A. Boldyrev, “Economy as a Social System: Niklas Luhmann’s Contribution and its Significance for Economics,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 72.2 (2013) 265-292.

73

Harrison C. White, “Where Do Markets Come From?” American Journal of Sociology 87.3 (1981) 543-44.

48 │ The transformation of humanities education

it creates opportunities for others. Mostly, when we speak of “market failure” or “mismatches” we are engaged in a political form of communication. Which is fine, of course, but as Luhmann stresses, the two system references should not be confused: “(…) politics works with data that are admittedly summaries of economic data but are assigned their informational value for politics only in a political manner, while, at the level where companies operate, entirely different pieces of information play the crucial role. What matters in companies is the bottom line, the orders received, the prices, the activities of competitors, the increase or decrease in demand, and, by extension the possibilities for production. This world of information is specific to the economic system. It is very much in question whether anybody in this system ever orients himself by means of unemployment statistics. In the economy, market data counts as information.”74

The fact that there exists organizations who claim to speak on behalf of “business” or “the private sector” (notably employers’ organizations, such as the Confederation of Norwegian enterprise (NHO), whom we shall encounter in part two of this study) does not change this. Such organizations will surely keep an eye on economic data and try to maximize economic results for the majority of their members, but they are actually engaged in political communication, trying to influence the political conditions for economic activity. They are structural couplings between the economic system and the political system. As previously noted, the economy is structurally coupled in various ways to all other function systems. Notably, in our context, it is coupled to the system of education via such arrangements as internships and career fairs, and to the system of research via “applied” research (in corporations usually referred to as “research and development”) and technology transfer offices (TTOs). Via such couplings, the economy can access the performances of other systems, and vice versa.

3.13 THE RELEVANCE OF SYSTEMS THEORY FOR THIS STUDY With these sketches of the four function systems that matter mostly to the present study, I end this exposition of systems theory. Some of it might seem at first glance to have only tangential relevance for the research questions about Norwegian humanities education that were outlined in the introduction, but the baroque archi-

74

Niklas Luhmann, Introduction to Systems Theory, 93.

Key concepts in systems theory │ 49

tecture of the theory and its departure from common usages on key issues means that I could not have availed myself of the major conceptual advances it offers without accounting for the premises they rest on. Perhaps the most obvious relevance of systems theory for the topics of this study lies in the claim that function systems in modern society – such as research, education, the economy, and politics – are highly specialized, restricted and closed at their level of operations, and therefore experience incomprehension and “irritation” when addressing each other. Equally important is the corresponding claim that the function systems, precisely for this reason, are highly contingent upon each other. In the light of these twin claims it seems probable that organizations which define their goals according to the dynamics of a particular function system will engage in attempts to influence the function systems in their organizational environment, and furthermore, that these attempts will tend to orient themselves at the structural level, since there is no “foothold” to be gained at the operative level of other function systems. A hypothesis underlying the present study is that this is precisely what we see in the historical trajectory of humanities education in Norway. In fact, the research questions outlined in the introduction are all concerned with what in systems theory is called structural coupling between various function systems. The issue of admissions and capacity building – or more precisely, the question of why humanities education in Norway expanded dramatically from 1960 to 2000, which will be addressed in part two – is to a large extent a question of how research, education, politics, and the economy have been coupled, or not coupled. Changes in the curriculum of humanities education, the topic of part three, seems to be related to a particular form of coupling, i.e. the increasingly strong subordination of educational programs to disciplinary research. And changes in career opportunities for humanities graduates need to be investigated, as we do in part four, with close attention paid to how the labor market (in particular the market for school teachers), the rising aspirations of humanities research, and the political dynamic in the postwar welfare state have conditioned each other. It would seem, therefore, that the systems theoretical conceptualization of autopoietic functions systems and theorizing on the conditions of possibility for structural coupling between them may have a strong relevance for higher education research of the kind attempted here.

4

Comparing theories for higher education research

Regardless of what has been said so far in favor of systems theory, the usefulness of a theoretical perspective is hard to evaluate in isolation and on purely abstract criteria. A context must be specified and alternative views considered if the choice of one particular theoretical framework is to be legitimated. The relevant context in this study, of course, is what is usually referred to as “higher education research.” In the following discussion this context will be more explicitly accentuated than hitherto. A comparison will be made between a systems theoretical perspective on higher education (which I have only hinted at in the general discussion above) and what I will call the received view in higher education research, exemplified by the work of Burton R. Clark, whom I take to be one of the most influential contributors in this field since its emergence.75 In addition, I will also compare and contrast systems theory with a theoretical framework that has had some impact on higher education research more recently (and which ostensibly shares several features with systems theory), namely a strand in sociological institutionalism known as “institutional logics.”

75

Other contenders for the title on the international scene (e.g. Joseph Ben-David, Sheldon Rothblatt, Martin Trow) have done their best work on historical issues, and therefore seem to have had more influence on the historiography of higher education than on its theory. Another reason why I have chosen to focus on Clark is that he has been particularly influential in Norwegian higher education research. Cf. the seminal work on the period covered by the present study, Ivar Bleiklie, Roar Høstaker, and Agnete Vabø, Policy and Practice in Higher Education: Reforming Norwegian Universities (London: Jessica Kingsley, 2000) 20ff. Cf. also the Norwegian contributions in Ragnvald Kalleberg & al, eds., Comparative Perspectives on Universities (Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing, 2000).

52 │ The transformation of humanities education

The problem which immediately arises with comparing systems theory to mainstream higher education research is the fact that, as Malcolm Tight concludes in his much-used handbook Researching Higher Education, “most theoretical frameworks applied in higher education research are ‘homegrown,’ and tend to be fairly ‘low level.’”76 It might seem unwarranted and even unfair, therefore, to compare a framework employed within this applied field with a macro-sociological theory of modern society. And indeed, a comparison at the high levels of generality and abstraction where the basic tenets of systems theory are formulated would be pointless. To be useful a comparison must focus on the specific research object in question: higher education. But here another problem arises, for the construction of this “object” itself has theoretical underpinnings that are very often left as tacit assumptions in the “low level” theories we find in higher education research. As Malcom Tight says in the cited handbook, “[t]here is normally a theoretical framework there – sometimes implicit, sometimes only marginally explicit, sometimes clearly explicit and labeled as such – but it is often confused or closely bound in with the topic being researched.”77 The following comparison of theoretical frameworks therefore involves teasing out the tacit premises of a “low level” higher education theory (and as we shall see, Clark would probably not protest such a characterization) and holding them up against the more explicitly formulated premises of the “high level” systems theory in the work of Niklas Luhmann, Rudolf Stichweh, and Dirk Baecker. I will also briefly outline the more recent framework of “institutional logics,” especially as articulated by Patricia H. Thornton and William Ocasio, and discuss its use in the field of higher education research. The aim is twofold: to demonstrate how mainstream higher education research (as exemplified by Clark and the institutional logics approach) conceptualize the “object of study” in this field as compared to systems theory, and also, towards the end of this first part, to assess the ability of the various contributions to deal with self-reference and reflexivity in higher education research.

76

Malcolm Tight, Researching Higher Education, 2nd edition, (Berkshire: Open University Press, 2012) 213. On this issue, see also Peter Maassen, “Higher Education Research: The Hourglass Structure and its Implications,” Higher Education Research: Its Relationship to Policy and Practice, eds. Ulrich Teichler and Jan Sadlak (Bingley: Emerald, 2000).

77

Malcolm Tight, Researching Higher Education, 200. Emphasis mine.

Comparing theories for higher education research │ 53

4.1

BURTON R. CLARK ON THE “HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM”

The avowed aim of Clark’s classic study The Higher Education System is “to set forth the basic elements of the higher education system, as seen from an organizational perspective; and to show how these features vary across nations, with fateful effects.”78 Despite its title and its frequent use of the term, however, the book pays surprisingly little theoretical or even analytical attention to the concept of “system.” In the one and a half page discussion of it in the introductory chapter, Clark calls it a “murky term,” and seems apologetic of its use. Nevertheless, “[i]t is an idea” he says, “we can hardly do without even when plagued by its ambiguity and shifting meanings.”79 It should perhaps be mentioned in this connection that just as Clark is by no means the last to use the concept in the way he does, he is also not the first. An obvious precursor is Parsons and Platt’s famous 1973 study, The American University, where “the American system of higher education” refers to the totality of HEIs in the United States and all their activities.80 In many ways, Clark takes over the concept from Parsons’ tradition of functionalism, albeit with certain reservations. His major worry is with the concept’s implication of boundaries: “When we use the term, we construct boundaries, arbitrary definitions of relevant actors and structures that fashions insiders and outsiders.”81 According to Clark, this is particularly difficult when dealing with higher education, since so many of the “actors” participate in the “system” only partly (e.g. students), or only part of the time (e.g. trustees). Clark proposes to solve this problem pragmatically, i.e. by using a “relaxed approach” to the concept, in which “boundaries expand and contract, zig and zag, across time and space.”82 Using a conventional heuristic, Clark distinguishes between three levels in the study of higher education: the macro level of the nation, the meso level of the institution, and the micro level of the department (or equivalent). Although occasionally using the term “system” on the meso level of the institution, Clark for the

78

Burton R. Clark, The Higher Education System. Academic Organization in Cross-

79

Ibid.

80

For instance in the following formulation: “the American system of higher education

National Perspective (Berkley: University of California Press, 1983) 2.

(referring here to the approximately 1200 liberal arts colleges and universities).” Talcott Parsons and George M. Platt, The American University (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973) 356. Emphasis mine. 81

Burton R. Clark, The Higher Education system, 4.

82

Ibid., 5.

54 │ The transformation of humanities education

most part reserves this concept for the macro level.83 It is on the national level that he proposes to analyze the modus operandi of the higher education system through the framework of his famous “triangle of coordination.” According to this model, national higher education systems are coordinated by the three separate forces of the state, the market, and the “academic oligarchy,” in the sense that a national system is usually dominated by one of these (e.g. “the market” for higher education in the US). Change is also analyzed on the national level, and is treated as conditioned by the structural propensities, the beliefs of actors, and the distribution of authority in each particular country. Although the book shows national higher education systems to be extremely divergent along all of the mentioned dimensions, and also strongly differentiated internally, Clark attempts in the concluding pages to assign to the higher education system as such a form of identity. This seems to be motivated by a wish to ward off what he views as an unwelcome tendency to compare its organizational propensities with those of the economic and political systems. Clark is careful not to insist on unity in the sense of simplicity or substantial uniformity – which would obviously contradict the evidence. In this regard he is again apologetic about the concept of system: “The imagery of ‘organization’ and ‘system,’ the very terms themselves, lead us to expect simplicity […]. But if the higher education system was ever simple, it will not be again. We are looking at inordinate and uncommon complexity.”84 Nevertheless, Clark clearly needs something to function as an identity marker in order to demarcate the “higher education system” from its surroundings. He finds this common denominator in the system’s tasks: “For higher education…the tasks are knowledge-centered. It is around the formidable array of specific subjects and their self-generating and autonomous tendencies that higher education becomes something unique, to be first understood on its own terms.”85 Conceptually, this means that the “higher education system” as an object of study becomes coextensive with a nation’s universities, since it encompasses all the tasks in these institutions (i.e. the concept is not reserved for the education side exclusively, but includes research, dissemination, etc.). Furthermore, Clark insists that the higher education system (the organizational form of the university, or the

83

In higher education research, both usages are prevalent. A classic study using the concept of system for the meso-level is Robert Birnbaum How Colleges Work (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1988). A recent volume using system on the national level is Michael Kariwo, Tatiana Gounko, and Musembi Nungu, eds., A Comparative Analysis of Higher Education Systems. Issues, Challenges and Dilemmas (Boston: Sense, 2013).

84

Burton R. Clark, The Higher Education System, 275f.

85

Ibid., 276. Emphasis mine.

Comparing theories for higher education research │ 55

totality of such organizations in a country) must be studied not as one system among others, but as an entity sui generis. The implications such a conceptualization must have for the perspective of the researcher who is attempting to gain knowledge about the supposedly unique system of higher education, while also being a part of this system, is not explicitly handled. However, the insistence that higher education be “understood on its own terms” seems to indicate that for Clark the “insider’s view” is an asset rather than an epistemological problem. In Places of Inquiry, written about a decade after The Higher Education System, Clark returns to the idea of a system of higher education, this time focusing explicitly on what is sometimes thought to be the most corrosive split in that system, namely the distinction between research and education.86 Clark takes as his starting point a somewhat skeptical comment from Joseph Ben-David to the Humboldtian ideal of the university. Ben-David says that “far from being a natural match, research and teaching can be organized within a single framework only under specific conditions.”87 Formulated in response to this comment, Places of Inquiry is an attempt to tease out, through empirical cross-national comparison, what these specific conditions are, so as to be able, once again, to assert if not the unity, then at least “the essential compatibility” of teaching and research in universities.88 The first part of the book consists of historical and structural descriptions of the higher education systems in Germany, France, Britain, the United States and Japan – based on a comparative research project.89 In part two, Clark analyses the “forces of fragmentation” (research drift and teaching drift) and offers a taxonomy of the “conditions of integration,” the different combinations of which create different versions of that he calls “the Research-Teaching-Study Nexus” in the five countries.90 In the last part Clark weighs these contradictory forces against each other, and concludes that although conflicting interests and increasing complexity is

86

Burton R. Clark, Places of Inquiry: Research and Advanced Education in Modern Universities (Berkley: University of California Press, 1995).

87

Joseph Ben-David, quoted in Burton R. Clark, Places of Inquiry, 3. Emphasis mine)

88

Ibid., 249.

89

Burton R. Clark, ed., The Research Foundations of Graduate Education: Germany, Britain, France, United States, Japan (Berkley: University of California Press, 1993).

90

The “conditions of integration” are: differentiation of research universities, reputationbased competition between institutions, integrative funding practices, the “ideology of unity,” differentiation of a separate graduate school, the financing of graduate school and research by undergraduate tuition, niche-competitiveness, knowledge-centeredness and the merging of “teaching-groups” and “research-groups.” Burton R. Clark, Places of Inquiry, 211ff.

56 │ The transformation of humanities education

everywhere to be seen, the research-teaching-study nexus does in fact survive, particularly in favorable conditions such as the US graduate school, and thus can be made to flourish in other countries as well, given the right conditions. Taken together, then, Clark’s two books presents us with a view of higher education – or of the global “university sector” – as composed of various national systems, internally heterogeneous, serving the major functions of research and education, the two of which are unified by sharing the common identity of knowledge-centeredness, which also serves to differentiate the higher education system from other realms such as the worlds of business or politics.91 This view of higher education rests on Clark’s (and his collaborators’) detailed and comparative organizational analyses, and on the distillation of generalized postulates about higher education as such from this seemingly formless mass of empirical detail. In a symposium following the publication of Places of Inquiry, Clark explained his research program in a very straightforward manner. Dismissing theorists like Parsons, Giddens and Habermas as “too ‘blue sky’ for me,” he argues that “we learn more about this relatively unexplored sector by moving up to middle range categories from empirical observation than we do by attempting to deduce such categories from grand theory.”92 As I shall return to below, there are drawbacks as well as advantages to such a strong empiricist program.

91

It seems to be a condition for Clark’s perception of unity and compatibility that he does not distinguish very sharply between the societal level on the one hand and organizations on the other, but uses the ambiguities of his “relaxed” concept of system to conflate the two, and allows himself to speak of “higher education” and “the university” in one sense or the other as he sees fit. Of course, these ambiguities do not originate in Clark’s work. They are imminent in a semantic tradition which seems to have evolved alongside the organizational form of the modern university, and which has served as its self-description at least since the early 19th century. See Sheldon Rothblatt, “The Idea of the Idea of a University and Its Antithesis,” Conversazione (Bundoora: La Trobe University, 1989).

92

Burton R. Clark, “Comments on the review essays by Ragnvald Kalleberg and Guy Neave,” Comparative Perspectives on Universities ed. Ragnvald Kalleberg & al. (Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing, 2000) 275.

Comparing theories for higher education research │ 57

4.2

SYSTEMS THEORY ON HIGHER EDUCATION AND THE UNIVERSITY

I now want to contrast Clark’s perspective with a systems theoretical approach to “higher education” as an object of study. First, I will present Luhmann’s writing on the topic, along with two more recent contributions within the same tradition. In the next section I examine the alternative view of institutional logics. Although Luhmann wrote several papers on various aspects of the university, he did not give it a comprehensive treatment in a monograph like he did with so many other similar topics. This has caused some researchers in the discipline of sociology to conclude that, seen from the perspective of systems theory, the university does not perform a particularly important societal function.93 While this may be an exaggeration, it seems clear from comments dispersed throughout his writings that Luhmann himself saw the German university, and the whole Humboldtian concept of the research university, as most likely to be a transitory organizational form, mainly because in his estimation it could not in the long run contain both massification in education and increased specialization in research. For him, it was not the Humboldtian university which had attained systemic properties (i.e. “operational closure”), but the two separate function systems of research and education. Hence, it was these function systems that caught his attention. However, in his publications on research and education he also had to consider how they had been organizationally coupled, since Humboldt, in universities. Particularly in his writing on pedagogy and education, Luhmann and his co-writer Schorr offer a perspective on higher education which might help us deal with the question of the university. As previously mentioned, Luhmann and Schorr follow a fairly established view when they outline how education was differentiated as an autonomous function system during period from the mid-18th to the mid-19th century in most European countries. However, as Luhmann and Schorr notes, this differentiation was not universal. Modern society still has three major domains in which it has not been possible, at least not so far, to differentiate education from other systems. Luhmann and Schorr term these “overlapping domains,” and they are: upbringing (the family/education), workplace learning (the economy/education), and higher education (research/education).94

93

See for instance Rudulf Stichweh, “Niklas Luhman,” The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists: Classical Social Theorists, Vol. 1, eds. George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).

94

Niklas Luhmann and Karl-Eberhard Schorr, Problems of Reflection in the System of Education, 60. It should be noted here that Luhmann’s conceptualization of relation-

58 │ The transformation of humanities education

In the case of higher education, the attempt to utilize the scientific distinction (or “code”) of truth/untruth for educational purposes, which is a legacy of the 19th century, has had considerable success, but has proven increasingly difficult to accomplish with satisfactory results in the context of the massification of the 20th century. Within the “overlapping domain” where university education is situated, the research function according to Luhmann clearly takes precedence over the educational function on the organizational level of the university, partly because of the high degree of autonomy achieved by research, and partly because of society’s increased dependency on it.95 The resulting relationship between research and education is one where “the distance between notions of rationality and optimality increase on both sides.”96 That is, the demands of education are increasingly difficult to reconcile with those of research. However, since no functional equivalent to the code of research has appeared for higher education (i.e. there is nothing else which could take its place),97 and since such codes are “convincing only in the context of operations” that is, in organizations where the “basis” for education (research) is produced, the Humboldtian arrangement has persisted, at least in research universities.98 We have a situation, therefore, in which the code of research

ships between function systems developed over the years as he tried out various options, several of them adapted from other theorists. “Overlapping domains,” “interpenetration” and “structural coupling” are among them. Without having done extensive research on Luhmann’s manuscripts, my own interpretation, which I will use in the present study, is that structural coupling is a generic concept for any form of coupling between systems, whereas overlapping domain (at least in the context of education) is used to capture incomplete differentiation. As previously noted, Parsons’ concept of interpenetration was used as a generic term by Luhmann until he (mostly) switched to “structural coupling” after his biological turn in the late 1980s, whereafter he reserved interpenetration for the particular case of systems that has co-evolved and are for practical purposes inseparable, cf. Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society, Vol. 1, 60. 95

In part three of this study I shall discuss some possible reasons for this subordination with reference to Merton’s concept of the “reward system” of research.

96

Niklas Luhmann and Karl-Eberhard Schorr, Problems of Reflection in the System of Education, 64.

97

Although in some instances, particularly in professional programs, elements such as practice, internships, etc. have been introduced, the legitimation as higher education still depends upon the domination of research.

98

Niklas Luhmann and Karl-Eberhard Schorr, Problems of Reflection in the System of Education, 63.

Comparing theories for higher education research │ 59

“remain[s] in part indispensable to education, and on the other side, [it] cannot be made to submit to this function with [its] own logic.”99 In Luhmann and Schorr’s study, originally published in 1979, the authors were content to call the status of higher education in universities “problematic.” In his more occasional writings on German university reform, however, Luhmann was less circumspect: “What is needed is . . . an overall idea for the social function of higher education, for its mission of educating and training. The Humboldt University was based on an idea of education that can no longer be resuscitated.”100 Two sociologists who have taken up Luhmann’s systems theoretical perspectives and attempted further analyses of higher education and the university are Rudolf Stichweh and Dirk Baecker. In a recent paper, Baecker argues, pace Luhmann, Parsons and others, that the university is indeed an autopoietic social system. According to Baecker, the university achieves what in systems theory is called “double closure” by communicating decisions on research and teaching, and by collectivizing such decisions in programs.101 Furthermore, “the autopoietic element of the university as we know it” rests simply on ensuring that “no teaching is done without research to back it and no research without teaching informed by it.”102 Stichweh avoids using the concept of “system” on the university, opting instead for “form,” “medium” and a few other concepts to perform his analysis. For him too, however, the task is clearly to furnish the university with conceptual unity beyond what Luhmann was willing to grant it. Stichweh asks first what distinguishes the modern university within the system of education. The answer he gives, based on an historical exposition, consists of a fourfold set of distinctions which can be summarized as follows: the distinction university/school is defined through the distinction scientific/nonscientific, with the provision that the scientific distinction truth/untruth is subjected to the specifically modern distinction of cognition/reflection. More simply put, what distinguishes modern higher education from school education is that in higher education the universality of scientific truth is treated critically. Stichweh, writing in the 1990s, seems to mean that this “form” of

99

Ibid.

100 Luhmann quoted in Christoph Führ, “The German University – Basically Healthy or Rotten?” European Education 25.4 (1994) 47. 101 “Double closure” is achieved when a system is able to reproduce itself through its own operations, and also decides the premises for how these operations are to be employed. Cf. Niklas Luhman, Theory of Society, Vol. 1, 39f. 102 Dirk Baecker, “A Systems Primer on Universities,” Soziale Systeme: Zeitschrift für soziologische Theorie 16.2 (2010) 364.

60 │ The transformation of humanities education

the university, although the outcome of historical processes, is consummated in the 20th century: “What becomes apparent here is that the emergence of a form within the university, that is, the co-utilization of the form of science (the binary code of truth/untruth) by academic organizations that are at the same time marked more clearly as organizations of the educational system, has proven to be an irreversible, radical shift.”103

Another interesting thing about Stichweh’s paper is his treatment of what he calls the “medium” of higher education, a concept developed to handle the difference between the formal structure of the university (which is observable both within and without it) and its internal activities. For a formal structure to take shape, systems need to make strong connections between certain of its elements (at the expense of others, which remain more loosely coupled), and whatever entity facilitates this process, Stichweh calls a “medium.” In the case of higher education, Stichweh argues, the medium is the credit system, conceived as the tripartite unity of curricula, courses and grades. It is through the credit system that the formal structure of higher education emerges, both for its internal activities and for its external representation. As Stichweh recognizes, however, “[a]cademic credit as a medium of university education is only one of the modern university’s functional relationships. The analysis…has bypassed the university as a whole since the university is also the dominant organizational infrastructure of the science system…”104

To remedy this, Stichweh picks up on a suggestion made by Parsons, and concludes that what unites the whole of the university – encompassing both research and education – is the distinction rationality/non-rationality (which is not to be confused with the distinction rationality/irrationality). More precisely, Stichweh uses the distinction, not to say that the university excludes all non-rationality, but to say that even when dealing with non-rationality, “‘rationality’ as the side directly defining the university’s identity signifies the particular contribution of the university.”105 As we can see, Baecker and Stichweh both end their analyses of the university in postulations of unity and identity – whether it be through balancing research and

103 Rudolf Stichweh, “The University as Form,” Problems of Form, ed. Dirk Baecker (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999) 129. 104 Ibid., 138-9. Emphasis in original. 105 Ibid., 140. Emphasis mine.

Comparing theories for higher education research │ 61

education in its autopoiesis or through the common trait of rationality. As hinted at above, I do not find these solutions entirely persuasive. Baecker’s assertion of a symmetrical relationship between teaching and research in the university, especially the notion that no research can take place within the university which is not also conducive to teaching, can be quite easily dismissed – even if we allow for the necessary reductionism of conceptual work – by massive empirical evidence to the contrary, including Clark’s.106 And as for Stichweh’s concept of rationality, although it is certainly interesting in the context of Weber’s and Parsons’ interpretation of this concept, particularly as regards the historical evolution of the university, there are at least two reasons why I think it will not work as an analytical device in the effort to conceptualize the modern university (although one might of course support it as a normative stance). Most obviously, perhaps, it contradicts the fact that the modern university encompasses forms of knowledge or epistemic cultures in disciplines and fields such as theology, literature, music, arts, philosophy, creative writing, etc. where the distinction between rationality/non-rationality is less than helpful. More importantly, however, the claim that the university is distinguished by rationality, in the sense that the university has more claim to rationality than e.g. courts or hospitals, has no foundation beyond its own domain, and thus becomes self-referential to a degree that outside observers will find lacking in credibility. It is hardly persuasive, in my opinion, to define any extra-academic perspective as non-rational – even if care is taken not to give such a characterization a normative slant.107 I cannot pursue this question further here, but it seems to me that both Baecker’s and Stichweh’s conceptual closures, not unlike Clark’s, come closer to capturing the projections of the university’s self-description rather than offering – as systems theory usually advocates in other contexts, and as Stichweh explicitly

106 Cf. for instance many of the articles in Ronald Barnett, ed., Reshaping the University: New Relationships Between Research, Scholarship and Teaching (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2005). 107 As even a cursory glance at the conceptual history of “rationality” (and “reason”) indicates, many other function systems and types of organizations also partake of this Enlightenment tradition. Even if one could argue that research and higher education have been particularly trusted strongholds of rationality in the 19th and 20th centuries, there are clear signs today that this credibility is on the decline. Saying this I refer not primarily to climate skeptics and creationist, but to increased degrees of mistrust regarding research and teaching in general – on the part of the media, the economic system (the labor market), social movements, and the political system. In a polycontextural society, it is hard to see how a concept like rationality can be monopolized.

62 │ The transformation of humanities education

subscribes to in the beginning of the paper I have quoted – second-order observations of the difference between self-reference and external reference. This aim, it seems to me, is better adhered to by Luhmann, although his contribution to higher education research remains a torso.

4.3

SYSTEMS THEORY AND BURTON R. CLARK COMPARED

If we try to compare what has been said so far about the “received view” in higher education research (as represented by Clark), and the systems theoretical perspective (as sketched by Luhmann), it is obvious that the most striking difference is a difference in the level of analysis. In contradistinction to Clark, who zooms in on higher education systems and considers its societal environment only inasmuch as it can be said to participate in the higher education “system” (as when ministries are conceived as the “tops” of the national pyramids of higher education, for instance), systems theory starts from a sociological perspective on the whole of modern society, and then views higher education in relation to that whole. As mentioned, it might be considered unfair to compare conceptualizations of higher education in contributions with widely different ambitions. But one should also consider the possibility, not uncommon in the history of research, that the shortcomings of one contribution can best be seen from the perspective offered by another kind of research, formulated at a different level. In the present case, it seems to me that it is precisely the comprehensive, societal perspective offered by systems theory which allows us to observe some highly problematic aspects of Clark’s use of the designation “higher education system.” His claim that education and research are “essentially compatible” in their “knowledge-centeredness” amounts to conceiving them as a unity not only on the organizational level, but on the societal level, since the unity of them must also function in society.108 This conception is problematic on several accounts. First of all, it seriously underplays the historical contingency of the Humboldtian structural coupling between the two systems, and seems, in the end, to hold it up as a timeless ideal form. Secondly, while Clark certainly notes various forms of strain between the two “tasks,” his

108 As mentioned above, Clark does highlight the problematic “forces of fragmentation” within the compound of “higher education” (or “the university”), but these are considered to arise from the fact that education and research are separate activities, and therefore compete for resources, etc., not from any fundamental difference in their underlying dynamics or societal functions.

Comparing theories for higher education research │ 63

focus on the organizational level makes him miss how both the operative mode and the societal aims of education differ fundamentally from those of research. As a consequence, Clark’s perspective cannot illuminate how education and research relate differently to societal systems in the environment – the two of them seem to blend in a joint societal effort to process “knowledge,” the societal function of which is left unexamined. Lastly, I will venture the claim that to essentialize the research university as the consummated union of education and research is in practice to let a normative stance take precedence over a theoretical and hence distancing orientation. This, I think, is especially damaging – as I shall return to below – in a field of research that is caught up in a highly problematical kind of self-reference.109 While Clark’s conceptualization of higher education is still influential – or, perhaps more accurately, while the frames of much of higher education research are still constituted by the tacit assumptions that “Clark (1983)” has become the shorthand for in countless papers – there has of course been done a lot more work in this field, especially during the past two or three decades. Some of it has been informed by more explicitly stated theoretical frameworks than the quotes from Malcolm Tight’s handbook above might indicate. I am thinking here in particular of the influence of institutionalism. The work of John W. Meyer and the Stanford school has for instance proved influential in demonstrating the global dissemination of the modern formats and policies of (among many other things) higher education and research. The spread and standardization of these “institutions” has been explained with reference to such metaphors as “global scrips”, “myths” and “ceremony”, highlighting mechanisms like sense-making and isomorphism.110 In my view,

109 It should be noted that in the late 1990s Clark challenged the Humboldtian orthodoxy with the notion of the “entrepreneurial university,” which, along with other notions from the 1990s, such as “mode 2” and the “triple helix,” has since been much debated, although certainly not widely adopted, neither as normative positions nor as analytical tools by mainstream higher education research. Cf. Burton R. Clark, Creating Entrepreneurial Universities: Organizational Pathways of Transformation (New York: Emerald, 1998). For quite a few higher education researchers and historians, the new concepts from the 1990s have served mainly as antagonists in polemics on behalf of traditional, Humboldtian academic values. At least in my estimation, the mainstream still operates within the framework of Clark’s previous work. 110 For a presentation of new institutionalism in general, see the now classic anthology Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio, eds., The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). The essentials of John W.

64 │ The transformation of humanities education

however, new institutionalism, which like systems theory is a macro-sociological venture, has to a large extent been enlisted by higher education research in order to argue basically the same case that Clark was working on, namely that higher education institutions in the modern world (unfortunately) are subjected to a constantly increasing external “pressure”. With the help of institutionalist theory it has become commonplace to argue not only that the origin of this pressure is the twin forces of “the market” (neoliberalism, corporatism) and “the state” (new public management), but also (and this is the specific contribution of institutionalism) that there is no actual functional foundation for these pressures (or interventions) other than the culturally constructed (”institutional”) rationalizing myths of modernity. Higher education research in this tradition often seeks to demonstrate that, in addition to having no coherent functional aim, modern reform of higher education, informed by these global rationalizing myths, are seldom more than superficially (ceremoniously) implemented, and hence impotent as well as aimless. Despite this measure of predictability, it cannot be denied that a lot of interesting empirical research has been produced under the heading of (or with reference to) new institutionalism, and although I have certain reservations, I avail myself of some of this research later on in the study regarding specific issues, especially on educational expansion in the postwar era. Space does not allow a general discussion of institutionalism as a theoretical program here. There is, however, a particular branch of it which under the label “institutional logics” has made interesting advances towards the kind of sociological macro-perspective that I have argued for above, stressing the differentiation of modern society, and which therefore merits further comment in this context.

4.4

THE “INSTITUTIONAL LOGICS” APPROACH

Taking their cue from an influential paper from 1991 by Roger Friedland and Robert R. Alford, researchers working under the banner of institutional logics have developed a theory of modern society as an “inter-institutional system” consisting of several “institutional orders” (societal spheres or sectors) with distinct “institutional logics” that condition the actions of individuals and organizations in the purview. Friedland and Alford originally presented a list of six such institutional logics in their 1991 paper: the capitalist market, the bureaucratic state, families, democracy, and

Meyer’s work is collected in Georg Krücken and Gili S. Drori, eds. World Society: The Writings of John W. Meyer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

Comparing theories for higher education research │ 65

religion.111 A 1999 paper by Patricia H. Thornton and William Ocasio came up with a revised list: markets, corporations, professions, states, families, and religion.112 In a more recent book from 2012, some of the same authors elaborate the framework, and among other things adds a seventh institutional logic: communities.113 Obviously, on the question of societal differentiation this approach has some similarities with systems theory, and one might perhaps think “institutional orders” could serve approximately the same theoretical purpose as functions systems in a study such as this, producing in addition a more immediately recognizable framework, since it builds upon the institutionalist program already familiar in the field of higher education research. Upon closer consideration, it does not, however. I would even argue that the institutional logics approach, at least in the ways it has hitherto been developed, would seriously obstruct the major aims of a study like the present one. There are two main problems, in my view. In the light of what has previously been said about the systems theoretical view of the “overlapping domain” of higher education, the first and most obvious shortcoming is that neither of the lists of logics capture the important demarcation line that cuts across the field of higher education itself, the one between education and research. Absent this, higher education researchers who put on the glasses of institutional logics will by default have to locate themselves as well as their object of study within the “professions logic,” a perspective that makes it hard to appreciate the different systemic natures and functional foundations of the two participating systems, and easy to underestimate the societal importance of the demarcation between them. This blind spot, it seems to me, is not only similar to but has the same origin as we saw in Clark’s work, namely that the conceptual frame is arrived at inductively, based mainly on observed patterns of expressed values, attitudes, judgements and legitimation strategies for action within various societal areas – as these identify and demarcate themselves on the cultural level. Unlike systems theory, neither Clark nor the

111 Roger Friedland and Robert R. Alford, “Bringing society back in: Symbols, practices, and institutional contradictions,” The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, eds. Walter W. Powell and Paul DiMaggio, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 112 Patricia Thornton and William Occasio, “Institutional logics and the historical contingency of power in organizations: Executive succession in the higher education publishing industry 1958-1990,” American Journal of Sociology 105.1 (1999) 801-843. 113 Patricia Thornton, William Ocasio, and Michael Lounsbury, The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure and Process (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

66 │ The transformation of humanities education

researchers in the institutional logics camp are concerned with conceptualizing how the core activities in a “field” (such as research and education in academia, or economic transactions in the market), actually function at the basic operative level and how their distinct operational modes condition (but far from determine) the “logics” or programs that they give rise to. True to their Weberian inspiration, institutional logics researchers rather tend to skip ahead to the cultural level.114 This is why the border lines and trench wars that come into view in this manner, when the lens is focused on cultural distinctions between for instance a “bureaucratic,” a “professional” and a “corporate” logic with respect to higher education, will be closer to the level that in systems theory is called “programs” and “selfdescriptions” than it will be to the level of function systems.115 The second problem is that even though the major proponents of the institutional logics approach claim that the same seven institutional logics are applicable on various levels of social life – for individuals, organizations, organizational fields, and (societal) institutional orders – it is far from clear how the levels and logics relate to each other, other than in the trivial sense that vaguely similar valuedescriptions can be found (i.e. can be recognized by interpretation) at various social levels within a logic, pertaining to e.g. the “idea of a university” as such on the societal level, to the universities in a particular area at the level of organizational fields, to a particular university, and to the role an individual professor. The problem, it seems to me, is that when all of the levels are in effect socio-cultural selfdescriptions, and none of them are anchored in or even conditioned by anything but each other, the whole cross-tabulation of institutional orders on the x-axis and social “categories” on the y-axis (which is the preferred presentation of the main proponents), becomes somewhat arbitrary and self-referential in a vicious way. I am not suggesting, of course, that it would be possible to anchor a theory like this in “reality” plain and simple, nor that “autopoietic function systems” are the only valid conceptual anchoring mechanisms for a sociological macro-theory, but I agree with Rudolf Stichweh who has argued that something must serve a similar function in a macro-sociological theory, otherwise the theoretical architecture becomes too impressionistic.116

114 Regarding the Weberian inspiration, see chapter 4 in Patricia Thornton, William Ocasio, and Michael Lounsbury, The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure and Process. 115 In his later work, especially in Theory of Society, Luhmann increasingly spoke of “semantics” when discussing the self-descriptions of social systems. 116 Rudolf Stichweh, “Comparing Systems Theory and Sociological Neo-Institutionalism: Explaining Functional Differentiation” From Globalization to World Society. Neo-

Comparing theories for higher education research │ 67

But even if the institutional logics approach is deemed unsatisfactory as a macro-sociological theory, could not parts or aspects of it be used as helpful heuristics in higher education research – in conjunction with for instance systems theory? A reason to think so is that the level where advances in systems theory have proved to be most difficult is where the institutional logics approach locates itself (more or less), namely at the mid-level between that of societal function systems and social “actors.” Surely, the highly abstract systems theory should welcome help in specifying how organizations and individuals legitimate their actions with reference to what it calls programs and semantics (and which Thornton & al calls “logics”)? Indeed, some form of amalgamation would be useful, especially as both approaches share the emphasis on differentiation, but unfortunately the institutional logics approach as currently formulated does not face up to important problems in higher education research, and for two reasons.117 Firstly because, as argued above, the available categorization of logics bypasses the crucial distinction between education and research, making it unhelpful in for instance the examination of how the rise of disciplinary research in the Norwegian humanities impacted humanities education in the 1960s and 1970s. Secondly, because the approach does not take into account self-reference and the need for reflexivity in higher education research. This last point necessitates a brief separate discussion.

4.5

SELF-REFERENCE AND REFLEXIVITY

As previously noted, self-reference is inescapable according to systems theory, not only in research but in all forms of communication, simply because all observations necessarily entail reference to the position from which they are uttered. But for higher education research, self-reference becomes especially problematic because it occurs on several levels, its aim being to observe precisely the position it observes from, with the aid of the major functional “code” (truth/falsehood) it uses to demar-

Institutional and Systems-Theoretical Perspectives, eds., Boris Holzer, Fatima Kastner, and Tobias Werron (New York: Routledge, 2014). 117 Discussing the similarities between new institutionalism and systems theory, and the feasibility of fusing insights from the two, is the purpose of a recently published anthology: Boris Holzer, Fatima Kastner and Tobias Werron, eds., From globalization to world society: Neo-institutional and systems theoretical perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2015). See especially Christina Besio and Uli Meyer, “Heterogeneity in world society. How organizations handle contradicting logics,” in which the institutional logics perspective is held up against systems theory.

68 │ The transformation of humanities education

cate itself from its societal surroundings.118 Surprisingly few researchers in this field discuss this as a problem, however. As we have seen, Clark thinks of his insider perspective as mostly a virtue, claiming that higher education should be “understood on its own terms.” In my view, this speaks volumes about how Clark’s perspective on higher education and the university is conditioned by his own relationship towards it, perspectives that he seems blind to because of the very conceptualizations he uses.119 Furthermore, it seems to me that the reluctance or inability to view higher education in a societal perspective is consequence of the epistemology of Clark’s research program, a formulation of which was cited above. Attempting to begin with a direct confrontation of the empirical materials, insisting that concepts should be drawn inductively from the evidence, Clark runs the risk that tacit conceptualizations – for instance the self-descriptions of traditional academia – structure his evidence for him, before he gets a chance to formulate the distinctions and levels he needs to triangulate his position vis-à-vis his object of study. Much the same can be said of institutional logics approach in higher education research, which as we have seen does not conceptualize research (or education) as a distinct logic at all, and therefore seems largely uninterested in other drivers in the evolution of modern academia than exogenous ones. Its attention is mostly turned to the “adoption of market logics throughout a variety of institutional fields,” including higher education.120 While this undoubtedly points to a real trend in many

118 Parallels in problematic self-reference would be the police investigating itself, or the media writing editorials on the media. 119 Discussing his book Homo Academicus, Pierre Bourdieu made this point quite clear in his final lecture at the Collège de France: “[W]hen I undertake to objectivate an object like the French university system in which I am caught up, I have as my aim, and I need to know this, to objectivate a whole area of my specific unconscious that is liable to obstruct knowledge of the object…” Pierre Bourdieu, Science of Science and Reflexivity (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2004) 92. 120 Patricia Thornton, William Ocasio, and Michael Lounsbury, The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure and Process, ch 7. An prime example of this “marketization” perspective in higher education research using an institutional logics framework is Patricia J. Gumport “Academic Restructuring: Organizational Change and Institutional Imperatives, Higher Education” The International Journal of Higher Education and Educational Planning 39 (2000) 67-91. For an example of the other major type of higher education research using the institutional logics perspective, which focuses on “managerialism” in higher education governance, see for instance Blaschke, S., Frost, J., & Hattke, “Towards a Micro Foundation of Leadership, Govern-

Comparing theories for higher education research │ 69

parts of the world, the conceptualization offered by this approach does not allow for much more than observing it from the “inside” of the professional logic in mildly deploring terms, when what is needed is some form of explanation, which can only be mounted when the societal environment is seriously taken into account, and not merely viewed as what Luhmann would have called an “irritant.” But how can higher education research attain a societal perspective from inside of higher education? In a strict sense, it cannot (as previously discussed), but according to systems theory a measure of reflexivity is still feasible in the form of second-order observations, i.e. the observation of observations. It is here, I think, that systems theory has several epistemological advantages over the perspective of Clark and the institutional logics approach, and the theory of function systems is at the heart of it. It is because systems theory emphasizes the differentiation of function systems and their closure on the level of operations that it is able to view the “overlapping domain” of “higher education” with the help of a whole set of distinctions (primarily education/research, education/politics, and education/economy, but also by implication research/politics, research/economy and politics/economy), thus enriching the understanding of higher education in the organizational setting of the university – as well as on the societal level. This is not only a gain in possible knowledge about higher education; it means that “higher education” is construed differently. The gain is in reflexivity as well as in substance. In summary, the key to reflexivity for higher education research lies in the recognition that for each of mentioned distinctions, it is possible – and necessary – to observe, from the perspective of the coupled domain of “higher education,” the external observation of higher education’s self-observations – which amounts to what Luhmann calls second-order observation. With respect to the distinction higher education/the economy, for instance, which will be the topic of part four of this study, it will not produce interesting insights if higher education research is content to mark, from the perspective of higher education, the boundary to e.g. the

ance, and Management in Universities,” Higher Education 68.5 (2014), 711-732. Interestingly, this empirical study of developments at a large German university finds that “the university is enacting organizational change around its core issues of research and teaching rather than tackling these head on” and hence “does not support the argument that the ‘new managerialism’ is much of a threat to the autonomy of research and teaching” (726). The paper is not able to do more than register this as a somewhat surprising finding. I believe that if a systems theoretical approach rather than the institutional logics framework had been chosen, it might have offered insights and conceptualizations towards a possible explanation for why the autonomy of precisely these “core issues” had to be protected.

70 │ The transformation of humanities education

labor market, conceiving of whatever is out there – where most graduates spend their lives – as foreign territory. Although it is obviously not possible (under condition of functional differentiation) for higher education or for higher education research to actually adopt the perspective of the economy, higher education research can describe the difference between higher education’s own self-observation (which can, for brevity’s sake, be subsumed under the Bildung-formula) and the economy’s observation of this self-observation (which we can approximate here as an observation using the distinction useful/not useful). Thus, allowing the distinction Bildung/usefulness to reenter its self-description, higher education research can help higher education to achieve a more complex understanding of itself on what we might call, with some laxity, the societal level.121

121 Systems theory has obviously also been exposed to criticism. There have been accusations of incomprehensibility and (in the heyday of the Frankfurt school) critiques of the supposedly inherent conservativism in any brand of functionalism. A form of criticism that preoccupied Luhmann more was the epistemological kind that has been directed at constructivist theories in general– in short, of solipsism and self-refutation. This has been the case since the early work on general systems theory by von Bertalanffy and Ashby. However, in Luhmann’s work deliberate measures are taken to avoid, not selfreference itself, but the epistemological pitfalls that open up as soon as the circularity of self-reference becomes vicious. This is why Luhmann takes care to anchor his major conceptualization in the world of empirical facts: “[T]he concept of system refers to something that is in reality a system and thereby incurs the responsibility of testing its statements against reality.” Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems, 12. That is, the concept exists only on the semantic level (as a construct), but it refers to something in reality which, according to the theory, exhibits the propensities predicated on it by the concept. This is not claimed a priori, but as an hypothesis subject to testing. At the same time, and in contrast to e.g. Clark, Luhmann does not assume a transparent relationship between the observer (researcher) and the object (the higher education system). By conceiving of systems as self-referential and self-generating, Luhmann allows himself to thematize his own perspective as partaking in the function system of research, whereas higher education as an object of study is viewed as situated in the “overlapping domain” of the functional systems of research and education. This does not remove the “blind spot,” but it provides for second-order observations and descriptions by which it can be controlled. As Luhmann says, “[i]t is much easier for a theory that interprets its objects as self-referential systems to present its own self-reference.” Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems, 487.

5

The use of theory in this study

In the introduction, I outlined three major research questions regarding Norwegian humanities education: on admissions policy, on curricula change, and on career trajectories. While these aspects to some extent will have to be studied separately – to be manageable at all, and also to make it possible to zoom in on certain exogenous factors that have impacted the three aspects in different ways – it is of course likely that the “transformation” referred to in the title of this study involved several forms of interaction between admissions, curricula, and careers. These interrelationships will be discussed throughout the study, especially in the conclusions to each part, and in the recapitulation offered at the end. Among the questions raised are for instance: How could educational programs in the humanities which around 1960 were clearly associated with the school teacher profession change their curricula in the direction of disciplinary research in the space of a little more than a decade? How was it possible that during the 1990s, a new form of humanities education which was no longer oriented towards specific careers at all, tripled its candidate production? Investigating such questions in the following three parts of the study involves close examination of policy documents, curricula documents, and various statistics, and also necessitates the furnishing of quite a lot of historical background information. Although the framework of systems theory provides the backdrop for these investigations, most of the historical interpretative work does not enlist systems theory or its particular terminology directly. This is a deliberate choice. I have not wanted to burden the reader unnecessarily with arcane Luhmannian jargon where more mainstream terminology will suffice. Also, on the issues I address, whether concerning a particular higher education policy traced in white papers from the 1960s, or the rise of history as a research discipline in Norway, I have wanted to be able to engage the findings of previous work (building on it or criticizing it) and to do so is certainly easier without dragging the whole conceptual machinery of systems theory along in each case.

72 │ The transformation of humanities education

The framework will be present, however, to structure my approach to each subtopic and to aid me in formulating conclusions to each part of the study with reference to a consistent and comprehensive societal view of higher education. I have found it necessary, in addition, to begin each of the ensuing three parts of the study with discussions of conceptual issues, especially regarding the possibilities for integrating the overall systems theoretical framework with selected “middle range” theories on policymaking, curricular design, career patterns, etc. My hope is that these introductory chapters will ease the transition from “grand theory” to empirical matters.

Part two: Admissions

6

Introduction to part two

Why did Norwegian humanities education expand thirteenfold during the years from 1960 to 2000? This is the research question that will guide the investigations in this part of the study. More precisely, the aim is to account for how it was possible that the number of humanities students could rise sharply from a little over 2000 (and below 0,5 percent of the age group 20-29) around 1960 to more than 10 000 in the mid-1970s, after which it stagnated and even declined a little in the early eighties, before it surged again from 1987 and kept rising until the late nineties, when it reached almost 30 000 students, which was over 15 percent of all students and almost 5 percent of the age group 20-29.122 Even if the scale of humanities education is more “elastic” than most other forms of higher education, the quantitative changes illustrated by the figures above are of a magnitude that obviously have entailed a qualitative transformation of the Norwegian humanities, too. Having catered to a small elite with a shared sense of purpose in the postwar years, the humanities towards the end of the century found a way, somehow, to accommodate a fairly large share of Norwegian youths, with their diverse backgrounds and diverging futures. The consequences of this expansion for curricular content and career options will be examined in part three and four. In this part, the questions center around possible reasons for the strong educa-

122 Statistics Norway has 2271 students at the faculties of humanities at the universities in Oslo and Bergen in 1960, a total of 11 077 in the category “humanities and aesthetic disciplines” in 1974, and 28 945 in the same category in 2000. It should be noted that during these years categorizations of educational programs changed, making it difficult to find very precise comparisons. The figures used here should be taken as indications of scale. Moreover, with regards to relative size it should be noted that not all students were between the ages 20-29, and although an overwhelming majority were, the percentages given may exaggerate the relative size of the humanities slightly. Statistics Norway reports 408 297 people in this age group in 1961, and 588 461 in 2001.

76 │ The transformation of humanities education

tional growth in the Norwegian humanities, while the co-evolution and mutual adjustments of the three factors scale, curricula, and careers will be addressed in the concluding sections to each part, and in the conclusion to the study. The reasons behind the successive expansions of humanities education in Norway are not obvious. Anyone familiar with the history of modern academia will recognize that the development sketched above mirrors the overall expansion of higher education in the post WWII era (although some interesting deviations from the general trend do occur, to which I will return below). However, the almost parallel graphs cannot be used as proof that whatever caused the overall expansion caused the specific expansion of Norwegian humanities education, too. The latter issue, I will claim, has not been studied in detail before. The development might have been that of a rising tide which lifted all boats, including the humanities. But it could also have been like a flood which had to pass through certain outlets because others were more or less closed. As this study will demonstrate, Norwegian humanities education has evolved in ways which makes it different from most other kinds of higher education. Perhaps the reasons for its growth were different, too? However, the correlation indicates that it is probably wise to take a look at the general development first, and then consider the specific case of the Norwegian humanities in that light. In what follows I therefore first review the literature on the general expansion of Norwegian higher education in the post WWII era, with a view to examine which explanations might fit the case of the humanities specifically. The literature on the global nature and scope of educational expansion is also considered. From the literature review emerges the realization that the particular case of Norwegian humanities education demands a perspective which puts policymaking at center stage (mostly because virtually all Norwegian higher education is publicly funded and owned), while acknowledging the importance of other, underlying factors such as demography, socio-economic variables, and cultural shifts. It also becomes evident that enrolment in humanities education cannot be studied in isolation, since it is indirectly dependent upon the availability of alternatives for people in the relevant age group. The conclusions from the literature review has consequences for the choice of materials to be studied in succeeding sections (mostly, the reports of policymaking committees and affiliated documents) and for the perspectives applied to these materials. The task of investigating higher education policymaking in Norway – or, more specifically, the policies that have determined the scale of Norwegian humanities education – necessitates some introductory discussions of how such policymaking occur. After the literature review, I therefore offer brief sketches of the four function systems participating in this particular policymaking field, highlighting certain

Introduction to part two │ 77

organizational characteristics of politics, education, research and the economy in postwar Norway. Thereafter, I discuss how to frame higher education policymaking theoretically. As part of this discussion, some of the relevant literature from higher education research, political science, and adjacent fields is consulted. A problem turns out to be that quite a few of the contributions seem content to label the ideologies or mindsets of the various “actors” in the policymaking process (”technocracy,” “neoliberalism,” and “new public management” being the prime suspects), which does not enhance our understanding beyond a certain point. In order to arrive at a more useful theoretical framing of policymaking for the purposes of this study, I return to systems theory, in particular to certain advances within this tradition centered on the concept of “structural coupling” between organizations affiliated with different function systems, which was also briefly discussed in the first part. With the aid of this concept, the actual policymaking procedure in the field of higher education in Norway – which has consisted of a series of temporary committees of inquiry with ensuing white papers and parliamentary decision – is theoretically framed. The framework is then supplemented with some insights from a little read branch of Norwegian political science regarding the way such committees have been used in Norway. The rest of part two consists of analyses of policy documents pertaining to four Norwegian committees of inquiry in the field of higher education, with particular attention paid to how the topics of admissions and capacity building for humanities education have been handled. By way of conclusion to the second part, I return to the issue of how the scale of humanities education has been influenced by policymaking as compared to other factors – including demography, economy, “cultural” changes and “self-propelled” growth.

6.1

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ON HIGHER EDUCATION EXPANSION IN NORWAY 1960-2000

A much-cited account of growth in higher education in post WWII Norway is a fairly short and unassuming article by Hans Skoie entitled “Public Policy for Universities and University Colleges 1945-1988 – an outline.”123 The article was commissioned by the Hernes committee of 1988 (about which more below), and is printed as an appendix to the commission’s report. In accordance with its mandate and title, the article is primarily concerned with outlining what Skoie calls “the

123 Hans Skoie, “Offentlig politikk for universiteter og høyskoler 1945-1988 – hovedtrekk,” Norwegian Official Report, NOU 1988:28 Med viten og vilje.

78 │ The transformation of humanities education

intentions of the government,” i.e. with the political motives behind educational policy, often specified with reference to particular political parties.124 According to Skoie, two of the most important political intentions regarding higher education in the postwar era were quantitative growth and democratization. Growth was deemed desirable by the Labor government because it wanted, in the words of Skoie, to “grant the wishes of the young for higher education, whether viewed as a cultural good, or as the promotion of careers,” and also because of “a desire to develop an innovative and knowledge-based economy, as well as concerns for the staffing of an expanding public sector.” As regards democratization, which is obviously connected with educational growth, Skoie simply states that the government had wanted to create opportunities to “attend and complete higher education, irrespective of gender, geographical or socio-economic background.”125 Skoie’s focus is on the various positions in the political debates accompanying the educational growth once it really captured the public eye in the second half of the 1960s. Secondly, he wants to assess whether governmental policies were actually implemented, and with what consequences for ensuing policymaking. Early policies on educational growth from around 1960 are therefore treated mainly as independent variables, but indirectly it is acknowledged that these political “intentions” did not arise in a vacuum. Even a longstanding majority government such as the Labor government (in power since WWII), could not base policy entirely on ideological aims; it had to handle situations and problems, and in the postwar era the emerging situation was young people’s increased demand for access to higher education and fluctuations in the labor market’s demands for certain types of qualified manpower. Skoie briefly discusses how policymakers and committees around 1960 handled such issues, and refers in passing to the declining importance of labor market forecasting. A different perspective on the growth of higher education was offered by Per O. Aamodt seven years after Skoie’s article, in 1995.126 By the mid-1990s, a second period of growth had sparked renewed interest in the underlying reasons for educational expansion, and Aamodt’s contribution centers not on political aims as such, but on the explanatory force of demographic changes in combination with changes in enrolment patterns. Of course, the impact of changes in cohort sizes had preoccupied both policymakers and researchers previously also, with particular attention paid to the “baby boomers.” Aamodt’s new insight was that even in periods when

124 Ibid., 238. 125 Ibid., 239. 126 Per O. Aamodt, “Bottlenecks and Backwaters: An Analysis of Expansion in Higher Education in Norway,” Higher Education 30.1 (1995), 63-80.

Introduction to part two │ 79

cohort sizes were decreasing, as they were in the late 1980s and beginning of the 1990s (when forecasts therefore indicated a future decrease in enrollment), students numbers could actually increase if there was a marked tendency to enroll earlier than previously. By itself, such a change would only have a short term effect, but Aamodt demonstrates that when combined with a general increase in enrollments per age cohort and longer time-to-degree, the overall impact on student numbers could be dramatic – as they indeed turned out to be in the 1990s. While primarily concerned with the effects of these variables, Aamodt also notes that the underlying reason for the increase in all of them (entry time, enrollment per age cohort, and time-to-degree) was the high youth unemployment in Norway at the time – in combination, of course, with the fact that higher education was available for free, with subsidized living costs. As we shall see, the combination of these factors had particular significance for humanities education. In later writings, Aamodt has elaborated on this theme, and compared the Norwegian experiences with the other Nordic countries.127 A third angle was pursued by Sverre Try, who after the expansion in the 1990s studied the political motives behind the increased funding of higher education in this period. Try documented that the effort to avoid youth unemployment from the late 1980s onwards was a major rationale, but also pointed to certain unintended consequences of using educational growth as a labor market policy.128 Perhaps the most comprehensive study of Norwegian higher education in the expansionist period of the second half of the 20th century is the monograph Policy and Practice in Higher Education: Reforming Norwegian Universities by Ivar Bleiklie, Roar Høstaker and Agnete Vabø. Published in 2000, this is a study with a wide range of theoretical inspirations – most prominently, as I mentioned in part one, Burton Clark’s work, but also Scandinavian new institutionalism and Bourdieuan field theory. Its ambition is “providing a social science analysis of changes within Norwegian higher education policies and educational institutions.”129 The book contains a highly interesting analysis – or perhaps more accurately, a set of

127 Per O. Aamodt and Svein Kyvik, “Access to Higher Education in the Nordic Countries,” Understanding Mass Higher Education, eds. Ted Tapper and David Palfreyman (London: Routledge, 2005); and Per O. Aamodt, “Access to Higher Education Within a Welfare State System: Developments and Dilemmas,” Cost-Sharing and Accessibility in Higher Education, ed. Pedro N. Teixeira & al. (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008). 128 Sverre Try, Veksten i høyere utdanning: Et vellykket arbeidsmarkedspolitisk tiltak? (Oslo, NIFU, 2000). 129 Ivar Bleiklie, Roar Høstaker and Agnete Vabø, Theory and Practice in Higher Education: Reforming Norwegian Universities (London: Jessica Kingsley, 2000) 11.

80 │ The transformation of humanities education

analyses – that trace the historical trajectories of various aspects of Norwegian higher education during the second half of the 20th century. It is slightly surprising, however, that the authors explicitly refrain from proposing explanations for the expansion of higher education in the postwar era: “It is not our aim to study the social reasons for this expansion: whether it was driven by reform policies, by the “needs” of the labour market […], or was some kind of autonomous and self-perpetuating process. Trying to answer this question represents an unnecessary detour for our analysis that focusses on policy content rather than explaining student behavior 130

or characteristics of the higher education system.”

This reluctance seems strange, especially since the cited passage leads directly into a discussion of how “a policy for expansion was formulated from the late 1950s” – a discussion where “social reasons for expansion” clearly belong, as far as I can see.131 And actually, this discussion, which takes the form of an historical exposition of “three waves of reform,” does point to many of the most interesting and relevant background variables influencing this policy, such as the practice of labor market forecasting and the role of the research councils in this, as well as the expansion of secondary schools. Elsewhere in the book there are also scattered remarks on factors which may have influenced expansionist policy: “Both the changing size and the organization of the system and the changing composition of university disciplines and teaching programs, were related to new demands for manpower. The demands were generated by a growing industrial economy and later service economy where welfare state services made a major component.”132

But true enough, in keeping with the disclaimer cited above there is no sustained effort to specify, for instance, the nature of the “relation” between the demands for manpower and changes in size of higher education, or the dynamic whereby the changes in the economy can “generate” changes in educational policy. When a large amount of variables and factors are mentioned in this manner, it creates the impression that a full picture is being painted, but when one moves closer it turns out that the brushwork consists of dots that are not connected.

130 Ivar Bleiklie, Roar Høstaker and Agnete Vabø, Theory and Practice in Higher Education, 84. 131 Ibid. Emphasis in original. 132 Ibid., 69. Emphases mine.

Introduction to part two │ 81

On the other hand, even if the study does not propose explanations for the general expansion of Norwegian higher education, it does contain – and here it differs from most previous studies – highly interesting discussions of the interdependence between changes in scale in the various types of programs, including the humanities. The authors contrast professional programs with “free” programs. With reference to a distinction developed by Luhmann they characterize the former category as “upbringing [Erziehung] education,” and the latter (which is operationalized as programs with unrestricted admission, which would include the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences, but also law and theology) as “socializing education” – i.e. “the kind of education where the links between education and a prospective professional trajectory are weaker and vaguer,” and where “responsibility for realization of the educational ideals rests with the individual rather than the school.”133 The transformation of Norwegian humanities education into this kind of “socializing education” is analyzed in terms that are for the most part in line with what will be presented in the fourth part of the present study, although a different conceptualization will be chosen.134 As regards expansion, Bleiklie, Høstaker and

133 Ibid., 89. 134 There are several questionable aspects of the discussion of the humanities in this study, however. For instance, the authors use historical statistics to argue that humanities graduates who became secondary school teachers (lektorer) in the interwar period had a low social standing (because they were relatively often sons of lower functionaries, farmers, or merchants) and that this explains the eventual weakening of this profession in the postwar era. In my view, it is not clear how the cited figures support this thesis. The differences between the occupational status of the fathers of humanities candidates and the fathers of candidates in medicine or law are actually very small (168). Furthermore, the authors presuppose the existence of “a hierarchy of social status among graduated professionals themselves and hence to the social status of their profession” (169). But there is no reason to think that there was one, and only one, social hierarchy in the highly regionalized Norway of this period, except as reconstructed by social scientists with aggregated data. For the son of a farmer (and for his farmer parents), for instance, theology and priesthood or the humanities and a position as a secondary school teacher might have signified something very much more respectable and attractive than the unfamiliar world of law school and a position in a ministry or a court. It is true that school teachers eventually did experience a more general loss of social prestige, but this was at a later stage, and – as I will argue in the fourth part – largely because teacher education was taken over by the significantly less prestigious college sector in an era when higher education became massified, and not because of tiny differences in prestige between programs and careers within the prewar elite system. For an interesting analysis how the

82 │ The transformation of humanities education

Vabø makes the interesting observation that when access to professional education is limited by numerus clausus, expansion inevitably flows towards the “socializing” programs, like the humanities. Their conclusion is: “Thus the social function of the growth of “socializing” education can be identified. Institutions of “socializing” education serve like “sponges” absorbing any surplus of graduates from colleges or any surplus of youngsters not admitted to “upbringing” education. By making access easier to a “socializing” education – and thereby individualizing success or failure – it is possible to shield the most prestigious studies from an obligation to educate a larger share of the students.”135

While this certainly formulates a valid and important point about the interconnectedness of higher education programs, I shall later have occasion to question how intentions and consequences here are fused in a manner which creates the impression that mighty forces have been afoot “to shield the most prestigious studies” by deliberately “making access easier” to other programs.136 Partly, the notion of strategic agency implied here is problematic, and partly it can be demonstrated that the intentions of the most influential policymakers were actually the opposite of what is hinted at, as I shall return to below.

prestige of occupations is judged differently in different contexts, cf. Xueguang Zhou. “The Institutional Logic of Occupational Prestige Ranking: Reconceptualization and Reanalyses”. American Journal of Sociology 111.1 (2005): 90-140. At any rate, the difference between the humanities and e.g. medicine in their abilities to retain prestige and secure their positions in the labor market over longer periods of historical time must find its explanation in more basic differences in the educational process and professional practice, especially in the risks associated with malpractice, in the pressure on professional “technology,” and in the costs of the various types of education. 135 Ivar Bleiklie, Roar Høstaker and Agnete Vabø, Theory and Practice in Higher Education, 92. 136 Reading the study one frequently gets the impression that the three authors do not necessarily share the theoretical framework outlined in the introduction, which is allegedly “actor-centered,” but sometimes slips into more functional explanations. In addition to the cited passage, cf. such formulations as “the overall reproductive strategies of different social groups.” Ibid.,169.

Introduction to part two │ 83

Historical works The historical literature on the higher education expansion in Norway consists mainly of works on individual universities. In addition, the topic is discussed in more general accounts of Norwegian postwar history, although upon closer inspection not as thoroughly as one might have expected. In keeping with traditions within the discipline of history, neither the university histories nor the general national histories are prone to formulate explicit explanations for the phenomena they describe. Many of them nevertheless contain highly interesting discussions of causal and functional reasons for educational expansion. In the following I will try to extract the major points of relevance for this issue, even if it is means largely disregarding the narrative structures they are submerged in. The history of the University of Bergen, written to commemorate its 50-year anniversary in 1996, was the first major Norwegian publication to take a comprehensive view of the expansionist period – which was perhaps natural, since the national growth period coincided with the history of that university. 137 In order to account for the educational expansion from the late 1950s, the historian Astrid Forland first and foremost points to human capital theory, as developed by Norwegian economists and embraced by the Labor government.138 She documents that Norwegian discussions on this issue actually predate the more well-known American theories of Becker and others, and suggests that conceptualizing higher education as an economic investment was what made the expansionist policy possible. As supplementary factors, Forland refers to a labor market forecasting report from 1957 which indicated a larger demand than supply of highly qualified personnel, and also to a survey from 1958 which indicated that a much larger share of secondary school graduates were planning to enter higher education than hitherto. According to Forland, these were the premises from which the important policymaking committees, the Kleppe and Ottosen committees, worked. Forland also discusses the impact of fluctuations in birthrates, but finds that the educational expansion was

137 Narve Fulsås’ history of the University of Tromsø, which appeared in 1993, covers the main events and factors regarding the expansionist period, and Forland’s discussion three years later builds in part on Fulsås’ work, but Fulsås has a very clear regional perspective and interprets events mainly with a focus on the consequences for Tromsø. This interesting study is therefore not discussed here. See Narve Fulsås, Universitetet i Tromsø 25 år (Tromsø: Universitetet i Tromsø, 1993) 24ff. 138 Astrid Forland, “Studentvekst of politisk høgkonjunktur,” Universitetet i Bergens historie, Vol. 1, eds. Astrid Forland and Anders Haaland (Bergen: University of Bergen, 1996) 328ff.

84 │ The transformation of humanities education

much larger than this factor can explain. Rather, she argues, and this is her conclusion, the overall expansion was due to a new and highly positive valuation of higher education in general. Young people were inclined to enroll because, in the light of the new labor market forecasts, they were no longer afraid of academic unemployment. Politically, higher education was beginning to be seen as a valuable instrument not only for economic growth, but also for democratization along three dimensions: social class, gender, and geography. Forland thus contends that the expansion was the combined outcome of many of the familiar factors pointing in the same direction. Towards the end of Forland’s discussion, she adds an interesting long-term historical perspective. According to Forland, statistics on the social background of the expanding student body indicate that the period 1920-1960 could be seen as a temporary setback during which certain parts of the middle classes (especially women) were held back for economic reasons (because of the depression and WWII) from education they otherwise would have taken. Thus, what happened from around 1960 onwards was that the rest of the middle classes finally had their chance, and jumped at it. The next phase of general expansion, during the decade from the late 1980s to the late 1990s, Forland chiefly explains with reference to youth unemployment, in combination with a higher valuation of education in general than had been the case in the 1980s: “Even if it was rather uncertain which forms of knowledge society would need in the 1990s, young people and the authorities alike were apparently convinced that a high level of competency and formal education was necessary to gain entrance to the labor market and to strengthen the position of Norway in the international competition.”139

Regarding the humanities more specifically, the influx of new students – which at Bergen (as at Oslo) happened mostly in “theoretically and aesthetically oriented disciplines without the traditional connection with school teaching” – is explained with reference to cultural factors, first and foremost. According to Forland, the young generation was now opposed to the “vulgar aspects of the ‘yuppie period’ in the 1980s,” and came to the humanities in need of “other values than the purely material ones.”140 On the other hand, Forland also acknowledges that it was the political and economic developments of the 1980s that had generated a demand for

139 Astrid Forland, “Studentvekst og politisk høgkonjunktur,” Universitetet i Bergens historie, Vol. 1, 532. 140 Ibid., 483.

Introduction to part two │ 85

humanities education: the standard of living had reached a level where young people sought to develop their aesthetic interests, and the increasingly globalized private sector generated a demand in the labor market for competencies like language skills, intercultural understanding, ethics, and so forth. In his contribution on the humanities in volume two of the same work, Fredrik W. Thue adds that within the humanities faculty, programs that were oriented towards research (and were unspecified with respect to career prospect) attracted surprisingly many students in the 1990s, especially when compared to the previous growth period in the 1960s, when it was the major school-teacher oriented disciplines that had attracted most of the students. Whereas Forland points to a more general shift in values, Thue suggests that a particular form of intellectual curiosity lay behind expansion in the humanities: “it was the disciplines that had most to offer intellectually, which also had the highest ‘market value’.”141 The fifth volume of the history of the University of Oslo, covering the period 1945-1975, tells much the same story as Forland did regarding general expansion, but with more detail and richer analyses of possible interrelations between the various variables.142 As in Forland’s account, the Kleppe and Ottosen committees are foregrounded, and the political system is treated as the prime mover in the early phase of the expansion (from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s). The background variables of demography, enrollment patterns and the “demands” of the labor market are mentioned, but not given pride of place. It is primarily the ideas and intentions of the government, Parliament and the committees of inquiry that are analyzed, revealing the abovementioned strands of legitimation (human capital theory, democratization, and rationalization). The University of Oslo and other academic institutions, on the other hand, are viewed as mostly re-acting to external pressures. The authors argue that state authorities were primarily interested in funding educational capacity, whereas the universities tried their best to use the opportunity to expand the research capacity. Discussing the next phase, from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, Thue and Helsvig take more interest in the universities’ own dispositions and actions. For instance, they provide information which indicates that the University of Oslo’s budgeting procedures vis-à-vis the ministry, based upon fixed teacher-student ratios, may have propelled educational expansion, even if this was not the universi-

141 Fredrik Thue, “Det humanistiske fagfeltets historie,” Universitetet i Bergens historie, Vol. 2, eds. Astrid Forland and Anders Haaland (Bergen: University of Bergen, 1996) 559. 142 Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen, Vol. 1, Universitetet i Oslo 1811-2011, ed. John Petter Collett (Oslo: Unipub, 2011).

86 │ The transformation of humanities education

ty’s intention. In this, too, however, Thue and Helsvig seem to suggest that the university was mostly a victim of circumstance. Hence, the 1960s wave of students appears as a force majeure which cancelled all responsibilities on the part of the university. Below, I shall have occasion to question this interpretation, at least on a few accounts. Thue and Helsvig have several interesting things to say about the evolution of the humanities in the period from 1945 to 1975. Regarding expansion, they offer a series of discussions across several chapters which we may summarize in the form of four hypotheses about why the expansion in the humanities was not counteracted, even when it lead to serious capacity problems at the University of Oslo (where the great majority of the Norwegian humanities students was enrolled). Firstly, Thue and Helsvig documents that the University of Bergen and the other Norwegian HEIs were opposed to letting the University of Oslo restrict admissions to the “free” faculties (which could only be done through new legislation) because they were afraid that Oslo would then attract all the best students, leaving Bergen at the others to take care of the rest. Secondly, the authors describe how students and student organizations, who had previously been wary of overproduction of candidates and had demanded restricted access whenever this danger arose, were from the mid-1960s, and especially after the student protests, fiercely opposed to any form of regulated access on ideological grounds. Thirdly, the students found an unlikely ally on this issue in the political opposition (the Conservative party) in Parliament, which argued that non-professional university education traditionally had been, and therefore should remain, open to anyone who was qualified. Fourthly, the two universities jointly supported the Ottosen committee’s policy of establishing a vocational short cycle college sector, rather than colleges of a “liberal arts” type (which had also been suggested), because they were afraid of competition on their own turf. The result was that almost everyone who sought a “socializing” type of education (to use the distinction introduced by Bleiklie, Høstaker and Vabø) was channeled into the universities.143 The combined result of these factors was that nothing – no countermeasures, no alternative routes – could prevent exponential growth of Norwegian humanities education. Only when the situation had become completely intolerable in 1973 did it become politically possible to pass the neces-

143 Later on, when academic drift began to make itself felt at many of the supposedly vocationally oriented “district colleges,” they also opened programs in the humanities and social sciences. But then – from the late 1970s onwards – the problem for the universities was not alleviation but the opposite: to attract new students to fill the capacity that had been built up.

Introduction to part two │ 87

sary legislation to enforce numerus clausus at the humanities faculty at Oslo. By that time, however, the first wave of expansion was receding. The next phase of expansion, from the late 1980s until the end of the millennium, is covered in volume six of the history of the University of Oslo, written by Kim Helsvig. Helsvig here points to the same two factors as Forland did. Youth unemployment is accentuated as the major explanation for the general expansion: “The individual student and the government were united in the assumption that when the labor market was so difficult, it could hardly be harmful to spend some time at the university.”

144

As regards the humanities’ relatively large share of the expansion, Helsvig, like Forland, points to cultural changes: “Studies of history, religion, and culture – which did not appear to have any direct relevance for the labor market – could support a lifestyle and a self-image which cherished the values of friendship, leisure time, and an extended period of youth-hood, as a reaction against – and 145

often in contempt of – the materialism of the so-called yuppie culture.”

However, Helsvig also mentions the underlying economic conditions which allowed these cultural values to be realized, namely increased state funding (partly taken from the ministry of labor) that followed student enrollment rather than targeting certain types of programs. Restricted access to the humanities faculty at Oslo was enforced in 1992, but only lasted two years. Thus, in keeping with the tradition from the 1960s, there was in reality little or no attempt on the part of the government (or the University of Oslo) to direct the second period of educational expansion either. As mentioned, comprehensive works on Norwegian general postwar history restrict themselves to very basic proposals regarding the reasons for the two periods of higher education expansion. Berge Furre’s much used synoptic work, entitled “Norwegian history 1905-1990: Our century,” assumes that expansion was generated by the needs of the labor market, and also points to education as a vehicle for social mobility.146 In addition, Furre mentions briefly that education in the postwar became an area of competition between the political parties, not so much because

144 Kim G. Helsvig, 1975-2011 Mot en ny samfunnskontrakt, Vol. 6, Universitetet i Oslo 1811-2011, ed. John Peter Collett (Oslo: Unipub, 2011) 104. 145 Ibid. 146 Berge Furre, Norsk historie 1905-1990. Vårt hundreår (Oslo: Samlaget, 1992) 318-19.

88 │ The transformation of humanities education

there were major disagreements about the ends or means, but in the sense that parties were outbidding each other. A more resent general history of Norway (and Sweden), The Age of Social Democracy: Norway and Sweden in the Twentieth Century by Francis Sejersted, downplays the political dimension of the expansion. The expansion “did not happen on the basis of any planned policy; above all, it was a movement from below. The youth sought out higher education, and the system had to adapt to this as well as it could.”147 Sejersted nevertheless recognizes and underscores the importance of the Ottosen committee’s policy of treating higher education as a welfare good and scaling educational capacity to meet the demands of the young. Studies with a global frame of reference For the most part, the studies discussed above take a national perspective on higher education. Many of them mention the fact that educational expansion in the 1960s was a global phenomenon, and a few of them discuss this briefly, but explanations (to the extent that they are articulated as such) are almost exclusively sought within the frame of the Norwegian nation state.148 This tendency, sometimes referred to as “methodological nationalism,” has been criticized in the literature on world society and globalization.149 To round off this literature review, I shall briefly consider two influential strands within this branch to see what they can offer pertaining to the question of educational expansion. According to Immanuel Wallerstein, one of the earliest and most influential scholars in this field, the rise of the modern “world-system” is in effect the same as the emergence and consolidation of global capitalism. Thus, for him global trends such as educational expansion originate in the workings of the capitalist economy, and variations (at least significant variations) are caused by the reproduction of inequality inherent in a societal system based on capitalism. 150 How this translates

147 Francis Sejersted, The Age of Social Democracy: Norway and Sweden in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011) 279. 148 Cf. in particular Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975 Den store transformasjonen, 217ff. for a discussion of the role played by the OECD. 149 The discussions about “methodological nationalism” have been conducted in the discipline of history in Norway as well, especially since the 1990s. See the chapter on history in part three of this study. 150 For the general theory, cf. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, vol. I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Academic Press, 1974). On higher education expansion more spe-

Introduction to part two │ 89

to our case about Norwegian humanities education is not immediately clear, but if the economy is to be considered the prime mover, we would expect higher education ultimately to be contingent upon manpower demands. On this account, the needs of the economy for skilled labor would determine the policies of governments, which in turn would determine the development of higher education. It is hard to see how the particular trajectory of Norwegian humanities education could be explained in this way, though. One might argue with some plausibility that the first expansion, from the 1960s onwards, was at least in part driven by manpower demands, but the next period of expansion happened in disciplines and fields which had very loose coupling to the labor market. If one still wanted to view the economy as the main driver, one would have to argue that expansion in the humanities in the 1990s was an unintended consequence of larger shifts in the global economy. In the sociological tradition of new institutional theory, which I have also discussed in part one, Wallerstein’s view has been criticized as too economistic – i.e. not leaving enough explanatory space to culture and ideas. As articulated by e.g. John W. Meyer, new institutionalism argues that what propels global trends is the need of all actors (be they nation-states, universities, trade unions, or whatever) to legitimate their course of action by demonstrating it to be in accordance (albeit with considerable variation) with evolving global “model scripts.” What makes the world go around, then, is “isomorphism” – emulation of certain practices governed by certain ideas.151 The difference between Wallerstein and new institutionalism is quite nicely illustrated in an influential article by John W. Meyer and Evan Schofer from 2006 which deals precisely with global higher education expansion in the postwar era. 152 Using large datasets on tertiary education in all regions of the world from 1815 to 2000, Meyer and Schofer demonstrate that there was almost no growth in the 19th century, slow growth from around half a million students in 1900 to around 10

cifically, see his brief article “Higher Education Under Attack” published on March 1st 2012

in

the

online

publication

Common

Dreams,

downloaded

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2012/03/01/higher-education-under-attack

from on

September 29th 2014. 151 For a summary of the main arguments in this theoretical strand, see Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell, “Introduction,” The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, eds. Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 152 John W. Meyer and Evan Schoefer, “The University in Europe and the World: Twentieth Century Expansion,” Towards a Multiversity? Universities Between Global Trends and National Traditions, ed. Georg Krücken & al. (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2006).

90 │ The transformation of humanities education

million students in 1960, and from then on a dramatic growth to almost 100 million students in 2000. Moreover, they show that the explosive growth from around 1960 occurred in all regions of the world, even Sub-Saharan Africa (although of course with considerable variation in rates, as the starting points were so different). Meyer and Schofer explain this phenomenon by asking which mechanism had previously hindered expansion. Their answer is that the major obstacle had been the principle of scaling higher education to the perceived needs of the labor market. Once the idea gained foothold that human “progress” was both economically and culturally linked to higher education as such (as it was in non-communist countries), higher education expanded dramatically (except in the communist states, which is taken as proof of the general rule). The conclusion, in Meyer and Shofer’s words, is that “expanded education resulted from the expanded and changed ideas about progress – found everywhere in the non-Communist world – rather than from the actual and highly variable course of real socio-economic development in the world.”153 Meyer and Shofer’s combination of theoretical simplicity, large datasets, and explanatory scope is truly fascinating, and the global perspective they employ, as well as the empirical material they present, will have to be taken into account when studying the case of Norway as well. As for the mechanism they highlight, the cessation of using labor market forecasting to scale higher education, I will later argue that the issue is much more complicated than Meyer and Schofer let on. At least in Norway, labor market forecasting has had a much more ambiguous function. Sometimes it has been used to legitimate growth, other times to advocate the enforcement of numerus clausus. Summary How should we summarize the discussion of the literature so far? Different emphases and certain disagreements notwithstanding, it seems most accounts agree that several factors have contributed to general expansion of higher education in Norway.154 At least the following have played a part: demography, labor market de-

153 Quoted from a reprinted edition with a revised title: John W. Meyer, “The University in Europe and the World: Twentieth Century Expansion,” World Society. The Writings of John W. Meyer, eds. Georg Krücken and Gili S. Drori (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) 364. 154 The only real discrepancy concerns the “global” versus the “national” perspective, and even if the former is usually formulated as a criticism of the latter, I shall later have occasion to argue that they are perhaps not as incommensurable after all.

Introduction to part two │ 91

mand for personnel, political aims (particularly equality), and certain changes in cultural values.155 But what were their relative impacts? In a comparative study of growth in higher education in the Nordic countries from 2005, Per Olaf Aamodt and Svein Kyvik summarized their findings as follows: “Even though arguments about knowledge being important for the development of the economy have been put forward, our main conclusion is that the interaction between individual demands and political priorities has been the most important driving force behind the increased access.”156

Conclusions are not always as readily offered in the contributions discussed above, but my impression is that Aamodt and Kyvik here capture a fairly consensual view: the driving forces have been politics and demands from students, and the interaction between these two. As regards the growth of humanities education in particular, the literature does not offer very precise explanations, but cultural factors are frequently mentioned, such as the general “spirit of 68” and the late 1980s reaction against the “yuppie culture.” Labor market issues have also been discussed, particularly the weakened importance of teacher jobs, new career paths explored from the 1970s onwards, and youth unemployment from the late 1980s. But even though these factors obviously have influenced what Aamodt and Kyvik term “individual demands,” there are strong suggestions in the literature, especially in the study by Bleiklie, Høstaker, and Vabø, that for actual growth to happen in humanities education, admissions policy, including policy for capacity building, has been a decisive factor. There is no suggestion in the literature I have reviewed that there has been a manifest policy for substantial growth in humanities education.157 Rather, the humanities are seen as

155 Even though the term “democracy” is often used, “equality” captures the idea better. 156 Per Olaf Aamodt and Svein Kyvik, “Access to higher education in the Nordic countries.” Understanding Mass Higher Education, eds. Ted Tapper and David Palfreyman (London: Routledge, 2005) 133. 157 As we shall see below, most Norwegian policymaking committees have discussed the humanities and have devised more ambitious goals for humanities education and research than comparable policymaking processes in other countries. The Kleppe committee, for instance, hoped that humanities graduates would expand their career options beyond the traditional avenues, and the Hernes committee in the late 1980s was concerned with reinvigorating graduate and postgraduate study in the humanities after a period of stagnation in the 1980s. But in the larger picture, the humanities have clearly not been among the prioritized areas for educational growth in Norway at any time.

92 │ The transformation of humanities education

having had what Bleiklie, Høstaker, and Vabø calls a latent “function” in accommodating young people who did not meet the admissions requirements of competitive programs, but who could not legitimately be denied higher education in a welfare state. If this is a fair summary of the literature relevant for this part of the study, I have no major disagreements with it – as far as it goes. Certainly, all the abovementioned factors have been important for educational growth in Norway. I also think the clear tendency in the literature to accentuate the role of policymaking is warranted. While this might have been debatable in other historical and geographical contexts, there is a very simple reason for such an assessment in the case of postwar Norway, namely that Norwegian higher education (and to a very large extent, research) has been publicly owned, funded, and governed (on the structural level) throughout the period in question.158 For any kind of change to happen, politically binding decisions therefore had to be made. As we shall see, this by no means excludes influence from other “stakeholders,” from “cultural shifts,” or from labor market fluctuations. But it means that all influence, at the end of the day, had to be channeled through the policymaking process. My departure in the remainder of this part from the literature referenced above concerns mainly three issues. Firstly, building on systems theory I will offer a different conceptualization of the policymaking process than previous social science studies on Norwegian higher education have done (and historical works have implied). This is motivated not only by theoretical arguments, but also by a different view of the political situation in postwar Norway with regards to higher education. Secondly, I will argue that one important factor has so far been seriously underestimated in explanations of educational growth, namely the rise of modern disciplinary research in Norway. These two departures are interconnected in the sense that the conception of policymaking I will advocate calls attention to (among other things) the ways in which the rise of research has impacted higher education policy. And thirdly, policies that previous research has tended to view as economically motivated will in my account mainly be interpreted as political, i.e. as flowing from the welfare state paradigm rather than from the profit motive. In order to substantiate my preferred perspective on the processes that led to the growth of Norwegian humanities education, I will in the following sections outline how systems theoretical insights on policymaking under conditions of functional

158 Especially in the U.S., such a heavily policy-oriented perspective would have been problematic, but cf. also the perennial debate about whether ministerial policy or competition between institutions (or a combination) explains the expansion of the Prussian/German universities in the 19th century.

Introduction to part two │ 93

differentiation can be applied to the particular historical circumstances of postwar Norway. Some historical background on Norwegian politics, economy, research and education will be provided in order to flesh out (for the benefit of those not very familiar with Norwegian history) the otherwise fairly abstract accounts of the mechanisms involved in higher education policymaking.

6.2

HIGHER EDUCATION POLICYMAKING IN NORWAY

It is frequently assumed that if an issue – like for instance access to higher education – is handled politically, then we know who is responsible, and we can presume that the decisions involved are motivated by the political aims of the political decision-makers. Although the first is true in a constitutional sense (the minister is of course responsible towards Parliament, and Parliament towards the electorate), the process leading to a political decision is in reality exceedingly complex, involving many contextual factors, which often makes talk of political “motives” (even when such are formulated in speeches or white papers) highly problematic, and probably best understood via attribution theory. Another assumption one sometimes encounters is that when an outcome, such as the enforcement of numerus clausus at a university, can be traced back to a political decision (as it could in Norway at the time in question), it means a certain range of options must have been available. The choice can therefore be interpreted as a political (ideological or more tactical) preference. But this is often not the case. In complex welfare societies the availability of functional equivalents at the time when a decision is needed is often severely restricted.159 As was emphasized in part one, the systems theoretical perspective offered in this study does not accept the view that the political system somehow enjoys priority over other function systems in modern society. Politics has the prerogative of making collectively binding decisions, and it has powerful legal and financial instruments at its disposal. But it can only legitimate the use of these instruments to condition other function systems if it respects their operative autonomy.160 This means first and foremost that political communication cannot interfere directly with for instance educational or scientific communication, not even in cases where educational and scientific organizations are owned and funded by political organizations. On the structural level, however, political impact is possible and even

159 Cf. Balzács Brunczel, Disillusioning Modernity. Niklas Luhmann’s Social and Political Theory (Frankfurt, Peter Lang, 2010). 160 Niklas Luhmann, Political Theory on the Welfare State (NY: de Greuter, 1990).

94 │ The transformation of humanities education

permissible, provided it is compatible with the maintenance of operational autonomy. The question is how it can be determined which kinds of structural interferences will be compatible with operational autonomy, and which will not. In the case of the public sector, which is what mostly concerns us in this study, the authorized political organization (Parliament, or the Ministry of education and research) has always had the option, from a legal point of view, of seeking answers to this question on its own. Unilateral policymaking has become increasingly rare, however.161 The problem is not so much that “central planning” is illegitimate, necessarily, but that the political system in that case has to accept the sole responsibility for the consequences. As long as the systems in question have limited complexity and inter-systemic relations are to some extent stabilized by shared values and practices, this might work – at least in the sense that it does not create insurmountable problems. But when the size and complexity of the implicated systems increase, the political system will sooner or later experience that it cannot build up sufficiently complex understanding of its environment to make decisions entirely on its own. The risks of malfunction or breach of operational autonomy (and thus accusations of illegitimacy) become too great.162 In this situation, other mechanisms for policymaking are usually resorted to. Bureaucratic procedures within the political system are supplemented with mechanisms that in systems theory fall under the concept of structural coupling between relevant function systems. This can take various forms – such as boards, councils, liaison officers, hearings, or contracts. In the domain of Norwegian higher education, as we shall see below, the mechanism of the temporary committee of inquiry has played an important role in seeking solutions to structural problems – solutions that can satisfice the operational dynamics of all the involved function systems and affiliated organizations.163 While admissions to higher education may from some perspectives appear to be a small and somewhat technical issue (from the perspective of Norwegian universities themselves, the issue is surprisingly often treated in this way), it does not take very much deliberation to see that it has huge ramifications for quite a few of society’s function systems. In fact, regulating the scale (and hence output of candi-

161 The most famous discussion of this issue in Norway is Stein Rokkan, “Numerisk demokrati og korpotativ pluralisme. To beslutningskanaler i norsk politikk,” Stat, nasjon, klasse: Essays i politisk sosiologi, ed. Bernt Hagtvedt (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1987). The literature on corporatism is referenced more fully below. 162 Cf. Niklas Luhmann, Risk: A Sociological Theory (London: Transaction, 2002) ch. 8. 163 Cf. Ivar Bleiklie, Roar Høstaker and Agnete Vabø, Theory and Practice in Higher Education, 83ff.

Introduction to part two │ 95

dates) seems to have preoccupied and involved more stakeholders than most other issues concerning Norwegian higher education, including its content. Understanding policymaking on this issue therefore necessitates casting a fairly wide net, spanning at least the four function systems I have previously said that the policy field “higher education” involves: education, research, politics and the economy. Systems theory can offer insights into the operative dynamics of each of these at a general level, as outlined in part one. There is also in this theoretical tradition an ongoing discussion about the general conditions of possibility for the coupling of them – as I shall return to below. However, regarding the particular Norwegian historical context that interests me in this study, it is imperative to recognize that that these four function systems during the 20th century have distinct local trajectories. All of them have undergone substantial changes regarding their status and selfdescriptions as systems, partly in response to each other – and partly conditioned by the larger context of the national history of Norway since the 19th century. In general, one would have to say that in Norway, partly because of the small population, especially in the early period, and partly for other reasons, functional differentiation and the achievement of systemic autonomy in many fields occurred later than in the larger European countries. An example of this is academia. It is debatable whether the only university in Norway at the turn of the 19th century, the University of Oslo, was a coupling of two distinct systems (education and research) or whether the more general notion of “scholarly (vitenskapelig) work” in many academic areas – not the least in the humanities – encompassed the totality of the professors’ tasks.164 Likewise, it has been argued that the political system in Norway did not achieve autonomy (from other societal elites) until the interwar period, when the political parties took control over nominations of candidates for political office.165 As these examples indicate, discussions of policymaking procedures on admissions and capacity building in higher education necessitates some background information on how the four relevant function systems in Norway expanded and acquired increasingly high levels of internal complexity and autonomy in relation to their environments during the 20th century. At the operative level, the most obvious sign of this development was that many of the interferences that education and research, for instance, had to accept in the early half of the century (from religion,

164 See the discussion of the Norwegian professor’s role in the first decades of the 20th century in Jorun Sem Fure, 1911-1940. Inn I forskningsalderen, Vol. 3, Universitetet i Oslo 1811-2011, ed. John Petter Collett (Oslo: Unipub, 2011) 70ff. 165 Kjetil Jakobsen, “Maktutredning: Kunnskapsregime eller motmakt?” Kunnskapsmakt, eds. Siri Meyer and Sissel Myklebust (Oslo: Gyldendal Akademisk, 2002) 230.

96 │ The transformation of humanities education

or politics, or general “morality”) could be dismissed as illegitimate towards its end.166 Also, and as part of the same development, it became increasingly difficult, and at some point impossible, for one system (like politics, for instance) to maintain a full understanding of the complex operations of another system, like research or the economy. At the organizational level, too, the level of complexity and thus of the autonomy granted the various function systems tended to increase. In order to understand higher education policymaking under these conditions we need some information about the particular organizations involved – how they evolved, which functions they served, and how they perceived themselves in relation to their environments. In the following sections, brief historical outlines of the four abovementioned function systems in Norway are offered. Far from being comprehensive, they are meant to serve as a backdrop for subsequent discussions of policymaking on higher education admissions and capacity building. The system of politics is given a slightly more detailed treatment than the others, partly because of its importance for policymaking arrangements, and partly to bring in certain important aspects that are rarely discussed in the literature on higher education. The economic system in Norway All the structures, formats, and mechanisms upon which a modern, autonomous economic system rests were in place in Norway at the beginning of the 20th century: a currency supported by a reserve bank, contractual freedom, limited liability for companies, available credit from a commercial banking system, etc. Even if the scarcity of private capital and the three crises of the first half of the century (the world wars and the depression) resulted in fairly strong coupling with the political system (via e.g. protectionist customs, concession laws, price laws, publicly owned industry, etc.) especially around the middle of the century, the general tendency was that economic actors were increasingly allowed to concentrate on making and reinvesting profit. The Norwegian economic historian Einar Lie has described the relationship between the political system and the economy in the 20th century as “a pendulum movement” from liberalism to a planned economy and back again.167

166 This autonomy was a social reality for many decades in Norway before it was codified in specific legislation on academic freedom in 2007. 167 Einar Lie, Norsk økonomisk politikk etter 1905 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2012) 9-10. Lie qualifies his description by adding that in reality the events which influenced this relationship (the crash in 1929, the Bretton Woods agreement, the oil crisis in 1973, etc.) were more sudden and dramatic than the pendulum metaphor suggests.

Introduction to part two │ 97

Especially in the last decades of the century a “free” market situation was created in which it became difficult to maintain what had by then become a Norwegian tradition of nationalized industrial ventures and state banks seeking to achieve both economic and political goals simultaneously.168 Alongside this pendulum movement, and connected in intricate ways with both the increasing autonomy of the economy and its continued coupling with politics, there was a buildup of an organizational footing for voicing the logic of the economic system vis-à-vis the other function systems. The economic domain which concerns higher education policymaking the most, namely the labor market, was organized on the basis of the distinction employer/employee. Early in the century this distinction was the frontier of a class war, but since the “class compromise” in the interwar period the centralized employer organizations and trade unions have served, under the name of “the social partners” to articulate the self-description and even common strategic interests of the economic system in policymaking processes.169 As regards the direct relations between the labor market (and especially the market for high-skilled labor) and higher education, it is noteworthy that there has been a slow transition from a tight coupling in the form of regulated professions and occupations to a looser coupling based on the generalized notion of “careers.” This transition is the major theme in part four of this study. Early in the century higher education was differentiated into programs which overlapped to a large extent with the jurisdictions of the various professions and occupations in the labor market.170 From the 1970s onwards, this professional complex, as Parsons called it, began to disintegrate. There were various reasons for this. Some were germane to internal developments in higher education. But just as important was the pressure for greater flexibility in the ways production was organized in the economy, especially in the areas of working life where increasing demands on performance could not be met by automatization. This applied primarily to the private sector, but increasingly the public sector and NGOs followed suit (of course, these sectors are also part of the economy in the sense that they compete for personnel resources and must make the best possible use of them). Professions and occupations obviously continued to provide some degree of structural stability in certain areas of higher education and working life, but towards the end of the century the balance between regulated professions and occupations on the one hand and more generic “knowledge work-

168 Cf. Lars Mjøset, “Den norske oljeøkonomiens integrasjon i verdensøkonomien,” Det norske samfunn, eds. Ivar Frønes and Lise Kjølsrød (Oslo: Gyldendal akademisk, 2003). 169 Francis Seiersted, The Age of Social Democracy, 122ff. 170 Cf. Ulf Torgersen, Profesjonssosiologi (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1981).

98 │ The transformation of humanities education

ers” on the other was shifted to the extent that in both educational and labor market policymaking “vocationalism” is replaced by the more generally applicable concept of “employability.” This shift may have been facilitated by the fact that (with some exceptions) Norwegian professions and occupations have not been organized so much on the basis of their particular competencies and their use of these in the production of particular services, as on their economic interests as employees. Highly unionized, Norwegian working life has not been as influenced by professional associations as many other countries. The educational system in Norway Since compulsory schooling was introduced in the mid-19th century, Norwegian education gradually evolved by way of organizational mergers and innovations into a comprehensive public system of schools for pupils of the ages 7 to 19. This “system,” which in its basic features is the same as we have today, was established around 1970.171 In the stratified society of earlier times, primary school had mostly had a religious function and secondary school had been a preparation to university education for a tiny elite. From the last half of the 20th century, however, the educational system viewed itself as providing the whole population with a freestanding platform for future careers based upon individual choice. Even upper secondary school, which was differentiated into vocational training and the gymnasium (preparatory for higher education), tended to close in upon itself, preoccupied with “schooling” as conceived by the teacher profession, resulting in continuous complaints about lack of relevance for working life (regarding vocational training) and lowered “academic” standards (regarding the gymnasium). While higher education in Norway is obviously a part of the educational system, it has been increasingly differentiated from the lower tiers – organizationally, and with respect to the implicated professional groups. Prior to ca. 1970, secondary and higher education were interlocked in the sense that the former prepared students for the latter, while the latter educated the teachers of the former.172 With the emergence of a unitary and comprehensive national educational system, however, another group of teachers (who had previously taught primary school, but were now

171 Primary school (7-12 years); lower secondary school (13-15 years); upper secondary school (16-19 years). Cf. Reidar Myhre, Den norske skoles utvikling: Idé og virkelighet (Oslo: Ad Notam Gyldendal, 1998). 172 Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen, 148ff.

Introduction to part two │ 99

granted the right to teach at higher levels also) acquired the hegemony.173 Increasingly, the union representing this teacher group would attain the authority to articulate the logic of the educational system in the face of its societal environment. Because organizationally coupled with the system of research (which will be discussed below), higher education has not had a separate organizational footing for articulating its concerns as education. In most contexts, the self-description of higher education has been inseparable from that of research, leaving it open to interpretation whether articulated views (in a statement from the Rectors’ conference, or proposals from members of a policymaking committee) are balanced between the two, or prioritize one over the other. In this situation, the students’ organizations have increasingly acquired the authority to represent the viewpoint of higher education (as opposed to research) – in the media, but also, as we shall see, in policymaking processes. Following the broad European tradition from the medieval university, the various areas of study at the tertiary level have been differentiated into faculties. In educational matters, the faculties – i.e. the groups of chair-holders, each led by an elected dean – have been fairly autonomous vis à vis the university board and the rectorate. Contact with systems in the environment, especially with politics, have mostly gone through the rectorate, however. The humanities, which is our concern here, is the modern heir of the encyclopedic Faculty of philosophy (which was the name when the University of Oslo was established in 1811). The Faculty of philosophy at Oslo parted company with the natural sciences in 1861, and with the social sciences a hundred years later, in 1963. After the differentiation in 1861, the remaining disciplines were grouped together under the heading of the Historicalphilosophical faculty, often translated as the Faculty of humanities.174 Both differentiation processes were driven for the most part by specialization in research, but the establishment of separate faculties for the natural and social sciences had profound effects on higher education as well, including several important indirect effects on humanities education which I will return to below.

173 Kim G. Helsvig, “ Universitetets lærerutdanning i spenningsfeltet mellom akademia og skolen,” Universitetet og lærerutdanningen: historiske perspektiver, eds. Geir Knudsen and Trude Evenshaug (Oslo: Unipub, 2008). 174 Only since 2005 has it been renamed the Faculty of humanities at Oslo (and at most other universities in Norway).

100 │ The transformation of humanities education

The research system in Norway Throughout the 19th century, research in Norway was located mainly at the University of Oslo. It was a very small operation with a small number of individuals who were also tightly coupled to other systems, such as politics (the “professor politicians”), secondary education (the lektors), the media (the cultural sages), and the economy (the entrepreneurial scientist).175 Or, perhaps more precisely, the roles which we now belatedly use double designations to characterize were not yet clearly differentiated from each other. In the early 20th century, however, the natural sciences expanded and “professionalized” its operations, and in the post WWII era the humanities and social sciences followed suit.176 From ca. 1970 the organizational platform of research was extended to cover most of the country, with many new universities and colleges being established, and with nationwide disciplinary communities emerging (as opposed to individual chairs at Oslo) for the most part in emulation of developments abroad.177 At this point university-based research had become a closed system, working almost exclusively on problems of its own making (with some exceptions, of course). As long as research in Norway rested upon the organizational structure of the University of Oslo, it had very little strategic capacity.178 With no chancellor, vicechancellor, or even rector until the early 20th century, its structure (the collegium and the faculties) was mostly engaged in securing reproduction by appointing new chair-holders when the old ones died, and handling occasional reform proposals which were mostly initiated elsewhere. With the introduction of the rectorate, this changed somewhat, and several expansive initiatives were launched in the first half of the 20th century, mostly pertaining to the natural sciences.179 But it was only in the postwar era that Norwegian research in a modern sense – including the humanities – built up structures which could channel the logic of research and articulate its

175 Some of the most domestically influential of these figures have been termed “national strategists” by the Norwegian sociologist Rune Slagstad in his De nasjonale strateger (Oslo: Pax, 1998). 176 Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen,77ff. 177 Cf. Hans Skoie, En norsk forskningsorganisasjon tar form. En oversikt (Oslo: NIFU, 2013). 178 The Norwegian academy of arts and sciences had traditionally been a channel for articulating the concerns of Norwegian academia, but especially in the postwar era this body was seen as outdated and elitist by other systems in the environment, and hence it was increasingly bypassed in policymaking processes. 179 Jorun Sem Fure, 1911-1940. Inn I forskningsalderen, 65ff.

Introduction to part two │ 101

self-understanding in the face of its environment. Most important was perhaps the establishment of three research councils shortly after WWII; one technical, one agricultural, and one for the university-based arts and sciences. A joint committee for the research councils (hereafter the Joint committee) was established at the same time. Especially the research council for the arts and sciences and the Joint committee would become very important channels for the research system, as we shall see below. In addition, the postwar era saw the advent of many new institutions (universities at Bergen, Trondheim, and Tromsø – and, from ca. 1970, a plethora of public university colleges where gradually research was undertaken).180 While each of these additions strengthened and expanded research as a function system in Norway, the aggregated complexity necessitated umbrella organizations to coordinate practical matters and to represent common interests. Separate rectors’ conferences for the universities and colleges were established in the 1950s. These were relatively weak organizations, however, with little strategic capacity. Also, since their members were not only research organizations but also educational institutions, the problematic situation alluded to above prevailed. It seems likely that the concern for education as well as research hampered their strategic importance in the policy field of research. As we shall see, the underdeveloped organizational platform of Norwegian research in the 1950s and 1960s had important consequences for higher education policymaking, in particular as regards capacity building and admissions. At the universities, the organizational differentiation in the same period – especially the establishment of a Faculty of social sciences at Oslo in 1963 and the mushrooming of disciplinary departments – had profound effects on the autonomization of modern research, as we shall see in part three. The political system in Norway The function system formally responsible for policymaking had by the postwar period attained the major characteristics of a modern political system, but is should remembered that its way there had been somewhat different from many other Western nations. Having espoused parliamentarianism, universal suffrage, and elections based on proportional representation in the decades around 1900, Norwegian politics in the 20th century evolved into a multiparty system with a two-block structure based on the now familiar left-right cleavage, supplemented by a center-

180 Svein Kyvik (ed.), Fra yrkesskole til universitet? Endringsprosesser i høgskolesektoren (Bergen: Fagbokforlaget, 2002).

102 │ The transformation of humanities education

periphery cleavage.181 A distinctive feature, shared by Sweden and Denmark, was that the postwar political system was dominated by a social democratic party (the Labor party), which governed alone from 1945 to 1965. Throughout the century the Labor party remained the largest party, but its trajectory in government was increasingly punctuated by relatively short-lived interludes of center-right coalition governments.182 Quite a few researchers have interpreted the rise of the welfare state in postwar Norway (“the Norwegian model”) as the Labor party’s doing.183 In some ideological respects (particularly regarding the high prioritization of equality, and, consequently, the emphasis on redistribution) and in certain policy areas (such as social security, or state-owned industries) it may be warranted to assign agency to the “Labor party state.”184 In a larger perspective, however, the question is whether the dynamic which expanded the domain of politics beyond the role of “night watchman” and propelled it into taking the responsibility for the “welfare” of the whole population is more properly understood as germane to politics as such under conditions of increased functional differentiation. Two things seem to support such a thesis. Firstly, many other western countries have seen a similar development (and not only the other Nordic countries).185 Secondly, in 1965, after twenty years of Labor rule, the center-right government for the most part continued, throughout its five-year tenure, along the same lines as previously (i.e. it expanded the welfare state).186 As we shall see, continuity is visible not the least in the policy fields of education and research. Although later periods (especially the 1980s) have seen more distinct political cleavages, it could be argued that opposing views on how to operate the welfare state stem as much from changes in economic contexts and

181 Cf. Stein Rokkan, Citizens, Elections, Parties (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1970). 182 The social democratic party – the “Norwegian labor party” – governed alone for 40 of the 55 years from 1945 to 2000. It held an absolute majority in Parliament between 1945 and 1961. With the exception of one month’s interlude in 1961, it governed consecutively between 1945 and 1965. By contrast, the longest period without a social democratic government before the millennium was six years in the mid-1980s. 183 The locus classicus in Norwegian historiography on this issue is Jens Arup Seip, Fra embedsmannsstat til ettpartistat og andre essays (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1963). 184 Rune Slagstad, De nasjonale strateger, 223ff.; Francis Sejersted, The Age of Social Democracy, 3. 185 Cf. Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (London: Vintage, 2010) 360ff.; Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977-1978 (NY: Picador, 2007). 186 Francis Sejersted, Norsk idyll? (Oslo: Pax, 2003), 40f.

Introduction to part two │ 103

from the difference between advocating political views from a government position (i.e. with support depending upon the consequences of implemented policies) and from opposition (i.e. with support depending upon motives and aims) as from ideological distinctions. If the above is an adequate outline of the political party constellations and dynamics in Norway, it means that the public administration has been of central importance, not the least in preparing and implementing “welfare reforms.” Since the role of the public administration in such reform policies pertains directly to my research question in this part of the study – regarding changes in admissions policy for higher education – I will offer an account (slightly more substantial than the sketches above) of how the public administration in Norway has evolved. As one might expect in a sparsely populated country with limited financial resources, the early 20th century public administration in Norway was very small. In 1913, seven ministries employed a total of 371 civil servants. The two offices in the Ministry of church affairs responsible for the whole Norwegian educational system, including the University of Oslo and a few other HEIs, numbered 18 people.187 Even if there was an administrative buildup during WWI, the total growth in the decades before WWII was moderate. It was only with the post WWII ambitions for a more comprehensive welfare state that a substantial strengthening of the administrative capacity in the field of education became a necessity. However, during the first 10 years after the war the strained “rebuilding economy” put a cap on initiatives in many areas, including research and higher education. Thus, the real buildup of ministries and other governmental agencies occurred in the 1960s and early 1970s. The growth continued in the 1980s and 1990s also, but at a reduced rate, and increasingly in the form of unwanted and self-propelled “bureaucratization.” By then the administration had also changed functions. The historian Jens Arup Seip, highly influential in Norway, has suggested that in the postwar era, especially in the 1950s, the administration was so closely associated with the ruling Labor party that the distinction between the two collapsed, creating a “one-party state.”188 However, this is a polemical exaggeration not to be taken literally. While it can be demonstrated that there were couplings between the Labor party and the administration which would later have been deemed inappropriate, the two organizations were at least sufficiently demarcated for a transition to a new coalition government in 1965 to occur without any major

187 The figures are from Kåre D. Tønnesson, Sentraladministrasjonens historie. Vol. 4. 1914-1940 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1979) 42ff. 188 Cf. Jens Arup Seip, Fra embedsmannsstat till ett-parti stat og andre essays.

104 │ The transformation of humanities education

crises.189 In saying this, I do not mean to suggest that the administration has been politically neutral. Rather, it has been political in a sense which could be aligned with the programs of various parties – at least as long as parties have operated within the welfare state paradigm. How has the administration viewed itself and its functions? Which principles have governed administrative work? Borrowing a periodization from the Danish organizational researcher Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen, whose work is mostly done within the systems theoretical framework, I propose to outline the history of the Norwegian administration in the 20th century in three phases: 1) general rationalization, 2) sectorial planning, and 3) polycentric public administration.190 In the first of these, the administration percieved itself as performing the “apolitical” tasks of Weberian bureaucracy (applying general rules to particular cases). In order to perform these tasks as rationally as possible the administrative meta-perspective was geared towards rationalization, i.e. simplifying procedures, removing “double” administration, implementing modern technologies, etc. This phase began in the

189 A discussion of this issue can be found in Tore Grønlie, Sentraladministrasjonens historie etter 1945. Vol. 1. Ekspansjonsbyråkratiets tid 1945-1980 (Oslo: Fagbokforlaget, 2009) 207ff. 190 Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen, Selvskabt forvaltning – forvaltningspolitikkens og centralforvaltningens udvikling i Danmark fra 1900-1994 (Copenhagen: Nyt fra samfunnsvidenskaberne, 1995). There are two reasons why I think Andersen’s periodization may justifiably be transferred to the Norwegian context. First, comparing Denmark to Norway does not present many difficulties in itself, partly because of major societal similarities between the two countries, and also because the governments and public administrations of the Nordic countries have, at least since the second world war, engaged in what Tore Grønlie has called “one common Scandinavian circle of administrative reform.” Tore Grønlie, Sentraladministrasjonens historie etter 1945, 426. Secondly, the rather abstract conceptual framework Andersen uses – mostly adapted from systems theory – brings the issue up to a general level and sheds light not only on how the Danish administration is similar to the Norwegian, but also on how it is in many respects typical of emerging welfare states. The major differences between the two countries is that advances into “sectorial planning” in Norway began earlier than in Denmark, and ran parallel to rationalization efforts from the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s. At least in some areas, therefore, the planning efforts were also frustrated earlier than in Denmark – as we shall see in the case of higher education policy. Obviously, in the following discussions, it is the developments in Norway which guide the distinctions between the phases, whereas the Danish developments that Andersen details are not discussed further here.

Introduction to part two │ 105

interwar period and lasted until around 1960.191 In the second phase, which in some areas – notably economic policy – began already in the late 1940s and thus overlaps with rationalization policy for at least a decade, public administration gradually became sectorized and geared towards political planning.192 This occurred partly because of political reform ambitions and partly in response to the administrative overload created by tensions and overlaps between policy fields, constitutional responsibilities, and increasingly autonomous function systems in the environment. This phase was characterized by renegotiated boundaries between and within ministries, the development of new techniques for steering, and (where necessary) corporative coupling techniques with structural elements (i.e. organizations) in the societal environment. The ideal became ministries acting as intermediaries between the political center and the various “sectors” of society. On Andersen’s account this is the threshold that marks the achievement of “first order autonomy” on the part of ministries, which means that in order to participate in the chain of planning they need to reflect upon their own operations vis-à-vis their environment. Overall planning of the sectorial planning (the planning of planning) was in this phase to be provided by the Ministry of finance through socio-economic instruments.193 In the third phase, however, the planning ambitions ran into difficulties, according to Andersen. In particular the ambition of a central planning of planning were increasingly seen as illusory. What gradually replaced it was a general program of “modernization” applicable to all parts of public administration. Rather than con-

191 Reading for instance Grønlie, we recognize the dominance of “rationalization” from the inter-war period continuing after WWII in the form of the Committee for rationalization and the establishment in 1948 of a Directorate for Rationalization (Rasjonaliseringsdirektoratet). 192 Of course, rationalization and sectorial planning are not necessarily incompatible paradigms, but the latter is more ambitious on behalf of the political system. In the period of overlapping there seems to have been some competition between the two paradigms. For instance, top civil servant Kjell Eide tells how a representative from the Directorate for rationalization had little sympathy for introducing sectorial planning in the ministry of education and church affairs. Cf. Kjell Eide, Departementets lille kanarifugl (Oslo: mimeo, 1985). 193 It is interesting to note that in both Denmark and Norway the need for political planning became an issue to a large extent because of a perceived mismatch between the operations of the educational system and those of the economy, and the difficulties the administration had in handling this issue. In both cases it was commissioned reports on the confused state of the many technical schools under different ministries which led to larger reforms of public administration.

106 │ The transformation of humanities education

ceiving politics as the planning center of society, and the Ministry of finance as the planning center of politics, public administration was now re-conceptualized as a de-centered network of separate units which had to take individual responsibility for reforming themselves in continual response to their environment. The unity of the political system is now preserved (and limits to differentiation set) by the obligation of each ministry to uphold the overall rationality of the political system by complying with the socio-economical conception of society. This phase, then, was – and is – characterized by what Andersen calls “second-order autonomy” on the part of individual ministries in their responsibility for each sector.194 This means that they are at liberty to orchestrate policymaking in their areas of competency as long as these are 1) compatible with the operations of implicated functions systems, and 2) within the bounded rationality of socio-economic thinking. This third phase raises some difficulties regarding dating in the Norwegian context. Using broad brush strokes it seems reasonable to use 1980 as its beginning, as Andersen does for Denmark, but in certain areas the abovementioned features appear earlier, as we shall see below in the case of higher education. On the other hand it can be questioned whether the Norwegian administration has ever really made a whole-scale switch to polycentric administration. While many ministries indeed become autonomous in the sense outlined by Andersen, the notion of political planning has never been completely abandoned in Norway. It continued to exist, partly in the form of party politics (mostly among leftists in the Labor party and in the programs of the Socialist party), and partly in pockets of the administration, in particular in departments with a responsibility for “planning,” “analysis,” “development,” or equivalent.195 Thus the notion of political planning has been kept in the picture, even if marginalized.196 This may go some way to explain why polycentric administration has been only partially and hesitantly implemented in Norway, at least when compared to Denmark – not to speak of the U.K.197

194 Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen, Selvskabt forvaltning. 195 As late as 1996, an incoming Labor party government led by Torbjørn Jagland attempted to establish a ministry of “planning and coordination” as the centerpiece of an ambitious program entitled “the Norwegian House,” a plan that soon backfired, was widely ridiculed, and contributed to the loss of the election the next year. 196 Planning as an ideal for public administration has in recent decades often been espoused by the opposition (and therefore by changing parties since the 1980s), which has resulted in a series of rather predictable attacks on the sitting government for “lack of planning.” 197 The concept of polycentric administration can be considered as a somewhat different, less value-laden, and in my view much richer, conceptualization of what has in recent decades has become known under the label New Public Management.

Introduction to part two │ 107

Perspectives on higher education policymaking Against the background of these sketches of the four implicated function systems and their organizational footing in Norway, I now return to the question of higher education policymaking. How can we understand the contributions of these four function systems to the policymaking process that resulted in the massification of higher education in Norway? If we are to move beyond such underspecified formulations as “impacts” and “pressures,” we need concepts that can help us unlock the historical material regarding the processes leading up to political decisions on admissions policy. There is an extensive literature in political science and sociology on how the political system relates to its environment in the process of policymaking. Since the 1960s, the topic has been studied under a number of headings: “corporate pluralism,”198 “iron triangles,”199 “pluralism,”200 “state/societal corporatism,”201 “meso/macro corporatism,”202 “democratic elite theory,”203 and “policy networks”.204 In higher education research, reference is often made to this general policy literature. However, the conceptualizations, which are for the most part developed to deal with other policy areas, are not infrequently found to be inadequate for higher education. This is rarely taken as an opportunity to theorize on higher education policymaking, though. As an applied practice, research in this field for the most part contents itself with adding a few compensatory heuristics, before it moves on to empirical matters. In the previously discussed study by Bleiklie, Høstaker and Vabø, there is an attempt to move beyond this impasse. Informed by the abovementioned literature on policymaking and several other theoretical frameworks, including Clark’s “triangle of coordination” and Bourdieu’s concept of fields, it analyzes policy

198 Stein Rokkan, “Norway: Numerical Democracy and Corporate Pluralism,” Political Oppositions in Western Democracies, ed. R.A. Dahl (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966); and Johan P. Olsen, Organized Democracy (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1983). 199 Theodore Lowi, The End of Liberalism (New York: Norton, 1979). 200 Grant Jordan, “The Pluralism of Pluralism: An Anti-theory?” Political Studies 38.2 (1990). 201 Philippe C. Schmitter, “Still the century of corporatism?” Rev. Polit 36 (1974). 202 Alan Cawson, Corporatism and Political Theory (London: Blackwell, 1986). 203 Eva Etzioni-Havaley, The Elite Connection: Problems and Potential of Western Democracy (London: Polity, 1993). 204 R. A. W. Rhodes, Understanding Governance (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997).

108 │ The transformation of humanities education

change in the area of higher education with reference to the new-coined term “policy regime,” also referred to as a “dynamic network approach.”205 Rather than specifying one – or a few – particular forms of policymaking which is typical in the field of higher education, this concept is intended to broaden the view, i.e. to include all possible variants of policymaking. The categories of policymaking identified in the general policy literature are re-conceptualized as traits which are more or less characteristic of a given arrangement in higher education policymaking. The traits singled out in the study are “state domination,” “institutional autonomy,” “elite mediation,” and “corporate mediation.” In addition there is the overarching dimension of “cohesion.” In line with this framework, Norwegian higher education policymaking in the second half of the 20th century is found to be characterized by a relatively stable balance between “state domination” and “institutional autonomy”, with “elite” and “corporate mediation” playing relatively insignificant roles – and cohesion declining somewhat over time. The overall conclusion is that Norwegian policymaking in the field of higher education during the period studied has become more “politicized” and more integrated with welfare state and labor market policies. Bleiklie and his cowriters make several interesting observations, to which I shall return below, and the conceptualization of policymaking alerts us to dimensions which are not readily captured by the previous (mostly historical) literature on Norwegian higher education. But I do not think it moves very far beyond characterization and labeling. It does not even approach an explanation for the traits it purports to identify in the changing Norwegian “policy regimes.” Moreover, several of its conclusions, including the claim that Norwegian higher education policymaking in the last half of the 20th century became increasingly “politicized,” are questionable. Thus, even though I will discuss some of Bleiklie, Høstaker, and Vabø’s findings in more detail below, their theoretical framework does not seem to offer solutions to the problems I want to address in this part of the study. Policymaking and structural coupling I return, therefore, to some of the conceptual tools developed in the tradition of systems theory, specifically to the concept of “structural coupling,” which I believe can help unpack some important aspects of the historical development in question. In part one I provided a short theoretical discussion of this concept. What should be stressed when I propose to make use of it in the specific historical context of

205 This approach seems to have been developed through a series of publications with Bleiklie as the main author spanning the period from 1995 to 2006.

Introduction to part two │ 109

Norwegian higher education in the post WWII era, is that this concept is devised to complement the notion of operational closure under conditions of functional differentiation. As the brief overviews of the four function systems above indicated, operational closure (autopoiesis) was underway in several of these systems in Norway in the 1950s and 1960s, but care should be taken not to presume in the empirical analysis (for instance regarding Norwegian research or the political administration) a situation as clear cut as presupposed at the level of theory. Nevertheless, although there has been changes in the relationship between the governmental organizations and the higher education organizations in Norway, as well as in the relationship between the function systems of politics on one hand and higher education and research on the other, there has been, all through the forty years from 1960 to 2000, a reciprocal observation by relatively autonomous systems which justifies the use of the same conceptualization of structural coupling for the whole period. Actual changes, whether pertaining to individual systems or the relations between them in the processes of policymaking, will be discussed in the context of the empirical material below. At this point, however, I would like to refer briefly to some interesting attempts to specify, from within the paradigm of systems theory, what the abstract concept of structural coupling might mean for actual systems such as those we are concerned with here. We need to get a clearer picture of how structural coupling actually occurs. A fairly “optimistic” view of the feasibility of societal coordination via structural coupling was articulated by legal scholar Gunther Teubner and sociologist Helmut Willke from the mid-1980s onwards.206 Influenced by the work of Luhmann, and working under the general heading of “reflexive law,” they sought to demonstrate theoretically that structural coupling (and hence societal coordination) between autonomous function systems is indeed possible through thoughtfully designed and carefully applied mechanisms such as committees, commissions, and other negotiating procedures, which were at the time referred to as neo-corporatist arrangements, but would today probably be termed policy networks.207 Writing in

206 See for instance the contributions in Gunther Teubner (ed.), Dilemmas of Law in the Welfare State (NY: de Greuter, 1988). 207 In its earliest and most “optimistic” version, this research program drew much criticism, Luhmann placing himself “at a certain distance” from it being perhaps the most sobering. See Niklas Luhmann, “The Coding of the legal System,” State, Law, Economy as Autopoietic Systems. Regulation and Autonomy in a New Perspective, ed. G. Teubner and A. Febbrajo (Milano: Guiffrè, 1992). It should be noted that this was a period when Luhmann’s own terminology for inter-systemic relations was in a process of change. What he previously had termed interpenetration he increasingly called structural cou-

110 │ The transformation of humanities education

what was still a transitional period in political administration (as we have seen, Andersen viewed it as the shift to “polycentric” administration), Willke used the concept of “societal guidance” to indicate a middle ground between governmental planning and societal evolution (“muddling through”). He made the interesting observation that in a welfare society, the political system, while not “superior” in any sense to the other function systems under functional differentiation, is as a matter of fact called upon to interfere in the operations of other systems. The reasons for this “pressure to intervene” range from perceptions of mere inefficiency to emergent crises and looming dangers to society as in the case of global warming. In all cases, however, an ambivalence towards the role of the state arises in a society of autopoietic systems: “The major societal subsystems call for and reject the state at the same time. This ‘double bind’ has some schizophrenic touches.”208 Governmental planning most often runs into the ground under such conditions. Rather than reduce complexity, it adds to it. Willke thus reached the same conclusion regarding political steering as Andersen did with reference to how the Danish political administration came to see itself since the 1980s. “Societal guidance” in Willke’s view, is a more modest, and a more realistic ambition, in particular since it is less asymmetric. It “respects” the autonomy of others systems: “As societal actors the subsystems [i.e. the function systems], organizations, and other corporate actors take part in formulating the patterns and procedures of contextual guidance, e.g. in that they participate in concerted actions, socio-economic councils, multi-partite commissions, bargaining systems or similar institutions of collective discourse. The fact that the relevant actors participate in shaping contextual rules or patterns is a certain guarantee that these actors modulate their autonomous processes of self-guidance in accordance with the premises of the chosen patterns. In essence this is self-commitment by participation. Guidance thus promotes order through self-commitment.”209

In Willke’s concept of societal guidance, politics (and law) retains the upper hand only by setting the stage: “The point is to create contextual conditions or “triggering patterns” which make it probable that the target system will choose according to its

pling. Unfortunately, it is not possible to discuss all the nuances of the various conceptualizations of Luhmann, Teubner, Willke and others here. I have had to restrict my discussion to what is particularly relevant to the issue of policymaking in the field of higher education. 208 Helmut Willke, “Societal Guidance Through Law?” State, Law and Economy as Autopoietic Systems, 370. 209 Ibid., 358.

Introduction to part two │ 111

own rules of operations to do what it is expected to do.”210 More specifically, “guidance works on the structural and procedural interferences between the various (organizational, corporate, or subsystemic) actors of a complex society. The constraints, contingencies, and externalities of these actors need to become interrelated in a way that promotes a preferred pattern of expected structural change.”211 Working alongside Willke on many of the same issues, Günther Teubner developed the concept of “interference” to deal with precisely this problem of a common language in structural coupling.212 In line with Willke, Teubner thought systems coupling was made possible by “sharing” the same communicative events, and specifies this idea with reference to Luhmann’s tripartite concept of communication (cf. part one). In Teubners view, interference happens when the same “utterance” is made available to two (or more) systems – even though the “information” attained by the various systems by the utterance, as well as the “understanding” which completes the communicative event for each system, will necessarily be subject to operative closure on the part of the individual systems. Among the sites where Teubner thinks such interference may take place are two with particular relevance for higher education policy: “neo-corporatist negotiation systems” and contracts.213 Before I turn to the specificities of Norwegian policymaking, and to the policy issue of admissions to humanities education, I want to supplement the theoretical account of structural coupling with two more recent contributions by Danish researchers working within the paradigm of systems theory. Anders Esmark’s work is particularly relevant to my topic because he provides a discussion of how concrete structural coupling mechanisms such as commissions, committees, councils, etc. can be understood in systems theoretical terms. His basic contention is that structural coupling beyond incidental cases “can only be achieved by other systems, i.e. organizations and interaction systems.”214 Linking up with the general literature on governance, Esmark identifies “interaction systems” (in systems theoretical parlance) with what Rhodes and others call policy “networks,” and he explains the popularity of the latter concept with the systems theoretical insight that while the

210 Ibid., 380-81. 211 Ibid., 373. 212 Gunther Teubner, Law as an Autopoietic System (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993) 86-90. 213 Gunther Teubner, “Industrial Democracy Through Law. Social Functions of Law in Institutional Innovations,” Contract and Organization. Legal Analysis in the Light of Economic and Social Theory, eds. Terrence Daintith and Gunther Teubner (Berlin: de Greuter, 1986). 214 Anders Esmark, “Network governance between publics and elites” Working Paper 2003:2, Roskilde Centre for Democratic Network Governance (2003) 7.

112 │ The transformation of humanities education

establishment of new formal organizations for the purpose of structural coupling will tend to dissolve the original organizations, “the temporally and spatially limited coupling by an interaction system can in fact be achieved without destroying the operational autonomy of the implied organizations. But on the other hand this temporal and spatial limitation is also the problem, if one has great expectations to the coordination and steering performance, simply because interaction systems cannot breach the operational autonomy of the organizations coupled.”215

In a later paper, Esmark adds to this procedural discussion some interesting thoughts on how policy instruments can be influenced by structural coupling in networks. Taking up Luhmann’s idea that function systems need to specify their communicative codes by the use of “programs” (see part one), Esmark discusses whether there has been a tendency in policymaking in recent decades (since when is not specified) to utilize programs across function system boundaries. He refers to the use of “market mechanisms” in public governance and the use of the code of “love” in corporate organizations as examples of this. Of course, this raises a number of questions, among them the familiar discussion about whether such “appropriations” are somehow inappropriate (cf. the discussions on “new public management,” “managerialism,” etc.). But rather than framing this problem with reference to essentially different “traditions,” “value spheres”, or “institutional logics” (cf. the discussion of this strand in new institutionalism in part one) which are somehow incompatible by default, systems theory allows for a more nuanced discussion about the relations between various program types and the codes and generalized communication media they have evolved alongside. 216 An interesting

215 Ibid. Whether Esmark is right in identifying networks like committees of inquiry as interaction systems, or whether they should rather be conceptualized as temporary organizations with the capacity to make decisions, I shall leave aside for the moment, but I want to underscore the importance of the dilemma he points to in our context. In establishing a mechanism for structural coupling the implied organizations (a ministry and a loosely organized group of universities, for instance) will recognize that any stability in coordination is bought with the risk of cooptation. I believe this dilemma can go a long way towards explaining the wavering in the Norwegian context between using temporary committees of inquiry and setting up more permanent standing committees or councils to coordinate higher education policymaking. 216 As Esmark recognizes, systems theory does not share the Habermasian view of society that makes it the task of the social scientist to protect one part of society (the “lifeworld”) from the “colonizing” efforts of the other part (the “system” part of instrumen-

Introduction to part two │ 113

example that Esmark does not mention is the utilization from the late 1960s onwards of the program of “democracy,” taken from the political system, at the structural level of the coupled systems of research and higher education – where democracy previously had pertained only to the operative level. In a paper from 2005, Simon Calmar Andersen expands on the idea of structural coupling at the level of programs, and argues that even when political influence through such coupling is possible, the political system should from the perspective of its own rationality, refrain from too extensive interference with other function systems. Like Willke and Teubner, to which he refers extensively, Andersen argues that the autonomy of each function system has proven itself evolutionary viable (i.e. capable of solving the increasingly complex problems it encounters in a way that is compatible with the operation of other systems in its environment), and therefore should be respected by politics – in accordance with the general principle of keeping an “arm’s length distance.” The problem this generates is, of course, that of accountability. The logic of politics in the welfare state demands accountability for government spending. On the other hand, if each function system is to be allowed to operate autonomously, it cannot be evaluated according to political objectives – its performance must be judged according to its own criteria, by “peer review.” Subsystems must be held accountable, in Andersen’s view, by self-evaluation: “A general solution to the governability problem may consequently be formulated in the terms of the following hypothesis: ‘The outcome of state welfare services will be improved if politics commits to a self-limitation allowing for greater professional autonomy, and at the

tal reason). In accordance with the more analytical approach of systems theory, Esmark claims to withhold judgment on for instance the simulation of market programs by the introduction of “incentive structures” in the public sector. But his rhetoric in the concluding paragraph of the paper leaves no doubts about his disapproval. The precise reasons for his disapproval are not important here, but I would like to draw attention to a major advantage of the systems theoretical conceptualization of programs for social science, namely that it treats the question of functional success as an empirical question. From a systems theoretical perspective, there is nothing inherently impossible or wrong in using the medium of money as an incentive to accomplish certain things in for instance higher education, but whether is succeeds or backfires, or both, can only be determined by detailed study. Of course one can discuss the feasibility of a given program application in general too, in particular when some experience has been gained, but within the paradigm of systems theory it makes little sense to argue “guilt by association.”

114 │ The transformation of humanities education

same time demands that professional organizations are subjected to self-evaluations open to public scrutiny.’”217

While the feature of “public scrutiny” as an accountability mechanism raises some difficult questions (which in my view weakens the value of this hypothesis as a normative theory), I have included it here because it captures the rationale behind many of the experiments which have characterized the structural coupling of politics with other function systems in the decades since the 1980s (balanced scorecards, incentive schemes, evaluations, audit, accreditation, benchmarking, etc.). Moreover, I think Andersen is right, along with Esmark, in locating some of the most interesting issues for policy analysis at the level of programs, as I shall have occasion to return to below. 218 With these reflections I conclude this brief survey of systems theoretical thinking on policymaking as structural coupling. In the next section I turn to the more specific question of how a particular type of structural coupling mechanism – the temporary committee of inquiry – has come to play a crucial role in the policy field of higher education in Norway. Very little has been written on this topic. Fortunately, there is in the Norwegian political science literature from the 1970s a branch, discontinued in the mid-80s, which addresses not only the rationale behind, but also

217 Simon Calmar Andersen, “How to improve the outcome of state welfare services. Governance in a systems theoretical perspective,” Public Administration 84.4 (2005) 900. 218 To be a bit more critical, I think Andersen underestimates the demands politics is exposed to in the welfare society. As Willke reminds us (above) the political system is in the position of a “double bind” (in Bateson’s sense) vis à vis its environment; the calls for more professional autonomy are always matched by calls for more political steering. In addition I think the notion of “public scrutiny,” much like Habermas’ notion of communicative rationality, fails to face up to the radical schisms which characterize modern society. It seems to presuppose some form of domination-free public discourse which is untainted by functional differentiation, but even a cursory glance at the actual programs for “public” accountability reveals that they are heavily conditioned either by the system code of science (in accreditation and peer-review schemes, evaluation reports, “regulatory science,” etc.) or by the code of the news media (league tables, feature journalism, exposés). Thus, what emerges from such programs is not status reports by the health care system or the educational system laid bare before the naked eye of “the public”, but scientifically produced and media-generated constructions of such reports.

Introduction to part two │ 115

the concrete historical evolution of this structural coupling mechanism for policymaking.219 Committees of inquiry in higher education policymaking Before we engage the literature on committees of inquiry in Norway, an overview of how this kind of policymaking actually takes place in practice might be convenient. Since I am mainly concerned in this part of the study with policies on admissions and capacity building in higher education, I will base this overview on the kind of committee which has been employed to handle larger, structural policy issues. Committees appointed to deal with more “technical” problems, e.g. particular legal or financial instruments, may differ somewhat from the patterns described below. Also, it should be said at the outset that the procedures regarding committees with a broader mandate have been subject to several significant changes, to which we shall return below. Nevertheless, it is possible to outline a sequential order which has remained relatively stable through the period 1960-2000: In the field of higher education, the initiative to appoint a committee of inquiry most often comes from the Ministry of education, but in some cases the original request may come from Parliament. In either case it will be the ministry which formally proposes the appointment of a committee of inquiry to the Cabinet, which then makes a decision, sometimes adding particular requirements regarding membership, mandate, timeframe, or other factors. On the basis of the Cabinet decision, the Ministry of education will finalize the mandate and decide upon leadership and membership of the committee, most often after consultations with a prospective committee leader. The appointment of the committee is then made public. After the appointment, the committee prepares a report, or a set of reports, in compliance with the mandate and some very basic regulations. During preparation, the committee usually engages in media debate on issues raised by the mandate. The committee then presents its report(s) to the ministry, at which time it (they) are also made public. Upon reception, the ministry organizes a public hearing on the report, and then (usually) prepares a white paper for Parliament, containing a summary of the

219 Temporary committees of inquiry seems to have been somewhat neglected in the literature because this mechanism was not deemed, from the perspective of Norwegian political science of the 1970s and 1980s, to be as important, or as easy to study, as the more permanent structures of boards, councils, and standing committees which were – and to a certain extent still are – widespread in policymaking pertaining to the economic system.

116 │ The transformation of humanities education

committee report and the statements from the hearing, as well as the commentary and policy proposals of the ministry (which will have been approved by the Cabinet). Upon reception of the white paper, the parliamentary Standing committee on education, research and church affairs prepares a report for a plenary sitting, in which the policy proposals by the ministry are discussed, and recommendations on particular issues are made, with indications as to which committee members (and thus which parties) support which recommendations. The standing committee can also use this report to make comments or suggestions on behalf of some or all of its members. During the preparation of its report, the standing committee is often in contact with various interest groups. On the basis of the standing committee’s report, Parliament organizes a plenary debate. In almost all cases the vote after the debate is in support of the proposal from the Standing committee to “enclose” the white paper and the report of the standing committee with the parliamentary protocol – leaving the funding of the specified proposals to the annual budget. The report by the standing committee and the parliamentary protocol will thenceforth be the platform for ministerial policy, which in turn will have to be implemented (or not) by HEIs and other agencies and organizations in the field.220 The sequence outlined here is quite time consuming, and involves complex negotiations between various interests, often attracting much attention in the media. The stakes are high, with regard to both party politics and for the interests involved, because policies arrived at in this manner tend to come in bundles or packages which will affect the whole structure of higher education. Once decisions are made, the chance for restoration or a new direction, in whole or in part, will be many years ahead. Higher education is not the only policy field in Norway where reforms have been initiated in this way.221 But higher education seems to have been more dependent upon it than for instance health care, or primary and secondary education,

220 This summary is derived from the following adminstrative booklets published by the State directorate of rationalization, Statens rasjonaliseringsdirektorat: Søkelyset mot komiteen (Oslo: Grundt Tanum, 1959), Planlegging og utførelse av utredningsarbeid (Oslo: Statens rasjonaliseringsdirektorat, 1980) and Fra idé til utredning – en håndbok for oppdragsgiver og utreder (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1985). 221 Especially in the postwar period, a staggering number of temporary committees have been at work. Since 1972, the reports from such committees have mostly been published in the series Official Norwegian Reports [Norsk offentlig utredning, NOU]. Cf. Jorolf Moren (ed.), Den kollegiale forvaltning. Råd og utvalg i sentraladministrasjonen (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1974).

Introduction to part two │ 117

where other, more permanent arrangements have functioned as structural couplings, facilitating incremental change, and alleviating somewhat the need for recurring, full-scale structural reforms. If we now ask what makes higher education in Norway so dependent upon this form of policymaking, we may benefit from some general insights provided by the Norwegian political scientist Jorolf Moren.222 Moren stresses that the committee system, which includes both standing and temporary committees, has not been intentionally designed for policymaking for any specific policy-field. In Scandinavia it has historical roots in the guild system growing up around the monarch under absolutism, from which it evolved and has been slowly transformed over time. In the 20th century it has been activated as an effective societal coordinating mechanism in times of crises such as the world wars, after which some of the structures have become permanent, some have been discontinued, and not a few have been gradually transformed to take on new forms and functions. Especially after WWI, the committee system became strongly associated with policymaking regarding the economic system (involving the social partners in the so-called tripartite cooperation model). Committees have also been much in use in areas where public and private (or “third sector”) institutions need to cooperate. A relevant case in point is the developments in science and technology, which among other things led to the establishment of permanent research councils. Regarding the overall rationality of the “committee system,” which only came to be articulated in the administrative policies of the twentieth century, Moren points to two often mentioned aims: 1) to involve lay people (the user perspective) in policymaking, and 2) to involve experts.223 Obviously, on one level these can be seen as contradictory, furthering “democracy” or “technocracy” respectively. But then again it is precisely the nature of the “committee system” to handle such contradictions by bringing it down to the level of individual membership: both lay people and experts can be members, and if the coupling mechanism is successful, the difference between them will be black-boxed, or else it will stick out in dissenting remarks, which will be processed by the parliamentary system. A less explicitly articulated but nevertheless important “technical” reason for the use of committees, according to Moren, is scarcity of administrative capacity. A ministry can for instance need to use the administrative capacity of an external organization to handle problems, and accepts influence on policymaking in return (especially when such influence seems unavoidable anyway). The reverse –

222 The following is based on Moren’s own contributions in Jorolf Moren (ed.), Den kollegiale forvaltning. Råd og utvalg i sentraladministrasjonen. 223 Jorolf Moren, “Komitésystemets rasjonalitet, internt og eksternt,” ibid.

118 │ The transformation of humanities education

external organizations participating in order to gain access to the administrative capacity of a ministry – can also be the case, as we shall see below. Our issue, however, concerns more specifically the temporary committees of inquiry. What can be said of a general nature about this kind of policymaking mechanism? Based on a conceptual framework developed by James D. Thompson and Arthur Tuden, Moren argues that committees of inquiry are most often used in policymaking when consensus among interested parties cannot be assumed for neither ends nor means.224 This in contradistinction to situations where consensus is established regarding ends, but not means (for which an “impartial” expert committee will most likely be used) and situations where means or procedures are agreed upon, but where the end-result cannot be calculated (which calls for negotiations in standing committees or councils with carefully balanced interest representation).225 The choice of which kind of committee to appoint also depends on the ministry and the situation involved. Moren makes a distinction between ministries that are “technical,” such as finance and justice, and those that are “client-oriented”, such as agriculture and fishery. The former will tend to employ relatively small expert committees, whereas the latter will usually appoint broader committees with representatives of the interest involved (and usually some experts added into the mix). As concerns the policy “situation,” Moren argues that a committee of inquiry is more likely to be employed when there is neither an acute crisis (which calls for immediate action, based usually on proposals by a small group of experts) nor a routine operation to be performed (which can be handled by a standing committee), but rather a situation with too high levels of uncertainty (which calls for the “communication technology” of a commission of inquiry).226 In the light of these general observations, we can make some hypotheses about why the Ministry of Education in Norway has resorted so often to temporary committees of inquiry. First, it is fairly obvious that higher education (and research) is – or at least has become – a policy-field where questions of overarching aims are fiercely contested, and also viewed very differently from the perspectives of the various function systems involved.227 Likewise, questions of means have become increasingly difficult to handle as the sector has expanded and differentiated itself

224 Cf. J.D. Thompson and A. Tuden, “Strategies, Structures, and Processes of Organizational Decision,” Comparative Studies in Administration, ed. J.D. Thompson & al. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1959). 225 Jorolf Moren, “Komitésystemets rasjonalitet, internt og eksternt,” 183. 226 Ibid., 187. 227 See for instance Ivar Bleiklie, “Reformpolitikk og endring,” Kunnskap og makt: Norsk høyere utdanning i endring (Oslo: Tano Aschehoug, 1996)

Introduction to part two │ 119

into many organizations and types of organizations with different identities in competition for scarce resources. This combination, as Moren points out, creates a degree of complexity regarding the policy “task” which cannot be handled by a small group of experts, and does not lend itself easily to the establishment of permanent structures (like a standing committee).228 Moreover, the relationship between the Ministry of education and its environment is somewhat ambiguous. One might perhaps say, as a first approximation, that it is positioned in between the two extremes of “client-oriented” and “technical.” It is client-oriented in the sense that there are several groups or “clienteles” which look to the Ministry of education for solutions to their most urgent problems (in the case of higher education these are academics and students, mostly). But from a societal point of view the Ministry of education also has a function which is more generic (or “technical”), namely to oversee the education of the labor force for other sectors. It cannot, therefore, keep policymaking exclusively within the circle of its core groups or clienteles, at least not in the long run. As we shall see, there has been some change as to how Norwegian higher education policymaking places itself on this scale from “client-oriented” to “technical,” but during the period 1960-2000 it never really approached any of the extremes. An important and difficult problem pertaining specifically to the policy field I am concerned with here, and which as far as I can see is not dealt with in any of the relevant literatures, is the self-reference involved when academics partake in policymaking on the issue of higher education. In other policy fields, academics are usually called upon to give “expert advice.” But as we saw in part one, the issue of self-reference raises some tricky questions regarding research on higher education and research. The problem is not primarily the practical one of keeping track of the CVs of individual committee members (knowing about their affiliations, stated views, etc.); nor is it one of role conflicts in the most obvious sense (as when committee members have both academic and political affiliations); it rather concerns a collapse in the distinction between two aspects of the “academic” role: the role of “scientific expert” and “interest representation” on behalf of academia. With the emergence of higher education research as a separate field of academic study (which did not really happen until the 1990s in Norway), this problem may have become less acute, but traditionally “expertise” on higher education has been very loosely defined, involving a wide range of disciplines within the social sciences and

228 At least this has been the situation in Norway, cf. Vidar Grøtta, “Higher Education Policymaking in Scandinavia: Committees of Inquiry and Permanent Councils as Structural Couplings between Politics and Academia.” HEIK Working Paper Series 2014/01 (Oslo: University of Oslo, 2014).

120 │ The transformation of humanities education

humanities, and most often including any normative or descriptive contribution by self-reflexive teachers and researchers.229 Thus, there has been no clear demarcation line, especially not in the early period, to indicate which of the professors (if any) have participated in policymaking in the capacity of being “experts” on higher education, which have been considered as representing certain interests, and which have been selected for other reasons.230 But as we shall see below, ambiguity and “black-boxing” should not necessarily be considered dysfunctions in a policymaking mechanism, nor should inability to penetrate and illuminate all motives and affiliations be seen as indications of an inadequate theory or research design in the study of such policymaking mechanisms. Indeed, covering up paradoxes which if pressed by a rigid and overly principled handling would lead to paralysis, might even turn out to be one of the functional demands upon policymaking in this field. If I now were to summarize the discussion so far, my conclusion is that the longstanding practice of policymaking by committees of inquiry in the field of higher education, and also the significant variations within this format over the period 1960 to 2000, can be fruitfully interpreted in the light of the dimensions Moren points to: expert/lay involvement, degree of consensus on means/ends, importance of patron-client relation, the perceived urgency of the situation, the availability of administrative resources, etc. In addition, however, there seems to be several fundamental questions which will benefit from being posed within the conceptualizations of systems theory. A case in point is the overarching question of

229 The beginnings of this branch of research in Norway date back, as we shall see later in this part, to the 1950s and to the Joint committee of research councils. From the 1960s onwards the NAVF would publish quite extensively on Norwegian higher education, in particular statistics and forecasts of various kinds, but the status of these reports as “research” was somewhat unclear because of the tight organizational coupling to the research council and to the ministry. With the establishment in 1996 of NIFU as a freestanding institute, and with increased interest in higher education research since the 1980s at several universities, the field attained a new degree of capacity and autonomy. 230 Policymaking on issues implicating other academic professions, such as health-care policy and reforms of the legal system, encounter similar problems, but in these cases there is, and has been for a long time, an established distinction between “professionals” (physicians, lawyers, judges, etc.) and “academic researchers” (medical professors, legal scholars, sociologists of law, etc.). The latter have maintained a distance to the professions which has allowed them to act as credible independent “experts.” In my view, it is fairly obvious that higher education research still does not demarcate itself from the domain of professional (professorial) practice in a comparable way, at least not in Norway.

Introduction to part two │ 121

the conditions of possibility for structural coupling itself, but also such dilemmas as whether couplings should be construed as interaction systems or organizations, and which functional equivalents are available at the program level. I will return to these issues in the final section of this part. I now move on to analyses of the documents pertaining to the five committees of inquiry from the period 1960 to 2000 which will be the major sources in the attempt to understand admission and capacity building in higher education in the humanities in post WWII Norway. Particular attention will be given to the two first committees, since they provided the framework for their successors. Moving from the abstractions of systems theory and political science to the concrete documents, events, and historical figures in postwar Norway means a shift of level, from discussions about societal functions and mechanisms to observations at the level of individuals and organizations. As previously mentioned, developments at this level necessarily proceed according to a communicative dynamic where actors become focal points and their attributions of agency to each other (and themselves) are considered driving forces. At this level, therefore, an actor-oriented perspective – not unlike the narrative style associated with the discipline of history – becomes unavoidable. Interpretations of this historical trajectory, informed by systems theory and with reference to societal functions, will be offered at the end of each section, and at the conclusion of part two.

7

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955–1975

The policymaking process that prepared the ground for the massification of Norwegian higher education, including humanities education, mostly took place in the 1960s, but it had an important prequel in the 1950s, and it entered its crucial implementation phase in the 1970s. In this chapter I discuss these three phases as steps in a prolonged expansionist period which by 1980 had stabilized the scale of Norwegian humanities education at a whole new level. The two succeeding decades from 1980 to 2000 will be discussed in the next section. As the literature review above showed, the reports of the Kleppe committee (1960) and the Ottosen committee (1965-1970) have been at the center of attention in the debates on the expansionist period, and rightfully so, since they were undoubtedly the most important contributions to the policymaking process during the 1960s. But as previously indicated, I want to challenge the view that the texts of the Kleppe and Ottosen reports can be interpreted as if they voiced coherent and unconstrained arguments from which the policies were simply deduced. Rather, the reports should be interpreted as bundled compromises where each feature, including legitimizing arguments, may not even have been the preferred solution of any of the committee members. Attributions of agency such as “The Kleppe committee intended…” or “the Ottosen committee was convinced that…” are perhaps unavoidable and in many contexts harmless simplifications, but in reality these reports were conditioned by a variety of factors, influences, and interests – and tied up with diverging function system logics. These impacts were all channeled through the interaction of the members of the committees as they discussed and wrote their reports. As I have underscored in the previous discussion, a characteristic feature of a temporary committee of inquiry is that the process whereby the various inputs are transformed into the output of the committee report tends to be black-boxed. This means that while certain aspects of the context can be reconstructed, others must be conjectured, and some are irrevocably lost.

124 │ The transformation of humanities education

Recognizing this, what can we say – as a first approximation – about the status of these reports? First of all, they are political documents – in the sense that their primary aim is to furnish premises for political decisions. That their use of information, rhetorical strategies and formats that are at first glance very similar to those we find in research reports, does not change this fact. As previously said, even when building upon or incorporating published research verbatim, the communicative context make such reports political. However, their political status should not be taken to mean that they are essentially the property of the “political authorities,” whether we think of particular political organizations or use a broader conception of the “political milieu.” By inference, it should not be assumed that actors in academia (or in the economy, for that matter) by default are standing only at the receiving end of the perspectives and policies of such reports. As we have argued at the theoretical level above, and as we shall demonstrate empirically below, actors (individuals and organizations) whose primary concern is for instance research or industry, frequently participate in politics – that is, they often have significant impact on political decisions by partaking in policymaking. When they do so, they tend to argue in favor of policies congruent with the system logic they represent or favor – which is most often the reason they are invited to participate in the first place. While it is trivially true that a specific political actor (namely the minister, or, in the last instance, Parliament) must always be held politically accountable for political decisions, it is nevertheless imperative from the point of view of research on these matters that we recognize the societal ecology political organizations operate within. In modern society neither ministries nor Parliament can operate unilaterally concerning issues that are of vital importance to autonomous systems in the environment of politics. In the following I shall therefore be concerned not only with the content of the policy documents but equally much with the perspectives, logics, and interests which have shaped them. Given my topic, I shall be particularly interested in the interplay of factors which (directly or indirectly) influenced admissions policy and capacity building in the humanities. However, as previously noted, these are usually submerged in more general admissions policies. My exposition will therefore have to encompass a broader set of issues than those pertaining directly to the humanities. I begin the historical reconstruction in the post WWII era, focusing certain preliminary reports which paved the way for the Kleppe committee around 1960. I then discuss the relevant proposals of the Kleppe committee and the political decisionmaking connected with them. Thereafter I consider how the outcomes of Kleppe committee’s policies together with certain parallel developments led to the appointment of the Ottosen committee, before I analyze the relevant policy proposals

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 125

of that committee. The aim is to understand how the growth of humanities education in the 1960s and early 1970s could happen. The section ends with a discussion of the various factors that contributed to the stagnation in humanities student numbers from 1975 onwards.

7.1

THE POSTWAR YEARS

Prior to WWII, higher education in Norway had evolved in a symbiotic relationship with the country’s social elite. In the absence of an aristocracy and with only a weak commercial bourgeoisie, the Norwegian state had grown strong, and the elite was to a large extent employed in various branches of the civil service, the entry requirement to which was higher education. In other words, higher education institutions and the state-based social elite had a long tradition of reproducing each other.231 The cultural impact of higher education had extended far beyond the narrow circles of the elite, however. Disseminated through schools, churches, the media, and the world of politics, the largely academic “invention of tradition” for the young Norwegian nation had created a resonance in most of the population. 232 The humanities had played a central role in this. But even if the cultural space commanded by academia extended across the nation, its organizational scale was very slight. It required little administrative oversight, and the need for policymaking (if that is even the appropriate term) was small and infrequent. At least no particular policy was necessary on an issue like admissions. Entry to the university was regulated by two propaedeutic exams, and beyond that the student body was self-selective.233 Anyone who passed the mentioned exams and could cover the living costs could be a student – i.e. enroll, attend public lectures, read the literature, and present themselves for the final degree-granting exams. As long as the number of students was roughly in balance with available vacancies in the areas of the labor market where academic education was in demand (mostly professions organized as part of the extensive civil service), and as long as

231 Vilhelm Aubert & al., The Professions in Norwegian social structure, 1720-1955, 2 vols., (Oslo: Institute for social research, 1961-62), Ulf Torgersen, Profesjonssosiologi (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1972), Rune Slagstad, De nasjonale strateger (Oslo: Pax, 1998). 232 Eric Hobsbawm and Terence O. Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 233 Cf. the section on the examen artium and the examen philosophicum in the chapter on philosophy in part three.

126 │ The transformation of humanities education

the degree structure and curricula were adapted (or at least not severely maladapted) to the perceived needs of those areas, the university and the other higher education institutions were mostly left to their own devices.234 Any problems pertaining to the duration of the students’ time at the university (throughput as we now call it) or to the subsequent transition to working life were either handled by the students’ families or treated as personal issues.235 The only problems in the field of higher education which attracted real political attention were funding for office and lab space (particularly the discussions about the establishment of the new campus at the University of Oslo, and the recurrent advocacy of various other cities for the establishment of new institutions), funding for a few large research projects, and the appointment of professors in certain disciplines (especially theology).236 In the aftermath of the Norwegian political crisis in 1884 there had also been a parliamentary campaign to appoint chairs and grant stipends to more “liberal” academics.237 But otherwise the University of Oslo and the university colleges minded their own affairs, financed over the public purse, with budgets which changed little from year to year, except in times of war or depression. As mentioned in part one, the whole of Norwegian academia could be surveyed by a very small number of people in the Ministry of church affairs and education. It was this small world of pre-war Norwegian higher education that was expanded and transformed to such an extent in the postwar era that even the most conservative historians resort to terms like “revolution” and “explosion” to describe the process. As mentioned above, this was part of a global development, but due to the miniscule beginnings of Norwegian higher education, its “great transformation” was even more of a shake-up than the equivalent developments in most other countries. The widening of the recruitment base had started in the decades before the war, with the expansion of the secondary schools, but the drastic effects on admissions to

234 Jorun Sem Fure, 1911-1940. Inn i forskningsalderen, 65. 235 There had been an instance of mild fear in Parliament of “academic unemployment” during the inter-war period, but nothing came of it. 236 Jorun Sem Fure, 1911-1940. Inn i forskningsalderen, 62-65, 96ff., 148ff. 237 This was the political crisis which led to the establishment of parliamentarianism in Norway in 1884. In the period leading up to the crisis many conservative university professors, especially law professors, had supported the King’s refusal to comply with certain decisions in Parliament, and especially the Liberal party (Venstre) in Parliament was therefore eager to use its prerogatives to change the professoriate in a more liberal direction. Cf. Bredo von Morgenstierne, Det kongelige Fredriks universitet 1811-1911 (Christiania: Aschehoug, 1911) 319ff.

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 127

higher education only became noticeable in the post-war era. The development was not linear, however. In the years immediately after 1945, student numbers rose sharply, but this turned out to be a transitional phenomenon, and from the late 1940s and throughout the early 1950s student numbers actually declined.238 This period of stagnation, which resulted in what later researchers have called a “phase of apathy” in higher education policy, may seem surprising when we consider that two of the political decisions which laid the foundation for the expansion of Norwegian higher education later on, namely the establishment of the University of Bergen and the establishment of the Norwegian State Educational Loan Fund, were made in 1946 and 1947, respectively.239 However, the University of Bergen was for several reasons unable to attract very many students in its first years, and the Loan Fund, which subsequently came to run one of the most generous funding programs for higher education in the world, also had a relatively modest first decade. Both of these slow starts must be interpreted against the background of the particular economic circumstances of the “rebuilding” period after the war. The labor market was in dire need of manpower, and formal credentials like university diplomas were not uppermost in anyone’s minds.240 In the mid-1950s, however, the public perception of higher education began to change. It became increasingly clear that higher education could not remain an elite phenomenon, and that it would have a much more important function in the society which was now emerging. An important catalyst for this change of perception was a report drawn up by the Joint committee of the research councils, entitled “The demand for and supply of academic labor force.” In order to understand the origins of mass higher education in Norway, we need to take a closer look at this report and the research councils behind it.

238 Mostly due to the reenlistment of young men who had been unable or unwilling to complete their studies under the Nazi regime, but who now did so in great numbers. 239 Steinar Stjernø quoted in Astrid Forland and Anders Haaland (eds.) Universitetet i Bergens historie, Vol. 1, 272. 240 The Robbestad Committee, appointed in 1947, warned against academic unemployment. The report of the committee was printed as an appendix to the white paper St.meld. nr. 45 (1950-1951).

128 │ The transformation of humanities education

7.2

THE ROLE OF THE JOINT COMMITTEE OF THE RESEARCH COUNCILS

Shortly after WWII, three Norwegian research councils had been established in order to allocate funds for research activities: the Norwegian Technical Science Research Council (the NTNF), the Norwegian Agricultural Research Council (the NLVF), and the Norwegian Research Council for Science and the Humanities (the NAVF).241 Technical and agricultural research were governmental priorities, and had several channels of funding. Basic research at the universities, which was the purview of the NAVF, had traditionally rested (and would continue to rest) upon the funding the universities received as educational institutions. A major reason for establishing the research councils was that all three kinds of research were now to receive additional funding from a new source, namely a state lottery (Norsk tipping). Somewhat surprisingly, the revenues from this lottery would turn out to be a quite substantial funding source for Norwegian research for many decades to come. On the model of similar bodies in other countries, the Norwegian research councils were dominated by academics, especially the one for basic research (the NAVF).242 However, the Joint committee of the research councils, which authored the report we are interested in here, was a more evenly balanced body, situated midway between the systems of politics and research. It could perhaps be considered, with reference to the discussion above, as a mechanism for structural coupling between these two systems. In this body, the world of research was represented by members of the three research councils, and the political administration was represented by senior civil servants from the ministries involved. The chairman was “independent” in the sense that he was directly appointed by the government. The mandate for the Joint committee, drawn up by the Ministry of church affairs and education, stipulated three tasks. The first was to make proposals for how the revenues from the state lottery should be divided between the three research coun-

241 Since the Norwegian abbreviations have entered the literature, I use them throughout – rather than introducing confusing new names or abbreviations in English. 242 Particularly influential was the British University Grants Committee, which the exiled Norwegian government had become acquainted with during the war. The original proposal by the all-academic Norwegian committee of inquiry was a council with 32 members of which 30 should be researchers, one should represent the ministry, and one should represent the state lottery (Norsk tipping). However, in processing the proposal the ministry increased its own representation to 8 and reduced that of the researchers to 24. Hans Skoie, En norsk forskningsorganisasjon tar form. En oversikt (Oslo: NIFU, 2013) 10.

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 129

cils. This soon turned into a yearly negotiation procedure. In addition the Joint committee should handle any business of mutual concern to the three councils. Thirdly, it should be at the disposal of the Cabinet and the ministry. Like so many of the later attempts to establish permanent councils and committees in this field, the Joint committee ran into difficulties and eventually became dismantled in the mid-60s.243 But in the mid- and late 1950s it played an important role in moving higher education and research out of the backwaters it had drifted into during the rebuilding period after WWII. A major reason why it could play this role was its secretariat. In a situation where administrative capacity was scarce in the ministries as well as in the universities and other research/higher education organizations, this secretariat offered one of the very few opportunities to have important issues in the field of research and higher education analyzed, often with a view to begin a policymaking process.244 Placed at the intersection of research and politics, the secretariat also had the advantage that it could “sound out” the perspectives and interests of the various stakeholders at the very start of an initiative, thus being able, at least in cases of mutual concern, to provide a common ground for further work. The director of the secretariat, Kjell Eide, and a central staff member, Per Kleppe, were young social economists with a keen interest in research and higher education and strong ties with the Labor party and the cabinet. These two individuals merit special mention here mainly because a few years later they would make up the core of the first committee of inquiry in the field of higher education, the

243 This was partly due to rivalry between the three research councils for funds, but perhaps just as important was the threat the secretariat posed to the departments in the Ministry of education. The ministry could not develop as an autonomous subunit of the political administration when the premises for policies were being produced by the Joint committee (cf. the discussion of Andersen’s concept of autonomy above). 244 Jacob Kjøde has the following comment on the timidity of the ministry in this period: “The administration in the Ministry of church affairs and education which was responsible for research was very small and characterized by the personal style of the Director General. He administered through personal contacts in the world of research, which he himself had belonged to before he was appointed as Director General.” Jacob Kjøde, Organisasjonsdød. En studie av Forskningsrådenes fellesutvalg (Bergen: mimeo, 1976) 18. The other organized actors in the field were also small. The Norwegian academy of science and letters had marginalized itself, as indicated by the process leading to the establishment of the Joint committee, and the Rectors Conference, which was established only in 1958, was very informal and discussed mostly internal, organizational matters pertaining to education.

130 │ The transformation of humanities education

Kleppe Committee. Eide would also be a member and a strong influence on the next one, the Ottosen committee. But it was in the secretariat of the Joint committee that they did the ground work. Eide has emphasized, in an article from 1996, that from the outset the Joint committee considered itself to be “a lobby organization vis-à-vis the government on behalf of the world of research” – a “general staff of research.”245 This might seem somewhat strange today, since in legal terms the Joint committee was a governmental agency. Moreover, the three research councils and the two universities were all state institutions, and the ministry formally responsible for all of their activities was represented in the committee. Indeed, during the crucial first years the ministry’s representative, Director General Olav Devik, even functioned as the committee’s chairman. While there is no doubt that the committee was activistic far beyond what would be deemed acceptable today, the term “lobbying” is probably somewhat anachronistic when applied to the postwar relationship between governmental organizations. At the time there seems to have been a greater acceptance for using public organizations as platforms for campaigning certain ideas or professional interests, at least if they were perceived to be legitimate, and led by persons of authority. Moreover, a ministry responsible for research (including the minister) will probably always appreciate convincing arguments for increased political attention to its own portfolio – as long as the presentation of them cannot be construed as disloyalty to the cabinet or as sidestepping the rules of parliamentarianism.246 An indication that this attitude was prevalent is the approval of the representative from the ministry, seemingly made without hesitation, when the committee prepared a strategy for launching its own initiatives vis-à-vis the government on the behalf of the world of research, instead of waiting for the government to put issues on the table of the committee, as the formal instructions stipulated.247 Another important contextual aspect, which I have touched upon above, was the lack of political attention to research and to academia in general in the first half of

245 Kjell Eide, “Fra norsk forskningspolitikks barndom: Forskningsrådenes fellesorgan som policyorgan,” Forskningspolitisk rådgivning – erfaringer og synspunkter, eds. Hans Skoie and Randi Søgnen (Oslo: NIFU, 1997) 37. 246 In Norwegian political administration this has resulted in a more or less formalized mandate for many governmental agencies to act as a “precipitator” (“pådriver”) on behalf of their field – but not to the extent of opposing the ministry or provoking other legitimate interests. 247 Kjell Eide, “Fra norsk forskningspolitikks barndom: Forskningsrådenes fellesorgan som policyorgan,” Forskningspolitisk rådgivning – erfaringer og synspunkter, 37.

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 131

the 1950s. After the peak in student numbers in 1946 had come and gone (and with it the fear of academic unemployment), and after the establishment of several important new academic institutions in the late 1940s had been finalized, the government turned to other pressing matters, and academia was left in the political shadow for many years. This was particularly disappointing considering the high hopes many leading Norwegian academics had nurtured for a new dawn for research after the war, hopes that actually dated back to the 1920s. As the years went by in the 1950s without anything substantial happening, a form of depression set in. The Labor government was increasingly perceived by academics (and portrayed by the opposition) as anti-intellectual and not likely to prioritize research in a period which was still financially difficult – especially not basic research. Even though new funds for research were being channeled through the research councils, this was not perceived as (nor administered as) “public” funding since it did not enter the national budget. It also turned out to be very difficult to make efficient use of these funds, especially in basic research, since the research facilities, the organization, and the staffing of the universities were not fit for the modern conception of research. Thus, there was a general feeling that something needed to be done, and that it could only be done by way of a political process. Many of the institutions had expansionist plans in their drawers, the most prominent of which was probably the interwar plan for a new campus at Oslo. And from the mid-1950s onwards, new local plans were being made to meet new challenges. But such was the financial dependency upon the state that without a political momentum, the situation looked hopeless. It is against this background – the Joint committee’s self-conception as an activist body on behalf of research in a phase of political “apathy” – we must understand its decision to begin investigating the labor market’s demand for academically trained personnel, an effort which laid claim to much of the committee’s administrative capacity in the mid-1950s.248 Eide describes the initiative as follows: “The idea of making prognoses in this field was raised by Devik already when the Joint committee was established, but it was not met with any immediate response [from the research councils]. However, in 1955 the effort to persuade the councils to make a comprehensive survey of the situation in this field, with prognoses for future developments, succeeded. The background was partly a worry over the recruitment to research. Also, most of our research was still anchored in the universities and university colleges, and an expansion of 249

these institutions was important for the research capacity.”

248 Forskningsrådenes fellesutvalg, Beretning for perioden 1954-57 (Oslo: FFO, 1957) 14. 249 Kjell Eide, “Fra norsk forskningspolitikks barndom: Forskningsrådenes fellesorgan som policyorgan,” Forskningspolitisk rådgivning – erfaringer og synspunkter, 47.

132 │ The transformation of humanities education

Concern for the general situation in the labor market and for the career prospects of future candidates might of course have been part of the motivation for the initiative, but it seems clear that from the perspective of the Joint committee, which was the perspective of the world of research, these prognoses were considered useful mainly if they could serve as a political argument for increased investments in the academic institutions, which would in turn facilitate an expansion of research.250 In addition to Eide’s judgement, two circumstantial factors seem to corroborate such an interpretation.251 The first can be inferred from the quoted passage. The research councils had not been very interested in contributing to labor market prognoses in 1949-50, which should probably be seen in the light of the considerable public concern at that time for an insufficient labor market demand, and a corresponding risk of academic unemployment. This had been the tentative conclusion of the Robberstad committee which presented its report in December 1948.252

250 Bleiklie, Høstaker, and Vabø also mentions that the Joint committee was the “nexus” of the early formulation of “a policy for expansion.” In this connection the authors refers to an unpublished study which I have not been able to consult: Stein Michelsen, “Utdanningsekspansjon og utdanningspolitikk” (Bergen: mimeo, 1992). See Bleiklie, Høstaker, and Vabø, Policy and Practice in Higher Education, 84-85. 251 In another publication Eide has characterized the activities of the Joint committee as thoroughly “political” and furthermore acknowledged that “the primary objective” of the report on supply and demand for academic labor force was “to signal that the need for expansion was critical.” Kjell Eide, Departementets lille kanarifugl, 13. However, Eide’s own role at this time and later should be interpreted with some caution. On the one hand he was undoubtedly engaged in the Joint committee’s campaign to raise more money and resources for research, but he was also, especially since the last half of the 1950s it seems, a loyal supporter of the Labor party, and in 1958 he even engaged in public debates to defend the government from what he considered unfair criticism by several professors in conjunction with the national budget. See Kjell Eide “Norsk forskning – hvor står vi?” in VG for 3.7.1958, p. 3, and Birger Kaada “Staten forsømmer norsk forskning” in VG for 3.20.1958, p. 3. 252 In the Joint committee’s 1957 report the Robbestad committee is criticized as biased by a “fear of overproduction,” for being overly focused on the peak years after the war, and for having overlooked other factors, such as the decline in humanities enrollment. But the major finding in 1957 is not only that the Robberstad committee had gotten it wrong, but also, and more importantly, that the supply of candidates had actually declined substantially in the period from ca. 1947 to ca. 1956. Forskningsrådenes fellesutvalg, Om tilgangen på og behovet for akademisk arbeidskraft (Oslo: Forskningsrådenes fellesutvalg, 1957) 9-10.

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 133

In other words, around 1950 there was reason to fear that further work on labor market prognoses would furnish arguments against a general expansion.253 The second indication can be inferred from the events that followed after the first report had been presented. As we shall see below, the 1957 report was interpreted as a persuasive argument for a massive general expansion of the educational capacity at Norwegian universities. Riding on the success of this report, follow-up work was immediately instigated under the auspices of the Joint committee in order to provide better and more precise estimates and prognoses. But at this point a disagreement erupted between the NTNF and the NAVF. The latter suspected the former of presenting inflated figures in order to build a case for increased investments in Norway’s largest polytechnic college in Trondheim (NTH). According to Eide, the Joint committee supported the latter’s contention. I shall return to the issue of how capacity building and admissions in the various fields was impacted by prognoses; the point here is simply to demonstrate that it was evident to the implicated actors at the time that labor market prognoses had an important legitimating function for expansionist policies. Let me now summarize briefly the findings of the Joint committee’s 1957 report. They were as follows: • •

The demand for academically trained personnel was on the rise in almost all sectors and industries. The trend during the first half of the 1950s was a marked decline in higher education enrollment (the report had figures until 1955/56).

The report made two inferences from these findings: • •

If the decrease in enrollment continued, it would create a serious shortage of qualified manpower, thereby hazarding the political goal of economic growth. Fortunately, however, the demographics showed that in the period from 1958 to 1966 the number of graduates from secondary schools would double, a development which, if handled properly, could solve the problem of manpower shortage.

253 However, around 1950 the NTNF did make some estimates and prognoses which indicated, pace Robberstad, that one might in fact be facing a dearth of technical personnel. This may have contributed to the ensuing decision to let the Joint committee conduct a comprehensive survey of the situation for all academic groups.

134 │ The transformation of humanities education

These statistics and prognoses set in motion a development which not only led to the appointment of the Kleppe committee three years later; they also formed an important strand in the argument of that committee’s report. In the light of what I have said above, it is hardly surprising that the report was found persuasive in the research councils, at the universities, and in other organizations affiliated with the function systems of research.254 But it is somewhat surprising that the expansionist argument was taken so seriously and acted upon so forcefully by the political system. With representation in the Joint committee, the ministry seems to have been on board all along. This indicates that the ministry was developing an agenda of its own (cf. Andersen’s concept of second order autonomy), and was forming alliances with the research councils in order to further it.255 But the enlistment of the Labor party, the Ministry of finance, and the cabinet of Einar Gerhardsen – which had for many years been uninterested – was not something that could be taken for granted. Three factors may contribute to explain the changed attitude in political circles. First of all, the report by the Joint committee was couched in the same socioeconomic terminology and thinking that the Labor party had grown accustomed to employ in its political long-term planning since the end of the war.256 Secondly, as

254 Based upon an interview with Erling Fjellbirkeland in the mid-1970s, Kjøde suggests that the secretariat took the lead in using the prognoses as an argument for political action. The statement Kjøde refers to in making this judgment is the following: “We had to put pressure on Eide [in the secretariat] to stick to what the figures said. This cannot be found in the figures! In that case a program will have to be attached separately.” Fjellbirkeland, quoted in Jacob Kjøde, Organisasjonsdød, 141. Another interpretation, and in my view a more plausible one, is that Fjellbirkeland first and foremost underscores how the research-dominated committee was concerned not to mix the “scientific” nature of the statistics and prognoses on the one hand, and a political “program” on the other. From a scientific point of view, no political implications could be “found in the figures,” but there was no objection to political conclusions as long as they were attached in a separate “program.” 255 It might be that this agenda did not encompass the entire ministry, but was primarily anchored in certain departments or even informal networks within it. Unfortunately, it is not possible to explore this topic further here. 256 Eide and Kleppe had since the end of the war been advocating increased investments in research and education based on a general socio-economic argument centered on the socalled “rest-factor” in Ragnar Frisch’s economic theory. The argument, which closely resembles what would later be called human capital theory, had so far not succeeded in persuading the key figures in the Labor party. But in 1957-58 it seems the attitude changed. An illustration is a speech by Research director in Statistics Norway, Odd

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 135

the report also made very clear, plans for the expansion of higher education and research were under foot in much of the western world. The nearest example of this trend was the appointment of a Swedish committee of inquiry in 1955 which presented its first report with grand ambitions for Swedish higher education in 1959, under the leadership of the rector at Uppsala, Torgny Segerstedt. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, it was increasingly obvious that the “facts on the ground” had changed significantly in Norway during the 1950s. But what had changed was not an entirely clear-cut issue. For in addition to the 1957 report, there appeared in 1958 another interesting report which was also taken to support a policy of academic expansion – albeit from a somewhat different rationale. This latter report was produced by a task force at the NAVF, led by the selfsame Kjell Eide, which (after the abovementioned dispute with the NTNF) had been charged with a general responsibility for such surveys and prognoses. Among other things, this task force had conducted a survey which demonstrated a dramatic increase in the share of secondary school leavers who planned to attend university studies. It was this survey which was the basis of the mentioned 1958 report. Its findings, which could be interpreted as an indication that universities were due to be overwhelmed by students, attracted massive attention in the media.257

Aukrust, given at the Nordic meeting on national economics in Copenhagen in 1958. Aukrust was one of the key economists and advisers to the government in this period, and he had now become convinced that Eide and Kleppe were right: “If this lecture has any practical implications, it is that we now – from the perspective of narrow, economic considerations – should concentrate our attention on the human being as a means of production. In our policy for swift economic growth we have hitherto put the emphasis on investments. We have tried to force the rate of progress by keeping the level of investments high. We must now seriously consider whether there is more to be gained from increased efforts in research and education.” Odd Aukrust, “Investeringer og økonomisk vekst. Fra forhandlingeme ved Det nordiske nationaløkonomiske møde i København 1958,” Økonomisk forskning og debatt. Utvalgte artikler 1942-1989 (Oslo: Statistisk sentralbyrå, 1990) 113. 257 The newspapers had for some time been concerned with what was considered a generally problematic situation in academia. In the years from 1957 to 1959 the angle changed from worrying about too few students relative to labor marked demand (spurred by the 1957 report) to worrying about too limited capacity relative to high and increasing student numbers. This change can for instance be traced in the following news stories, editorials and op-ed piences: “Studentene blir færre. Bunnrekord efter 1927 i vårsemesteret i fjor” Aftenposten 1.10.1957, p. 3; “Deviks tall”, editorial in Aftenposten 2.27.1957; “Kan vi forhindre akademikermangel i Norge?” op-ed in Aftenposten by Johan R. Ring-

136 │ The transformation of humanities education

In the last years of the 1950s a consensus therefore emerged to the effect that the universities and university colleges had no choice but to expand their capacity. But this consensus was based on two different rationales – which could even be seen as contradictory. The socio-economic rationale suggested by the 1957 report was concerned with increased labor market demands and was based on forecasts indicating a scarcity of students. The welfare rationale which underpinned the 1958 report was concerned with the intentions (and perceived rights) of young people to attend university, and was based, on the contrary, on forecasts which indicated too many students. It fell to the Kleppe committee to handle this tension and to draw the conclusions.

7.3

THE KLEPPE COMMITTEE

The Kleppe committee was appointed by the Ministry of church affairs and education on 7 January 1960. Its chairman was Per Kleppe, the aforementioned young social economist who, after a few years in the secretariat of the Joint committee, had entered a political career in the Labor party and was now a secretary of state in the Ministry of finance. The other members were Leif J. Wilhelmsen, the Director General in the department responsible for research and higher education in the Ministry of education, Dag Omholt, an adviser from the same department, and Kristian Ottosen, the Director of the Student Welfare Organization in Oslo. The fifth member, who was also acting as the secretary of the committee, was the previously mentioned Kjell Eide, at this time still the Director of the secretariat of the Joint committee.258

dal 8.7.1957, p. 2 and 7; “1055 uteksaminert ved våre universiteter og høyskoler i 1957” Aftenposten, 1.3.1958, p. 9; “Gjort og ugjort” editorial in Aftenposten 6.10.1958, p. 3; “For knappe bevilgninger til våre to universiteter” Aftenposten, 11.26.1958, p. 1 and 11; “Vår politikk skal skape vår fremtid” Aftenposten 2.4.1959, p. 1 and 4; “Elever til universiteter og høyskoler frem til 1970” Aftenposten 2.19.1959, p. 9; “Paviljongbygg kan avhjelpe rumnøden ved universitetene” Aftenposten 4.23.1959, p. 3. 258 All of these members have interesting biographies, which I cannot outline here. But just to illustrate the mobility between organizations, the multiple roles, and personal, professional, and political acquaintances within a small country with a small societal elite, it can be mentioned that Wilhelmsen had recently stepped down as the Director at the University of Bergen, and was therefore very familiar with the perspectives of the universities, and Ottosen had as a war prisoner become well acquainted with Prime Minis-

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 137

The mandate of the committee was: “on the basis of our national needs, our resources, and the established coordination of the tasks of the higher education institutions, to •

propose framework plans for the development of our universities and university colleges, including an analysis of the building program such plans would entail

•

propose a building program for the period 1961-1970, and suggest priorities and a time 259

schedule for the actions which should be taken during the first 5-year period.”

The deadline was 31 December 1960, but the committee was allowed a three month extension. Even with that extension, the committee is the fastest working of the handful of committees whose mandate has been to survey and propose reforms for the whole of Norwegian higher education. The swiftness undoubtedly reflects the perceived urgency of the situation in higher education in 1960. However, it had hardly been possible for such a small group of people to survey and propose detailed policies for the whole of Norwegian higher education had it not been for the preparatory work done under the auspices of the research councils, especially from the mid-1950s onwards. The report draws up the following list of factors as the most important inputs for its policy arguments and recommendations: •

“The expected increase in the number of applicants to the various higher education programs.

•

The demand for graduates from the various programs [...].

•

Other educational activities in universities and colleges.

•

The need for capacity building in research [...].”

260

Against the background of the two abovementioned reports from 1957 and 1958, it is interesting to note at the top of this list of factors, which is particularly salient because the sequence also structures the major argument of the report, the “increase in the number of applicants.” The demand in the economy for academically trained labor, which was given priority in the 1957 report, is now discussed as a secondary

ter Gerhardsen and several other members of the Cabinet. The entangled career trajectories of Kleppe and Eide have already been mentioned. 259 The Kleppe committee, Innstilling om den videre utbygging av våre universiteter og høgskoler fra Universitets og høgskolekomiteen av 1960 (Oslo: Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet, 1960) 1. 260 Ibid., 23.

138 │ The transformation of humanities education

consideration. And capacity building in research, which to a large extent had motivated the contributions of the research councils and their Joint committee in the first place, is the last item on the list. As mentioned, the order here is not trivial since in the report the discussion of the first item provided the premises for the subsequent ones. How, then, should we interpret these changes in frames and perspectives? First of all, it must be recognized that even though the Kleppe committee builds on material from the Joint committee and the research councils, and even though key individuals seems to tie all of these reports together, the Kleppe committee was in fact a very different enterprise than the “lobbying” efforts of the research councils. Using systems theoretical concepts we could say that unlike the latter, which had been allowed to “irritate” the political system with the perspectives and interests of Norwegian research, the Kleppe committee was more properly speaking a structural coupling designed for policymaking purposes (in the sense discussed in the previous chapter) and therefore had to take a whole range of different contextual factors into consideration. Moreover, since the report was partaking in political communication and consequently was aiming to furnish premises which should lead to concrete political decisions, it had to arrive not only at a policy which indicated a “direction” (expansion!); in addition it had to produce a carefully reasoned argument leading to a numerically precise level of expansion in the various programs and at the various institutions.261 It should furthermore be underscored that the priority assigned to student recruitment (the first item on the list) reflected not only the impact of the prognoses in the 1958 report from the NAVF, but also their subsequent corroboration by the actual increase in the enrollment in most disciplines in the last years of the 1950s. By 1960, this development had all but made the 1957 report’s fear of a declining supply of candidates obsolete. It had also become apparent that, considered from a political point of view, having to refuse admission to a substantial share of applicants to higher education, something which had never before been necessary in Norway, would present an even more acute political problem than meeting the prognosticated (and somewhat theoretical) labor marked demand for candidates which would only become problematic in a longer time perspective.262 As we shall see below, this realization marks the beginning of a change in the rationale for Norwegian admissions and capacity building policies which would reach its fulfill-

261 Ibid. See especially the detailed building program in the last part. 262 In keeping with the political dynamic in the welfare state, it was in particular the opposition in Parliament, led by the Conservative party, that championed open access.

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 139

ment in the Ottosen committee’s explicit reconceptualization of higher education as a welfare good. In sum, putting the increase in recruitment to higher education on top of the list made sense partly because it was now the factor which, considered in isolation, would require the strongest expansion, and because it (therefore) represented the most acute political problem. In addition, opening the argument of the report with a prognosis of what a purely student-driven expansion would amount to (the estimate shows that a tripling of the student body in a decade would be the result) allowed the Kleppe committee to use the second item, labor market demand, to moderate the estimated capacity needs and bring them into accordance with what was technically and financially feasible (which turned out to be a doubling of the student body in a decade). Rhetorically, the effect was that the final estimates and the building program based on them appeared fairly moderate compared to the first estimates based on student recruitment, even though they exceeded the original plans drawn up by the institutions themselves by far.263 Given the still strained economic situation in 1960, it is not strange that the committee throughout its report is at pains to demonstrate that its expansionist policy was no more than what was absolutely necessary, and that when compared to what the most expansionist interpretation of the materials would have amounted to, and not the least, compared to what the even more ambitious Swedish committee of 1955 had suggested, the Kleppe report was really a modest proposal. It is noteworthy that even if the committee bases its estimates on this trade-off between student recruitment, labor market demand and practical considerations, it also offers a fairly thorough discussion of the relationship between the supply and demand in the academic labor market which, if followed to its conclusion, undercuts the logic it advocates in the short run, at least as a long term policy. Most importantly, forecasts of labor market demands based on the past and the current situation are questioned. One thing is that “demand,” according to the report, is context sensitive: “[t]he structure of working life will adapt to the supply of manpower available at any time.”264 But even more importantly, the report argues that future demands for academically trained personnel will depend upon three “structural changes in working life which are to be found in all countries at the same level

263 The Kleppe committee, Innstilling om den videre utbygging av våre universiteter og høgskoler fra Universitets og høgskolekomiteen av 1960, 45. For a vivid description of the plans for growth at Bergen, cf. Arne Halvorsen, Et universitet i vekst (Bergen: Universitetsforlaget, 1967) 21ff. 264 The Kleppe committee, Innstilling om den videre utbygging av våre universiteter og høgskoler fra Universitets og høgskolekomiteen av 1960, 29.

140 │ The transformation of humanities education

of development as ours,” namely a gradual shift in the direction of serviceproduction rather than the production of material goods in the private sector; an accentuated division of labor (specialization) in production – which in turn creates a demand for coordination, planning and regulation; and lastly, an increased demand for public welfare services.265 If one asks how expansion of higher education relates to these societal changes, it seems obvious, even if this is only hinted at in the report, that increased supply of academically trained personnel can just as easily be seen as a driving force (a push dynamic) which produces such changes in working life, as a demand resulting from them (a pull dynamic).266 As we shall see, the subsequent Ottosen report takes this argument regarding the supply driven changes in the labor market (and in the economy) to its logical conclusion. Research is the last item on the Kleppe committee’s list of considerations and, as we shall see, many later historians have interpreted the Kleppe committee as almost adverse to research expansion. But as the discussion above indicates, this treatment of research as an add-on was the necessary consequence of the “lobbying” strategy of the research councils. When the representatives from the world of research had accepted to use first labor market demand for academics and then insufficient educational capacity as arguments for institutional expansion, this was tantamount to accepting that research expansion at the institutions would have to ride on educational expansion. In keeping with this logic, the issue of research is treated in a separate chapter of the Kleppe report, in which the rhetoric is ambitious but realistic.267 The committee first of all argues that research expansion is absolutely necessary: modern society is utterly dependent upon it, as can be readily seen in the massive research investments of other countries. A warning is then issued against a situation where the planned educational expansion comes at the expense of research expansion. Nevertheless, even in the midst of this premonition the committee seems to realize that the suggested educational expansion is so dramatic that it will take up much of the capacity during the first five years. This realism should probably not be read as if the committee is willing to sacrifice research, however. On the contrary, the report is at pains to suggest personnel planning

265 Ibid., 30. 266 Thue and Helsvig consider this two-way dynamic to be a central tenet of the human capital paradigm that was the context for policy debates in higher education in the late 1950s, cf. Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen, 218. But even so the Kleppe report, in their reading, is found to be dominated by crude – albeit ambitious – calculations based on labor market demands. Ibid. 221. 267 The Kleppe committee, Innstilling om den videre utbygging av våre universiteter og høgskoler fra Universitets og høgskolekomiteen av 1960, 40ff.

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 141

procedures (based on more or less fixed teacher/researcher-student ratios) and recruitment strategies that the institutions can adopt in order to avoid a “teaching drift.” 268 The chapter on research ends by prognosticating that “research expansion will be given a higher prioritization towards the end of the 1960s.” The committee then adds: “however, not at any time will it be possible to put the need for a continued research expansion completely on hold.”269 Let us now take a look at how the Kleppe committee handles the humanities specifically. The most noticeable discussion is a separate chapter on the humanities in a section entitled “The various fields of study.”270 Here, an argument is presented in line with overall supply-demand reasoning I have outlined above: first, current and prospective student numbers are accounted for; second, labor market demand is presented and summarized; and third, a conclusion is reached about a target figure. The chapter then proceeds with a survey of the need for buildings and personnel, and ends with an estimate of the costs over the next ten years. The statistics and prognoses underpinning this chapter are not taken from the previously mentioned reports, but from an updated 1960 report from the NAVF specifically on the humanities.271 Interestingly, the Kleppe committee consistently selects the prognosis alternatives from this report which suggest the highest immediate growth rate, and also tends to round the relevant figures in this regard upwards. As regards the supply of humanities candidates, the Kleppe report begins by calling attention to the most pressing political issue, namely the significant increase

268 Although, according to the report, the use of ratios should not be implemented in such a way as to generate “automatic” expenses. In this caveat we probably see how the logic of the Ministry of finance, and its aversion against such budgeting mechanisms, intervenes in the argument. 269 The Kleppe committee, Innstilling om den videre utbygging av våre universiteter og høgskoler fra Universitets og høgskolekomiteen av 1960, 46. 270 Interestingly, the chapter heading is “The humanities [Humanistiske fag],” whereas in the body of the text the study programs and the students are consistently referred to as “philology” and “philologists” – in accordance with the current program names, degrees, and affiliated titles. It is also interesting that the report has a separate chapter on the social sciences, even though these had not yet been clearly differentiated from the humanities/philological studies at the institutions. This had clearly been important to the committee, since it had taken pains to derive figures specifically for the social sciences from data sets where they were lumped together with the humanities. Ibid, 56-64. 271 NAVF, Prognose over tilgangen på og behovet for filologer årene 1960-1975 (Oslo: NAVF Utredningsavdelingen, 1960).

142 │ The transformation of humanities education

in enrollment during the last few years. As of 1960, the total number of humanities students was 2350, of which 1800 at Oslo, and the committee foresaw a continued increase in enrollment in the years ahead.272 In its effort to calculate the labor market demand, the Kleppe report refers to the categories of occupations from the NAVF report, of which the largest by far is secondary school teaching. Estimating the demands for teachers in the 1960s and 1970s had presented intricate difficulties for the NAVF because the school system was undergoing substantial changes at the time, and it was not yet clear to what extent university educated teachers would be preferred in the planned compulsory lower secondary school (ungdomsskolen). Hence the NAVF had presented alternative prognoses, all of which showed a dramatic increase in the demand for humanities candidates. Interestingly, however, most of the alternatives – including the one which the Kleppe report bases its proposals on – indicate a huge demand in the first five years, and then, for demographic reasons, a falling demand thereafter. I shall return to this issue below. The other main occupational categories for humanities candidates are “research and higher education” and “other occupations.” The expected increase in demand within research and higher education is based primarily on the educational tasks of the faculty, adjusted for the fact that most of them also conduct research. Neither the NAVF report nor the chapter on the humanities in the Kleppe report has much to say about any societal demand for humanities research as such. This probably reflects the general acceptance at this stage of the fact that institutional expansion would first have to come in education, and only secondarily in research. Thus, even if the 1960s and 1970s would see a rise of “professionalized” research in the Norwegian humanities as a result of the expansion which began with the Kleppe committee (cf. part three of this study), the report itself does not contain clear ideas about what humanities research can contribute to modern society. This in stark contrast to the chapters on the natural sciences and the social sciences, where there are long discussions of the various societal uses of these types of research. In other words, while it can be demonstrated that, contrary to what most previous research has said, the Kleppe committee was in many ways eager to underscore the societal

272 The report gives student numbers in the humanities in 1960 that are slight higher than those from Statistics Norway cited at the beginning of this part. Since the registration of students at the institutions in this period was not very precise, and since there might have been differences in categorization that are difficult (if not impossible) to reconstruct now, I have not been able to evaluate these two sets of figures against other sources, but the differences are so small that they do not change any of the arguments involved here.

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 143

demand for research in general, it was rather modest on behalf of humanities research, at least at the rhetorical level: “The major share of the expansion in the humanities disciplines must come in the disciplines where the educational challenges are most pronounced [i.e. in the disciplines that educate teachers]. However, in certain areas it is desirable to expand for purely scientific reasons. In some specialized areas, Norway has managed to create research groups which meet high international standards. The possibility for continued work in these fields must be se273

cured.”

But even if an explicitly formulated rationale for research expansion in the humanities in general was lacking (beyond this mention of a few specialties), the figures of the report tell a somewhat different story. Most striking are perhaps the figures for labor marked demand for humanities candidates in the field of “research and higher education.” These are imported directly from the NAVF report into the calculations of the Kleppe report, and if we consult the NAVF report we see that they amount to a dramatic increase of 175% in the coming decade – from a national total of 200 humanities faculty in 1960 to 550 in 1970. In the separate discussion of “personnel,” which is the basis for the computation of actual costs, the increase is less dramatic – from 200 to 420 faculty positions. But the proposed increase in faculty positions (110%) is still larger than for the student body (80%). Whether or not the use of the first figure (550 faculty in 1970, which would increase the yearly demand by 40-45 candidates) was a slip,274 the two figures seen in conjunction seem to confirm the tendency already hinted at, and suggests that the Kleppe committee was far from adverse to a substantial increase in research capacity – even in the humanities, where there was no explicit research policy to build on. The last source of labor market demand for humanities candidates was a scattering of diverse career trajectories grouped under “other occupations.” The NAVF report mentions “private and public administration, other educational work than

273 The Kleppe committee, Innstilling om den videre utbygging av våre universiteter og høgskoler fra Universitets og høgskolekomiteen av 1960, 57. 274 Ibid., and NAVF, Prognose over tilgangen på og behovet for filologer årene 19601975, 2. Of course, the prognosis behind this suggested increase necessarily bit its own tail. In order to calculate the demand for faculty, the NAVF had been obliged to prognosticate the student body ten years ahead. It did so using the growth rate of recent years as the base line, and ended with a much higher estimate than the Kleppe committee itself would arrive at. The NAVF estimated ca. 7000 humanities students in 1970, whereas the Kleppe committee ended up suggesting 4000-4500.

144 │ The transformation of humanities education

mentioned above (general information activities, correspondence courses, etc.), publishing, newspapers, broadcasting, Norwegian and international NGOs, freelance work.”275 A detailed discussion of the developments in actual career trajectories will be offered in part four of this study, but already at this point it is noteworthy that both the NAVF report and the Kleppe committee thinks these “other occupations” will become increasingly important for humanists in the coming decades. However, the estimate of the yearly labor market demands in all these fields taken together (30-40 candidates) is still smaller than for research and higher education (40-45 candidates). And compared to the estimated yearly demands for secondary school teachers (ca. 250 candidates) they are both still miniscule. Even if the statistics and prognoses discussed above were important for achieving a political breakthrough on behalf of an expansionist higher education policy in Norway, what is perhaps even more interesting, if the purpose is to understand how the committee actually envisioned the ensuing educational expansion, is the committee’s general discussion of the relationship between admission to various forms of higher education and the demands in the labor market. This general discussion, I will argue, is of particular relevance for the humanities. Three dimensions deserve special attention. The first has already been hinted at above, and concerns the committee’s view of higher education in a wider, societal context. Despite the supply/demand logic which runs through the calculations discussed above, there are several passages (particularly in chapter 3) where another conception surfaces, one in which the problem is not so much a demand generated by one societal subsystem (the economy) which must be met by a supply from another subsystem (higher education) as an inescapable, self-generating societal dynamic where supply and demand chase each other. Of course, this dynamic is none other than what we usually refer to as modernity, conceptualized in the report as divisible into “stages of development.”276 The reasoning is that in order to take the next step in its development, Norway must expand its educational capacity – and then, in a series of mutual adaptations, the other subsystems will also expand accordingly.277 To the

275 Ibid., 23. 276 Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 19781979 (NY: Picador, 2010) 215ff. Famously, the same basic dynamic, once it has become available for reflection, has also been referred to as “postmodernity,” cf. JeanFrancois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition. A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). 277 This is exactly the kind of mechanism John W. Meyer has in mind, cf. the discussion above. His contention that it has no functional foundation does not necessarily apply, however.

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 145

extent that the Kleppe committee and other actors in the policymaking process was informed by this kind of thinking, the labor market prognosis seems to have been viewed not so much as the rationale for expansion itself, but rather as a form of risk calculation.278 The second topic in this general discussion is the interdependence of the various higher education programs’ scale when some have numerus clausus and others open access. As we shall see, the Ottosen committee would some five years later arrive at the position that all higher education programs should have open access. Eide has in hindsight stated that this view was shared by the Kleppe committee also, but that the economic context and the timeframe prevented this position from being reflected in its actual policy proposals.279 This may have been the case (or it might be a later reinterpretation), but as the report actually turned out, and as it was used in the ensuing decision-making process, the differences between the admissions regulations of various programs were not only preserved; they also served a very important “buffer” function – as Bleiklie & al have also pointed to (cf. the discussion above). The report even articulates this function very clearly when discussing the two categories in terms of their “elasticity.” Because of high costs, certain professional programs would have to regulate access, while “for programs with greater elasticity in the educational capacity it should be possible to meet temporary fluctuations in applications, even if this should result in a level of admissions which periodically surpasses the estimated [labor market] demands.”280 The consequences of this “elasticity” function are explicitly stated. Continued restricted access to certain programs during a period of massive general expansion

278 In a review article many decades later, Kjell Eide suggested as much: “…prognoses of labor market demand were employed to ensure that the suggested educational capacity would not create chaos in the labor market.” Kjell Eide, “Norsk høyere utdanningspolitikk i internasjonalt perspektiv” Review of Ivar Bleiklie, Roar Høstaker og Agnete Vabø: Policy and Practice in Higher Education, Forskningspolitikk 4 (2000), 22. 279 Ibid. 280 The Kleppe committee, Innstilling om den videre utbygging av våre universiteter og høgskoler fra Universitets og høgskolekomiteen av 1960, 28. Interestingly, the Kleppe committee does not discuss the traditional role of professional protectionism in regulating access to higher education – even though this runs as a subtext throughout the report. In the chapters on medical education and dentistry, for instance, there is an interesting tension between the fairly conservative capacity estimates provided by the powerful Director of health care Karl Evang, which the report duly but somewhat grudgingly cites, and the more expansive proposals made by the committee itself – with reference to the situation in other countries.

146 │ The transformation of humanities education

“will possibly lead to a stronger channeling of applicants in the direction of programs with open access than we have today.”281 It is noteworthy that, contrary to what Bleiklie & al have implied (cf. the discussion above), there seems not to have been any deliberate intention on the part of the Kleppe committee to shield the professional programs from massification. Below, we shall see that this was even less the case for the Ottosen committee. The third point I would like to highlight is the committee’s contention that supply and demand of candidates will tend to balance over time, since applicants presumably will want to avoid unemployment. This argument is formulated on a general level to argue that the prognosticated overall expansion based solely on demographics and enrollment rates will not actually materialize because the somewhat lower labor market demand will have a chilling effect. According to the report, it is this mechanism which will probably – or hopefully – make it possible for the open programs to avoid implementing numerus clausus. This reasoning is repeated in the chapter on the humanities: “The committee estimates a continued increase in applications to humanities programs in the years to come. However, the fear of overproduction in this field in a longer time perspective must be presumed to reduce the share of secondary school leavers applying to these programs.”282 In sum, it seems that the general perspective on higher education in the Kleppe committee was first and foremost that its expansion was an urgent and broad societal demand, and secondly that even though the political system would need precise figures in order to make the decisions which would set this expansion in motion, the societal processing and absorption of it would happen by mutual adaptation and self-regulation among the implicated actors rather than just playing out a planned sequence of events. This conception presupposed a high level of autonomy and observational capacity on the part of these actors – the students, the institutions, the departments, etc. The institutions were entrusted with handling the “elastic” capacity of open programs, and secondary school leavers were supposed to apply for admissions based on their knowledge of the labor market some seven to ten years hence.283 As we shall see, the problems that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s were due not so much to miscalculation or errors in the prognoses of the Kleppe committee, as to its overestimation of these self-regulatory capacities.

281 Ibid. 282 Ibid., 57. 283 To help solve the latter problem, the committee mentioned counseling services, but with that the matter was dropped.

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 147

Previous research on the Kleppe committee Previous historical and social science studies on Norwegian higher education have tended to view the Kleppe committee as completely dominated by the political system and as alien to the academic world. According to Thue and Helsvig, “the government and the public administration [embedsverket] ruled alone, while the universities and university colleges were not represented” – in contrast to the Swedish committee of 1955 where the rector at Uppsala served as chairman.284 While this formulation is not entirely accurate, it is true that the three most important members were listed in the report as Secretary of State (Kleppe), Director General (Wilhelmsen), and Principal Officer (Eide). 285 Moreover, Eide had clear affiliations with the Labor party – as did Kleppe, of course. Thus, there is no reason to dispute the judgment that representation in the Kleppe committee had a clear bias towards political organizations – at least when compared to later committees. But I would like to suggest that the picture changes somewhat when we take into account the role played by the Joint committee and the research councils in preparing the important reports which underpinned the committee’s policy proposals. It should also be remembered that both Eide and Kleppe had taken active part in this prelude – which at least partially amounted to a “lobbying” campaign on behalf of Norwegian research – and that even if the context had now changed to a much more politically binding process, Eide at this stage did not belong with the ministry or with public administration as such, but was still employed as head of the secretariat of the Joint committee, a body with a significant measure of autonomy, as we have

284 Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen, 220. 285 Although Ottosen had connections with important figures in the Labor party and was known to be a sympathizer, it is not accurate to suggest that he represented the government or the public administration. As Thue and Helsvig also seem to suggest, almost as an afterthought (ibid.) it would be more precise to say that he as the director of the student welfare organization (Studentsamskipnaden) represented the world of higher education, and specifically the student perspective. As regards the contrast to the Swedish committee, which was supposedly more academic, its chairman had originally also been a secretary of state, namely Ragnar Edenman. He only stepped down and transferred the chairmanship to rector Segerstedt because he was appointed as the Minister of education. In my view it is highly questionable whether the overall policymaking process associated with the Kleppe committee was more dominated by a political (or bureaucratic) logic than the equivalent process in Sweden.

148 │ The transformation of humanities education

seen.286 Forland reminds us of the difference between the perspective of the Ministry of education and the Joint committee when she mentions a persistent strain within the committee: “While Wilhelmsen had a low level of ambition, Eide pressed the figures upwards.”287 Considering what has been said above about committees of inquiry as structural coupling mechanisms, the question of balanced representation of the implicated function systems is obviously important, especially for the likelihood that policy proposals of such committees can be accepted as legitimate. In this context it is interesting that there is very little indication that the Kleppe committee’s policy proposals were considered illegitimate by the contemporary Norwegian academia in the early 1960s. In later studies, however, there seems to be a widespread tendency to question this legitimacy, and to suggest that academic autonomy was compromised.288 According to Thue and Helsvig,

286 True, as Principal Officer in the secretariat of this committee he was formally a “civil servant” [embedsmann] and on the payroll of the public administration, but this does not mean that he was directly subordinated the Ministry of education. His superior was the chairman of the Joint committee, Gunnar Jahn, who was directly appointed by the Government in order to be “independent” – as opposed to the other committee members who were representatives from the research councils and the ministries. It is not at all strange that Eide is strongly associated with the (Labor party dominated) political system in Norway, since he during the 1950s served on several governmental committees and projects and even acted as a kind of private secretary to Minster of education Birger Bergersen at the end of the 1950s (while he was still employed by the Joint committee), and since he later had a long career as top civil servant in the Ministry of education at the same time as he remained closely affiliated with the Labor party. But in 1960-61 his formal position still rested with the Joint committee, and in many ways it also seems that his allegiance was still with the expansionist policy that this committee had lobbied for during the past decade. 287 Astrid Forland and Anders Haaland (eds.) Universitetet i Bergens historie, Vol. 1, 337. 288 Of course, there is always the option offered by the historian Jens Arup Seip in his famous 1963 lecture on the “one-party state” of the postwar era: one can declare the whole political era to be illegitimate because of the Labor party’s grip on public administration. While this is certainly a valid criticism of certain tendencies in the Labor party, it is probably more interesting as a moral or political stance in response to the hegemony of the Labor party than it is helpful as an historical analysis of it. At any rate, the question of the legitimacy of certain specific policies across organizations and function systems in this period can hardly be solved in this way. Cf. Jens Arup Seip, “Fra

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 149

“[t]he universities were treated in the report first and foremost as state institutions which effectively and loyally should educate the academically trained labor force society needed. The perspective was centered on education; it was the rapidly increasing demand for educational capacity that motivated the expansion. […] The Kleppe committee signaled a substantial increase in the prioritization of the universities, but planned for an expansion driven by education which might come at the expense of research. In combination with a research policy that favored applied research, this could be seen as a threat to the conception of the 289

universities as ‘the home of the scientists’ […].”

Forland also considers the Kleppe committee as an instrument of the political authorities, and associates the committee’s focus on education with this role: “The Kleppe committee undoubtedly represented something completely new in the history of Norwegian universities, namely an attempt on the part of the political authorities at a planned expansion of the universities. It claimed to take societal demands as its starting point, but in reality the expansion was based on how many students it was believed that Norway could 290

afford to provide with a university education.”

The most thorough social science study on this period, by Bleiklie, Høstaker, and Vabø, has an even more clear-cut view: “Although the Kleppe Commission of 1960 sought to induce the universities to expand their educational capacity, the Commission wanted to base this expansion on prognoses for the future labor market needs for academically-trained personnel […]. The members of the 291

commission were at the time strong proponents of the demand side argument.”

Rune Slagstad has conveniently condensed this strand in the literature on the Kleppe committee into the label of “reform technocracy,” which he thinks characterizes the modus operandi of Norwegian state in general in the postwar era.292

embedsmannsstat til ettpartistat,” Fra embetsmannsstat til ettpartistat og andre essays (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1963). 289 Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen, 221. 290 Astrid Forland and Anders Haaland (eds.) Universitetet i Bergens historie, Vol. 1, 338. 291 Ivar Bleiklie, Roar Høstaker, and Agnete Vabø, Policy and Practice in Higher Education, 147. 292 Rune Slagstad, “Kunnskapens hus i det norske system,” Norwegian Official Reports, NOU 2000: 14 Frihet med ansvar. Om høgre utdanning og forskning i Norge.

150 │ The transformation of humanities education

While there may be many good reasons to criticize the policies of the Kleppe committee, I believe the referenced literature oversimplifies the role the committee played in Norwegian higher education policymaking. In particular, I think the discussion above has demonstrated two major misconceptions. The first one is the influential but erroneous view that the “demand side argument,” as Bleiklie, Høstaker, and Vabø suggests, was the Kleppe committee’s chief consideration. The second is the likewise widespread idea, articulated by e.g. Thue and Helsvig, that the expansionist policy focused on the educational dimension was something the political system almost forced upon Norwegian academia – with especially damaging consequences for the humanities. It seems to me that these notions at least in part arise from inadequate theoretical frameworks. Applying the perspective of systems theory allows for a more nuanced view, I would argue, of how the Kleppe committee functioned as a structural coupling mechanism, channeling and balancing several (partly conflicting) logics and interests in its report. Three insights derived from this theoretical perspective have particular relevance for the interpretation of the Kleppe committee. First, it should be recognized that the proposals resulting from a policymaking process do not by default express a purely “political” logic (although they will have to be compatible with this logic) but almost invariably incorporate several other considerations also. Thus, in the case of the Kleppe committee, I believe the perspective of the function system of research was clearly a more important consideration than the literature has so far acknowledged. Secondly, insofar as the system of politics conditions policymaking, it does not necessarily aim – pace the claims of Marxist theory to the contrary – to serve the needs of the economy, even though the continued functioning of the economy is certainly among the issues a government will be held politically responsible for. As I have shown above, labor market prognoses in higher education policymaking is often not introduced in order to serve the interests of industry or to increase the GNP, but is rather used as a legitimation strategy, and as a form of risk calculation. Thirdly, while the inescapable “insider perspective” of research on university history and on the development of higher education tends to structure events and processes according to an inside/outside distinction, care should be taken to apply what in systems theory falls under the concept of “second-order observation,” allowing for a triangulation of the various function systems involved, avoiding the propagation of a simplified “tale of tribe” in which any deviance from an ideal development is caused by “external pressures” – i.e. politics and the economy.

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 151

The political outcome of the Kleppe committee The Kleppe committee presented its report to the Ministry of church affairs and education on 28 March 1961. Later that year the ministry presented a white paper to Parliament in which it supported all of the committee’s most important proposals. Interestingly, this white paper had a much more “academic” perspective on the universities than can be found in the Kleppe committee’s report. In contrast to the terse and somewhat technical committee report, the opening chapter of the white paper employs a rather lofty tone as it traces the history of the universities from the middle ages to the recent triumphs of modern research. The white paper is also eager to balance an “instrumentalist” view of higher education with a more Bildung-oriented one. Since WWII, the white paper states, “there has been a fundamental change in the view of education as the basis for social and economic progress […]. But education and knowledge is more than a means to achieve certain social and economic goals. Opportunities for a richer and more fulfilling existence are now opened for a much larger share of the population by increasingly providing the conditions necessary for everyone to have access to the education which answers to their capabili293

ties and interests.”

My point in citing this passage is not that it contradicts anything the Kleppe report says; the difference concerns emphasis and style. Apparently the ministry believed that it was necessary to use a broader range of legitimating strategies. In part, this was probably a concession to the academic world. But as a political document its chief consideration at this stage was to secure support from a widest possible spectrum in Parliament. There was a particular reason for this, namely that the Labor party had lost the majority in Parliament earlier that year, for the first time since WWII. It could still form a majority with support from the newly formed Socialist party, but from now on the Labor party clearly had to be more careful not to provoke resentment – especially not on issues where consensus could be achieved by appealing to a broad range of arguments.294 In keeping with the procedures outlined in the section on Norwegian-style policymaking above, the white paper conscientiously summarized the responses from

293 White paper, St. meld. nr. 91 (1961-62) Om den videre utbygging av universiteter og høgskoler, 5. 294 Cf. Olav Rovde, “Borgarleg samling,” Vekst og velstand. Norsk politisk historie 19451965. Regjering og opposisjon under Arbeiderpartistyre, ed. Trond Bergh & al. (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1977) 434ff.

152 │ The transformation of humanities education

the general hearing which had been organized after the publication of the Kleppe report. The overall conclusion was that all the universities, university colleges and other implicated organizations were supportive of the plans for expansion. There were only a few reservations. Some had raised concern for the availability of academic staff. And the University of Oslo supported expansion but was somewhat reluctant with regards to the massive scale, in particular in the case of the social sciences. Other than this, I will only highlight a few points from the white paper which are relevant to the topic of expansion in humanities education. First of all it is interesting that the ministry, before it accepts the plan for expansion, discusses several hypothetical possibilities for lowering the amount of applications from prospective students, for instance by regulating access to upper secondary school, or making education more expensive. Not surprisingly all such options are then dismissed – other than the traditional selection mechanism of the propaedeutic exam in philosophy. The discussion is dropped with a reference to a separate committee currently at work on this specific issue.295 The white paper concludes that it hopes to avoid enforcing numerus clausus in the programs which had traditionally been open, but that it will have to consider and review the situation as it develops. As regards the prognoses and the estimates which the Kleppe committee had based its proposals on, the white paper’s assessment is that they are rather too modest than too ambitious. For the humanities, the ministry explicitly characterizes the Kleppe committee’s estimated demand (based on the NAVF report) as “moderate” [forsiktig] because it has not taken into account “substantial changes in the factors which impact the demand, for instance resulting from humanities candidates seeking employment outside education and research.”296 As we have seen above, this last claim is not correct – it had been taken into consideration by both the NAVF and the Kleppe committee. It is highly interesting, however, that all of these actors were so eager to demonstrate that the humanities could sustain quite extensive expansion. Of course, this might have been because if it did, this would solve some very difficult problems facing both the world of politics and the world of research. The last point I would like to mention is that the white paper, like the Kleppe committee, seems to presuppose that the educational expansion in the open programs would be facilitated and controlled by a self-regulatory dynamic. According

295 This committee, led by Rolf Waaler, also discussed many hypothetical arrangements for using tests etc., but in the end its recommendations did not have much impact. 296 White paper, St. meld. nr. 91 (1961-62) 22.

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 153

to the white paper, the social sciences “are expected to receive a larger share of the increase in student numbers in the open programs as the [labor market] demands for humanists and natural scientists are increasingly met.”297 As it turned out, there would indeed be a growth in social science education, especially towards the end of the decade, but it came on top of the growth in the humanities.298 Even if the Labor government had lost its long-standing majority in 1961, the parliamentary situation was still such that it could safely expect a positive outcome on a policy issue like this. A few aspects of the report from the parliamentary Standing committee on church affairs and education are nonetheless interesting. In addition to its customary interest in individual institutions and in the question of whether, how, and (not the least) where new institutions should be established (issues I will not discuss here), the Standing committee addressed two important aspects of the proposed educational expansion in its report to the plenary session. The chief question was whether access should be regulated. A majority in the Standing committee supported a formulation which in fairly strong words deemed it “an unnecessary and therefore illegitimate restriction of the citizens’ personal freedom to make plans based on the premise that some study programs shall retain permanently restricted admission [skal være permanent lukkede].”299 However, a minority comment voiced concern for what would happen to academic standards if study programs were kept open regardless of student numbers. This minority also emphasized that the societal demands for the various categories of competence should be more thoroughly considered. The conclusions in the report of the Standing committee, and the outcome of the vote, was at any rate that the white paper’s motions regarding capacity building, based on the Kleppe committee’s estimates, were carried in Parliament. Moreover, the report stated that Parliament viewed the government’s plans as probably too modest in view of the societal needs in the coming decades. Fearing that hitherto open study programs would have to adopt restricted access, the Standing committee therefore recommended that the ministry in addition to the planned expansion

297 Ibid. 298 In a longer time perspective, however, the white paper was right, in the sense that from the mid-1970s onwards, admissions to the humanities stagnated, while the social sciences continued to climb. But this soon turned into a problem of its own, politically and for the institutions. And in the labor market, too, the changes created problematic shortages, as will be discussed in part four. Hence, the cycles involved here cannot be said to have been self-regulatory in any meaningful sense. 299 Parliamentary Report, Innst. S. nr. 107 (1962-63). The spokesperson on this particular item of business was Per Lønning from the Conservative party.

154 │ The transformation of humanities education

should consider establishing a new type of institution – namely “colleges” or “university colleges.” It was this last proposal which – along with certain other developments – led to the appointment of the Ottosen committee only a few years later. Summary How does the story so far look if we place it within the systems theoretical framework outlined at the beginning of this part? The first thing we may notice is that the policymaking trajectory associated with the Kleppe committee, from the mid-1950s until 1963, shows research and politics in Norway in the process of attaining increased degrees of autonomy as societal function systems. Higher education was of course still coupled to the labor market – in the case of humanities education, the coupling to the teaching profession was in fact fairly tight until the late 1970s – but as the discussion above makes clear, this was about to change. However, for all the implicated function systems the organizational footing was still too weak for any of the them to proceed unilaterally. Not only were they mutually dependent upon each other; it could even be argued that they were not yet clearly differentiated at the organizational level. In the political system, the Ministry of church affairs and education had very limited administrative capacity, and when political problems in this field appeared it therefore had to rely on the Joint committee to provide analyses, opening up an avenue for the research system to provide the premises for policymaking. The system of research on its part could to some extent articulate a self-description and even strategic ambitions through the research councils and the Joint committee, but the major organizational platform for actual research production – the universities – was still not adequately equipped to serve this purpose. The universities, in addition to being small, were still mainly organized as educational institutions, and even as such they seemed to have had little capacity for grasping their environmental relations and behaving proactively. The perspective of the economy – i.e. the demands in the labor market – was at this stage mainly represented in the policymaking process through the socio-economic rationale that was believed to inform the committee leader. As indicated above, however, I think the economic arguments in the report should for the most part be interpreted as forms of political legitimation on one hand and risk calculation on the other. Hence, the economy as a function system (i.e. the profit motive) only had an indirect impact on the policymaking process. In conclusion, it seems to me that in the “policy situation” around 1960, what the Kleppe committee did was to come up with policy proposals that could solve at least the most pressing problems for all implicated function systems, paving the

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 155

road ahead for the next few years, in compliance with its mandate. Doing so, it set Norwegian higher education, including humanities education, on the track it has since travelled. It is something of a paradox, in my view, that the Kleppe committee is often supposed to have subordinated higher education policy to economic planning when what it did was set the stage, not the least in the humanities, for a much tighter coupling between higher education and research, hence beginning a process whereby humanities education was increasingly decoupled from the labor market.

7.4

THE OTTOSEN COMMITTEE

The Ottosen committee was appointed on 6 August 1965, two and a half years after Parliament had discussed the proposals of the Kleppe committee. By this time, much of the building program outlined in the Kleppe report had been completed. For the humanities, the situation had changed completely in just a few years. At Oslo, the humanities faculty had moved into a new building on the Blindern campus and the faculty staff had been significantly expanded. The new positions were mostly lecturers, but also professors, readers, and assistant professors. At Bergen, the humanities had moved into a renovated school building in 1965, in accordance with the plan in the Kleppe report. The staff at Bergen had also grown strongly during the last few years, in spite of recruitment problems. But these expansionist measures – dramatic as they had seemed in 1960 – were already deemed insufficient to meet the challenges that had become apparent in the meanwhile – for the humanities, and for higher education in general. In many ways, the situation in 1965 was even more critical than previously. In the five years from the mid-1950s, when the Joint committee had started working on its reports, to the appointment of the Kleppe committee in 1960, the student numbers at the universities had doubled. This was an urgent, but not completely unseen development. The years immediately after WWII had seen a similar growth rate. Moreover, in 1960, tentative plans for the expansion of the existing institutions were actually available, and could be upgraded without many problems by the Kleppe committee. But when student numbers doubled again in the five years from 1960 to 1965, it was evident that even the most expansive alternative forecasts in the Kleppe report were in the process of being surpassed. This meant – as Parliament had suspected in 1963 – that the existing institutions and higher education programs would not be able to cope in the long run. New and more radical policies were needed. While the political urgency of this situation was the rather obvious motivation for mandating a new – or renewed – policymaking process in the field of higher

156 │ The transformation of humanities education

education in 1965, the particular format of what became known as the Ottosen committee was not obvious. Compared to the Kleppe committee, the Ottosen committee turned out to be significantly larger (14 members and two secretaries) and more broadly composed (with representatives from various academic disciplines, politics, the civil service, secondary school, and students). It was also allowed a longer tenure to complete its work, and it was mandated to take a longer time perspective on the policy field. In addition, its working methods were much more consultative and open to public debate. This particular policymaking arrangement was the outcome of an administrative reform effort pertaining to the interface between the political system and academia in Norway in the mid-1960s, an effort which in the end was subject to certain ad hoc adjustments by an incoming government. Part of the background for the administrative reform was the already mentioned problems the Joint Committee of the research councils encountered in the late 1950s. Various strains had seriously weakened the capacity of the Joint committee to coordinate the research councils.300 Even the production of surveys, analyses, and prognoses for the whole of Norwegian research became too problematic. Hence, the Joint committee was increasingly useless as an arena for policymaking. By 1964 it had become apparent to the ministry, and to minister Helge Sivertsen, that a new structure was needed. Rather than remaining dependent upon external bodies for analyses of higher education and the policymaking initiatives which often followed them, the ministry had now acquired the degree of autonomy which allowed it to take matters into its own hands by establishing its own Department for planning and analysis. It had reached what we have seen Andersen referring to in the Danish context as the “planning” phase.301 At the same time it was apparent that even with increased strategic and administrative capacity, the political/administrative system could not unilaterally devise actual policies for higher education and research. Structural coupling mechanisms to these systems were necessary in order to come up with policies that would be 1) adequate to the complex problems at hand and, 2) legitimate from the perspective of these external systems (which had by now also expanded and acquired a stronger sense of themselves). For research, the structural coupling mechanism chosen was an advisory council composed of leading academics (called the Chief committee for research [Hovedkomiteen for forskning]) placed at a certain distance from the political

300 Cf. Jacob Kjøde, Organisasjonsdød. The strain was primarily between the technicalindustrial interests on one hand and basic research on the other. 301 Cf. the discusson of Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen, Selvskabt forvaltning, in the first section of part two, above.

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 157

system, in combination with a Cabinet committee for research (Regjeringens forskningsutvalg) where the relevant ministers would meet under the chairmanship of the prime minister.302 The secretariat for both of these committees was supposed to be the ministry’s new Department for planning and analysis. For higher education, where as we have seen the situation was again becoming urgent, the solution was the new temporary committee of inquiry led by Kristian Ottosen, the membership of which was significantly more broadly composed than the Kleppe committee. The secretariat for this committee, too, was to be the Department for planning and analysis in the ministry. The administrative dimension of the whole arrangement would thus be united in one person acting in the combined capacity as Director General of the new planning and analysis department, Secretary General to the Chief committee of research and the Cabinet committee of research, and member and secretary in what would become known as the Ottosen committee. This person was none other than the previously mentioned Kjell Eide, who was called home from a position in the OECD (where he had been since his engagement with the Kleppe committee) to put on the whole stack of hats.303 Upon Eide’s return in April 1964, a project was established in the Ministry of education under his leadership to prepare the launch of this structure. Among other things, the mandate and composition of the Ottosen committee was drafted.304 And

302 The arrangement was inspired by the OECD’s Piagnol report from 1963. Cf, Edgeir Benum, “Et nytt forskningspolitisk regime,” Historisk tidsskrift 4 (2007) and Hans Skoie, “Norsk forskningspolitikk- en OECD-kopi?” Historisk tidsskrift 2 (2008). 303 Kjell Eide has discussed this period extensively in his own publications, cf Kjell Eide, Departementets lille kanarifugl: eller: kulturpolitikk blir til (Oslo: mimeo, 1985), Kjell Eide, Vitenskapeliggjøring av politikk (Oslo, Utredningsinstituttet for forskning og høyere utdanning, 1995); Kjell Eide, OECD og norsk utdanningspolitikk (Oslo: Utredningsinstituttet for forskning og høyere utdanning, 1995). 304 In a highly interesting internal 29-page note to minister Sivertsen, Eide outlines the challenges facing higher education at this juncture. In the note he discusses the appointment of a new temporary committee of inquiry, and also drafts a mandate. Cf. Kjell Eide, “Yrkesutdanning for ‘artianere’”. Note dated 29 May 1964, the Ministry of church affairs and education, the National archive, Riksarkivet, file RA/S6147/D/Da/L0009/0004 “Ottosen-komiteen. Diverse bakgrunnsstoff.” The same file in the National archive includes an undated document with a list of possible members for the Ottosen committee, revealing that two well-known Norwegian academics were at one time considered for membership: the philosopher Arne Næss and the educational researcher Eva Nordland. I have not seen this list or these names mentioned in previous research on the Ottosen committee. In view of their strong and original views on educa-

158 │ The transformation of humanities education

in the fall of 1965, the committees were formally appointed. But only weeks later the Labor party lost its first parliamentary election since WWII, and the situation was changed. The newspapers noted that the whole arrangement of committees in this field – like in other fields – was dominated by people with Labor party affiliations or sympathies, including seven of the nine original members of Ottosen committee.305 There was also a suspicion abroad – and not a very far-fetched one – that minister Sivertsen had appointed members to the Ottosen committee and the Chief committee for research during the summer months of 1965 because he suspected an impending electoral defeat and wanted to establish a policymaking structure that would ensure continued work along the lines he and his party had advocated.306 Against this background it was somewhat surprising that the new minister of education, Kjell Bondevik from the Christian democratic party, did not cancel or reappoint the committees, but contented himself with adding a few new members who were affiliated with the parties of the new coalition government, nearly all of them academics. He also furnished the committees with separate secretariats, thereby weakening the links to the ministry’s new Department for planning and analysis – as well as diminishing somewhat the influence of Kjell Eide, who was by this time unmistakably a Labor party figure, having served as a Secretary of state at the prime minister’s office during the electoral campaign that fall.307 Thus it was that the Ottosen committee ended up with 14 members, most of them academics, and with a rather wide representation of the political parties. An interesting feature of the Labor minister’s planned policymaking structure is that whereas the Kleppe committee had discussed and made proposals for both higher education and research – since the mandate was concerned with a building program for the universities and university colleges as institutions –, the two (organizationally coupled) function systems were now to be handled by different policymaking mechanisms. How it was all planned to work out is difficult to tell (if, indeed, the plans were fully thought through). The ministry’s new planning and analysis department was probably supposed to serve as a coupling mechanism

tion, well known in Norway, it is interesting to speculate how Næss or Norland, or the two of them together, would have influenced the committee’s policy proposals and the heated debates they provoked. 305 Aftenposten, 2 September 1965, p. 2. 306 In the conservative press, the documents pertaining to such last-minute decisions were called prime minister Gerhardsen’s “posthumous papers” [Gerhardsens etterlatte papirer]. 307 For Eide’s own account, see Kjell Eide, Departementets lille kanarifugl, 40.

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 159

between the two. But research and higher education were now clearly viewed as separate policy fields, each with its own problems. Research was an area where the operational autonomy now demanded an arms-length’s distance and a long-term perspective, whereas higher education was clearly deemed to be both a more urgent concern, politically speaking, and a field where policymaking could still legitimately be more politically oriented. The fact that much of the two-channeled policymaking structure survived the change of government indicates that it reflected the perspective not only of the Labor Party, but of the political system as such. The mandate of the Ottosen committee – a fairly long document, cited in the first report – was almost exclusively concerned with educational capacity.308 It asked the committee to propose ways for existing universities and university colleges to expand their current capacity, and to consider the possibilities for organizing “elementary instruction” (i.e. the propaedeutic course in philosophy and certain undergraduate courses) outside of traditional academic institutions. Furthermore, it asked the committee to assess the demand for and possible formats of a new kind of higher education that could provide “alternatives to lengthy programs at universities and university colleges.”309 Lastly, the committee was asked to assess the demand for higher education in a long time perspective, and to suggest locations of new institutions (in addition to Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim, and Tromsø – the last two of which were already decided upon by this time). Despite the entanglements of its appointment, the fourteen member strong committee worked fast once it had constituted itself, and was able to present its first “framework” report in June 1966. Then followed four additional reports, the last of which summarized the committee’s proposals in 1970. All the major policy issues were touched upon in the first report. On a few of them the committee was ready to offer principled statements, but for the most part the first report just raised and framed questions it wanted to discuss – internally in the committee, with the institutions, and with the general public. And discuss they did. Especially after the publication of the second report, which proposed more structured degree programs in the “open” university studies (including the humanities), the student protest movement made the Ottosen committee one of its prime targets, accusing the committee (and most of its perspectives and proposals) of playing into the hands of the technocratic state, which in turn was

308 The Ottosen committee, Innstilling om videreutdanning for artianere m.v., Vol. 1 (Oslo: Enger, 1966) 5. 309 Ibid.

160 │ The transformation of humanities education

condemned as the handmaiden of capitalism.310 In retrospect it is striking how similar the arguments and the formats of these protests were to events in many other European countries.311 In Norway, however, the student protesters found allies among the most influential faculty, especially of the younger generation, and from the late 1960s even rectors and many older academics displayed considerable tolerance and even support for their ideas. Unlike the situation in many other Western countries, where the student protests were forcefully directed at the academic establishment, the rhetorical battle-line in Norway was therefore mostly drawn between academia (including students and faculty) on one hand and the twin systems of politics and the economy on the other (sometimes conflated into “the establishment”).312 For almost a decade, the Ottosen committee served as the avatar of this elusive but powerful societal establishment on the students’ own turf.313 Where were the humanities in all of this? They were right in the middle of it. As predicted by the Kleppe committee, and by Parliament, humanities programs had attracted a large share of the increase in students, especially since the early 1960s. By the late 1960s, humanities students were so numerous, especially at Oslo, that their situation was the major illustration in news stories about the general problem of overcrowded universities – despite the recently completed building program. Part of the problem, at least as seen from the point of view of policymakers, was that time-to-degree was unusually long in the humanities. Another aspect was that even

310 The Norwegian student protesters wrote a large body of literature, some of which is cited in Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, Den store transformasjonen, 317ff. Possibly the most vehement criticism of the Ottosen committee was Harald Berntsen, Studenter og byråkrati. Ottosen-komiteen partert og anrettet på spidd (Oslo. Pax, 1969). 311 It is also striking how the stances of the student protesters have colored much of the later research literature on the Ottosen committee, and on Norwegian higher education policy in general, cf. for instance Ivar Bleiklie, Roar Høstaker, and Agnete Vabø, Policy and Practice in Higher Education, 86ff. 312 The leading conservative daily Aftenposten in a 1972 editorial warned that a university which so uniformly dedicated itself – with its faculty members as well as its students – to a critique of society might find that society eventually would answer with a similarly mercyless critique of the university. See Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, Den store transformasjonen, 352. 313 One of the leading student protesters spoke of “…the state bureaucracy that, in the form of the Ottosen committee, appears to put forth solutions that promotes the interests of the private sector in the sphere of the university.” Steinar Stjernø, interviewed in Det politiske universitet. En bok om studenter og makt, ed. Tore Linné Eriksen (Oslo: Pax, 1969) 85.

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 161

though a majority of the candidates still ended up as teachers, humanities students were increasingly seen as undetermined with regards to future careers (a topic I shall return to in part four). In the last half of the 1960s there were still no real unemployment issues, but there was a sense that an increasing share of the humanities students considered themselves to be more or less “free-floating” intellectuals, at least for as long as they were still students. This impression was strengthened by the fact that the humanities – in particular philosophy – became the epicenter of the student protests. Admissions policy A relatively large and visible part of Norwegian higher education, the humanities programs at the universities would of course be strongly impacted – directly and indirectly – by most of the general policies of the Ottosen committee. In addition, the committee’s reports contained discussions and proposals more specifically directed at the humanities. The overall reform strategy of the Ottosen committee, elaborated throughout all of its five reports, was that continued massification of higher education in Norway was indeed possible, but only if several lines of reform were pursued simultaneously. Three items were particularly important: 1) more structured programs at the existing universities, 2) two additional universities, and 3) a new type of district colleges to be established all over the country. 314 Behind these policies was a general policy principle that had been present in the Kleppe committee in embryonic form, and which now was clearly articulated: Higher education had to be conceptualized as “a central welfare good for the individual citizen.”315 This was one of the few issues settled already in the first report, presumably because it was considered to be uncontroversial at this stage. As we have seen above, the proposals of the Kleppe committee had been adjusted by prognoses of labor market demand, but the real policy objective already in the early 1960s had been meeting (as far as possible) the students’ demand, as the subsequent parliamentary debate also demonstrated. In the opening pages of its first report, the Ottosen committee could therefore state rather confidently that it interpreted the mandate’s use of the phrase “demand for educational capacity” as meaning the applicants’ “demand for education” and not “access to qualified labor sufficient to

314 Cf. in particular The Ottosen committee, Innstilling om videreutdanning for artianere m.v., Vol. 1, 16-19. In addition, continuing and furthering education (with reference to “lifelong learning”) was deemed important and elaborated in report 4. I will not discuss this policy here, however. 315 The Ottosen committee, Innstilling om videreutdanning for artianere m.v., Vol. 1, 12.

162 │ The transformation of humanities education

meet the demands in working life.”316 The committee was also remarkably confident in arguing that a continued massive increase in higher education capacity would be beneficial for both the individual candidates and for society at large – based on a continued and unflinching trust in the capacity of the labor market to absorb academically trained candidates without significant problems. As in the Kleppe committee’s report, positing self-regulatory mechanisms was an essential part of this argument. On the macro level, mutual adjustments of supply and demand in the two markets (for admission, and for labor) would ensure an overall balance: “The committee also recognizes the fact that in the long run there is no clear-cut contradiction between the [labor market’s] demand for personnel and the [students’] demand for education, since assessments of demand, developments in the labor market, and applications to higher education are all part of an interactive process [et vekselvirkningsforhold] which tends to even 317

out discrepancies.”

At the level of the individual candidates, the “elasticity” argument from the Kleppe report was repeated: “It seems to be a common observation that educated candidates are very adaptable; they find employment in new areas even if there is currently no demand in the field the educational 318

program was originally designed for.”

In its fifth and final report, the committee took this trust in self-regulating mechanisms to its logical conclusion and advocated the view that all higher education programs should have completely open access. The ultimate aim was that anyone with a diploma from secondary school should be able to choose a higher education program freely, without further restrictions. In combination with free tuition and governmental loans and stipends to cover most of the living costs, this should remove the last obstacles to complete educational freedom. In the (very few) situations where restricted access had to be implemented, for whatever reason, the committee proposed that selection among qualified candidates should be based on a lottery.

316 Ibid., 6. Of course, this confidence stemmed from intimate knowledge of the intentions behind the mandate, which had been drafted by Kjell Eide. 317 Ibid., 12 318 Ibid.

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 163

Unsurprisingly, this utopian admissions policy was never implemented. In hindsight, it seems so off the charts that one is left wondering why it was even proposed, especially since the Ottosen committee’s first report from 1966 was much more conservative and, as it turned out, realistic, in this respect. In 1966, the committee had underscored that although long term capacity building should ideally be based on the “welfare principle,” the scarcities of resources and certain other factors would at least in the near future impose some restrictions: “This does not mean that every educational program at all times must accept all qualified applicants who put themselves forward. It is realistic to assume that many programs will still have to regulate access beyond the minimum requirement of a secondary school diploma. Moreover, society’s demand for qualified personnel (as far as this can be predicted) must play a significant role in capacity building for the individual types of programs – especially the 319

programs that are in need of the highest investments.”

Why, then, the change from this 1966 realism to the 1970 utopianism? One reason might have been that the 1970 argument for completely open access appears to have been articulated under the influence of the radical critique the committee was subjected to by the student protesters in the late 1960s. Even if this admissions policy could be (and has since been) characterized as a “market” mechanism, it amounted to an “opening up” of higher education, and was thus in line with demands from the students and (the more or less politically radical) academic community at this time. But even more important, in my view, was the function this policy had in the overall architecture of the Ottosen committee’s proposals. Throughout the five reports, the committee underscored (as the mandate from the ministry had also strongly suggested) that policymaking in the field of higher education should henceforth be comprehensive and systemic. Therefore, the committee argued, the various policy proposals – especially the three strands mentioned above – should be implemented “as an integrated whole.”320 A major threat to this “holistic” policy perspective, it turned out, was the cleavage in higher education between “open” and “closed” programs, and the dynamic this cleavage produced. The committee mentioned this issue already in the first report, and returned to it with a comprehensive discussion in the final report of 1970. The major problem was that this distinction would necessarily result in stratification:

319 Ibid. 320 The Ottosen committee, Innstilling om videreutdanning for artianere m.v., Vol. 5, (Bergen, Reklametrykk,1970) 9.

164 │ The transformation of humanities education

“A qualitative equal standing [kvalitativ likestilling] among the institutions implies that none of them must be allowed to establish restricted access. If one institution is allowed to establish such a special status, most students will first apply there, and other institutions risk receiving mainly students who have been rejected from the first one. Thereby a clear hierar321

chy is permanently established between the institutions.”

To avoid prestige hierarchies, whether between fields of study or between institutions, was an ideological goal in itself for some of the committee members – as was leveling out existing ones as far as possible. The members affiliated with the Labor party seem to have been motivated by such ideas. But even from a more conservative viewpoint it could be argued – or at least felt – that there was no tradition in Norway for one institution (for instance the University of Oslo) to consider itself academically superior to others of its own kind – mainly because there had been only one institution of each kind in the country until fairly recently, but also because criteria and procedures for assessing academic superiority was lacking. Thus, there seems to have been a fairly wide consensus in the committee (across the political spectrum) that the emergence of new prestige hierarchies which were due for instance to students’ preference for studying in Oslo, was not desirable in principle. But principles are one thing, the humdrum practicalities of how educational capacity fills up at the institutions is something else. And in reality, stratification had already begun – although not primarily between institutions. During the decade since the late 1950s, massifying Norwegian higher education had largely meant overcrowding the open programs such as the humanities, whereas the “closed” professional programs were only moderately affected. As pointed out above, the Kleppe committee had foreseen and accepted this as an unfortunate but unavoidable consequence. As the 1960s progressed, however, the overload began to generate demands for numerus clausus to be applied to the open programs at Oslo.322 In

321 Ibid., 27. 322 As mentioned above, there was a changed view on this issue among students in the late 1960s. As late as in May 1966, the Student parliament was impatient to enforce restricted access to the open faculties at Oslo. Cf. “Innstilling fra studenttingets universitets- og høyskolekomité,” 9 May 1966, the National archive, Riksarkivet, file RA/S3022/D/Db/L0150/0002 “Adgangsregulering til HF: Smidtkomitéen.” However, by 1968 the new and radical student organization Faglig studentfront had managed to acquire complete ownership to the issue, voicing strong support for open programs, a position at least seemingly supported by a majority of the students, and, as it turned out, in line with the 1970 proposal from the Ottosen committee.

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 165

1963, the natural sciences were allowed, without much fuss from either the ministry or Parliament, to regulate access (which demanded a parliamentary decision). Because applications to the natural sciences did not continue to grow as much as had been feared, few applicants were actually turned down, and thus it could be argued that the precaution did not have large consequences. But of course it is possible that the restrictions actually contributed to decreasing the number of applications, in which case they worked as intended.323 When the Faculty of humanities at Oslo began to voice a demand for the same policy of restricted access in 1964, it encountered unexpected resistance. The proposal was initially supported by almost all parties at the university: the humanities departments, the faculty, the largest student organization, and also the university board and the rector. But when the University of Bergen was consulted, as a matter of courtesy, the dean as well as the rector there turned out to be strongly opposed to the proposal.324 They offered a series of reasons for their skepticism, including the ideal of academic freedom and the demands of secondary school for more teachers, but it was fairly obvious that the most important reason was the fear of stratification. However, in the end the major resistance came just as much from the ministry as from Bergen, even though the ministry used the University of Bergen’s opposition for all it was worth. After prolonged deliberation, the ministry said that it could not support the proposal from Oslo, partly because it did not consider the situation to be as bad as described (especially not if certain “rationalization” measures would only be implemented), and partly because the problems were only temporary: the number of applicants were believed to decrease in a few years, and besides, the capacity increase at Bergen, effective in a few years, would by then alleviate the situation at Oslo. The ministry was processing the proposal from the University of Oslo in several stages during the years from 1964 to 1966, at the same time as the Ottosen committee was preparing its first report. Internal documents from the ministry show that all of the top civil servants as well as the minister and the secretary of state were opposed to restricted access. The most dedicated opponent was the previously mentioned Kjell Eide, whose planning and analysis department drew up a substantial report in which both the factual and the principled arguments for restricted access were countered.325 Whether it was this report that persuaded the minster is

323 Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, Den store transformasjonen, 233. 324 As mentioned in the literature review, Thue and Helsvig discuss this. Ibid. 325 Cf. the note entitled “Undervisningssituasjonen ved Det historisk-filosofiske fakultet ved Universitetet i Oslo,” signed by Anne-Marie Fetveit in the ministry’s Department for planning and analysis, dated 10 March 1966, the National arcive, Riksarkivet, file

166 │ The transformation of humanities education

hard to say. As we shall see below, he might have had other reasons, too. But it is noteworthy that whereas previously it had been mostly the Conservative party that had argued for open access at Oslo, arguments against restricted access were now being articulated from a variety of political and pragmatic perspectives.326 Eide had for quite some time been opposed to restricted access, and although his influence on other issues was somewhat diminished under the coalition government from 1965, it seems the arguments he and his department in the ministry produced had a significant impact not only on the ministry but also on the Ottosen committee. By 1970 the strange thing had happened that even if the situation for the humanities faculty at Oslo was worse than ever, with student enrollment going through the roof, the arguments against restricted access also seemed stronger than ever. Finalizing its fifth and final report, the Ottosen committee therefore had to come up with an admissions policy that avoided two highly problematic outcomes. Letting the overcrowding of the humanities at Oslo continue by keeping it as one of the few fields of study with open access was no longer acceptable, at least not as an argued position.327 But enforcing numerus clausus here was also not acceptable. Not only

RA/S-6147/D/Da/L0009/0004 “Ottosen-komiteen. Diverse bakgrunnsstoff.” In a cover letter affixed to the note, Eide says that although the report might seem to be an argument against restricted access, his department really has no opinion on the matter. In view of the context, this seems to me disingenuous, and minutes from a later meeting between the ministry and the two universities (on 2 May 1966, handwritten minutes available in the file cited above) clearly show that Eide consistently argued against restricted access, and that he also had the other top civil servants as well as the minister on his side in this issue – although perhaps for slightly different reasons. Other documents in the cited file also demonstrate that the ministry deliberately used the opposition from Bergen to avoid a direct confrontation between the ministry and the University of Oslo, and that the ministry’s intention was that the rectorate at Oslo should accept that the situation the humanities faculty was not as critical as it was presented – at least not yet. 326 The arguments used by the Conservative party were principled, and turned on equal educational opportunity as well as academic traditions, but in choosing this particular issue to advocate equality, and not others, the suspicion was raised that the Conservative party was mainly concerned for the careers of upper middle class youths, and also used the issue as an opportunity to criticize the Labor party government. 327 The committee explicitly discusses and dismisses this option: “With the expansion to be expected at the University of Oslo, one must count on considerable problems which may decrease the attractiveness of its educational programs. However, it would be questionable to use this as deliberate policy to distribute the students among the various in-

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 167

would it – as we have seen – result in differences in prestige which would be unfortunate from an ideological point of view; it would jeopardize the “balanced” buildup of Bergen and the other universities, and in addition it would create problems for the district colleges. In short, it would create a domino effect which would undermine the whole national system of higher education: “In the committee’s view there is a considerable risk that the conditions at the University of Oslo will make it necessary to restrict the access to that institution, with the detrimental consequences this will have for the other universities. Should such measures be followed by similar measures at the other universities, the problem would be shifted unto other higher education institutions. The possibility for establishing the district colleges as a real alternative 328

to university education would then be mostly wasted.”

When this argument was made in 1970, the district college policy was already in the process of being implemented under the protection of minister Bondevik, who had responded enthusiastically to the idea of decentralizing higher education when it had been first presented in report two from the Ottosen committee in 1967.329 It was not only the minster who saw the potential for political gain in this policy, however. By the late 1960s, postwar state centralism had given way to the political program of “building the districts,” a slogan that had been gradually adopted across the political spectrum and turned into a policy field in its own right.330 The general tendency of each district to look out for itself was thereby furnished with a new legitimation. The interests of the new universities were thus jealously guarded by

stitutions.” The Ottosen committee, Innstilling om videreutdanning for artianere m.v., Vol. 5, 28. 328 Ibid. 329 The minster, Kjell Bondevik from the Christian democratic party, had promptly asked the committee to change the planned sequence of the ensuing reports in order to begin experimenting with establishing district colleges as soon as possible. The committee concurred, and report three, which was originally meant to discuss lifelong learning, was devoted to the district colleges. By 1970, six district colleges had already been established. Cf. Svein Kyvik (ed.), Fra yrkesskole til universitet? Endringsprosesser i høgskolesektoren. 330 The establishment of a governmental fund for investments in the districts [Distriktenes utbyggingsfond] in 1961 had been a breakthrough for this policy field, which gathered considerable force in the 1960s and 1970s. For a brief summary, see Håvard Teigen, “ Distriktspolitikkens historie: Frå nasjonal strategi til regional fragmentering?” Plan 43.6 (2011).

168 │ The transformation of humanities education

politicians from the cities of Bergen, Trondheim, and Tromsø, while the rest of the Norwegian counties, most of them considered too sparsely populated to support a university, jumped at the new format of the district college as a chance to experiment with small-scale academic entrepreneurship, hoping to attract jobs and to prevent local youths from moving to the cities. The enthusiasm for academic decentralization was not limited to the local level. MPs from all parties would naturally look to the interests of their own constituencies, supported by general “district policy” objectives in most of the parties’ programs. Thus, when the Ottosen committee emphatically stated that its overall reform agenda, including the district college policy, precluded restricted access at Oslo, it could reasonably expect that Parliament would at least think twice before allowing it. However, to argue that the humanities (and the social sciences, where the situation was now also very difficult) at Oslo should be denied the use of restricted admission while the natural sciences, medicine, and others were granted it, would hardly be consistent. The more radical proposal of opening up all programs solved this conundrum rather neatly for the committee. It allowed for a principally argued admissions policy which was congruent with the buildup of a decentralized “system” of higher education institution, and left the practical problems to the ministry, and to Parliament. It should be remembered that the flavor of utopianism we detect in this policy today may not have appeared so strange in the early 1970s, the period that educational historian Alfred Oftedal Telhaug has termed the “neo-radical period” in Norwegian education.331 Influential groups at the universities were actually on board: A university admissions committee appointed by the 21st Rectors’ conference in 1969 concluded by supporting the Ottosen committee’s demand for completely open access when it presented its report in 1971.332

331 “In the educational sector, the neo-radicals characterized the postwar social democracy as authoritarian. The new goal was to socialize the pupils into becoming self-governing individuals or the subjects of their own training. The central steering of the educational sector was weakened in favor of regional and local autonomy. Detailed laws and regulations were replaced by frame laws and frame plans.” Alfred Oftedal Telhaug, “Velferdsstat og utdanning i Norge – to sider av samme sak,” Utdannelseshistorie. Årbok. (Copenhagen: Selskapet for skole- og uddannelseshistorie, 2006) 43. 332 This committee, commonly referred to as “immatrikuleringskomiteen”, was chaired by the educational researcher and Labor party affiliate Eva Norland. Its proposals were widely accepted by the universities.

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 169

Other policies While the admissions policy discussed above is what usually catches the eye of later researchers, it was the Ottosen committee’s proposals for more resource effective program structure in the open studies which attracted most attention, and most controversy, at the time. The two are connected in that the policy for more structured programs was explicitly designed to increase throughput and thus alleviate the capacity problems in the open programs, especially at Oslo. This had a double significance for the humanities programs, which were both the least structured (with time-to-degree averaging 10 years for the graduate civil service exam [embetseksamen]) and the most overcrowded type of studies. The policy for program structure was briefly mentioned in the first report of 1966, in response to a direct request in the mandate. The committee made the point that “[t]there is no necessary connection between firmly structured programs and restricted access; one could equally well have “open” programs where students follow a tightly structured path 333

through their studies.”

How structure could be applied was then elaborated in great detail in the second report from 1967. The main proposal, or at least the one which attracted the most attention, was dividing the undergraduate degree into two two-year cycles, of which the first should serve as an entry requirement for the second. Other proposals were introducing a course-credit system of the American type (which the natural sciences had already implemented), and counteracting “research drift” at the graduate level: “The normal function of graduate programs should be to serve as the completion of a full education, not to be a selection mechanism for recruitment to research. The work on the thesis should therefore be more concentrated and focused on its aim, for instance to furnish the 334

competency needed for teaching in secondary school.”

I shall not dwell on the details of this policy or the debate it aroused. Suffice it to say that although the policy was primarily aimed at reducing time-to-degree, it also contained some elements that could be characterized as vocationally oriented (as in the quoted passage). It is noteworthy in our context that the section which outlined the proposed program structure for the humanities at both Oslo and Bergen simply

333 The Ottosen committee, Innstilling om videreutdanning for artianere m.v., Vol. 1, 19. 334 The Ottosen committee, Innstilling om videreutdanning for artianere m.v., Vol. 2 (Oslo, Enger, 1967) 17.

170 │ The transformation of humanities education

contained a reference to the section on the natural sciences at Oslo, which the committee set up (with some adjustments) to be the model for most of the other open programs. No doubt, this added to the fierceness of the ensuing debate in the academic community, especially in the humanities and social sciences, and in the media. Turning on such familiar distinctions as Bildung/vocationalism and critique/instrumentalism, and fueled by the Norwegian version of the Positivismusstreit, this debate has been extensively discussed elsewhere.335 In our context the major point is that the protests from students and from the academic community (and especially from the humanities) were so strong that the committee was forced to moderate its proposals already in the third report from 1968. In particular, the suggestion that the two first years should be “a period of trial and selection” was practically dropped.336 This meant that the Ottosen committee was left with very few realistic proposals which could alleviate the pressure on the humanities programs at Oslo, and nothing which could check the national growth in the number of humanities students. The new universities at Trondheim and Tromsø could be expected to take some of the pressure off Oslo in the long run, but as the developments at Bergen had demonstrated previously, it would take quite a few years before a new university would attract students in a significant number. The emerging sector of district colleges offered short, vocationally oriented education, not the Anglo-American style of

335 See for instance Mette Torp Christensen, Fra akademiske idealer til radikalisering og studentopprør – En studie av Det Norske Studentersamfund ved Universitetet i Oslo 1963-1972, master thesis [hovedoppgave] (Oslo: University of Oslo, 2002); Tor Egil Førland and Trine Rogg Korsvik (eds.) 1968. Opprør og motkultur på norsk (Oslo: Pax Forlag, 2006); Rune Slagstad (ed.) Positivisme, dialektikk, materialisme. Den norske debatten om samfunnsvitenskapens teori (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1976); Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, Den store transformasjonen; Ivar Bleiklie, Roar Høstaker, and Agnete Vabø, Policy and Practice in Higher Education. 336 The committee claimed that the elaborate outline of structural reform in report two had been “misinterpreted” – and that it had never been its intention “that this sketch should be taken as the proposal for formal regulations.” Furthermore, the committee said it realized that many exceptions would be necessary, and that students should at any rate be allowed a second chance through continuation exams. Cf. The Ottosen committee, Innstilling om videreutdanning for artianere m.v., Vol. 3, 8. In report five, where all of the policy proposals are summarized, the committee barely mentions the policy of more structured programs, and includes the same disclaimer text about having been misunderstood in 1967. The Ottosen committee, Innstilling om videreutdanning for artianere m.v., Vol. 5, 11.

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 171

liberal college education which had also been considered at one point.337 They would therefore hardly offer an alternative to students who were genuinely interested in the humanities, although they could perhaps attract students who would otherwise have ended up in the humanities for want of other options. The outcome of the Ottosen committee As the 1970s commenced, the scale of Norwegian humanities education had reached a whole new level. The number of humanities students at the Norwegian universities and university colleges had almost tripled since 1960, and was approaching 7000. The relative share of the total number of students in Norwegian higher education had declined somewhat in the last half of the 1960s, from over 30% in 1964-65 to 21% in 1970, but this was to a large extent due to the corresponding rise of social science education, which had been differentiated from the humanities as a separate faculty at Oslo since 1963. If we look at the output of humanities graduates from the universities, the growth is striking. In 1960 the number of undergraduate (cand. mag.) degrees awarded was 134, and for the graduate (cand.philol.) degree the number was 57. In 1970 the corresponding numbers were 633 and 233 – an increase of 370% and 310%, respectively.338 Most of the expansion, at both Oslo and Bergen, had come in the traditionally large disciplines that qualified for the teacher profession (history, Nordic studies, and English studies in particular), but also the more research oriented disciplines (such as philosophy, general literature studies, ethnography, etc.) had grown significantly.339 The former programs had now grown into veritable student factories compared to ten years earlier, and the latter, which had been rather small and esoteric niches, had acquired a scale that few would have thought possible in the 1950s. The unprecedented scale of humanities education around 1970, and especially its continued growth at this time, seems to call for additional explanations. Had the humanities now become a self-perpetuating fad? Was there something about the “spirit of 1968” that was particularly compatible with the humanities – and, it should be added, with the social sciences? If so, how can we understand this generational “spirit”?

337 Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, Den store transformasjonen, 242. 338 All figures are taken from NOS Statistics Norway. 339 See Fredrik Thue, “Det humanistiske fagfeltets historie,” Universitetet i Bergens historie, Vol. 2, 493 and Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, Den store transformasjonen, 303ff.

172 │ The transformation of humanities education

A precondition of particular importance for the cultural phenomenon of “1968” seems to have been the dramatic expansion of secondary schooling in the postwar era.340 With an increasing share of each cohort spending the formative years between the ages of 16 and 19 among peers of exactly the same age, but of a more diverse social background than had previously been the case in secondary school, it is not strange that the cohorts coming of age in the 1960s were influenced more by their contemporaries than their elders (parents, teachers) in lifestyle and career choices.341 This seems to have had consequences for their thoughts on education and self-formation. Observing their peers, and the cohorts immediately above them, it increasingly dawned on young people of both sexes that the emerging postwar social structure did not, as previously, determine the futures of youths on the basis of social origin, but in principle put a responsibility on each of them individually for constructing an identity, and even an “identity politics.”342 Art – especially rock music, film, and modern literature – came to play an important role in this, as a site for individual identity construction, as well as a common cultural frame of reference for a whole generation faced with this Bildung challenge on a scale hitherto unseen. Of course, radical art had been available earlier too, from the age of roman-

340 There were almost 15 000 graduates in 1955/56, more than 40 000 in 1965/66 and more than 50 000 in 1970/71, cf. Statistics Norway (NOS Utdanningsstatistikk). 341 This is what Margaret Mead called the co-figurative paradigm. Margaret Mead, Culture and Commitment: A Study of the Generation Gap (NY: Doubleday, 1970) 32. Regarding students from labor class or lower middle class background, it has been suggested that parents would often be supportive of further studies in the 1960s, but without being able to offer much advice regarding the choice of programs – in practice leaving this to the students’ own preference. Cf. Harald Berntsen, Det lange friminuttet. Et essay om ungdom i 1960-åra (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1998) 34ff. 342 In combination with the program of radical critique of modernity, this entailed many contradictions. On the one hand the students in this period tended to distance themselves from their elders (parents as well as professors), but they also wanted to criticize contemporary society as progressively more alienating, in contrast to a previous community of more organic solidarity (albeit based on domination). The following excerpt from an interview with a student politician may serve as an illustration: “They [students] no longer see their future as members of the power elite, the upper class that is supposed to administer this society. Students no longer become justices and judges, priests and secondary school teachers across the country. Instead they become narrow specialists [avanserte fagidioter], technicians with university education charged with administering a society that is in reality irrational.” Lars Alldén, member of the Student Parliament for the humanities students, interviewed in Det politiske universitetet, 101.

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 173

ticism to the beat generation, but its influence had been restricted to limited strata and subcultures in society. What was new in the 1960s was that the mass media had acquired the capacity for global distribution of these art forms, exposing the entire generation (or at least the culturally dominant part of it) to many of the same cultural influences. The phase of Bildung in a person’s life was also extended in the other end by the two recent innovations of student loans and contraception, which made it possible for youths around 1970 to postpone family life for quite some time beyond what was traditional practice. Thus, youth-hood was both prolonged as a stage in the life of the individual (lasting now from the early teens until well into the twenties) and expanded socially as a common socio-cultural experience for a whole generation across regional and even national borders. This seems to have produced a self-propelling generational effect whereby various socio-cultural tendencies, once past a certain tipping point, would escalate by isomorphism in a manner previously unseen. Some such “viral” mechanism seems to have been at work around 1970 regarding the popularity of humanities education. But even if the growth was unprecedented, and far surpassed both the prognoses and the capacity of the institutions, it seems none of the actors relevant to higher education policymaking thought it was in their interest to intervene with regulations at this time. The Ottosen committee was content to say that with its policy proposal of completely open access to higher education it had treated the humanities on a par with all the other programs. In addition it had offered the advice of applying more structure and shortening the programs. If that advice was ignored by the humanities faculties and their students, it was at their own peril. Then they would simply have to put up with continued massification until alternatives became available. The student organizations on their part had turned around and were now, from ca. 1968, fiercely opposed to restricted access as well as to structured programs on ideological grounds.343 The University of Oslo, the dominant institution in the humanities, had become reluctant to do anything about the growth in student numbers, partly because the new rectorate from 1970 gathered from the heated debate associated with the Ottosen committee that the climate in the academic community had changed, and also because the budgeting procedures had made the whole institution dependent upon the funding that followed the students.344 In Norway, the im-

343 Cf. note 203 above. 344 Johs. Andenes, the new rector, was more sympathetic to the student protesters than his predecessor, and in 1971 he even organized a joint protest meeting with them against the government’s budget proposal. As for the budgeting based on ratios, cf. Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, Den store transformasjonen, 235-37.

174 │ The transformation of humanities education

portance of this mechanism of cross-subsidizing had been recognized in the academic community at least since the lobbying strategy of the Joint committee in the mid-1950s. By the late 1960s it seems to have become a commonplace, as can be gleaned from the following statement made by the rector at Oslo, Hans Vogt, in a debate on the aims of the university in 1968: “Political authorities in most countries are more supportive of expenses pertaining to education than to theoretical research – because they are interested in the candidates who are in demand in society, teachers, lawyers, physicians, etc. If we were to separate the teaching functions of the universities from research, we would undoubtedly risk that the teaching institutions would be economically favored over the research institutions, which in periods of dearth would suffer the most. […] By demonstrating a close connection between research and education we have a better opportunity for making all funding for education automatically useful also for research. My conclusion is: No strict demarcation line between teaching and research, between researcher and teacher. The conflicts that may arise should be solved on an 345

individual basis within our own walls as far as possible.”

Lastly, the ministry and many of the parliamentarians were reluctant to interfere, partly because they did not want a confrontation with student protesters, and partly out of concern for the stratification effect which the Ottosen committee had warned against – which was now also debated in the media. Summary Applying the conceptual framework of systems theory, we can formulate a summary of the above as follows. The organizations affiliated with the political system had come to view higher education as a welfare good, which meant that its availability for all and its regional distribution were more pressingly important issues than its inherent qualities and even its vocational relevance (at least as long as these did not drop beneath a critical level). The humanities faculties, insofar as they operated according to the logic of the function system of research, were certainly distracted by the student growth, which took time away from research, but had at the same time grown dependent upon high enrollments as a cross-subsidizing mechanism. In their capacity as the third tier of the educational system, the humanities faculties were gradually ceasing to see themselves as teacher training institutions and

345 Hans Vogt, “Konflikten mellom undervisning, forskning og administrasjon.” Universitetets formål, eds. Robert Hutchins & al (Oslo: Studieselskapet samfunn og næringsliv, 1968) 187-88, my emphasis.

The humanities and higher education policymaking, 1955-1975 │ 175

increasingly operated according to what Luhmann has termed the “contingency formula” of Bildung.346 In its democratized and universalized reformulation, the concept of Bildung could no longer be reserved for the elite, but applied to everyone – i.e. to as many students as possible. In keeping with what they had come to believe was their Humboldtian legacy, the humanities faculties also resisted any reform effort smacking of streamlining or (reintroduced) vocationalism. The fourth function system relevant for higher education, the economy, was still not systematically represented in the policymaking process, and as long as qualified candidates of various types were plentiful and economic growth was dependable, there was no immediate need for employers or their organizations to be concerned, either with educational growth in general, or with the number of humanities candidates in particular. In addition to being propelled by the function system dynamics inherent in politics, research, and education, and at least accommodated by the state of the economy, there is no doubt that what young people around 1970 experienced as the “cultural climate” was favorable for humanities education. In the light of systems theory, the emergence of the generational paradigm associated with the year 1968 can be understood as preconditioned by profound changes in the system of the family (increased cross-generational social mobility, changing gender roles, and postponed nesting). In the system of art, new genres and formats evolved to accommodate and celebrate both the collective generational experience and the individual search for authenticity that these changes gave rise to. The reverse function, the blaming of everything deplorable on an externalized “establishment” was the purview of the new social movements. The effects of these developments in art and social movements were immensely magnified by technological advances in the media system, creating for the first time a global youth culture. The humanities seemed to be a site where all of these developments and preoccupations could flow together (even if some reorganization was necessary). Combined with an expansionist educational policy which lacked access barriers for this particular type of programs, and the fact that the labor market still seemed to support the graduates at the other end (as we shall see in part four), the popularity of the humanities had channeled a flood of Norwegian youths into these programs programs, a flood which in the early 1970s was at its strongest.

346 Niklas Luhmann and Karl-Eberhard Schorr, Problems of Reflection in the System of Education, 81.

8

Stagnation in humanities education, 1975–1987

But then something happened, because within a few years – by the mid-1970s – the growth in the humanities stopped. From a total enrollment of around 10 000 humanities students in 1970, the number rose to a peak of ca. 13 000 in 1975. Then, in the decade or so afterwards, student numbers were stabilized between 11 000 – 12 000. The period of stagnation lasted until 1988, when student numbers began rising again.347 How can we explain this stagnation?

8.1

EXPLANATIONS

An obvious hypothesis would be that the Norwegian humanities were hit by the general – and global – setback in higher education resulting from the economic crisis in the mid-1970s. And, indeed, this is clearly a part of the picture. But a closer look reveals, as I also mentioned in the literature review above, that the general accounts of the history of higher education, based on aggregated numbers, tend to disregard important and interesting differences between various kinds of higher education. For while humanities education stagnated in the late 1970s and in the 1980s, social science education – perhaps the closest parallel and competitor to humanities education – kept on growing steadily throughout the same period. Law studies and business and administration also expanded. Moreover, the stagnation in the humanities was unequally distributed across disciplines. It was first and fore-

347 All figures are taken from NOS Statistics Norway. In 1973/74 Statistics Norway introduced another categorization in its higher education statistics. The category “philology” was replaced by the more inclusive category “humanities and aesthetic disciplines” – which also included theology. The numbers used here to illustrate the development from 1970 to 1988 are based on the latter category, and are not directly comparable to the ones used earlier in this chapter, where the point was to illustrate the development in the 1960s.

178 │ The transformation of humanities education

most in the school teacher-relevant disciplines such as history, Nordic studies, English studies, etc., that a decline in student numbers occurred, while in the more research-oriented ones, such as philosophy and general literature studies, the problem was more an absence of continued growth.348 These differences suggest that just pointing to the general state of the economy does not provide a full explanation for stagnation in particular types of higher education programs. In the following I therefore examine four more specific changes that seem to have interacted with the general changes in the economic context (and with each other) in producing the mentioned development in the scale of humanities education from 1975 onwards. I will first examine changes in admissions policy – in continuation of the discussion in the previous section. Then I will discuss some important but intricate changes having to do with the recruitment potential from secondary education. Partly related to this I will briefly discuss certain developments in the labor market for humanities candidates (a topic which will be more fully discussed in part four), and fourth and last I will ask whether changes in the youth culture in the late 1970s might have turned some people away from the humanities. As we have seen in the previous section, there had been no effective intervention – from either of the implicated function systems – against the open access policy which flooded humanities education at Oslo in the late 1960s. The explosive growth had increasingly been observed and presented as problematic by the media system, however. It was mainly the practical problem of overcrowded auditoriums and libraries at Oslo that was considered newsworthy, but revealing and confronting the consequences of what was perceived as governmental underfunding was also much used journalistic angle, not the least because the Norwegian print media were at this time strongly coupled to political parties.349 In addition to this recurrent “irritation” from the media, the political system also had to adjust to several other environmental changes with consequences for higher education in the early 1970s.

348 Cf. White paper, St. meld. nr. 66 (1984-1985) Om høyere utdanning, 165. Cf. also Ole Jacob Skodvin, Den store utfordringen! Rekruttering til de humanistiske vitenskapene fram mot år 2010 (Oslo: NAVFs utredingsinstitutt. 1989) 49. 349 In the wake of the student protests some conservative commentators in the media came to view the growth in humanities (and social science) as a symptom of decadence. Among Labor party parliamentarians there was some irritation, too, and even suggestions that a mutual distrust between student groups and the rest of society could result in an unwillingness to fund the universities, cf. Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, Den store transformasjonen, 367). However, there was never such a “backlash” against the student protests in Norway as there was in other European countries and in the U.S.

Stagnation in humanities education, 1975–1987 │ 179

An incoming Labor government had responded to a worsening economic situation by cutting the funding of higher education in its first budget proposal for the year 1972.350 This was perceived as dramatic by the University of Oslo, which received the harshest cuts, and it caused an outcry in the media.351 When the budget proposal reached Parliament, the Labor majority in the parliamentary Standing committee on church affairs and education was not in a position to change their own government’s budget priorities, but responded to the criticism from the academic community in the media by asking the ministry, in the Standing committee’s report to the plenary session, to investigate policy alternatives in order to alleviate the situation for the open studies at Oslo, including the option of restricting access.352 At this time the Ottosen committee had presented its last report, and Parliament was waiting for the ministry to draw up a white paper. The Ottosen proposal of completely open access had therefore not been debated or put to the vote, but the argument that allowing Oslo to restrict access could jeopardize the balanced buildup of other institutions of “equal standing” was by now well known. Nevertheless, at least for the Labor Party the economic situation no longer allowed for continued increases in the funding of Oslo, and hence there was in reality no way programs like the humanities could be kept open without the party being exposed to intolerable levels of criticism.353

350 A top civil servant from the ministry had reportedly said to the university rectors at this juncture that “until the fall of 1971, the universities have been led astray by statements from politicians and from the Ottosen committee regarding the financial resources available in the years ahead.” Dag Omholdt, quoted in Narve Fulsås, Universitetet i Trømsø 25 år (Tromsø: The University of Tromsø, 1993) 168. 351 At Oslo, the rector hosted a press conference together with student representatives under the heading “From crisis to chaos” – a phrase that caught on in the media, and that is also cited in the report from the Parliamentary standing committee, cf. note 238 below. 352 The minority in the Standing committee, consisting of the parties from the previous coalition government, made an alternative verbal proposal that underscored the inadequate funding from the present Labor government in comparison with previous years, and asked the ministry to take action, but without mentioning restricted access. Cf. the Standing committee report on the budget proposal, Budsjett-innst. S. nr. 12 (1971-72), 13-15. 353 Labor party supporters in the educational sector, such as Ottosen, Eide, and others were most likely disappointed by this turn of events. They had succeeded in persuading the previous coalition government to refrain from regulating access, and now they were countered by their own party on this issue.

180 │ The transformation of humanities education

Shortly after the parliamentary vote on the budget for 1972, the ministry forwarded the Standing committee’s request for a new admissions policy to the rector at the University of Oslo, asking for a proposal on how to handle it, adding in a letter a few days later that the somber economic outlook meant that additional funding was mostly out of the question. In its usual fashion, the university consulted the implicated faculties (the humanities, social sciences, and law), which in turn consulted its departments. At the Faculty of social science, where overcrowding was now about as bad as in the humanities, (although on a smaller scale), there was a clear majority in favor of restricting access. At the Faculty of law, however, the principled resistance to restrictions was very strong. At the Faculty of humanities, there was a very close vote, with 33 to 32 in favor of restrictions – whereas seven years before, in 1965, there had been an overwhelming majority for restricted access, and only a few dissenting voices. Testament to the change in atmosphere can be found in the fact that both faculty meetings where the issue was debated and decided (at the faculties of humanities and social sciences) were interrupted by student protests against the proposed restrictions. Nevertheless, the university board’s proposal to the ministry obeyed by the faculties’ votes, suggesting restricted access in the humanities and social sciences effective from the fall of 1972.354 The first half of the 1970s saw a series of changes in government in Norway (no fewer than three in the years 1971-1973). One of the results was that the proposal for restricted access at Oslo was not presented to Parliament before 1973, at which time it was passed without further ado. Later that year, Parliament was presented with a white paper based on the five Ottosen reports, but due to another change in government it was withdrawn before the debate could take place. Thus, it was not until 1974 that Parliament received a revised white paper from the Labor government, and was finally allowed to debate the future of Norwegian higher education. This was ten years after Kjell Eide had prepared the first note on the Ottosen committee to minister Sivertsen, containing many of the most important Ottosen policies in embryo.355 As it would later turn out, it was also now the last year of the most dramatic period of expansion in Norwegian higher education ever. Neither the ministerial white paper nor the report from the parliamentary Standing committee can therefore be said to have had a strong impact on the major institutional outline or scope of Norwegian higher education. By 1974 the scale and shape of Norwegian

354 The board underscored that since it could only recommend enforcing a mild version of restricted access (turning away large numbers of applicants was considered unacceptable), it would take several years before this policy would be noticeable, and 6-8 years before it would have full impact. 355 Cf. note 185 above.

Stagnation in humanities education, 1975–1987 │ 181

higher education was in many respects a fait accompli. The binary system had been established by the coalition government in the late 1960s, and the flooding of especially the open programs at Oslo had been allowed to happen during the same period. But the Ottosen policies designed to make humanities education cope with the influx of students were never implemented, at least not as part of this policymaking process. More structured programs was still many years ahead, and the utopian policy of opening up all programs, which should counteract the flooding of the humanities in particular, was of course shelved (even though both the ministry and Parliament supported it as an ideal). On the other hand, the humanities faculty at Oslo had in the meanwhile been allowed, at long last, to restrict access. And as it happened, the growth in humanities education ended exactly when restricted access at Oslo first took effect – in 1975. But this was mainly coincidental. Restricted access at Oslo may have had some kind of “chilling effect” as it became known to potential applicants.356 But the most important causes of the stagnation seem to have lain elsewhere, for the growth stopped more or less simultaneously across the country, and, moreover, regulated access of the kind enforced at Oslo would not have had such a sudden impact.357 A second and probably more important cause of the stagnation in humanities enrollment was certain changes in secondary school. As previously indicated, one of the reasons behind the expansion of higher education in the 1960s had quite simply been an increase in the size of the relevant age group. Around 1970, the growth in this age group stopped, and its size remained at the same level until the mid-1980s.358 However, attendance in upper secondary school continued to in-

356 However, this seems not very likely to have had much impact in view of an experiment along the same path some ten years before. In 1964, while the ministry was deliberating the university’s proposal to restrict access, the humanities faculty at Oslo had been allowed to distribute a handout to secondary school leavers saying that access might be regulated the next year, with the aim of deterring applicants who were not strongly motivated. But the “chilling effect” did not work as intended – the increase in applicants the next year was just as high as previously. 357 At Bergen, the number of humanities students increased from ca. 2000 in 1970 to ca. 2300 in 1975, and then declined to ca. 1600 in 1980. Cf. Astrid Forland, “Studentvekst og politisk høgkonjunktur,” Universitetet i Bergens historie, Vol. 1, 613. 358 In the age group of 19-22 year olds, which covers the most usual enrollment ages, the total numbers varied between 160 000 and 180 000 in the 1950s. Then, in the period from 1960 to 1968, the number climbed from 172 000 to 255 000. After a short period of decline, the number stabilized between 240 000 and 250 000 for the period from ca.

182 │ The transformation of humanities education

crease, and to some extent compensated for the demographic stagnation in the relevant cohorts in the 1970s. In 1970 ca. 12 000 pupils graduated from upper secondary school, in 1975 the number was ca. 16 500, and by the end of the 1970s it was close to 20 000.359 Thus, due to an even greater share of youths attending upper secondary school, there was still an increase in the recruitment base for higher education. As a share of the 19-year olds, the completion rate of the secondary school track which qualified for higher education (examen artium/studieforberedende linje) grew from 23% in 1970 to 39% in 1981.360 But by this time secondary education had grown so much that its societal function was changing. The old academically oriented gymnasium was being transformed into one of the tracks in a comprehensive system of upper secondary schools, and hence put on a par with vocational education and training. As a result, upper secondary school was no longer perceived, at least not primarily, as a step towards higher education for the middle and upper class youths, but had rather become (and this included the remnants of the old gymnasium) the uppermost tier of a general system which at least in principle should cater to the whole spectrum of the relevant cohorts. It the light of this development, it is not surprising that the pupils in this much expanded system of secondary schooling in the 1970s were less compelled, on average, to continue to university studies than the pupils in the still fairly selective system of the 1960s.361 The direct transition from upper secondary school to

1970 until 1985, when numbers began rising again. The larger picture, then, is that during the 1960s the relevant age group grew from an average level of ca. 170 000 in the 1950s to a new level of ca. 245 000 in the period 1970-1985, which amounts to a growth of ca. 45% in eight years. All figures are from Statistics Norway, time series 05839, population by gender and one-year age until 118 years (1846-2009). 359 Figures from NOS Statistics Norway. From 1980 there is a breach in the time series, with secondary school leavers without a completed degree certificate included in the figures. 360 Cf. White paper, St. meld. nr. 66 (1984-1985) Om høyere utdanning, 23. Again, in 1981 the available statistics include graduates without a completed degree, and figures are therefore not entirely comparable. 361 One of the most interesting suggestions in the literature in this regard is Astrid Forland, who briefly mentions that the 1960s expansion could be seen as the “rest” of the middle class entering higher education, cf. the literature review at the beginning of this part. Along these lines one might hypotheticize – although it is not possible to investigate this topic here – that the continued expansion in secondary education in the 1970s accommodated the lower middle class and the working class into the educational system, and furthermore that these were not as predisposed to continue to the university as the

Stagnation in humanities education, 1975–1987 │ 183

higher education dropped from 26 percent in 1974, to 22 percent in 1978, and 16 percent in 1981. The decline was even more marked for the universities than for the university colleges.362 What all of this amounts to, then, is that in spite of an increased potential recruitment to higher education resulting from increased attendance in secondary school, the actual recruitment was stagnant or even declining (depending on the type of higher education) because the attitude towards secondary school had changed. Many pupils now seem to have considered upper secondary school as their highest educational ambition. The third reason for the stagnation in humanities student numbers concerns the labor market relevant for humanities graduates in the 1970s. This issue will be more fully discussed in part four, and so I will just briefly mention here that in the mid1970s real concern was beginning to be voiced for the career prospects of the humanities candidates. During the 1960s and the early years of the 1970s, the demand for teachers in lower and upper secondary school had continued to provide a dependable career option for graduates. But this demand eventually declined, partly because other categories of teachers from the teacher colleges had entered the competition for positions in lower secondary school, and partly for other reasons (to which I shall return in part four). This was probably why there was such a marked decline in enrollments to the schoolteacher-relevant disciplines. It also seems likely that the new uncertainty around the formerly secure career prospects in school teaching was especially off-putting to the new groups from secondary education. But school teaching, although important, was not all. As we have seen above, there had been talk about alternative career paths (the media, public administration, NGOs, etc.) for a number of years. According to the Kleppe committee, these options should materialize as society modernized and became more dependent upon high skilled labor in various sectors and industries. But the share of the humanities headed in these directions was still fairly small, and in the context of a global economic crisis it did not seem as if these options would increase in importance anytime soon. Moreover, with the cuts in university funding, the chances for careers in academia were also severely limited. The worsening situation for humanities graduates was summarized as follows in a report from 1976:

middle class had been in the 1960s, but rather transferred directly to working life upon graduation, or else continued to shorter and more vocationally oriented college education. However, this is a meaningful approach only at an aggregated level. For a particular field of studies like the humanities it would be very difficult to isolate the effect of “class” or social background. At any rate, I consider it beyond the scope of the present study to examine this issue further here. 362 Cf. White paper, St. meld. Nr. 66 (1984-1985) Om høyere utdanning, 23-24.

184 │ The transformation of humanities education

“For the philologists there has been a gradually more pessimistic assessment of the labor market situation during the past few years, and this seems to reflect a situation where it is increasingly difficult to gain employment within traditional fields. For recently graduated candidates with the lower degree in philology [the cand.mag.] one has also observed that an 363

increasing share is unemployed six months after graduation.”

According to this report, the labor market situation could not be expected to improve. Even with a low estimate of humanities enrollment in the coming years, the supply of candidates would be substantially larger than the labor market demand. The report could not see any new areas where philologists would be preferable by virtue of their education, and the prospects were therefore bleak: “The labor market situation for philologists is likely to become increasingly difficult in the years to come. […] It is likely that future philologists to a larger extent will have to enter employment at a lower level regarding the type of tasks, status, and salaries than what is considered normal today.”

364

The fourth cause of stagnation in humanities enrollments seems to have been a change in motivation among young people for this kind of education as a result of certain changes in the youth culture. The worsening of the labor market for humanities graduates might have pushed some people away, and may to some extent explain the relatively marked decline in the disciplines of relevance for the teacher profession, but if we are to understand the more general decline in the humanities (remembering that the social sciences, law and other programs continued to grow) we also need to ask if something happened to the cultural pull-factor that had motivated the cohorts of the 1960s to flock around such disciplines as for instance philosophy. Systems theory has not availed itself much of “culture” as an analytical concept, nor granted it much independent explanatory force in its theory of modern society. But as Luhmann has pointed out, the notion of culture has undeniably played a central part in modernity’s self-descriptions because it offers a viewpoint for drawing subtle distinctions and comparisons between alternative social forms. 365

363 NAVF, Arbeidsmuligheter for filologer. Noen regneeksempler over fremtidig behov og tilgang (Oslo: NAVF, 1976) 7. 364 Ibid., 7-8. 365 For Luhmann’s discussion of “culture,” cf. Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society, Vol. 1, 248, 354-58; vol. 2, 176; and “The Ecology of Ignorance,” Observations on Modernity,

Stagnation in humanities education, 1975–1987 │ 185

Such cultural distinctions are obviously highly important for group and identity formation. While in modern society they are increasingly conditioned by the operational logics of societal function systems, as we have seen above, cultural distinctions still serve as powerful motivations in areas where the codes and programs of the function systems themselves do not offer enough guidance or “framing.” The choice of educational programs is clearly an example of this, and the question is whether the decline in preference for the humanities after the mid-1970s can be understood with reference to a cultural shift. The cultural shift in question here – the post-revolutionary fatigue that followed les évenéments de 1968 – is relatively well-known, but the mechanisms which made it impact humanities education necessitates a few comments. By the mid-1970s, it had become clear to most observers, and certainly to young people of intellectual bent (who were among the closest observers), that even though the socio-cultural impact had been huge, the revolutionary hopes of the student protesters and affiliated movements for a new socio-political world order would not materialize anytime soon. Hence, a period of reaction set in, giving the cultural climate of the 1970s a sense of lost innocence. Unlike the previous decade, when it had been possible to speak of one common generational paradigm, which post hoc was given the evocative denomination “1968,” youth culture from the mid-1970s onwards became differentiated into various strands. Thomas Ziehe has captured an important common trait in these cultural strands with his concept of “post-detraditionalization,” meaning the particular condition faced by young people in the generations after the “detraditionalization” project associated with the year 1968 had run its course.366 When the possibilities for protesting against “traditional” society from marginalized (and hence uncontaminated) positions were exhausted, and the rebellious youths of the previous generations were entering the establishment as school teachers, writers, politicians, journalists, etc., continued protest along the same lines appeared at least to some trendsetting groups of youths as meaningless. Two highly visible and in some respects contradictory cultural responses to this condition are discernible among youths in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Norway. The first is the punk scene, which in one sense continued the tradition of protest against traditional authority, but in a radicalized form which now also included the “alternative vision” of the hippie movement as one of its favorite

eds. Timothy Lenoir and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998) 100ff. 366 Thomas Ziehe, “Post-avtradisjonalisering”. Betraktninger rundt det endrede stemningsleiet som preger dagens ungdom,” Humaniorastudier i pedagogikk, ed. Tone Kvernbekk (Oslo: Abstrakt forlag, 2011).

186 │ The transformation of humanities education

targets. The other cultural reaction founded its identity politics on an even more direct reversal of the ethos of the previous generation by deliberately espousing values, lifestyles, attire, music, and other cultural forms that were congruent with the mainstream consumer culture that the previous generation had rebelled against. A tendency in this direction was discernible already in the late 1970s (when for instance the conservative parties began attracting young people in many countries, including Norway) but as a youth movement it gained momentum and a name only in the first half of the 1980s – the yuppies.367 Neither of these two strands of youth culture had much use for the humanities. Punk was hardly compatible with higher education at all, at least not in its early forms, and youths who identified with yuppie culture came to prefer business and administration, law, and other educational programs directed towards jobs in the private sector. I am not claiming that these two subcultures alone deterred large numbers from entering humanities education. My point is mainly that the cohorts of secondary school leavers from the mid-1970s onwards no longer shared a generational cultural paradigm which resonated with the content and perspectives of the humanities (as these were then perceived). It should be remembered, however, that even in the low ebb of the 1980s there was still a share of the secondary school leavers who did enter humanities education – some seemingly motivated by the same impulses that had attracted students a decade previously (although perhaps with a more stubborn than enthusiastic mentality at this point), some motivated by a genuine devotion to a particular discipline, and some – still – in pursuit of a regular teaching career.

8.2

SUMMARY

Humanities education continued apace through the 1980s, therefore, even if its popularity decreased (relatively speaking) and its scale stagnated from the mid-

367 This cultural strand should also be understood in the light of the dramatic increase in living standards since the 1960s. Despite the economic setback in the mid-1970s, a whole range of new and relatively affordable products now made possible a kind of lifestyle that had previously only been accessible to the very rich, of which Norway had few. Many young people in the late 1970s and early 1980s were impatient to partake in this heightened living standard, and were less motivated for long university studies and a period of 5-10 years of austerity than students in the 1960s, when all young people had been relatively poor, especially since the exclusivity of higher education now was weakened to the extent that it could not guarantee a successful career anyway.

Stagnation in humanities education, 1975–1987 │ 187

1970s onwards. If as a conclusion to this discussion I were to offer an explanation for the stagnation, I would point to the following four aspects: 1) access had been restricted at Oslo, as part of a general withdrawal of political prioritization; 2) the demographic increase of 19-22-year olds had stopped, and even if the rate of secondary school attendance continued to increase, the default option after secondary school was no longer to enroll in university studies; 3) there were fewer attractive jobs for humanities graduates; and 4) the humanities were closely associated with the youth culture of the previous generation, and was not perceived as sufficiently attractive to the cultural self-image of the new one. But even if the stagnation in student numbers meant a corresponding stagnation in public funding, it is far from self-evident that the period from 1975 to 1987 should be considered a period of depression or crisis for Norwegian academia in general, or for the humanities in particular. For the latter, it is true, this was the period when debates on “the crisis of the humanities” acquired the characteristics we have since become so familiar with, but at least in Norway this debate arose from a deep and complex process of self-reflection that may have been triggered by the decline in student numbers, and by the consequences this had for funding, but cannot be said to have been caused by it.368 In what light the period should properly be seen will vary with the function system reference one adopts. If the vantage point is the system of research, and one considers this system over a slightly extended period of time, the twelve years from 1975 to 1987 will appear as the long-awaited consummation of modern disciplinary research in the Norwegian humanities. This development will be more closely examined in part three. Suffice it to say here that the organizational platform for research had by this time expanded from the small 1950s world of traditional chairs at the Faculty of humanities at Oslo, and the miniscule ditto at Bergen, to a distributed network of nation-wide disciplinary communities, located at departments in four humanities faculties around the country – with several additional nodes emerging at the university colleges. Relieved from the teaching overload of the 1960s, the much enlarged faculty staffs at these institutions could now finally make basic research their priority, whether this meant digging deeper (and more critically) into research problems of particular national interest, or the topics and/or methods were suggested by international disciplinary developments. There were of course differ-

368 For a discussion of the crisis metaphor in the Norwegian humanities debate, cf. Helge Jordheim and Tore Rem (eds.) Hva skal vi med humaniora? Rapport om de humanistiske fagenes situasjon i Norge (Oslo: Fritt Ord, 2014). For an analysis of how the sense of crisis has been impacted by the educational aspects of the humanities, see especially the section on education in part five, by the present author.

188 │ The transformation of humanities education

ences between disciplines and institutions in the level of ambition, as well as in achievement, but in general it would be fair to say that the period saw the rise of modern, disciplinary humanities research in Norway. As we have seen, this was in one sense a planned development, set in motion on the level of policymaking by the machinations of the Joint committee in the mid-1950s, then forecasted by the Kleppe committee in 1960 (who thought the time for productivity increase in research would come in the latter half of the 1960s), and finally arriving, a decade delayed, in the mid-1970s. As will also become evident in part three, the rise of humanities research had a profound impact on the system of education. Both the content and the didactic orientation of the humanities educational programs were exposed to strong academic drift in this period, to the extent that by the end of it, the modern conception of research – in the sense of the critical reexamination of established truths – was their undisputed paradigm, rather than the appreciative immersion in the culture of the establishment. As will be further examined in part four, the corollary to this development was the decline in the importance and relevance for humanities education of teacher training. Viewed from the system of politics, the period of stagnation at the universities held several lessons. The political use of human capital theory as a legitimation strategy had suggested that investments in education, even in humanities education, would eventually produce socio-economic revenue. The instrumentalism involved in this policy rationale had also been the target for the neo-Marxist student protesters. As it turned out, however, the massive investments in higher education in the 1960s and early 1970s, not only in Norway but worldwide, did not result in a period of economic growth, but rather ended with a recession. Thus, even if there is no reason to believe that the recession was causally linked to the investments in higher education, and even if the recession was less bad in Norway that elsewhere in Europe because of the oil money beginning to flow into the economy in this period, human capital theory had lost – at least for the time being – its credibility in the political system as an argument for increased investments in education.369 As if this was not enough, the other argument for educational expansion used in the 1960s – answering to the demands for equal access to education as a welfare good – was clearly not applicable in a period when such demands, and especially for longer university education like the humanities programs, were stagnant or even declining. The political relevance of higher education was not exhausted with the collapse of these arguments, however. With the autonomization of the ministry of education, the policy field of higher education had at least one organization in the political

369 See White paper, St. meld. Nr. 66 (1984-1985) Om høyere utdanning, 33.

Stagnation in humanities education, 1975–1987 │ 189

system dedicated to make sure that it was not entirely abandoned, even in a period when most of the political attention of the government and Parliament was directed elsewhere. And it was in the ministry that a new political rationale for higher education was articulated in the mid-1980s, not as a permanent replacement of the human capital and the welfare arguments, but as an alternative route to be taken when these avenues were blocked. For by this time it had become apparent that higher education expansion also served the latent political function of relieving unemployment problems – a discovery that would prove essential in the next period of growth, starting in 1987.

9

The second expansionist period, 1987–2000

The decade from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s had not only been a period of stagnation in the growth of Norwegian higher education, and in humanities education particularly; it had also been an interregnum in Norwegian higher education policymaking, especially concerning larger structural issues such as capacity building and admissions. Of course, the pause in policymaking was to some extent the result of the stagnation itself, and of the absence of credible rationales for increased investments in higher education, as discussed above. But equally important, it seems to me, was the fact that after the Ottosen committee had presented its final report in 1970, there was no mechanism of structural coupling in place between the function systems implicated in the policy field of higher education. A new coupling was not established until seventeen years later, in 1987, when a new committee of inquiry was appointed. I have not seen it discussed in the literature, but during these seventeen years there were repeated efforts to establish an entirely new form of structural coupling, namely a permanent national council for higher education. The Ottosen committee had underscored, in the final chapter of its final report, that “[i]t is no longer possible to fulfill important functions such as analyses and planning mainly through temporary committees of inquiry.”370 But although the committee was well aware that both Sweden and Denmark had recently established permanent structures for this purpose, the committee was content to recommend a “strengthening of the existing structure” without further specification, thus leaving the elaboration of this issue to the ministry. In the white papers that followed the report, the ministry discussed the establishment of a permanent body – in the form of a council – based on a proposal from another committee dealing with the organization of public

370 The Ottosen committee, Innstilling om videreutdanning for artianere m.v., Vol. 5, 73.

192 │ The transformation of humanities education

administration in general.371 Although no concrete proposal was made by the ministry – the matter was to be the subject of “further consideration” – the general idea of a national council was supported by a majority in the parliamentary Standing committee.372 But then the idea got stranded.373 Part of the reason for this was that the two major actors, the ministry and the academic institutions, could not agree on the balance of representation.374 Particularly difficult was the ministry’s proposal that representatives from the economic system (i.e. the social partners) should be included. Space forbids me to present the full story behind the littlediscussed failure to establish a permanent council of higher education here, but the outcome was that, in the absence of a significant coordination mechanism between the various function systems, the systems evolved independently for more than a decade, with heightened degrees of autonomy, strengthened organizational platforms, and thus increased administrative capacity on each side.375

371 See White papers, St. meld. nr. 66 (1972-73) and St. meld. nr 16 (1974-75). The proposal of a national council gets more attention and is more accentuated in the latter white paper, presented by the Labor government. 372 See Parliamentary record, Innst. S. nr. 272 (1974-75) p. 8. 373 However, since Parliament had asked for such a council, the succeeding governments could not easily dismiss the whole idea, only postpone it. It was therefore discussed time and again in the late 1970s and the 1980s, until the Labor government in 1987 announced that it would appoint a temporary committee (the Hernes committee) and stated that “with such a committee the government thinks there is currently no need to establish a central council for higher education,” cf. White paper, St. meld. nr. 19 (19861987), p. 13. 374 The ministry was still relatively small, but it was growing. It put great emphasis, therefore, on being in charge of appointments to the proposed council, and underscored in the white paper that it would also appoint “representatives from society outside the higher education institutions.” The Rectors’ conference strongly resisted this, a resistance which contributed to the proposal of the ministry eventually being voted down in Parliament. The Rectors’ conference instead came up with a proposal to reorganize itself, and in reorganized form (but still with representatives only from the higher education institutions and a few from the ministry) act as a national council with a governmental charter. This was in turn rejected by the ministry. The outcome was that the Rectors’ conference turned itself into a separate, non-governmental organization, named the Council for Norwegian universities. 375 For a more detailed discussion, see Vidar Grøtta, “Higher Education Policymaking in Scandinavia.”

The second expansionist period, 1987–2000 │ 193

In this situation, the initiative and the responsibility for higher education policymaking rested with the ministry alone.376 This proved to be a difficult situation. Around 1980, the planning department in the ministry drew up a status report on higher education for internal use, and began preparing for a new policymaking process.377 But due to changes in government (and probably other reasons, too) it was only in the mid-1980s, a decade after Parliament had discussed the white paper based on the Ottosen committee, that the ministry was able to make a comprehensive analysis of the situation in higher education again. It chose to present it in the form of a white paper to Parliament, this time without a foregoing committee report. An additional white paper, supplementing and correcting the previous one on certain issues, was produced by the incoming Labor party government in 1987. It was in this document the announcement was made that a new temporary committee of inquiry would be appointed. Compared to the policymaking documents from the expansionist periods in the 1960s and from 1987 onwards, the two white papers from the mid-1980s are modest in their ambitions. All in all, both documents give the impression that the situation is under control, and that only minor adjustments are necessary – although the fact that the latter announces a new temporary committee may indicate awareness that more comprehensive policies would be needed in a longer time perspective. Regarding the issues of interest to us here, the major policy proposals of the first white paper were: 1) to expand the total educational capacity in higher education by ca. 10 percent to accommodate the large cohorts of 19-year olds expected to apply for admission in the late 1980s; 2) to prioritize capacity building in business and administration, technology, and legal studies; and 3) – although the formulations here are less committed – to recruit more candidates to longer university educations, e.g. in the humanities, where the decline in previous years had been marked. Noteworthy in this context is also the ministry’s proposal for new legislation regarding numerus clausus. It is now suggested that the decision in this regard should lie with the ministry rather than Parliament – mostly, it seems, because of

376 That is, until 1981 it lay with the Ministry of church affairs and education, and then under a conservative government from 1981 to 1986, it lay with the Ministry of culture and research. While there may have been some relation between this organizational change and the situation in higher education policymaking, the reorganization had so many other tactical political reasons that precise interpretations are difficult to make. In the following, “the ministry” simply refers to the ministry constitutionally responsible for higher education. 377 See Kjell Eide, Departementets lille kanarifugl, 71.

194 │ The transformation of humanities education

concern that it would otherwise be difficult to reopen access again to the many programs that had been allowed to “close” during the 1970s. As it turned out, Parliament agreed to this, being equally concerned about opening up access during this period of stagnation as the ministry was. However, giving this legal prerogative to the ministry did not automatically make it easier to control and adjust admissions when the situation changed to explosive growth, as we shall see below. On the more principled issue of how the admissions policy should answer to the needs of applicants and employers, one can note in both white papers continuity from the line of the Ottosen committee, and even an enforced belief in the workings of the self-regulatory mechanisms of the two interlinked markets for higher education and qualified manpower: “One must recon with fluctuations in the number of candidates and available jobs, and adapt as best one can. In the 1970s, and earlier also, many thought that the labor market for philologists and social scientists would become increasingly worse, but this has not happened yet, even if the school system does not employ as many as previously. Several prognoses and assessments of the future labor market seem to have scared some applicants away from these 378

programs.”

To some extent, this passage is a reply from the ministry to the critics who had argued in the late 1970s that the admissions policy of the 1960s and early 1970s had seriously undermined the labor marked for humanists by a massive oversupply of candidates.379 It is interesting to note that for the ministry unemployment seems to be the relevant indicator of problems. As long as unemployment is avoided, the actual use of e.g. humanities competencies is now of little political interest – at least for the ministry responsible for education. This contrasts with how the former policymaking processes (especially the committee report and the white paper related to the Kleppe committee) had offered at least discussions of how humanities education could be beneficial for society at large. At the same time as the “market situation” is portrayed as fairly wellfunctioning, the ministry also seems to perceive that the function systems of research, education, politics and the economy have been growing apart, and cannot

378 White paper, St.meld. nr. 66 (1984-85) Om høyere utdanning, 27. 379 In 1977, for instance, there was a prolonged debate on the poor labor market situation for humanities candidates in the journal of Norwegian economists, Sosialøkonomen. Based on the previously cited 1976 report from the NAVF, the economist Steinar Strøm accused the political authorities of irresponsibility allowing a “lazzaize-faire admissions policy.” This debate is outlined and interpreted in more detail in part four.

The second expansionist period, 1987–2000 │ 195

easily be made to answer to each other’s needs by political planning. In this situation, the ministry, aware that it is addressing Parliament at this juncture without the support of a committee report, takes the role of the intermediary whose primary allegiance is with the academic institutions it charged with the responsibility for: “The ministry thinks it is important to ensure a flexible adjustment between supply and demand for a highly qualified manpower. But the responsibility for this cannot rest with one system alone. On this issue there must be an interaction between working life, higher education institutions and the political authorities. This interaction also demands an understanding of the fact that each actor is charged with different tasks, and one is therefore not always able to adjust to the needs in other sectors. The higher education institutions have a responsibility for basic and long-term tasks of cultural and societal importance within the fields of research and education. This presupposes academic independence and opportunities for research without demands for short-term use-value and profit. It is desirable that higher education institutions should produce services within research and education targeted at working life, 380

but this must not result in a weakening of the basic tasks.”

It seems one important consequence of the increase in operational autonomy on the part of each implicated function system was that it narrowed down the latitude for unilateral policymaking from the ministry, for in both of the white papers weight is put on descriptive analyses, with very little in the way of new policies beyond widely accepted general principles. The major difference between the two governments’ white papers regarding the issue we are concerned with in this section, admissions and capacity building, is that the conservative government prioritizes programs directed at the private sector, whereas the incoming Labor government adds several kinds of education for the public sector to the list, including teacher training. No doubt, this to some extent reflects ideological differences between the political parties, but as the latter white paper makes clear, it was also the result of developments that only became noticeable after the first white paper had been written, such as the shortage of teachers. There were also differences between the parties regarding preferences for policymaking mechanisms such as committees of inquiry. The Conservative party had promised, as part of a general effort of “de-bureaucratization,” to dismantle many of the councils and boards of the previous period. The Conservative ministers were thus under pressure not to establish new ones. On the other hand, the Conservative party did establish a Council for research policy with its own people at the helm, which the Labor party eventually terminated. Thus, it was mostly coincidental, it

380 White paper, St.meld. nr. 66 (1984-85) Om høyere utdanning, p. 35-36.

196 │ The transformation of humanities education

seems to me, that it was the Labor Party government which in 1987 realized that a new committee in the field of higher education was necessary, and appointed the Hernes committee. The deeper, more structural reason, I would argue, was that given the degrees of autonomy on the part of each function system, some form of coupling mechanism between them was now absolutely necessary to get beyond the status quo.

9.1

THE HERNES COMMITTEE

On the face of it, the Hernes committee was strongly dominated by representatives from various corners of the academic community, eight of them in total. The political system was not represented (other than in the “neutral” function as secretariat) because of new administrative regulations from the 1970s that strongly advised against the appointment of politicians or bureaucrats to serve in committees of inquiry.381 But two representatives from the economic system were included. Moreover, many of the academics, in particular the chairman, also had political affiliations and experience. The committee was thus slightly more balanced between the function systems than may appear from the professional titles of the members alone. With regard to the scale of Norwegian humanities education, the first thing to note about the Hernes committee’s report, presented to the ministry in September 1988, is that it proposed only a moderate expansion for the whole of the national student body. The total number of students in 1987 was 95 000. The committee suggested 105 000 as a target number for the year 1995. This was only a slight increase from the 100 000 proposed in the Labor party’s white paper from 1986 (and from the 90 000 proposed by the Conservative government in 1985). This moderation did not mean that a greater expansion was deemed undesirable by the academically dominated committee. It was simply believed at the time that the current demography combined with the expected inclination among young people

381 For the seemingly simple reason that politicians and bureaucrats should not bind themselves to particular views on issues which either Parliament or an executive branch would have to make a decision on further down the road. The Modalsli committee, “Innstilling om den sentrale forvaltnings organisasjon” (Oslo: Engers, 1970). For a further discussion of the representation of various function systems and interests in policymaking committees in the field of higher education, see Vidar Grøtta, “Higher Education Policymaking in Scandinavia.”

The second expansionist period, 1987–2000 │ 197

to enter higher education did not allow for a higher number.382 Moreover, the committee also believed, like the Ottosen committee had done before it, that certain rationalization policies it had devised and presented in its report would actually be implemented by the institutions, and that through-put would increase as a result, making it possible to educate more students with the same resources. According to the committee’s calculations, this would bring the prognosticated demand for 110 000 slots down to 105 000, which was – rather conveniently – the same target number as the sitting Labor party government would use in its national budget for the following year. Regarding the humanities specifically, the committee voiced a pronounced wish to foster quantitative growth after a decade of stagnation (and in some disciplines, decline). This was partly because of a high valuation of the general cultural importance of the humanities, and partly out of concern for recruitment to humanities research.383 But most of all, it seems, expansion in the humanities was deemed desirable because of a perceived need in secondary school for university trained teachers with graduate degrees.384 It had now become apparent to quite a few observers from across the political spectrum (and in various corners of academia) that the teacher profession, dominated since ca. 1980 by teachers with 2 to 3 years of education from university colleges, had run into trouble, and that the decline of the academically trained secondary school teacher had contributed to a lowering of standards in the whole school system.385 In hindsight it is easy to see that by 1988 it was, if not impossible, then at least very difficult to launch a revival of the academic teacher – partly because of research drift in academia, as we shall see in part three, and partly because of developments in the labor market for teachers, as will be discussed in part four. A telling sign of the vexed problems involved here is that the committee report had very few policy proposals on how to actually effectuate such a restoration.

382 “We can count on increased competition for shrinking cohorts. It will be difficult to sustain the current student numbers, and there is risk of a reduction. Long programs are in a difficult position already, and the difficulties may increase […]” Norwegian official report, NOU 1988:28 Med viten og vilje, 17. 383 As the only field of research, the humanities disciplines are discussed at length in a separate section. There is little in the way of actual policies there, however. 384 Norwegian official report, NOU 1988:28 Med viten og vilje, 28-29. 385 For the background of Hernes’ engagement with the school system, see Nina Volckmar, “Fra solidarisk samværskultur til kunnskapssolidaritet. Det sosialdemokratiske skoleprosjekt fra Sivertsen til Hernes”, PhD dissertation (Trondheim: NTNU, 2004).

198 │ The transformation of humanities education

The same can be said about a related and more overarching issue that the Hernes committee put great emphasis on, namely academic quality. Gudmund Hernes’ own entry into this policy field had been an op-ed piece in a Norwegian daily in 1986 where he strongly criticized the low quality of research and education at Norwegian universities.386 Although the rhetoric is obviously toned down in the committee report, a substantial part of it is preoccupied with the need for increased ambitions regarding quality.387 The report’s lengthy discussions of the humanities, it seems to me, is part of this plea for a “revival” of academic standards. How admonitions in a policymaking document like this should result in increased quality on the “factory floor” is far from clear, however. As is often the case, the report’s ambitions for qualitative improvements seem oddly out of touch with the current policy situation and the available policy instruments. The committee was not naïve regarding the potential for quantitative change in humanities education, however. In the light of the difficult past decade, and due to the expected scarcity of recruits to higher education in general in the coming decade, the committee realized that expanding humanities education would be difficult, whether for teacher positions or other careers. Recruitment to graduate and postgraduate programs was considered especially difficult. One suspects that these problems were considered so insurmountable, at least in the short run, that the possible consequence of their unlikely success – i.e. a sudden expansion in the humanities programs – was not very seriously considered. In the Hernes report, the weighing of labor market demand against alternative rates of candidate outputs, which so preoccupied the committees of the 1960s (even if only performed as “risk calculation”), is mostly absent. Regarding the more general policy principles on admissions, the report rehearses the arguments familiar from the 1960s and concludes, unsurprisingly, that the overall scale of higher education should still be determined by student demand, but that labor market prognoses should be used to some extent (although precisely how is left open) to calibrate particular types of programs. The committee’s discussion of these issues builds not only on previous discussions, but also on previous experience, and thus demonstrates a heightened awareness of the problems entailed in

386 “Kan man ha ambisjoner i Norge?” In Dagbladet on 31 December 1986. The piece caused a heated and prolonged debate in which a number of well-known Norwegian academics criticized Hernes, especially for holding up American ivy-league universities as an ideal. This was held by some to be inappropriate, and by others to be unattainable. 387 Interestingly, it seems the change of tone, in addition to proposals which seemed to promise increased funding, calmed down most of Hernes’ critics, for the reception of the committee report in academic circles was largely favorable.

The second expansionist period, 1987–2000 │ 199

admissions policymaking. In contrast to the Ottosen committee, completely open access is now perceived to be utopian, in particular in the more costly programs. However, the Hernes committee also recognizes that restricted access tends to create a perpetual spiral of artificial prestige, shortage of candidates, inflated salaries, and (in turn) increased volume of applicants. The only viable solution, the report implies, is to keep some types of programs “open” while others (the most costly ones) have regulated access. This, it is readily acknowledged, will tend to produce an overload in the open programs – at least in situations with a general increase in the recruitment to higher education. Fortunately, this was not the situation in 1988 – or so it was believed. Furthermore, an important lesson the committee had learnt from the previous 10-15 years was that because of the long duration of programs in higher education, signals from particular areas of the labor market would tend to arrive too late to ensure a smooth adjustment of the supply of candidates to the demand. Nowhere had this problem been more pronounced than in the humanities, where time-todegree was exceptionally long, and where the orientation towards working life was not necessarily a priority.388 On the other hand, the committee underscored that once a signal about problems in the labor market was received, applicants tended to “overreact,” causing a self-propelled decline in the recruitment far beyond what was optimal. According to the committee, this was what had happened in the early 1980s, when the prognosticated risk of teacher unemployment caused a decline in the recruitment to various types of teacher education, including the humanities. By the mid-1980s, however, these prognoses had turned out to be wrong, as evidenced by an unexpected shortage of teachers at that time, or so the committee argues in its report. This trajectory can be interpreted in other ways that the Hernes committee did, however. The committee’s interpretation seems to build on arguments in the white papers from the mid-1980s onwards, but it does not problematize that the ministry had several important motives for advocating this particular view. Firstly, as mentioned above, the ministry clearly wanted to defend the long-standing policy

388 The time-to-degree for graduate students in the humanities had been extensive previously also, a phenomenon that is well-known in other countries as well, but in Norway in the early 1980s it was extremely long, averaging between 10 and 15 semesters in programs with a standardized duration of 4-6 semesters. These figures are based on all registered students, however, since the statistics do not specify part-time students. The average time spent declined slightly in the period 1984-1988. See Ole Jacob Skodvin, Den store utfordringen! Rekruttering til de humanistiske vitenskapene fram mot år 2010 (Oslo: NAVFs utredningsinstitutt, 1989) 51-52.

200 │ The transformation of humanities education

responsible for the production of a vast amount of humanities candidates (and other teacher candidates) up until the mid-1970s against the many accusations of “overproduction.” Secondly, and interconnected with this, the incoming Labor government in 1986 wanted to criticize the previous government’s admissions policy.389 And thirdly, the ministry had obvious incentives, as the public authority responsible for the Norwegian school system, to prefer a situation with an oversupply rather than a scarcity of teachers.390 All of this serves to illustrate a problem that by now should be familiar, especially in the light of systems theory, namely that policies for admissions and capacity building will inevitably be viewed differently by different observers and stakeholders in different function systems. As we saw above, the Norwegian political system had during the 1980s become increasingly aware of the fact that the policy field of higher education involved several systems that had to be viewed as autonomous. On one level this recognition seems to have been a major reason behind the appointment of a new committee of inquiry after almost two decades without a structural coupling in place in this policy field. The point about different system references and incommensurable viewpoints was not lost on the Hernes committee itself either, which is not at all strange since Hernes himself had been one of the main contributors to the sociological study of Norwegian corporatism in the

389 The addendum white paper from the Labor party says that from 1982 to 1986, the demand for teachers had increased, even though this was not expected. At the same time, recruitment to the teacher profession had declined. “The signals of a possibly difficult employment situation in the school system may have contributed to this, but the efforts to strengthen technological, economic, and informatics disciplines may have resulted in a lower prioritization of applicants to the humanities and similar disciplines, such as teacher education.” White paper, St. meld. nr. 19 (1986-87) Tillegg til St . meld. nr. 66 (1984-1985) Om høyere utdanning, 49. Highlighting the previous government’s prioritization of other programs than teacher education in this way can be read as a criticism. It is interesting to note, therefore, that the addendum white paper itself proposes a strengthening of more or less exactly the same fields (technological and economic especially) – in addition to health care. 390 A major reason that the NAVF’s prognosticated reduction in the demand for teachers in the 1980s (cf. the discussion above, and also in part four) did not come true, was that the ministry in negotiations with the teacher organizations in 1984 agreed to substantially reduced working hours for teachers. This created an increased demand which was not planned for, and few (if any) measures were taken at the time to balance it out. See Gro Hagemann, Skolefolk. Lærernes historie i Norge (Oslo: Ad Notam Gyldendal, 1992) 318.

The second expansionist period, 1987–2000 │ 201

1970s.391 The Hernes report condenses and applies the insights of this literature to the policy field of higher education as follows: “There are many different actors who contribute to the policymaking, each seeking to realize particular objectives: schools, politicians, organizations, institutions, professions, ministries. They often lack an overview of the aggregated results or the long-term consequences of the actions taken by each actor separately – or such consequences have limited interest seen from 392

their particular viewpoint.”

Especially the last item here is important, and concurs with a central insight in systems theory: The prize to pay for any system’s autonomization is an increasing disregard for the consequences of its operations in the environment – unless, of course, there is a mechanism in place which feed them back into the system. As we shall see below, the reflexivity on the part of the policymakers demonstrated here – particularly of Hernes himself, one might suspect – had consequences for how the committee envisioned future policymaking, especially regarding the old idea of establishing a permanent council for higher education, an idea whose time would finally arrive in the 1990s. From what has been said above, it follows that the political follow-up of the Hernes committee’s proposals necessarily entailed a shift in perspective, and this is indeed noticeable in the documents. The focus on academic quality that we have noted in the committee’s report and, as part of this, the committee’s embrace of the humanities as the safe-keepers of the academic virtues (virtues society was now badly in need of, according to the committee) gave way in the white paper and other governmental documents to more politically pressing matters. Speaking of different perspectives, it should also be noted here that there were few traces in the committee report (or on the white paper, for that matter) of any significant influence from the two representatives from the economic system. One obvious reason for this was that they were a tiny minority, and a handpicked one at that. This fact may in itself be an indication that the economic system was represented mostly as a legitimating strategy. Possibly these committee members were also intended by the appointing ministry – which no longer could be represented in the committee itself – to temper academic self-interest, if any such tendencies should arise. At any rate, subjecting higher education policy to concrete economic considerations (and now I am not thinking of alleviating unemployment, which is mostly a political issue, but to enhance economic productivity and profitability) seems to have been largely out of the question at this point.

391 See Gudmund Hernes, Makt og styring (Oslo: Gyldendal forlag, 1983). 392 Norwegian official report, NOU 1988:28 Med viten og vilje, 19.

202 │ The transformation of humanities education

The shift in perspective from the academically dominated committee to the ministerial follow-up is particularly interesting because it was Hernes himself who, after a short-lived Conservative government in 1989-1990 had come and gone, was appointed as minister of education in a Labor government in the fall of 1990. He was thus charged (among other things) with producing the white paper following his own committee’s report. By 1990, however, several things had changed. First of all it had become clear, right after the publication of the committee report in 1988, that the expected difficulties in recruiting young people to higher education were completely obsolete. The number of applications had actually started to climb steeply from 1987, and showed no sign of leveling out by the time of the white paper, in 1990. One set of reasons for this change (or – differently put – one level of explanation for this change) was the combined effect of large cohorts of 19-year olds in the last years of the 1980s and, simultaneously, their early entry into higher education compared to previous cohorts. This combination, to which was a few years later added the factor of increased time-to-degree, has been discussed in detail by Per Olav Aamodt, as I have pointed out in the literature review above.393 But the tendency to enter higher education earlier than previously must in turn be explained, and on this point the attention must be turned, as Sverre Try has showed, towards a new conception of the relationship between higher education and the labor market.394 For while in the 1950s and 1960s an important argument for expansion in higher education had been the demands for skilled labor in an expanding economy (although this was probably more a legitimation strategy than it was the chief motivation for the policymakers, as we have seen), the reverse argument was now being used: Precisely because the labor market was collapsing, the capacity in higher education should be expanded – so as to accommodate young people who would otherwise be unemployed. This argument was not intended to replace the previous human capital arguments, but to supplement them. In this way there were now arguments available for educational expansion almost regardless of the situation in the labor market. Even though this “education as labor market service” policy was used with the greatest effects by Hernes and the Labor government from 1990 onwards, it was not their invention. A Conservative government had used it in a period of unemployment in the mid-1980s, and it was discussed briefly as a policy instrument in the white paper the same government presented in 1985:

393 Per O. Aamodt “Bottlenecks and Backwaters: An Analysis of Expansion in Higher Education in Norway.” 394 Sverre Try, Veksten i høyere utdanning: Et vellykket arbeidsmarkedspolitisk tiltak?

The second expansionist period, 1987–2000 │ 203

“Increased efforts in the educational sector can, however, be used as a short-term policy instrument as part of the labor market services [kortsiktig sysselsettingstiltak]. In periods with high unemployment it is even more important than at other times to ensure that young people have access to education. It will be felt as unfair by the young if they should be hit by unemployment and worsened opportunities for education at the same time. An education improves the employability of the individual at a later stage, as well as withdraws personnel 395

from the labor force in difficult times.”

The Conservative government had been rather careful in the application of this policy instrument, however. At first it had only been vocational education and training on the secondary level that was expanded, and when higher education had been included, it was law studies, one of the Conservative government’s prioritized areas among university programs, that had received additional funding from the budget of the Ministry of labor. What was new around 1990 was that the government was willing to let the funding follow the applications, rather than prioritizing specific programs. As we shall see below, this had a huge impact on the humanities. The question, then, is how we understand the various factors that created the situation in which such a policy was deemed necessary (assuming, at this point, that it was a deliberate policy). The context in the period in question was quickly rising youth unemployment. In only five years, from 1987 to 1992, the unemployment rate among 20-24-yearolds tripled, from below 4 percent to over 12 percent – and, as will become clear below, without the expansion in higher education, the unemployment in 1992 would have been much higher.396 The fact that the unemployment was particularly high among the young was, at least in part, a consequence of the large cohorts of secondary school leavers in the late 1980s and early 1990s.397 In addition, working life had evolved in ways that reduced the share of jobs for non-skilled workers.398

395 White paper, St. meld nr. 66 (1984-1985), 34. The idea of using education as a means in the fight against unemployment seems to have been floating around in the ministry earlier also. I have not been able to trace the first mention of it, but in a news story in Aftenposten on 21 September 1983 (3), which is some time before the policy is actually implemented, Kjell Eide is reported to advocate it on a more general basis. 396 Statistics Norway, unemployment survey data (AKU). 397 In 1986 there were ca. 386 000 19-24-year-olds in Norway, while in 1990 there were 404 000. From the mid-1990s, the cohorts were smaller, and by 2000 there were only 333 000 people in this age group. Source: Statistics Norway. 398 Kjetil Moen, Ungdomsundersøkelsen 1990. 17-24 åringenes tilpassing til arbeidsliv og utdanning m.m. (Oslo: Arbeidsdirektoratet, 1991).

204 │ The transformation of humanities education

In view of this situation, which had mostly become noticeable after the Hernes committee had completed its report, it is hardly surprising that a much higher number of young people sought out higher education than the committee had predicted. The growth, it turned out, came especially at the universities. From 1986 to 1996 the number of students at the universities was doubled, while at the university colleges the growth was 65 percent.399 Of course, this kind of expansion put the whole of higher education under considerable strain. The available capacity in teaching as well as non-academic services was soon stretched to the limit, and beyond. And just like in the previous expansionist period, it was the humanities that experienced the strongest growth – although this time with the social sciences not so far behind. The humanities’ share of the total student numbers had declined from 33 percent in 1980 to 26 percent 1987, but now it climbed to 33 percent again in 1998 (only to decline slightly in the new century).400 Measured in total student numbers, humanities education grew from around 10 000 in 1986 to 33 000 in 1998, before the numbers decreased somewhat and were more or less stabilized at the level of 25-30 000 in the first decade of the new century. Even measured in the output of graduate candidates (and as we remember, the time-to-degree was considerable), the Norwegian humanities tripled in size in this period.401 From the perspective of the individual applicant, the reasons for entering higher education in the late 1980s or early 1990 were quite obvious: Higher education was free of charge; it provided an attractive short term identity as student (and an escape from the alternative, which was in all likelihood the degrading identity as unemployed); and it also promised to improve one’s later chances for employment significantly. The only risk was the accumulation of student debts, but it seems the risk aversion in this respect had declined significantly from the 1970s and early 1980s (which had also seen rising youth unemployment, without this resulting in a massive influx at the universities). In the intervening years, the generation from the previous expansionist period (i.e. the parents of the school leavers in the late 1980s) had done quite well, and the repayment of their student loans had never been raised as a problematic issue. Besides, the fact that a larger share of the cohorts leaving secondary education in the late 1980s had parents with higher education than previously, precisely because of the expansion in the 1960s, would in itself lead one

399 Sverre Try, Veksten i høyere utdanning: Et vellykket arbeidsmarkedspolitisk tiltak? 12. 400 Per Olav Aamodt, “Vekst i utdanningssystemet,” Utdanning 2003 (Oslo, NIFU, 2003) 75. 401 Figures from Statistics Norway.

The second expansionist period, 1987–2000 │ 205

to expect higher attendance, based on the familiar mechanisms of social reproduction.402 A more difficult question, perhaps, is why so many school leavers in this period ended up studying the humanities. I shall return to why the political system and the academic institutions actually admitted so many students to the humanities, but I would first like to offer some reflections on possible motivations on the part of the students themselves. Regretfully, there has not (to my knowledge) been done relevant survey studies on this issue regarding the period in question, and so this must necessarily be somewhat speculative.403 In the literature review above I mentioned that especially the educational historians have offered some possible cultural explanations for young people’s increased preference for humanities studies in this period. Astrid Forland points to certain value orientations among young people at the time that were antithetical to contemporary society but resonated well with the humanities. Fredrik W. Thue more specifically emphasizes intellectual motivations, and uses this to explain the growth in particular research-oriented humanities disciplines (such as the history of ideas, or general literature studies) that were more vogue in the 1990s than other more vocationally oriented disciplines (i.e. school teacher-oriented ones). Kim G. Helsvig also reflects in terms of value orientations, but offers an additional perspective when he suggests that it might have been a motive for young people in this period to actively distance themselves from the youths of the immediately preceding period, namely the yuppie culture and materialism of the 1980s. Again it seems cultural distinctions must be taken into account to explain changed educational preferences, but when we come to the 1990s the dynamic of

402 The share of candidates with parents – one or both – that had completed higher education increased during the period 1989-1997 from 0,51 to 0,62, see Sverre Try, Veksten i høyere utdanning: Et vellykket arbeidsmarkedspolitisk tiltak? 20. See also Marianne Nordli Hansen, “Utdanningspolitikk og ulikhet: Rekruttering til høyere utdanning 19851996,” Tidssskrift for samfunnsforskning 2 (1999). The classic study on the general mechanisms of social reproduction in education is Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society, and Culture (NY: Sage, 1990). 403 As mentioned in the preface, I entered humanities education at Oslo in this period myself, and hence my account here will obviously be colored by my own experiences. As will become clear from the discussion below, my experiences are very much in line with the accounts in the historical literature on Norwegian higher education, but in the light of the discussion about self-reference in the introduction, this obviously does not mean that I am unbiased; it may simply mean that I share my bias with other observers who have perhaps been similarly placed.

206 │ The transformation of humanities education

cultural evolution among the young has been taken up a notch. Helsvig’s line of thinking can be extended, it seems to me, with reference to Thomas Ziehe’s concept of post-detraditionalization in youth culture, which I mentioned in connection with the former period of cultural transition in the 1970s. The socio-cultural development I have in mind (based on Ziehe, but adapted to the context of Norway) can be outlined as follows. Since the mid-1970s, the cultural setting for young Norwegians coming of age had no longer been a (more or less) monolithic youth culture that could serve as a shared generational paradigm. To a much larger extent than previously, young people since the late 1970s have had to find ways to relate to several youth subcultures existing simultaneously, usually by identifying more or less closely with one of them, or by using a more eclectic approach. One of the primary evolutionary dynamics in the relations between the subcultures seems to have been their simple tribal need for distinguishing themselves from competing ones, whether immediately preceding or coeval.404 In our context, this shift in the dynamic whereby youth cultures evolve means that for young people entering higher education around 1990, their parental generation – the generation of 1968 – was no longer necessarily the antagonists in cultural terms, nor were they necessarily conceptualized as an “establishment” to offer resistance to. Furthermore, to the extent that their parents represented “tradition,” this was not, as it had been for the generation of 1968 itself, inherently a bad thing. According to Ziehe, the cultural situation of post-detraditionalization means that previous traditions (as opposed the recent past) are seen as reservoirs of cultural attributes available for citation.405 In brief, then: what this accelerated cultural rhythm means is that the antagonist for each new youth subculture is now the

404 In a late essay, Luhmann noticed the instability of the identity-forming function of culture in late modernity: “Culture sees itself as a culture of individuals, but this also implies that individuals must correspondingly discipline themselves. It will prove impossible to renounce this aspect of culture completely, if social order and reciprocal expectations are to remain possible. But the trend seems to be headed toward the individualization of “frames” that we take for ourselves. In this sense we search for identity, alternative identities, protest identities, all the way to identification with functionlessness, or any sort of niche identity that a complex society can offer.” Niklas Luhmann, “The Ecology of Ignorance,” 101. 405 Although it shares some superficial traits with “postmodernism,” Ziehe’s concept should not be confused with this catch-all phrase, which when used as a periodization tends to include the whole postwar era, or else begins with the 1960s. Cf. Thomas Ziehe, “Post-avtradisjonalisering”. Betraktninger rundt det endrede stemningsleiet som preger dagens ungdom.”

The second expansionist period, 1987–2000 │ 207

immediately preceding one, whose potential for identity politics and social recognition seems exhausted, or else a competing contemporary subculture that can offer a suitable contrast in values, style, political orientation, etc.406 In my view, Ziehe’s ideas fits the cultural context of young Norwegians around 1990 fairly well. They are in line with Helsvig’s contention, and compatible with the thoughts offered by Forland and Thue. Furthermore, they move beyond mere labeling of values and cultural trends and contribute towards an explanation of the cultural mechanisms which made the humanities fashionable again after having been out of favor with most youth subcultures in the previous decade. That this was part of a broader revival of at least some of the cultural aspects of the 1960s is evident in everything from 1990s fashion (retro hippie styles), and popular music (especially grunge) to politics (where the Left in a broad sense regained the upper hand from the Right). Of course, in saying this I do not mean to suggest that the preference for the humanities was “merely” a fashion statement. It was undoubtedly a well-considered choice on most people’s part, and once on board, the socialization involved in all higher education programs of course would tend to re-enforce the initial decision. What I am suggesting is only that the choice of humanities education seems to have been much easier to legitimate for a young person in the face her peers around 1990 than it had been in, say, 1984. This last remark brings us to a second cultural explanation for the popularity of the humanities, namely gender stereotypes. The overrepresentation of women among those entering higher education at this time is clearly a major reason why the humanities received so many students, and such a large share of the total. Precisely why women on average were more prone to study the humanities than men is an interesting and important question, but unfortunately beyond the scope of this study to study in depth.407 Although I would hypothesize that it is at bottom a “cultural” phenomenon, it seems to have been a rather stable difference in preference throughout the 20th century, and its explanation is therefore probably to be found at rather deep levels of the societal structure, most likely in what we with systems theory might specify as the systems of the family and the economy, and in the coupling between them. If we in addition ask why there was an overrepresentation of women among those who entered higher education at this particular time, I

406 Peter Sloterdijk has recently spoken in interviews of the cultural impatience in late modernity – the compulsion to launch new cultural projects at decreasing intervals. See also Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity (NY: Columbia University Press, 2013) 224ff. 407 Cf. Liv Anne Støren og Clara Åse Arnesen, “Et kjønnsdelt utdanningssystem,” Utdanning 2003, ed. Mona Raabe & al. (Oslo: SSB, 2003).

208 │ The transformation of humanities education

suspect the answer is to be found in changes relating to the same systems. Almost all Norwegian young women would at this time see themselves as future full-time workers, which was a significant change from only two decades before.408 Based on the template of the women in the parental generation, many female applicants to higher education had reason to believe that humanities programs was an attractive path to areas of working life that offered a measure of social prestige and at the same time were welcoming to women. Not too many such areas were available. Moreover, cultural and particularly aesthetic practices had traditionally been one of the few spheres of society where women could have a role, in the capacity of audience, but also as hosts in salon culture, and increasingly in various performing roles.409 Such role models, which were scarce in many other areas of society, have probably played an important part in making the humanities interesting to women. But all of this is conjecture. The deeply embedded mechanisms behind it must remain in the dark here, but the outcome in the period under discussion was clear enough: More women flowing into higher education meant a relative increase of humanities students. In summary, then, the cohorts leaving secondary school in the late 1980s and in the 1990s had three major reasons to enter humanities education. First, the alternative option of employment was more or less blocked, at least until 1993-94. Second, as the children of the babyboomers, young people at this time would find higher education to be an obvious choice (even for those whose parents were not academically educated), with small risks involved. Third, certain developments in the youth culture made the humanities seem an attractive field again, especially for the large share of female students. At this point we must change the perspective, however, for educational expansion takes not only motivation among applicants, but also capacity and admission – which in Norway includes public funding. This returns us to the issue left hanging above, namely the complex situation facing the political system and other actors in the policy field of higher education in the late 1980s. Sverre Try has demonstrated that at this time increased access to higher education in general, and in particular to open and “elastic” programs such as the humanities, was actively used as a labor market policy by several governments, both Labor and Conservative. This lasted from 1986 and well into the 1990s. In the first half of the 1990s, more than two

408 In the early 1970s, 50 percent of Norwegian women were in employment. By the end of the 1980s, the figure was 80 percent. Statistics Norway, Historisk statistikk 1994. 409 See Drude von der Fehr, Anna G. Jonasdottir and Bente Rosenbeck (eds.), Is There a Nordic Feminism? Nordic feminist thought on Culture and Society (London: Routledge, 1998).

The second expansionist period, 1987–2000 │ 209

thirds of the funding for increased capacity in higher education was initially taken from a chapter in the national budget that was meant for labor market policy measures.410 However, this policy entailed some difficult dilemmas that were also much discussed at the time. Sverre Try refers in particular to a committee of inquiry on labor market policy (led by our previous acquaintance Per Kleppe) which in 1992 offered the general policy advise that measures designed to combat unemployment should be short term and possible to dismantle quickly when the desired effect was produced. On educational expansion, the committee’s view was very clear: “It should chiefly be the capacity in shorter and more vocational programs that should be the buffer in the educational system. The capacity at the higher levels of the educational sector should be planned within a longer time frame. At this level, education is more research-based and oriented towards in-depth study than the other parts of the educational system. In order to develop sound environments for education and research, a stable policy for capacity and 411

admission [dimensjonering] is desirable.”

The question is why this advice was not heeded, especially as it was given by a trusted previous Labor minister to a Labor government which had asked for it.412 One obvious answer is that it was simply too tempting to solve the acute unemployment issues by flooding the non-professional programs, even if the long term consequences were likely to be unfortunate. But tempting for whom? For the government as a whole, perhaps, and particularly for the Ministry of labor. But what about the Ministry of education? And what about the universities? Early on in this period, the ministry and the institutions seem to have observed the rapid expansion with some concern. Even if the rising student numbers in programs like the humanities was good news in the light of the widely shared perspectives of the Hernes committee, and even if the increased funding was welcome at the universities after the meagre years in the 1980s, a lesson had been learnt in the previous growth period. Hence, when student numbers went through the roof in the last years of the 1980s, the ministry decided to use its newly won

410 Sverre Try, Veksten i høyere utdanning: Et vellykket arbeidsmarkedspolitisk tiltak? 9. 411 Norwegian official report, NOU 1992:26 En nasjonal strategi for økt sysselsetting i 1990-årene, 252. 412 Kleppe had by this time retired from his political career, and held a position as an independent researcher at Fafo, a research institute and think tank for the workers’ union. His ties to the Labor Party were still strong, but it seems he could now found his policy advice mostly on his academic competency as an economist.

210 │ The transformation of humanities education

prerogative to enforce admission regulations, which came into effect from 1990. This was a sharp contrast to the previous expansionist period, when a decade of complaints had passed before the regulations finally were accepted. The number of students continued to rise quite steeply after 1990 also, but within certain boundaries. In the early 1990s, this controlled growth in the nonprofessional programs, primarily in the humanities but also in the social sciences, had two rationales: 1) the disciplines needed increased recruitment (as the Hernes committee had pointed out), and 2) time spent studying decreased unemployment. What is more puzzling is, as Sverre Try has pointed out, that even after the labor market changed significantly for the better in 1993, there was a continued increase in funding for higher education, including humanities education. Even stranger, considering the declining youth unemployment and the way the still rapidly increasing student numbers were at this point stretching the capacity at the institutions to its limits, was Parliament’s decision in 1995 to lift the admissions restrictions at the universities, paving the way for continued expansion in the last half of the 1990s. At this stage, apparently, another rationale had come into force. The most decisive factor in this development seems to have been the continued increase in applications from secondary school leavers. Precisely why there was such an increased appetite for academic study in the mid-1990s, when the cohort sizes were declining and the economy was booming, has not been given a sufficiently good explanation.413 It is beyond the scope of this study to give it detailed treatment, but in addition to the factors we have already discussed above, some form of isomorphic mechanism among school leavers was most likely in operation. It might also be that information about the shift for the better in the economy took some time to reach the applicants. These factors, in combination with the increased availability of academically trained personnel in the labor market, and the resulting heightening of the entry requirements from employers, seems to have made fairly extensive university education (such as graduate humanities programs) seem “a matter of course” and the only real ticket to the kinds of careers that were deemed attractive in the 1990s.414 For educational expansion to occur, the continued increase in applications to the humanities programs was of course a sine qua non, but so was the shift towards a more permissive admissions policy and the willingness of the political system to

413 Much of the later research refers to Sverre Try’s report from 2000, but with its focus on education as a labor market service this report offers only a partial explanation, and one which does not really account for the development after 1993-94. 414 Cf., once more, the mechanisms outlined in Randall Collins, The Credential Society: An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification.

The second expansionist period, 1987–2000 │ 211

fund continued educational expansion in the humanities, and this demands separate explanations. The scale of humanities education could have been maintained or even reduced with the use of continued competitive admissions, but this seems no longer to have been politically tenable by the mid-1990s. Why not? In approaching this question it should first be acknowledged that several exogenous factors impacted policymaking in the field of higher education at the time in question. The implementation in 1994 of major and costly reforms in the university college sector and in primary education had intended as well as unintended consequences which made it difficult to follow a principled admissions policy. Also, certain media-driven political debates and the perennial contest for public opinion among the political parties clearly motivated a number of smaller policy decisions. The Norwegian penchant for “district politics,” with MPs acting on behalf of the institutions in their own districts, was a significant part of this. The aggregated effect of it all was that most organized interests in Norway by this time advocated continued educational expansion, including, of course, the students.415 What happened in 1995, when Parliament decided to lift the restrictions that had been imposed by the ministry in 1990, was not a return to completely open access, however. Sensing which way the wind was blowing, the ministry had devised a mid-way solution, a so-called “national opening” of the non-professional programs, and it was this solution Parliament opted for. The idea was that applicants who could not be admitted at their institution of choice for reasons of space should instead be offered admission to the same kind of program at another institution where there was available capacity. With the use of this mechanism (a sort of inversed market mechanism), excess demand, mostly in the South-East, should be channeled to where supply was to be found, mostly in the districts. This policy was a failure, however. First of all, it seems to have reactivated the fear we saw in the late 1960s, at least in some institutions, of losing out in a zero-sum game of educational prestige. Although impossible to establish conclusively, it seems that this must have been at least one of the reasons why the University of Bergen somewhat spectacularly announced its intention, despite the parliamentary decision in favor of “national opening”, to continue to regulate access to nine undergraduate humanities programs in 1995-96. In the end, Parliament had to ask the ministry to intervene to enforce its decision.416

415 In this, too, the 1990s students followed the example of the generation of 1968, and not the more protectionist stance of students from the 1950s and early 1960s (and which still prevailed in some prestigious professional programs). 416 Cf. question 18 in the Parliamentary plenary session on 15 November 1995 from MP Erling Folkvord.

212 │ The transformation of humanities education

But more importantly, the “national opening” failed because the offers of admission at other institutions were very seldom accepted. In 1996-97, over 2000 applicants received such an offer, but only 49 accepted – and the next year the numbers were even lower.417 It is hard to believe that this was not foreseen. Domestic mobility in postwar Norway, especially among young people, had almost invariably been from the districts to the cities, especially to Oslo. The attempt to move students in the other direction was surely utopian, especially when there were well-known loopholes which allowed students to live where they wanted and to study what they wanted, anyway. If one wanted to study the humanities at Oslo but did not meet the competitive entry requirements, for instance, one such loophole was to enroll at the Faculty of theology, where admission was much less competitive, and then earn enough credits in the humanities (through permitted “interfacultary” study) to apply for a transfer. Another and more widely known option was to pass the final exam of the first one-year program (grunnfag) as a private candidate, whereby admission to the Faculty of humanities would automatically be granted. Both of these options were in widespread use throughout the 1990s, and made all access regulation somewhat illusory. Why, then, were these loopholes not closed by the ministry, or by Parliament? Because especially the latter – the use of the private candidate option – had come to be seen as a symbol of the equal right to higher education, and was now politically near-impossible to alter. And with that we have arrived at what was really the bottom line on admissions policy in Norwegian higher education at the end of the 20th century: Admission had become not only a welfare good, but a welfare right. This, in my interpretation, was the real political rationale for facilitating a continued expansion in humanities education after 1995, when most other considerations pointed in the direction of containment or reduction. This is corroborated by the rates of non-admissions. In 1991, 28 percent of the qualified applicants had not been admitted, but by 1998 this share had been reduced to 6 percent, and by 1999 to only 3 percent.418 At this point, not to be grated entry into a higher education program had become a legitimate cause for protest, and to have large groups of young people with complaints on this account would cost more politically than any of the parties in Parliament could

417 White paper, St. meld. Nr 36 (1998-1999) Om prinsipper for dimensjonering av høgre utdanning, ch. 1. 418 Sverre Try, Veksten i høyere utdanning: Et vellykket arbeidsmarkedspolitisk tiltak? 17, 22.

The second expansionist period, 1987–2000 │ 213

afford.419 It was only in exceptional cases, such as in very costly and demanding professional programs, or in periods of complete overload, such as the early 1990s, that it was legitimate to restrict access. Still, policy documents continued to claim that one could have the cake and eat it, too. The rights of young people to access higher education, popularized in the slogan “equal right to education” (”lik rett til utdanning”), had to be presented as compatible, somehow, with other societal concerns. A white paper from 1997, ordered by Parliament specifically to discuss “principles for admission and capacity building [dimensjonering] in higher education,” formulates the official admissions policy principle as follows: “It is still a main aim to meet each individual’s demand for higher education, at the same time as the capacity must answer to society’s demand for manpower. The capacity of higher 420

education must give room to meet both of these aims.”

But of course, postulating that school leavers’ applications should ideally match the labor market demand was neither an accurate description of the situation in the late 1990s, nor was it really a policy for how to negotiate these concerns in the future. Unsurprisingly, there is no such method outlined elsewhere in the white paper, either. The document contains mainly inconclusive discussions of the many problems in this policy field, most of them stemming from incommensurable goals, perspectives and interests. In addition to discrepancies between applicants’ preferences and labor market demands, there is the problem of whether to accentuate district politics or to build capacity in the larger cities where there are more applicants. There is the problem of whether certain programs should be prioritized by the political system, and if so, which to prioritize: engineering, ICT, health care, teaching – or what? Underlying many of the discussions in the white paper one can sense another schism that would become more accentuated in the new century (cf. the conclusion to this part): Should Norwegian public higher education institutions be regarded as a distributed system whose capacity and admissions policy needs to be steered by central authorities (i.e. by the ministry and Parliament), or should each institution to a larger extent be allowed to make its own priorities and even compete with the others? Few if any of these questions are resolved in the white

419 It should be noted that since the previous debates on admissions around 1970, the smaller political parties had become significantly more important, and competition for public opinion had become fiercer. 420 White paper, St. meld. nr. 36 (1998-1999) Om prinsipper for dimensjonering av høgre utdanning

214 │ The transformation of humanities education

paper, and particularly not for the non-professional programs (more concrete proposals are admittedly made for some of the professional programs). Instead, it is repeatedly said that a balance must be found. To find this balance was of course the constitutional responsibility of the ministry (in the face of Parliament, that is), but as we shall see below, it had by now become obvious that the ministry could not manage this task alone. The failure to arrive at conclusions and practical solutions in the white paper was not chiefly due to shortcomings on the part of the government or the ministry, however. Parliament had a year previously been presented with another white paper on the same issue that had had more concrete action points (based upon labor market statistics, applicable largely to professional programs) but Parliament had returned it, asking for a document with a more general principles. Read with this in mind, the white paper of 1997 referenced above can be interpreted, at least in certain passages, as leaking off a measure of muted frustration with a political system that now seemed incapable of indicating a direction, and instead insists on having it every way at once. Not wanting to provoke Parliament in the assessment of the current situation, or in the proposed action points for the future, the white paper is at its most revealing regarding the inconsistencies involved in this policy field when summarizing the admissions policy of the previous period: If one were to recapitulate Norwegian policy on admissions and capacity building in higher education during the last decades, one could say that the most accentuated steering lines have been the applications for admission, adjusted for documented shortage or expected lack of manpower in specific professions, and the goal of establishing a structure of institutions which could ensure capacity building in all parts of the country. In some professions there is a close connection between the competency requirements and the education. In other cases, the couplings are loose. Only in exceptional cases has the educational capacity been reduced as a result of an expected decline in the demand. Unemployment or mismatch in relation to the labor market for particular groups of graduates has not been deemed sufficient reason to lower the capacity for admission.421 The last point here is obviously of particular relevance to the humanities. In both waves of educational expansion it had been especially in the humanities that it could be argued for a controlled downsizing to avoid a mismatch with the labor market (cf. the discussion of this topic in part four). But looking back it was now clear that it was only in cases of manpower shortages that admissions were actually adjusted – i.e. labor market concerns were only heeded when they provided reasons

421 White paper, St. meld. nr. 36 (1998-1999) Om prinsipper for dimensjonering av høgre utdanning, ch. 3.1.

The second expansionist period, 1987–2000 │ 215

for expansion. Otherwise, the development resulting from the flow of applications was left to run its course. In reality, then, what the 1997 white paper offered was not very different from the self-regulatory mechanisms that the Ottosen committee had pointed to. Only now it was not human capital theory that legitimated it, but the notion of the “knowledge society” (in some quarters referred to as the “knowledge economy”). This concept and the viewpoint it offered was of course political in the sense that it was used to legitimate political decisions, but it was buttressed by extensive research and strongly supported by organizations in economic system, and hence succeeded in presenting itself as a comprehensive “societal” perspective.422 In some ways it resembled and built upon the human capital theories from the 1960s, but it was now less economistic and more broadly defined as a socio-cultural vision.423 Carried forward by the digital revolution and the entrepreneurialism of the dot-com era, it was the horizon of expectation for most of the function systems in the 1990s, but it found particular resonance in the system of education and in educational policy, where it was used to legitimate increased investments. Nevertheless, even if resolved to the satisfaction of Parliament on the abstract level of policy principles, it was obvious that on the practical level, the “vexed problems” of admissions and capacity building that had accompanied this field since WWII would not go away. Not even the emergence of a knowledge society could guarantee a spontaneous order or automatic coordination between the school leavers’ applications, the capacity in the higher education institutions, and the demands in the labor market. With publicly owned institutions, various under- and overcapacity problems would necessitate continued (and continuous) policymaking. It had been suspected since the 1980s that the ministry could not handle this by itself. Policymaking had to occur at the intersection of the systems of politics, education, research, and the economy. But how to go about it, on which policy arenas, with which mechanisms and instruments, was still far from clear. During the 1990s the discussions on this meta-issue evolved into an almost comical series of

422 The phrase dates back to Peter Drucker, The Age of Discontinuity (NY: Harper & Row, 1969), but it was in the 1990s that it gained wider acceptance, often used in public debates in conjunction with other key terms such as information, communication, competencies, networks, etc. For academic perspectives on these issues, cf. Nico Stehr, Knowledge Societies (London: Sage, 1994) and Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (London: Blackwell, 1996). The use of this discourse in policy documents from e.g. UNESCO and the EU might illustrate what John W. Meyer and other new institutionalists have called global “scripts” or “myths.” 423 This is the subject of further discussion in part four.

216 │ The transformation of humanities education

political and bureaucratic entanglements, of which the mentioned white paper from 1997 was only one episode. It could be argued that these issues have never, as of 2016, found a satisfactory solution in Norway, but within the timeframe of this study, it seems fitting to say that the trajectory came to a temporary culmination with the establishment in 1998 of the Network Norway Council – a construction that fell apart, however, after only a few years, in 2002. A few words on the 1990s part of this trajectory is in order, since it belongs to the saga of structural coupling mechanisms in this policy field in Norway in the second half of the 20th century. As mentioned above, the Hernes committee had in 1988 proposed the establishment – at long last – of a standing committee (or “council”) to function as a coupling mechanism for policymaking in the field of Norwegian higher education.424 The proposal was given further consideration by an expert committee led by Toril Johansson, a director of educational affairs at the University of Oslo, in 199495. This committee ended up recommending that the major policy advisers to the ministry on these issues should be the two independent councils that had been formed in the 1970s, when the previous attempt to establish a national council stranded, namely the Council of Universities (formerly the Rectors’ Conference) and the Council of University Colleges.425 The Labor minister of education insisted on the idea of a new comprehensive committee, however, and presented an outline of a plan to establish it to Parliament in the budget proposal in the fall of 1996. But a majority in Parliament voted to return the proposition to the ministry, stating that a full treatment in a white paper was in order. A white paper was duly produced, Parliament finally concurred, and the Network Norway Council could finally be established in 1998. The plan had only been hesitantly accepted by the opposition, however, which thought of the new council as a characteristic Labor party construction. It was also disliked by the two independent councils, which feared that the new council would step on their toes.426 Due to a change in government in 1997, it fell to a coalition government led by the Christian Democratic Party to effectuate the establishment of the Network Norway Council. The situation was somewhat similar to what had happened in 1965, when the Labor party had also prepared the ground for a particular kind of policymaking structure, but then had to leave it to a centrist government to decide

424 Norwegian official report, NOU: 1988:28 Med viten og vilje, 135ff. 425 The Johansson committee, Rådsstruktur og rådsfunksjoner i høgre utdanning : innstilling fra utvalg oppnevnt av Kirke- utdannings- og forskningsdepartementet 29. september (Oslo: Dep, 1995) 426 Per Nyborg, Universitets- og høgskolesamarbeid i en brytningstid. Femti års utvikling (Oslo: Unipub, 2007).

The second expansionist period, 1987–2000 │ 217

what to do with it. As in 1965, the incoming government in 1997 kept what the Labor party had left them with, but seems to have been skeptical or at least hesitant about its usefulness. Establishing the council, the new minister Jon Lilletun made sure the leadership and membership was heavily dominated by academics. The mandate was drawn up in compliance with what Parliament had agreed to, and stipulated, among other things, that the council’s responsibilities included giving policy advice on capacity building and admissions. But the council was certainly not alone on this policy arena. Parliament had underscored, as a condition for the establishment of a new council, that the Council of universities and the Council of university colleges should both keep up their work on these issues, supposedly in dialogue with each other, with the Network Norway Council, and with the ministry. As if this was not enough, the new minister waited only a few months after the establishment of the Network Norway Council before he appointed a new temporary committee of inquiry, chaired by Ole Danbolt Mjøs, and mandated it to take a comprehensive view of the whole of Norwegian higher education, including the questions of admissions and capacity building. In addition to a very active (but not always very consistent) Parliament, and the 1997 white paper which the ministry just had committed itself to, the ministry now had three permanent councils and one temporary committee of inquiry to consider in this policy field – a field which, as we recall, had lain almost dormant from the late 1970s to the late 1980s. Whether it was the intention of the minister in appointing the Mjøs committee or not, this temporary committee seems to have sensed that the policy situation at the turn of the century had come to a stand-still, with overlapping and overcrowded policy arenas, and policy actors keeping each other in check. The only way out was a whole new way of thinking about policymaking in Norwegian higher education.

9.2

A FEW REMARKS ON THE MJØS COMMITTEE

The scope and timeframe of the present study (1960-2000) does not permit a full discussion of the Mjøs committee. The committee’s report was presented to the ministry in 2000, but the political outcome of it only became clear several years later, and the implementation took longer still. Also, the development I am trying to understand, the expansion of humanities education in the second half of the 20th century, had already reached its peak in 1997, and at the time the Mjøs committee began its work it was entering a period of slow decline and then stabilization in the new century. In other words, Norwegian humanities education had by this time established itself at a level that was much higher than it had been in 1987. The

218 │ The transformation of humanities education

reasons for the slight decline after 1997 were partly demographical and partly had to do with the tight labor market in the booming dot-com era, and was even less the intended result of public admissions policy than the (much steeper) decline in the mid-1970s had been. As regards the scale of humanities education (and Norwegian higher education in general), the Mjøs committee therefore arrived at a fait accompli. Still, to provide some form of closure to the historical trajectory of structural coupling mechanisms in this policy field, a brief look at the perspectives and proposals of the Mjøs committee is in order here at the tail end of the 1990s. First of all it should be noted that the committee of inquiry this time was much larger than previously, and included broader representation from the various function systems, although still with a heavy majority from academia.427 Secondly, the committee’s tenure coincided with the Bologna process, which obviously mattered much to its analysis and policy proposals.428 Without inspiration and support from this international process, it is doubtful whether a Norwegian temporary committee, in the midst of all the other actors on the domestic policy arena, would have come up with such radical proposals as it did. Its most noticeable proposals (a new degree system, a new grading system, etc.) do not concern us here, however. But underlying many of the much debated action points (of which a large share were actually implemented in 2003) was a new way of thinking about higher education that also meant a departure from the way policymaking on admissions and capacity building had previously been conceptualized. In brief, the Mjøs committee proposed to view Norwegian higher education more as a set of individual self-governing institutions, and less as a centrally governed and comprehensive system.429 On one level, this shift was part of the larger transformation of Norwegian public administration that was discussed in the introduction to this part. Central planning was giving way to what we have previously called, with Åkerstrøm Andersen, “polycentric” administration. Institutions should henceforth to a much larger extent be self-governing entities, operating strategically and adapting themselves to a predefined incentive structure; government steering should be oriented towards objectives, not input factors; and quality control should be performed not by a political agency but via a more independent accreditation body. This administrative policy – often referred to as New Public Management – had been applied in other

427 See Vidar Grøtta, “Higher Education Policymaking in Scandinavia.” 428 Åse Gornitzka, “What is the Use of Bologna in National Reform? The Case of Norwegian Quality Reform in Higher Education,” Creating the European Area of Higher Education. Voices from the Periphery, ed. Voldemar Tomusk (Berlin: Springer, 2007). 429 Norwegian official report, NOU 2000:14, Frihet med ansvar. Om høgre utdanning og forskning i Norge, 517ff.

The second expansionist period, 1987–2000 │ 219

areas, and now it should be more thoroughly implemented in higher education as well.430 But what did this mean for policymaking on admissions and capacity building? For one thing it led to the establishment of a new accreditation body – NOKUT (the Norwegian agency for quality assurance in education), which meant the Network Norway council was definitely out of business only a few years after its arrival on the scene. Considering that the Council of universities and the Council of university colleges had merged in 2000, the policy arena was thus much less chaotic than it had been in the last years of the 20th century. And with student numbers more or less stabilized, the policy issue of admission and capacity building was no longer uppermost in anyone’s minds. But looking at the fundamentals, it is not obvious that the policy perspectives changed very much on this specific policy issue. True, after the policies of the Mjøs committee were implemented, higher education institutions were granted more autonomy to regulate capacity within an incentive structure that rewarded the production of credits and graduate exams. But although exposed to this quasi-market pressure, the institutions were still publicly owned, and what to do about institutions that were unable to attract enough applicants, and hence produced below par, was still an open question that continually called for political attention. The problems were really unsolved in the other end, too. Nothing the Mjøs committee proposed changed the perception of higher education as a welfare right. Hence, if demand should rise significantly, so must the supply. Since the turn of the century, this has not occurred. What will happen the next time the humanities faculties in the large cities receive a much larger number of applicants than they can accommodate – with the educational quality and the labor market balance intact – is still an open question.

430 There had been attempts to introduce this form of thinking (referred to as management by objectives – målstyring) since the late 1980s, but for the most part unsuccessfully, not the least because of the familiar forms of protest against New Public Management by academics. The Mjøs committee was met with the same kind of response, and some proposals were put on the shelf as a result, but in general the new policy perspective prevailed. Management by objectives was introduced in Norwegian public sector by a committee of inquiry chaired by Tormod Hermasen. Cf. Norwegian official report, NOU 1989: 5 En bedre organisert stat.

10 Conclusions to part two

Looking back on the whole trajectory we have covered in this part, from the 1950s to the turn of the 20th century, what can we say by way of conclusion about the massive expansion of Norwegian humanities education? All the events, committees, and documents – are they separate incidents, pointing this way and that, or do they add up to some kind of narrative? If there is a narrative, which dynamics have propelled it? As we have seen in the literature review, many of the episodes in the story of expansion in humanities education have been discussed before. But since most of the literature is on higher education in general, humanities education surfaces only occasionally as a topic, with somewhat fragmentary commentary, before it is once more submerged in the wide river of educational history. Hopefully, the narrower focus in this study offers a more comprehensive understanding of the growth of humanities education. In previous research, the first period of educational expansion – including the tremendous growth in the humanities from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s– has mostly been explained with reference to domestic political ideas from the 1950s and 1960s, featuring especially the Labor party’s goal of equality, but also the theory of human capital. The second period of expansion in the 1990s has in addition been explained by demography, labor market policy, and cultural factors. In my own analyses, I have emphasized the role of policymaking, not unlike previous research. But I have done so with reference to systems theory, which I believe has made a difference. As discussed in the first sections of this part, systems theory takes into account the differentiation of the various societal function systems involved in the “overlapping domain” of higher education, and uses the concept of structural coupling to frame the conditions under which these systems can impact policy on issues like capacity building and admissions. Using this conceptualization – mostly with regards to the temporary committees of inquiry that have been so important in Norway, but also in reference to other coupling mechanisms – has

222 │ The transformation of humanities education

alerted me to the salient roles played by other function systems than politics, even though the latter has had the prerogative of setting up the policymaking arena, and of making the final, collectively binding decisions. Most importantly, I have come to see that the rise of the system of research in postwar Norway played a more significant role for the expansion of humanities education than has hitherto been acknowledged. The primary and most direct agency in this regard should perhaps be attributed to the strategy devised under the auspices of the Joint committee of research councils in the 1950s. But the maintenance and, when needed, vigorous defense of the cross-subsidizing mechanism that has coupled the research ambitions of the humanities (as well as other disciplines) with educational massification has continued in subsequent decades, as illustrated by the cited statements made by rector Hans Vogt at Oslo in 1968 (cf the section above on the period 1960-1975). After ca. 1980, the conception of humanities education as tightly coupled with the humanities research enterprise, the two systems legitimating each other without much reference to their societal environment, has become so ingrained that even to refer to the environment (especially to the economy) has become a kind of faux pas – vilified as “instrumentalism,” “vocationalism,” or worse. In other words, the interpenetration of humanities research and higher education generated a selfdescription that confirmed its supposed unity vis a vis its environment. I shall offer additional discussions on this coupling in part three and four. While not simply a consequence of the co-evolution since the 1970s of humanities education and research, the weak representation of the economy as a function system in higher education policymaking (e.g. in the committees of inquiry) must certainly be interpreted in the light of this development. Prior to the mid-1970s, humanities education had been tightly but tacitly coupled to the labor market for school teachers (and hence to the economy and “the world of work”), but as we shall see in part four, the coupling mechanism of “profession/embete” then withered away in the last half of the 1970s, without new links to the economy being established instead. As we have seen, there was a feeble and failed attempt by the Ministry of education to include the social partners in the proposed policymaking structure in the 1970s, and the Hernes committee did include two representatives from the economic system, but that was about all. And so the economic perspective, which many researchers (and activists) since the late 1960s have viewed as the real driver behind the educational expansion, has actually only been reflected in the policymaking via the political system. Not only has there not been an articulated demand for people trained in the humanities (or similar “generalized” programs) by actors representing the economic system, but as we shall return to in part four, the share of jobs which actually require such competencies has been limited. Hence, the

Conclusions to part two │ 223

theory of the political system as the “handmaiden of capitalism” does not receive much support in the materials surveyed here. True, human capital theory (in a broad sense, including the later paradigm of the knowledge economy) has been referred to in many policy documents, but not as a criterion with which to calculate the allocation of funds. It has rather been used politically as a generalized contingency formula (to borrow, once again, Luhmann’s concept) whereby educational investments – almost irrespective of kind – have been considered compatible with the socio-economic rationality of the Ministry of finance. In other words, it has been used as a legitimation strategy. But while the rationality of the economic system has not been a significant factor for the capacity building and admissions policy in Norwegian higher education, the outcomes of the policies in this field have certainly had to be compatible with the realities in the economy. This is why declining business cycles have several times necessitated certain policy adjustments. These have been post hoc, however. Even though the analytical parts of policy documents have pointed to the risks of long-term imbalances in relation to the economy as a result of unfettered educational expansion, the actual policy recommendation have rarely erred on the side of caution – and neither have the decisions. The political system, I would argue, has been much more important in policymaking on these issues than the economy, but not so much in the ways suggested by previous research. In most of the relevant studies (cf. the literature review above), the programs of particular parties and the ideas of individual politicians (as well as bureaucrats) have been at the center of attention. I, too, have traced and commented the thinking and actions of certain key figures, such as Gudmund Hernes and Kjell Eide, but rather than viewing these as “national strategists,” to use a phrase Rune Slagstad has coined and popularized in Norway, or as mouthpieces for the supposedly monolithic ideologies of their parties, I have tried to view such key figures in the light of the political function system logic within which they have operated.431 What comes into view from this perspective is not chiefly the particular local color of the policy ideas of certain people from Norwegian Labor party, which I believe has been overestimated as prime mover, but rather the way these ideas were derived from a more generic welfare state logic that pertained to many (but not all) modern democratic states in the postwar era. Including the whole population in the higher education policy perspectives (at least in principle) became paramount for all the Norwegian parties in this period, as well as in many other European countries, and the differences between stances on particular policy issues at particular times were

431 Rune Slagstad, De nasjonale strateger.

224 │ The transformation of humanities education

relatively minor, and had more to do, in my view, with the distinction position/opposition than left/right. But what about the educational system itself? After all, if the systems theoretical concept of autopoietical function systems is to be taken seriously, the development of humanities education in Norway must surely have been conditioned primarily by the system logic of education, of which it is itself a part? In some ways, this has indeed been the case. The conception of higher education as a right, and hence the potential inclusion of all Norwegian youths into humanities education, was not only a political necessity flowing from the competition of political actors whose only available legitimation for admissions policy had to be universalistic; it followed likewise from the inherent logic of the educational system, which, according to Luhmann and Schorr, will tend to prioritize the function of enhancing social connectivity over the (more latent, and as Luhmann stresses, actively disliked) function of being a societal selection mechanism.432 From the late 1960s onwards, the “inclusive” logics of the political system and the educational system seem to have mutually reinforced each other. Moreover, the system dynamic at the lower levels of the educational system has also impacted humanities education at the tertiary level in the same direction, albeit in a more indirect way. As we have seen, the autonomization of lower and upper secondary school in the 1960s and 1970s implied (among other things) its decoupling from academia, and hence contributed to the de-professionalization of humanities education as teacher training, transforming it into what will be conceptualized, in the fourth part of this study, as a research-oriented generalist education of indeterminate career applications. This was obviously an important precondition for the continued expansion of humanities education in the 1990s. Nevertheless, it is striking how the two waves of quantitative expansion of Norwegian humanities education have happened in ways that have seriously impaired educational quality, without this inducing sufficiently strong objections from institutional leaders or professors on educational grounds to halt the growth.433 This is probably an indication of how, in the “overlapping domain” of academia, education has gradually ceased to be a top priority; and, in the policy arena, how the political (and educational) preference for inclusion has trumped the concern for educational quality and educational outcomes.

432 Niklas Luhmann and Karl-Eberhard Schorr, Problems of Reflection in the System of Education, 274ff. 433 Exceptions to this trend seems to have been the enforcement of numerus clausus in 1990, as well as the protests at Bergen against the “national opening” in 1995.

Conclusions to part two │ 225

On a general level, these are not altogether new insights. It has been noted several times, for instance, that the desire for research expansion can be a motive for advocating educational expansion.434 As we have seen, the use of higher education as a labor market policy in the 1990s has also been widely discussed, sometimes with explicit reference to humanities. But such discussions have not, in my view, offered coherent and comprehensive analyses of how various mechanisms have worked together in a way that could result in such massive expansion of humanities education. Moreover, previous accounts have mostly taken the simplified view that policy is something academia has been exposed to from without. The problem is not so much that blame for unwanted developments is always put on actors in the environment, for exceptions to this are not hard to find. It is rather that other perspectives, such as the political or economic ones, are rarely viewed as legitimate, simply because they are not academic. As I argued in part one, I do not think research on higher education in Norway has faced up to this problem of self-reference. Even theoretical strands where a measure of reflexivity should be expected, such as the program of institutional logics discussed in part one, offers no in-depth discussions of it, let alone solutions. Applied to the policy issues discussed in this part, the conceptual framework of institutional logics would amount to an accentuation of the schism between the “professional” and the “democratic” logic, with the almost irresistible temptation of tacitly taking the perspective of the former while describing its defensive struggles against the unwarranted advances of the latter. As argued in part one, I believe systems theory has the richest research perspective currently available on this issue with its concept of second-order observation. Briefly put, a research question such as the one that has guided the investigations in this part should not be viewed only through the research system’s own optics. An effort should also be made to gauge the distance to other relevant viewpoints, to ask which mechanisms and dynamics have conditioned the various actors in other function systems, and to compare and contrast the observations and actions of these with the difference of perspective in mind. The aim is obviously not objectivism, but observations of observations, or increased reflexivity.

434 Kjell Eide was clear about this, and Thue and Helsvig also recognizes the tacit “contract” between the University of Oslo and the Norwegian state on the cross-subsidizing of research by education. Cf. Kjell Eide, “Fra norsk forskningspolitikks barndom: Forskningsrådenes fellesorgan som policyorgan”; Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen, 391.This is indeed the international funding model of public research universities, see for instance Burton Clark, The Higher Education System.

226 │ The transformation of humanities education

Taking into account several perspectives in this way will tend to make unilinear causal explanations problematic. While helpful enough in some contexts, attempts to draw causal arrows pointing from independent to dependent variables presupposes a measure of stability in context and perspective that issues like the ones under discussion in this part do not easily accommodate. With a multi-angled historical trajectory like this, a functional form of explanation – i.e. an explanation which conceptualizes the explanandum as a solution and explanans as a problem or set of problems – is more illuminating, it seems to me.435 Using this “functional method,” as Luhmann termed it, we can summarize the findings in this part of the study as follows: The massive expansion of Norwegian humanities education in the last half of the 20th century happened because it simultaneously solved several acute problems facing the function systems implied in policymaking on higher education admissions and capacity building in this period: 1) the research system’s problem of how to attract resources – funding and recruitment – to the emerging enterprise of autonomous, disciplinary research in the humanities, 2) the political system’s problem of how to make good on the conception of higher education as a welfare right, and to do so within the limits set by the overarching socio-economic policy doctrine, and 3) the educational system’s problem of how to attain autonomy for educational operations by decoupling secondary education from subservience to academia, and humanities education from subservience to the labor market.436 Although it would be farfetched to say that the expansion of humanities education solved problems in the economy, we could add as a fourth leg to this functional explanation that the expansion turned out to be compatible with the economic developments which created a demand for generalized competencies and credentials in the knowledge economy. But as we have seen, the expansion of humanities education not only solved problems, it created some as well. Overload problems, resulting in low educational quality at the universities in the 1960s and 1990s, were not sufficiently heeded, partly because political considerations were given priority, and partly because the research-orientation of academic institutions had increasingly come to mean negligence of education. The absence of the economic system, and of the graduates themselves, on the higher education policy arena allowed humanities education’s

435 On the difference between causal and functional explanation, cf. Niklas Luhmann, “Funksjon og kausalitet” [“Function and Causality”], Sosiologisk teori, eds. Tore Bakken and Eric Lawrence Wiik (Oslo: Akademika, 2013). 436 Luhmann pointed out that “when particular performances solve several problems at once, they can become almost irreplaceable, since they from each viewpoint would have to be replaced by other equivalents.” Ibid, 68. My translation from the Norwegian.

Conclusions to part two │ 227

increasing problems with adapting to the labor market to escalate from the 1970s onwards, without substantial policy changes being made. These problems were not as readily channeled back into the policymaking process, however. To the systems participating in the policymaking process, they would register mainly as irritations sometimes visited upon them, coming at irregular intervals from less relevant areas of the environment. And here we arrive once more at the use of temporary committees of inquiry as structural coupling mechanisms. These have proved to be effective for addressing policy issues that have escalated over time, and where an awareness have grown in all systems of the need to “do something.” Not seldom the major problem has been admissions. Bringing the structural complexity of such policy issues and the relevant interests and perspectives into what systems theory conceptualizes as an interaction system has the advantage of black-boxing the policymaking process for a certain duration of time, allowing functional solutions to emerge and be legitimated as a compromise. The problem with relying so heavily on temporary committees of inquiry every 10-15 years, however, is that regular feedback-loops between the function systems are not established. As function systems grow increasingly autonomous, the distance between their perspectives will also tend to grow in the intervening periods, making multi-functional solutions harder to find for each time.

Part three: Curricula

11 Introduction to part three

In the previous part, we have been preoccupied almost exclusively with the quantitative aspect of Norwegian humanities education – with its size, and, most importantly, with its growth in the postwar period. There has been quite a few numbers, and the perspective has been “externalist.” In this part, attention is shifted to qualitative aspects, to the contents of this form of education. Interest will lie with the features which have come to characterize the humanities as such. As a consequence, this part will take place on campus. The chief topic will be curricula, and the main system-reference is still education, but to approach modern humanities education obviously makes it necessary to bring research into the picture. As this part will discuss in some detail, the systems of research and education have become structurally coupled in the Norwegian humanities during the second half of the 20th century, and the nature of this coupling has had a profound impact on humanities curricula. Research has certainly been in the picture in the previous part, too. As we have seen, the increased research ambitions of the Norwegian universities had an important impact on higher education policymaking in the postwar era. But so far research has been treated mostly as an independent variable. No real attempt has been made to investigate how modern research itself emerged as an autonomous societal system in Norway – or, more specifically, how the Norwegian humanities, which before WWII consisted of the relatively small Historical-philosophical faculty at the University of Oslo, was differentiated in the postwar era into numerous disciplinary communities of researchers located at four universities and a number of university colleges. The major thesis underlying this part of the study is that the changes in the content of Norwegian humanities education during the last half of the 20th century, as measured by curricula documents, can only be explained by examining how humanities research developed before and during the same period. Judged from the current state of academic affairs, this might not seem a very bold conjecture. With

232 │ The transformation of humanities education

reference to the now standard concept of “research-based education,” one might even consider it a tautology.437 But as we shall see, the notion that research (i.e. the production of new knowledge) can be the foundation for educational programs is actually a fairly recent one in Norway. To suppose that the orientation towards research simply is what determines the historical evolution of the humanities would be to beg the question. Eager to claim the Humboldtian idea of Bildung durch Wissenschaft as the origin of their enterprise, Norwegian academics have been prone to anachronistic self-descriptions in this regard, but as has been repeatedly underscored in this study the primary function of Norwegian academia from its inception until WWII was not research, but the certification of candidates for professional roles, mostly in the civil service.438 In the case of the humanities, it was the education of secondary school teachers which was the unquestioned premise for all academic activities until quite late in the 20th century.439 Only since the 1970s, this changed. Hence, a supporting thesis in the following discussion, which forms a corollary to the abovementioned thesis of the rise of research-oriented curricula, is that the same period saw a decline in the importance of the teaching profession as a point of orientation for humanities education. However, to say that humanities education traditionally was oriented towards teacher certification does not mean that the academic staff had no scholarly ambitions. Nor does it mean that the educational programs in question were carefully designed to cater to the professional needs of future teachers, not to speak of the needs of the secondary schools and their pupils. I shall return to this issue below, but I would like to point out already here at the outset that traditional humanities education in Norway was never more than compatible with teacher training – in principally the same way that theology had served as a preparation for teaching tasks previously. In the postwar era, the compatibility of humanities education with schooling was clearly less than satisfactory from the point of view of the secondary schools, which was one reason for the subsequent development. Thus, in the

437 In Norway, it was the Hernes committee which first suggested that all of higher education should be “research-based,” and this formulation was subsequently used in the new legislation on higher education in 1994. For the background, cf. Norwegian official report, NOU 1993: 24 Lov om universiteter og høgskoler. 438 This will be further substantiated in part four. 439 For an interesting and fairly recent historical account focused on the Norwegian humanities, an account which in many respects concurs with findings in the present study, cf. Fredrik W. Thue, “Fra ‘lærdomskultur’ til ‘forskersamfunn’,” Nytt norsk tidsskrift 29.2 (2012).

Introduction to part three │ 233

curricula documents and the other historical material under consideration here, we cannot expect the imprint of teacher education to be prevalent, even though it can be demonstrated that this was the primary societal function of these programs. For this reason the major focus in the historical expositions of the humanities disciplines and in the concrete curricula analyses will be on the rise of research, while the decline of the teacher training function is handled more as a background variable. The legal and political aspects of this decline (the changes in the degree structure in 1959 which decoupled teacher certification from academic credentials) have been outlined in the previous part; a more detailed discussion of the candidates’ career paths will be offered in part four. As is perhaps evident from the above, the conceptual framework laid out in part one, based mostly on the sociological systems theory of Niklas Luhmann, will be employed in this part of the study also. However, even a rudimentary knowledge of the historical trajectories of the various Norwegian humanities disciplines and of the educational programs in question will make it clear that certain adjustments will have to be made. While relevant and helpful in analyzing the evolution of humanities education from a societal viewpoint, rather than from the infra-academic perspective often employed in university histories, the historiography implicit in systems theory – its generalized account of how modern function systems gained autonomy in the Western world, mostly in the 19th century – is based upon developments in larger countries and is not a perfect match for the historical evolution of the Norwegian humanities. Yet, the overall outcome – as measured by the status of the Norwegian humanities around the millennium – is quite similar to the way the modern humanities are practiced and organized world-wide. And as we shall see, some of the same basic mechanisms have been operative in the emergence of autonomous humanities research in Norway as elsewhere. But the path there nevertheless differed, and crucial events happened much later in Norway. Now, if the theory needs adjustments in order to fit the empirical material, why keep it? Because even if some of the historical contingencies present problems, the theory in my view still allows for a clearer and richer understanding of the evolutionary dynamic in this field than any of the alternative theories, such as neoinstitutionalism, Bourdieu’s theory of societal fields, or the many variants of Foucauldian (”archaeological”) discourse analysis. Moreover, the problems presented by national variations can, I believe, be solved. They necessitate some introductory discussions, however, which is what the first section of this part is dedicated to. In it, I take a closer look at how systems theory accounts for the dynamic of research, in particular as regards its organizational coupling with education in research universities. Addressing the particular problem of how research achieved autonomy in various national and disciplinary contexts, I make

234 │ The transformation of humanities education

use of Rudolf Stichweh’s work on how national disciplinary research systems typically emerge and evolve. Stichweh’s perspective is then extended (and adapted) to deal specifically with the case of the rise of Norwegian humanities research. Even if it might seem backwards to begin with research in a study that is focused on education, the emergence and co-evolution of the two system dynamics in the “overlapping” domain of higher education will be easier to grasp, it seems to me, if we begin with the system that, despite its late arrival in the Norwegian humanities, ended up as the dominant one. The subsequent introductory section is more directly concerned with the system of education (as it operates in research universities). Central questions are: What are the societal functions of higher education? How do higher education institutions arrive at decisions about aims, content, and methods of educational programs? At the center of attention is the concept which has given title to this part of the study, the “curriculum.” Before the particular curricula documents of the Norwegian humanities disciplines can be analyzed, this key concept must be defined within the overarching conceptual framework of the study. A third introductory section provides background information on some the most important features of humanities education in Norway: degree structure, teaching methods, exams, etc. This section is mostly addressed to readers without prior knowledge of Norwegian educational history, and particular attention is given to traits which depart from dominant structures and practices in 20th century higher education. After these introductory discussions follows the main section of part three, consisting of four chapters devoted to four humanities disciplines: history, English, general literature studies, and philosophy. The chief aim of these chapters is to trace the origins and evolution of the disciplinary research dynamic in the Norwegian humanities and to investigate how it shaped curricula in the period from 1960 to 2000. An additional aim is to gauge the impact on the curriculum of other factors, such as the above-mentioned decline of the teacher training function. Each of the four chapters contains two parts. First, an historical exposition which traces the evolution of the discipline in question from the 19th century onwards, paying particular attention to the formation of a national disciplinary system in the post WWII period. It has been necessary to begin these introductory disciplinary histories as early as in the 19th century to be able to discuss how the various research disciplines achieved autonomy, especially why it took so long. After these historical introductions, focused mostly on structural aspects, follow fairly detailed studies of curricula documents pertaining to the corresponding educational programs from the period 1960-2000. In the last section of part three, the findings are summarized and tentative conclusions drawn.

Introduction to part three │ 235

11.1 THE COUPLING OF RESEARCH AND HIGHER EDUCATION In part one, brief sketches were offered of research and education considered as separate function systems, based mostly on Luhmann’s work. I have also, in part two, given short descriptions of the systems of research and education in the Norwegian context, and discussed how they have been structurally coupled to the systems of politics and the economy through such mechanisms as committees of inquiry. So far I have not said much about how research and education themselves are coupled in our so-called “higher education institutions” (HEIs), however.440 The literature on this topic in the systems theoretical tradition is not very extensive, but a convenient summary of how the university – which is the paradigmatic HEI – looks from this perspective can be found in Luhmann’s Theory of Society, where the university serves to illustrate a theoretical discussion on the concept of “structural coupling”: “The science system and the education system are coupled by the university organization form. At the latest in the nineteenth century, universities escaped their medieval commitments to service functions in the religious system or in providing human resources for the early modern state; and they now constitute an organizational community of research and teaching that also politically justifies the considerable financial cost to the state. The vehicle of research remains publication, and the vehicle of teaching interaction in lecture halls and seminar rooms. “Academic didactics,” or mostly improvised functional equivalents, determine

441

what scientific texts are suitable for instruction; and conversely, however qualified a

440 I am using quotation marks here to draw attention to the interesting name of this organizational category – the higher education institution, abbreviated HEI – which is long since internationally accepted in both research and policy contexts as a generic term, covering universities, polytechnics, colleges, etc. From an internal, academic perspective, however, it is research and not education which is the primary concern and the distinguishing feature of most of these organizations (at least in Norway); almost everything they do is “research-based.” The categorization “higher education institution” thus seems to reflect an external perspective, and perhaps carries an implicit recognition that the educational performance is of more direct relevance and importance to the societal environment (primarily the political system, the economic system, the families, etc.) than research. 441 In the original German text, the system reference of this determination is specified: “…um unter Gesichtspunkten der Lehre zu entscheiden….” See Niklas Luhmann, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft. Vol. 2 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1997) 785.

236 │ The transformation of humanities education

teacher’s work may be, it bestows no reputation as a researcher. The systems remain separate, but operate, as it were, in personal union; they have an effect on scientific publication that is difficult to determine and, perhaps even more strongly, bring a certain overemphasis on 442

science [Wissenschaftslastigkeit] and lack of practical relevance to university education.”

As hinted at here, the relationship between research and education in modern universities is asymmetrical.443 A certain “academic drift” or “research drift” can be observed. This is especially so in research universities, of course, but the same tendency has been increasingly noticeable in other universities, colleges, polytechnics, etc. as well. Viewed against the long history of universities, this institutional preference for research over education is not only relatively new; it is a complete reversal of the traditional mission of the medieval and early modern universities, which was

442 Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society. Vol. 2, 113. For additional accounts in the tradition of systems theory, see Rudolf Stichweh, “The form of the university“; Rudolf Stichweh, “The unity of teaching and research,” Romanticism in Science, eds. S. Poggi and M. Bossi (London: Kluwer, 1994); and Dirk Baecker, “A Systems Primer on Universities.” 443 The terms “science,” “research,” and “scholarship” present certain problems, especially with reference to the German concept of Wissenschaft. Throughout this study I employ “research” to designate the modern, autonomous function system that, in the conceptualization of Luhmann, lets its communicative operations be guided by the distinction truth/untruth. I use the term generically to cover in principle all modern disciplines and fields of study. German writers in the systems theoretical tradition, Luhmann and Stichweh for instance, use Wissenschaft in much the same way. It should be noted, however, that in the German tradition this term also covers earlier forms of learning that were not necessarily oriented towards Forschung in the sense of wanting to replace old truths with new ones. When discussing older practices that pre-date the modern notion of “research,” for instance in 19th century Norway, I will use the term “scholarship.” Since Wissenschaft is such an inclusive concept, it creates problems in translation into English. As seen in the citation above, it is often translated with “science,” even when it refers to the whole spectrum of disciplines, and not only the natural sciences, which this term is often understood as referring to in English. In the work of Stichweh, who often writes on Wissensshaft in a generic sense, but with examples drawn from the natural sciences, this can create complications in English, but fortunately not so much in this study. In the English citations from Luhmann, Stichweh and other German writers throughout this study, the term “science” refers to Wissenschaft, unless otherwise stated.

Introduction to part three │ 237

centered on teaching and learning.444 Up until the 18th century, universities were mostly indifferent to (and occasionally hostile to) the slowly emerging modern forms of “science” and “research,” which caused proponents of these new practices to search out alternative organizational platforms, such as courtly academies and royal societies.445 It was only after the Humboldtian revolution in the first decades of the 19th century that research was unequivocally put at the center of attention in universities, even though von Humboldt himself and many of the other neohumanists involved with the Berlin University envisioned a “holistic” arrangement – Bildung durch Wissenschaft – whereby the two activities should reinforce rather than oppose each other, or even compete for resources. In this sense, the Humboldtian revolution turned out to be more revolutionary than it was Humboldtian. As Joseph Ben-David, R. Steven Turner, and other researchers have pointed out, it set in motion organizational and cultural dynamics which in the course of the 19th century produced a completely new form of university, based increasingly on specialized research.446 The university maintained its teaching mission, but increasingly treated it as an obligation. The privileged status of research in modern academia is often not readily acknowledged, however.447 Instead, what we tend to hear, in innumerable commencement addresses, is the Humboldtian ideology rehearsed as if it were a living

444 See Hilde de Ridder-Symoens, ed., A History of the University in Europe. Vol. I: Universities in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Hilde de Ridder-Symoens, ed., A History of the University in Europe. Vol. II: Universities in Early Modern Europe 1500-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Olaf Pedersen, The First Universities: Studium Generale and the Origins of University Education in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 445 See Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996) 121ff.; Joseph Ben-David, The Scientists’ Role in Society, 50-55. 446 Ibid; R. Steven Turner, “The Growth of Professorial Research in Prussia, 1818 to 1848 – Causes and Context,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 3 (1971). 447 Burton Clark, for instance, claimed that “the medieval university emerged as a means of organizing such transmission [of knowledge], and teaching still predominates in the work of every national system of higher education.” Burton Clark, The Higher Education System This was in 1983, by which time research was undisputedly the most prestigious academic function, universally privileged by what Clark called the academic oligarchy. The only way teaching could justifiably be considered “predominant,” would be to focus exclusively on quantity, which Clark can be interpreted as doing with his reference to “work”. As an assessment of the weight accorded to research and education in modern academia, however, Clark’s statement seems somewhat disingenuous.

238 │ The transformation of humanities education

reality.448 But newer contributions in higher education research have shown that accounts of academic life often carry along with them such academic preconceptions, and that they are often left unexamined. Chief among these preconceptions, according to one critic, is “the myth of the mutually beneficial relationship between research and teaching” – despite the fact that this “myth” lacks empirical evidence.449 Of course, the lack of evidence for successful cross-fertilization does not prove that the coupling between education and research is useless, but the widespread defense of this idea of reciprocity among researchers, even when largely unsupported by evidence from educational research, suggests that it serves at least the additional latent function of legitimating a practice that depend upon this coupling, namely research. In the face of such idealized and self-serving self-descriptions, there are various interpretative strategies available in the social sciences in addition to the latent/manifest distinction: One can make use of Niels Brunsson’s notion of “organizational hypocrisy,” or, more specifically, of Tony Becher’s Goffmanian distinction between the “backstage” and the “front stage” of universities; or one could always resort to a more general concept of academic “ideology.”450 However, such exercis-

448 Larry Cuban comments on how presidents at Stanford have disagreed on many things, but never this: “the tensions between [research and teaching] were obvious, but even Presidents Jordan, Wilbur, and Sterling urged that the two complemented each other. Presidents Kennedy and Casper in the 1980s and 1990s also believed in the compatibility of research and teaching. The ideal of the synergy between the two remained alive and well.” Larry Cuban, How Scholars Trumped Teachers: Change Without Reform in University Curriculum, Teaching, and Research, 1890-1990 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999) 48. 449 Mark Hughes, “The myth of research and teaching relationships in universities,” Reshaping the University, ed. Ronald Barnett (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2005) 16. In addition to his own work, Hughes bases his argument on a much-cited meta-analysis by John Hattie and H. W. Marsh from 1996, which found that the interaction of research and teaching was “zero,” and characterized the notion of their mutual beneficial effect as “an enduring myth.” Cf. John Hattie and H. W. Marsh, “The Relationship between Research and Teaching: A Meta-Analysis,” Review of Educational Research 66.4 (1996) 50-542. 450 Niels Brunsson, The Organization of Hypocracy; Tony Becher, “Principles and Politics. An Interpretative Framework for University Management,” Culture and Power in Educational Organizations, ed. A. Westoby (Buckingham: Open University Press/SRHE, 1988). On academic “ideology,” cf Jürgen Habermas, Towards a Rational Society. Student Protests, Science, and Politics (Cambridge: Polity, 1987).

Introduction to part three │ 239

es in “the hermeneutics of suspicion” tend to run into the infinite regress of selfimplication, and often end up as unhelpful polemics. More interestingly, perhaps, one can ask: If research has taken precedence over education in modern universities, even when the influential normative strand of Humboldtianism claims they are of equal standing, why and how has this happened? Explaining the priority of research in the modern university Although the Prussian precedent eventually spiraled into a surprisingly standardized template for the modern university (or, more precisely, a template for the modern research university), numerous variations can of course be observed in how this model has been adapted to national and regional conditions around the world. In addition, there have been distinct disciplinary differences regarding the degree and tempo of implementation. Since the mid-19th century, the natural sciences have taken the lead, organizationally speaking, while the humanities have tended to lag behind.451 Hence, it is perhaps not surprising that the Norwegian humanities were somewhat slower in adopting the new research-centered university model – compared to the Norwegian natural sciences, but also to the humanities in other countries. However, we are talking about a delay of many decades. As will be demonstrated later in this part of the study, it was in the post-WWII era that research in the modern sense first became an important concern for the breadth of humanities faculty in Norway, and it was only around 1970 that it became the unquestioned priority. But as we shall see, when “research drift” eventually took hold, it transformed the Norwegian humanities rather quickly, with wide-reaching consequences not only for the members of the academic profession, but also for the societal functions of Norwegian humanities education.

451 Cf. Joseph Ben-David, The Scientists’ Role in Society, 124ff. Interestingly, philology contributed the influential organizational innovation of the seminar in the early decades of the 19th century, but from the mid-19th century it was the natural sciences that became organizationally normative, to a large extent because rapidly increasing investments in laboratories demanded better organizational planning. For the different temporalities of the natural sciences and the humanities in Norway, see Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen, 295ff.

240 │ The transformation of humanities education

Of course, this shift has been recognized by many scholars previously.452 However, surprisingly few have investigated why the shift from education-centered to research-centered humanities occurred. Most likely this is because the shift confirms to an international pattern, and therefore seems to demand no further explanation. Historical accounts of postwar academia in Norway, whether focused on intellectual or institutional history, have for the most part contented themselves with establishing that the Norwegian humanities eventually “caught up” with international developments. French structuralism, German Ideologiekritik, as well as the American department model and the “publish or perish” dynamic finally arrived in Norway also, despite some delay, and were duly welcomed as rejuvenating innovations, especially by younger scholars. On this view, it is as if the whole transformation resulted from a particular set of intellectual fashions that hit the Norwegian humanities around 1970 – which then caught on with epidemic rapidity and lasting consequences. But actually, new ideas about what a university could and should be, and what humanities scholars could and should do – including various modern research programs – had been around in Norway for a long time, and had been well known to many Norwegian humanities professors at least since the late 19th century, as we shall see in the disciplinary histories below. Quite a few Norwegian humanists had studied or spent time at German universities. International influences were also otherwise available, through publications, conferences, and associations – although obviously at a low frequency and with low degrees of commitment compared to the interconnectedness of later periods. Especially in the 1920s, international influences spurred serious Norwegian attempts at taking humanities research to a new level, but for various reasons I shall return to, these ventures had little impact on the larger structures of the humanities (which consisted mainly of the teaching-oriented University of Oslo), and even had problems sustaining themselves. In my view, the key to understanding the rise of Norwegian humanities research in the postwar era as something more than an intellectual fad that came to stay, is to formulate the question about the operational dynamic and structural conditions of research in more general terms. Only if we are able to grasp theoretically what can propel traditional scholarly practices (conducted alongside teaching tasks) into an autonomous function system of modern research, can we hope to understand the particular case of the Norwegian humanities in the postwar era. More precisely, the first question which needs to be asked is: Under which conditions will a teachingoriented academic staff switch to specialized research as its prioritized mission?

452 In addition to the university histories, see for instance Ivar Bleiklie, Roar Høstaker, and Agnete Vabø, Policy and Practice in Norwegian higher Education, 63ff.

Introduction to part three │ 241

Fortunately, there is a substantial literature on the rise of research in the Western world. Much of it examines in great detail, and with reference to a mass of historical records, the first period when modern research was established as a highly organized venture in Prussia and other German states around the mid-19th century. Contributions have centered on ideological questions as well as the effects of organizational features, categories of positions, competition between universities, the role played by state ministries, etc.453 In my view, the insights of this specialized literature, often conducted under the heading “history of science” or “university history,” is an absolutely necessary precondition for understanding the development of modern research. Nevertheless, most of it is so caught up with the particulars of the historical context that its conclusions are difficult to relate to a much later development in another country. Even the mechanisms identified by a social scientist like Ben-David – pertaining to competition in the distributed academic labor market in the German-speaking area, the function of the Privatdozent positions, etc. – are not always easy to dislodge from their particular context since they are not couched in a comprehensive theoretical framework. For present purposes I have therefore found that the sociological perspective on the rise of research offered by Rudolf Stichweh will be more helpful, especially since it is formulated within the terminology and tradition of systems theory. Like the literature referenced above, Stichweh’s work in this field has been concentrated on Prussia, but from his historical studies (particularly on the discipline of physics) he has proceeded to theory building in a series of articles that have become particularly influential in the study of academic disciplines.454 His argument has the advantage of being formulated at a level of abstraction that allows it to shed light, mutatis mutandis, on the emergence of disciplinary research in the Norwegian humanities in the 20th century also. In the following I will give a brief presentation of Stichweh’s analysis and a discussion of how it applies to the case of the Norwegian humanities.

453 Some of the most influential are: Joseph Ben-David, The Scientist’s Role in Society; R. Steven Turner, “The Growth of Professorial Research in Prussia, 1818 to 1848 – Causes and Context”; Charles McClelland, State, Society, and University in Germany 17001914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 454 Rodolf Stichweh, Zur Entstehung des modernen Systems wissenschaftlicher Disziplinen – Physik in Deutschland 1740-1890 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984), Wissenschaft, Universität, Professionen. Soziologische Analysen (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1994), “Science in the System of World Society,” Social Science Information 35 (1996), “The History of Scientific Disciplines,” International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences, ed. Neil J Smelser & al. (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2001).

242 │ The transformation of humanities education

Discipline formation and nationalization In the article “Science in the System of World Society,” which I will use as a convenient starting point here, Stichweh is primarily concerned with explaining the “globalization” of research, which he does by outlining the emergence of research disciplines as communication networks.455 Taking a long-time perspective on the European evolution of the practices that eventually became known as research from the Scientific revolution onwards, he has to face the paradox that the differentiation of research into specialized disciplines in the 19th century, which greatly expanded the field not only of knowledge but of possible knowledge, coincided with the nationalization of higher education institutions, which severely limited their previously cosmopolitan scope and reach, not the least by the replacement of universal Latin with the Babel of modern European languages. According to Stichweh, the paradox can be resolved if we consider that the narrowing down of the communities of scholars and scientists inherent in nationalization caused certain compensatory measures to be taken, measures which, as it turned out, made research communication vastly more intense and effective. The first and most important of these measures is the transformation of universities, ancient institutions dedicated to education, into research institutions, as symbolized by the establishment of the Berlin University in 1810. This also entails the transformation of the traditional role of the university teacher into the new role of the combined researcher-teacher. To these well-known developments, Stichweh adds the involvement of other groups of people in research work, such as amateur naturalists and schoolteachers in the Gymnasia. These new groups – researcher-teachers employed at reformed universities, students, teachers in secondary schools, employees in libraries, archives and museums – proved to be fertile ground from which networks emerged for research communication, channeled through journals and associations. Even though these channels were now limited by, respectively, the scope of the national language and the nationality of memberships, the improved organizational footing, and also the competitive dynamism of the Prussian/Germanic network of universities, made possible an increased disciplinary (and sub-disciplinary) specialization which, aggregated, amounted to an unprecedented growth in scientific production.456

455 Rudolf Stichweh, “Science in the System of World Society,” 327ff. 456 Stichweh’s major arguments here are consistent with the findings in Joseph Ben-David, The Scientists Role in Society, 108ff. and R. Steven Turner, “The Prussian Professoriate and the Research Imperative, 1790 – 1840,” Epistemological and Social Problems of

Introduction to part three │ 243

Stichweh emphasizes the role of the scientific discipline in this: It is the emergence of these specialized communities of peers, facilitated by a combination of organizational innovations brought on by nationalization and new communication media, which in turn makes possible the dynamism of modern science. The somewhat counter-intuitive insight that the nationalization of research was conducive to its growth in the 19th century does not imply that it has been possible or desirable for modern research as a communication system to retain this strong coupling to the nation state. According to Stichweh, the “intermediate phase of strong nationalization of science” was an important stage on “the path to modern global and universal science.”457 The same mechanism that propelled growth during this intermediate phase would, after a while, make research transcend the limits of the nation state: “[I]t is the incessant proliferation of ever-new communities of scientists with progressively restricted jurisdictions which organizes the social and cognitive space of science in a way which is incompatible with the boundaries of national scientific communities. The decomposition of the problem space of science makes it progressively improbable that relevant and necessary collegial relationships should accidentally be coextensive with national con458

texts.”

Relatively uncoupled from their institutions, modern researchers have their work defined and evaluated, at least as regards the increasingly important research dimension, by disciplinary structures and cultures which already in the 19th century transcended national borders, and which in the 20th century became global communication systems.459 Now, how does this analysis fit the developments of the Norwegian humanities in the 20th century? The short answer is that it fits rather well – if we allow for a time lag of more than 50 years, in some cases even longer. Furthermore, I think it can be demonstrated that Stichweh’s analysis of the interdependence of nationalization and disciplinary differentiation has particular relevance for understanding how the rise of research in the Norwegian humanities came to impact the educational mission, and in particular the curricula.

the Sciences in the Early Nineteenth Century, eds. H. N. Jahnke and M. Otte (Dordrecht: Reider. 1981). 457 Rudolf Stichweh, “Science in the System of World Society,” 329. 458 Ibid., 332. 459 Cf. Burton R. Clark, The Higher Education System, 28ff.

244 │ The transformation of humanities education

It should be recognized, however, that Stichweh’s historical work applies most directly to the natural sciences in Prussia, which are acknowledged by most historians to be the first in the world to evolve in the way described above. The humanities remained attached to the nation state and to the teaching mission for quite a while longer, although much longer (as we shall see below) in Norway than in larger Western countries. This time-lag between the fields of research can be attributed to several reasons. Firstly, the natural sciences have since the scientific revolution been able to rely upon the universal symbolic language of mathematics, whereas the humanities since the decline of Latin have been divided by national languages. Partly because of this, and partly because of the pressure of rising costs, the natural sciences have been both able to and also obliged to stabilize their methodologies, thus allowing for collaborative work to become the norm within and across institutions, and eventually across national borders. Scholars in the humanities on the other hand could for a long time easily do their research alone, even in the privacy of their own homes. Although certain collectives (“schools of thought”) are obviously discernible, it has even to this day been possible to conduct humanities research without much methodology beyond T.S. Eliot’s dictum that “there is no method except to be very intelligent.”460 The fact that the single-authored monograph has for so long remained the “gold standard” of the humanities is obviously connected with this. Finally, near-universal paradigms of the kind we often see in the natural sciences have been quite rare in the humanities.461 In addition to these generic differences between the natural sciences and the humanities, there are also important national differences within the humanities to consider. As regards the Norwegian humanities, the most distinctive feature has

460 T.S. Eliot, “The Perfect Critic,” The Sacred Wood (London: Faber & Faber, 1997). My sweeping generalization on the humanities here is valid only as a contrast with the natural sciences. With respect to specific disciplines it is not fair to philology, where collective formats such as the use of the seminar and the modern form of annotated scientific publications were developed very early. Archaeology obviously also relied on standardized methods, and historians have since the mid-19th century been committed to quellenkritik. However, the scope for individuality and even idiosyncrasy has been much greater in the humanities than in the natural sciences. 461 Cf. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970) 160ff. In a more anthropological conceptualization, the natural sciences have been characterized as mostly “urban” and the humanities as mostly “rural” with respect to how they define and handle their research problems, see Tony Becher and Paul R. Trowler, Academic Tribes and Territories, 2nd. ed. (Berkshire: Open University Press, 2001) 106ff.

Introduction to part three │ 245

been a slow evolution of collective formats and structures – compared to the developments in Germany, France, or Britain. This is in no small measure attributable to differences in size between these countries and their academic institutions. With a population of under 900 000 people in 1814 (when independence from Denmark was gained) and a little over 2 million in 1905 (when the personnel union with Sweden ended), Norway could sustain only one university until after WWII, and it was not until the late 1960s that the size of the population (3,8 million in 1967) required a network of higher education institutions comparable to what evolved in Germany in the 19th century.462 As we have seen in part two, the growth of the organizational network of HEIs in Norway in the post-WWII era resulted from a combination of a political dynamic which necessitated the provision of higher education to a much larger part of the population than earlier and a desire in the academic community for an organizational expansion which could facilitate increased research ambitions. The result was a trade-off whereby the universities accepted to educate an increased number of candidates in return for investments from the political system which made more research possible.463 The small size of the Norwegian population not only resulted in a comparatively late expansion of the organizational platform of academia; it also tended to set Norway apart culturally, especially since the Norwegian language has no foreign audience, except among Swedes and Danes, the relations to whom were a bit strained in the 19th and early 20th century because of colonial history. This made for a rather introverted brand of nationalism, in which the humanities not only took part, but were key actors. These rash generalizations will be fleshed out in more detail in subsequent chapters on four single humanities disciplines. Each of these four disciplines – history, English studies, general literature studies, and philosophy – have had their distinct trajectories in Norway, but they have shared some of the mentioned conditions: a small population, a small academic organizational platform, a small language area, and a prevalent nationalist ideology. The question is which consequences these factors have had for the capacity of each of the disciplines, and for the Norwegian humanities as a whole, to build up structures (a distributed network of departments, chairs and other researcher-teacher positions, professional associations, journals, etc.), which could support research as an autonomous systemic activity. There is also the interesting question of whether the massification starting in the 1960s and 1970s changed the conditions for discipline formation, and if so, how. Lastly, with reference to Stichweh’s theoretical perspective, it is interesting to

462 All figures are from Statistics Norway. 463 Cf. Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen, 391.

246 │ The transformation of humanities education

ask whether the establishment of national disciplinary communication systems in the humanities has in turn facilitated internationalism, and perhaps even ended up transcending the national context altogether, as the natural sciences have done. These questions will be discussed in the context of the four selected disciplines, and will then resurface in the conclusion to this part of the study. In what follows I will turn to another issue, namely how research communication is able to sustain itself as such once established. Motivational structures for research and teaching If the rise of research – in the humanities as well as in the natural sciences – was conditioned by the emergence of national disciplinary communities which could sustain themselves as communication systems, then what was the motivation for professors and other academics – who had previously been teachers primarily – to engage in this emerging form of communication, and even to let education be increasingly conditioned by it? Systems theory, particularly as developed by Luhmann, is based on the assumption that any form of communication is an improbable event, and that social systems can only emerge and evolve when there are sufficient motivations for participation.464 Stichweh seems to presuppose that such motivations for research communication exist, or that they emerged along with the disciplinary communities, but he does not say much about them – beyond the cited comment on the need academics have to establish “relevant and necessary collegial relationships.” But such needs are felt in nearly all professions and vocational groups, and most employees are content to work and communicate with colleagues on a much more local basis – within the same organization, or in a cluster of related organizations. Thus the need for “collegial relationships” in itself cannot have been motivation enough for participation on such a scale that it resulted in a global communication system of research.465

464 Cf. Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society. Vol. 1, 113ff. and Love: A Sketch (Cambridge: Polity, 2014) 4ff. 465 That is, unless one wants to conceptualize “collegial relationships” entirely differently for researchers than for other occupations. There might be a case for doing so, as evidenced by the prevalent notion of “peers,” and the particular function this form of collegial relationship has in the systemic operation of research communication through the mechanism of “peer-review.” But rather than conflating all aspects of research communication into the concept of “collegial relationships,” I have here followed Merton (see below) and considered the peer-review function as an additional systemic feature – what he calls “the reward system”.

Introduction to part three │ 247

There are two conditions, it seems to me, which set research apart from most other forms of communication, and without which the emergence of disciplinary communities would be hard to imagine. One is the aspiration of research to universality, which most studies of the history of science – including Stichweh’s – have emphasized. The other, which rests upon the aspiration to universality, is what Robert Merton has called “the reward system of research.”466 In addition to the (usually modest) monetary compensation, research is eligible for reward in the form of honorific recognition, from the mere acceptance of a piece of research into peerreviewed publication, via citation by other researchers, various degrees of academic prestige and distinction, to Nobel prices and eponymy.467 Recognition beyond disciplinary boundaries is of course rare, and even rarer is fame outside the world of research – but the fact that such celebrity is possible at all is doubtlessly motivational in itself. The “reward system” presupposes a feature which research shares with the arts and some corners of the media, namely that it is the individual producer rather than the research organization who has the right to be identified as the author of individual contributions, and therefore reaps the reward (and only secondarily to the organization).468 In summary, then, it seems reasonable to hypothesize that the motivation for academics to participate in research communication depends in the first place upon the universality of the scientific code of truth, and it rises significantly when disciplinary communities emerge, first on a national and then on an international scale, thus extending the outreach of research publication and thereby also its potential honorific rewards. This perspective makes the contrast between the “reward systems” of research and education clearly visible. Whereas the medium of research – publications – has an outreach which is potentially unlimited in time or space, the medium of higher education – students – has a very limited radius of

466 See Robert K. Merton, “The Matthew Effect in Science,” Science, 159.3810 (1968), and “The Matthew Effect, in Science II. Cumulative Advantage and the Symbolism of Intellectual Property,” On Social Structure and Science, ed. Piotr Sztompka (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 467 Since Merton, the literature on citations and their uses has grown considerably. For my purposes here, the original insights of Merton suffice, but for an influential summary of later theoretical discussions, see Susan E. Cozzens, “What do Citations Count? The Rhetoric-First Model,” Scientometrics 15.5-6 (1989). 468 The need for precise rules on how to handle co-authorship supports Merton’s thesis. The same can be said of the decline in pseudonymous or anonymous research contributions since the 17th century.

248 │ The transformation of humanities education

action.469 Thus, an “excellent” or “groundbreaking” researcher can reap international recognition, but the recognition of a great teacher stays within the limits of the campus and the memories of a few thousand alumni. True, credentials in the form of degrees, diplomas, and certificates have a much wider compass than the university campus, but if we treat formal credentials as the media of education, we must also consider that any value (prestige, performance) attached to such documents is attributed not primarily to the individual teacher but to the degree-granting HEI and to the graduates themselves (who rightfully will claim a substantial responsibility for any success).470 But is prestige and recognition, then, really what motivates academics? These are surely “external” forms of reward, psychologically speaking. Even if we disregard the degrees of “stardom” offered by mass media and limit our consideration to the more “refined” forms of recognition among peers in the same discipline or field, the motivation suggested here seems somehow unworthy of research. What about curiosity, the thirst for knowledge, the life of the mind, the unselfish hope to be of service to mankind? Also, with regard to the distinction between the reward systems of research and education, why shouldn’t academics – like teachers in schools – be just as motivated by the quieter but perhaps more intense rewards of teaching as they are by the external and somewhat noisy “reward system of research” as outlined by Merton? Of course, it is entirely possible that many academics are indeed motivated by such idealistic or even altruistic concerns. Yet, what a sociological perspective suggests, in particular a systems theoretical one, is that communication systems which require the sustained participation of many people over a long period of time, such as organized research and teaching in universities, cannot depend on altruistic

469 For the sake of simplicity, I treat “the student” as the medium of higher education here. Luhmann offers a more detailed and more subtle discussions of how the concept of “medium” applies to various forms of education. In his early writing, “the child” is considered as the medium of education in general, but in his later work he revised this to “human being” – and finally, under the influence of the emergence of “lifelong learning,” to “the life-course” or the “career.” Cf. Niklas Luhmann and Karl-Eberhard Schorr, Problems of Reflection in the System of Education, 40, and Niklas Luhmann, Das Erziehungssystem der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2002) 93. 470 Rudolf Stichweh has suggested that the course-credit system may be considered the “medium” of higher education. Cf. Rudolf Stichweh, “The form of the university,” 136138.

Introduction to part three │ 249

motivations alone. Incentives are needed, and if they are not provided, consistency in performance cannot be expected.471 As far as I can see, therefore, the differences between the reward systems inherent in the modern systems of research on the one hand and education on the other go a long way towards explaining the preeminent position of the former in universities and in most other HEIs which are not actively prevented from engaging in research. This general insight about the powerful motivations inherent in research communication applies to the specific national context of Norway and the disciplinary context of the humanities as well – even though the Norwegian humanities disciplines only developed systemic features which allowed the reward system of research to kick in in the post-WWII era. When it kicked in, however, it was soon enforced and confirmed by meriting and appointment procedures that would use the rewards of peer recognition from the wider disciplinary community as its input, forming a self-perpetuating system.472 Research as the basis for education The question of the relationship between research and education has two sides, and so far I have only discussed one of them, namely the relative priority accorded the

471 William James saw the potential powers of such motivational mechanisms in the academy already in 1903, and warned against the scope of the consequences: “[I]t is well for a country to have research in abundance, and our graduate schools do but apply a normal psychological spur. But the institutionizing on a large scale of any natural combination of need and motive always tends to run into technicality and to develop a tyrannical Machine with unforeseen powers of exclusion and corruption.” William James, “The PhD Octopus.” The Harvard Monthly 36 (1903), p. 7. 472 In other words, I consider the fact that appointments become dependent upon recognized merit in research as a secondary mechanism. The primary communicative reward mechanism, it seems to me, is the prospect of peer recognition in itself. If a chair was the only real reward, then the incentives for continued research work after tenure would be too weak to sustain the system. It might be, however, that in an early phase of the rise of research, before disciplinary communities are in place, appointment procedures may help establish and feed the primary reward system until it operates on its own, as Turner has pointed out that the Prussian ministry did in the 19th century. In later instances, as when the Norwegian humanities evolved into modern research disciplines in the postwar era, the situation has been somewhat different, since the template for the reward system was then already available in disciplinary communities on the international scene.

250 │ The transformation of humanities education

two activities in the organizational setting of the university. The other aspect of the question concerns the impact of one upon the other. The two aspects are obviously related: An activity which is deemed more important will almost invariably have a heavy impact an associated but less important activity – but they need to be analytically separated. Since the topic of this study concerns education, I will chiefly comment on the impact research may have on education – rather than the other way around. Furthermore, as an introduction to the subsequent chapters on humanities curricula in four specific disciplines, I will concentrate on the influence research may have – and has had – on university curricula. At the end of the chapter entitled “Curriculum, students, education” in volume four of The History of the University in Europe, Sheldon Rothblatt offers the following summary of the factors that have impacted curricula in the postwar European university: “[P]erhaps it is reasonable to conclude that if government was the most potent force acting upon the structure of the European university curriculum in the last fifty years, the content of teaching was most affected by knowledge growth, especially through specialization and cross-fertilization of disciplines. […] While it is by no means the case that academic specialisms have automatically found a place in teaching and examining at undergraduate levels, it is broadly correct to say that the professional interests of academics have continually, if unsystematically, pushed the content of the curriculum in new directions. The apparent demands of labor markets have been influential but not as directly significant, except at the lower entry points into the economy, since research universities continued to exercise 473

considerable influence over the curricula required for professional qualifications.”

This summary fits well with the findings in this study on the Norwegian humanities. As we saw in part two, the Norwegian Ministry of education has consistently been preoccupied with the degree structure (and with capacity building), but it has kept an arm’s length’s distance to curricula content, with some exceptions. In this part we examine the extent of the impact of research upon humanities education. And in part four we shall see that the Norwegian labor market has had only a very indirect influence. As mentioned above, the impact of research upon higher education is a topic that has been much studied and debated during the past decades. For the most part, however, research contributions on this issue have taken normative positions as

473 Sheldon Rothblatt, “Curiculum, students, education,” A History of the University in Europe: Volume 4, Universities since 1945, ed. Walter Rüegg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) 273.

Introduction to part three │ 251

their starting points, and even very empirical work has concentrated on whether a “beneficial” or “positive” influence can be demonstrated – as measured, for the most part, by the views of academics and students voiced in surveys and interviews. There has been less interest in describing more precisely which kinds of impact research has in fact had on education in various countries and disciplines. For the most part we are left, therefore, with sweeping generalizations such as the one by Rothblatt quoted above. Fortunately, in the case of Norway, there is an interesting exception, namely a study by Jens-Cristian Smeby from 1998. Like so many other studies in this field, Smeby’s study is based on surveys and qualitative interviews with academics, and addresses the overall question of whether or not the respondents think “interaction” between research and higher education takes place, and, if so, which way the influence runs. What makes the study interesting in this connection is that it compares the extent and forms of “interaction” in various fields of study. Smeby’s main finding is that in Norway at the turn of the century “teachers find that research is more important for teaching than vice versa.”474 Not surprisingly, the influence of research is reported in all fields of study to be stronger on higher levels than on the undergraduate level. However, “[t]here was a higher percentage of teachers in the humanities and the social sciences, than in natural sciences and medicine, who thought that their teaching at a lower level was influenced by their research to a great or some extent.” Furthermore, “there were also more [of teachers in the humanities and the social sciences] who thought that undergraduate teaching should be more connected to ongoing research.”475 These observations of what amounts to a relatively strong “research drift” on the part of the Norwegian humanities will be important to keep in mind when we engage with the various humanities disciplines and their curricula in subsequent chapters. Before we can proceed, we must consider briefly which forms the influence of research upon higher education can take. A typology developed by Ron Griffiths has become influential in the research on this issue. According to this typology, teaching in higher education can be influenced by research on three levels: 1) as a

474 Jens-Christian Smeby, “Knowledge Production and Knowledge Transmission. The interaction between research and teaching at universities,” Teaching in Higher Education, 3:1 (1998) 17. My emphasis. 475 Ibid.,10 and 15. It should be mentioned that the humanities in this study are represented by Nordic language and literature, a discipline which has certainly not been among the most research-oriented of the humanities disciplines in Norway in the period in question. Thus, the “research drift” Smeby finds is more likely to have been under-reported than over-reported, in my estimation.

252 │ The transformation of humanities education

minimum, teaching can be research-led (curricula content comes from research); 2) at a higher level, teaching can be research-oriented (not only curricula content, but also the methodology and the “ethos” of research is taught); 3) and at the highest level it is research-based (the whole educational experience takes the form of scientific inquiry).476 In the case of research-led teaching, we must distinguish between two types of content: research findings presented in textbooks and other forms of synoptic works on the one hand, and original research publications on the other. Most forms of higher education have for a long time been research-led in Griffiths’ sense. In the humanities, content has ultimately been derived from research since the 19th century, at least if we are not too strict about the definition of “research” and include most of the scholarly work, cultural criticism, synoptic works, essays, etc. that the academic teachers of this period published. Only in exceptional cases has knowledge from non-academic sources – e.g. from journalism, political pamphlets, religious tracts, travel books – been accepted as anything but objects of study.477 However, there is also an important distinction – especially regarding the humanities – between curricula content which aims to be up to date with the current state of research in a given field, and content which, although the knowledge is originally derived from research, is included because has achieved the status of a cultural constant, and has become hegemonic. As we shall see, Norwe-

476 In addition, Griffiths presents a fourth type, called “research-informed” teaching, which “draws consciously on systematic inquiry into the teaching and learning process itself.” Although highly interesting, the pedagogical reflexivity involved at this stage, where research into research-based teaching feeds into the teaching, unfortunately has very limited relevance for the historical study of Norwegian humanities education, and has therefore been left out here. Cf. Ron Griffiths, “Knowledge production and the research-teaching nexus: the case of the built environment disciplines,” Studies in Higher Education, 29.6 (2004) 722. 477 Rudolf Stichweh has argued that a crucial step in the evolution of the humanities as a self-organized system of research was the differentiation of philology from encyclopedia – the latter of which was eventually out-differentiated and associated not with research proper, but with popularization (or “dissemination”). Cf. Rudolf Stichweh, “SelfOrganization and Autopoiesis in the Development of Modern Science,” Selforganization: Portrait of a Scientific Revolution. Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook 1990, eds. Wolfgang Krohn, Günter Kippers and Helga Nowotny (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990) 200. It seems to me that when this step was taken, the stage was also set for research-led teaching in the humanities – although in Norway, it took quite a while before the imperative of novelty was added.

Introduction to part three │ 253

gian humanities education was to a considerable extent founded on curricular content of the latter kind, at least until WWII. In addition to the already mentioned distinctions, there is also a difference between content that stems from the teacher’s own research (or by someone closely affiliated with her) and content that stems from or reports of research conducted elsewhere – presumably at the “research front.” Because of the global nature of modern research, curricular content in modern higher education will overwhelmingly be of the latter kind. But this has obviously changed over time. In the case of the Norwegian humanities education, for instance there has been an interesting development from the 19th century, when curricula in several disciplines could be surprisingly dependent on the research (or scholarship) of a single, idiosyncratic chairholder,478 to the mid-20th century, when “importing” and disseminating research from the globally defined research front became the most important task in curriculum design, to the later decades of the 20th century, when the curriculum again – especially at the graduate level – could be at least partly founded on the research – or at least research interests – of faculty at the HEI in question. Regarding Griffiths’ two other levels – “research-oriented” and “researchbased” teaching – it is sufficient for present purposes to say that the former has become progressively important in non-professional higher education in the 20th century, as we shall see below in the case of the Norwegian humanities, and that the latter has mostly taken place at the graduate level – especially in the writing of theses. To sum up the discussion so far, what has been argued is that since the Humboldtian revolution, research has gained autonomy as function system in world society through the growth of national disciplinary communities which linked up with other national “nodes” until global communications systems were established. On the basis of the literature cited and the discussions so far, we can hypothesize that important conditions for the emergence of a disciplinary community in a local setting like Norway include a disciplinary template (theory, methodology, object of study), available positions, an organizational “home” for the discipline, and a network of competing disciplinary units to prevent it from stagnating. The claim is not that these, and only these, are the sufficient conditions in a strict sense; there may be other, more tacit factors that have not been discussed here. But it seems plausible that the abovementioned developments are the most important ones, and that when they intersect, they will tend to reinforce each other. Hence, a kind of

478 Examples could be three professors at Oslo: Marcus Jacob Monrad, Johann Storm, and Ernst Sars – chairs in philosophy, philology and history, respectively. See the sections on these disciplines below.

254 │ The transformation of humanities education

mechanism will kick in, whereby research over time will take over as a prioritized function, to a large extent because of the powerful motivational dynamic inherent in disciplinary research.479 University education, including curricula, will therefore tend to become “research-led” as a minimum, increasingly “research-oriented” on all levels, and “research-based” at the graduate and post-graduate levels – to use Griffiths’ labels. But how is it, more precisely, that curricula take shape – whether impacted by research, or by other concerns? What do we even mean by “curricula”? Giving pride of place to the rise of research in order to understand what is perhaps the most important determinant of Norwegian humanities education, at least in the latter half of the period covered in this study, we now need to take a closer look at educational structures and formats, as well as content and aims, in the specific context of higher education. For this purpose we need some basic concepts, which is what the next sections will provide – as a preparation for the analyses of curricular change in four selected humanities disciplines.

11.2 THE CONCEPT OF CURRICULUM Already in 1973, 119 definitions of “curriculum” were counted within the educational sciences.480 One major cause of the lack of consensus is probably that in the educational sciences the concept is applied to all levels of the educational system, although the vast majority of publications – many of which purports to be on education in general – are actually on schooling. Another reason may be that, as Paul Lazarsfeld once remarked, “educational researchers have traditionally been more concerned with improving education than with understanding it.”481 The widest definition of “curriculum” that I have come across with specific reference to higher education – perhaps the widest possible definition – is Tony Becher’s, who uses the term to denote “the totality of institutional activities, wheth-

479 Except, of course, in cases where special circumstances favor the educational mission, as in developing countries, or when powerful policy-instruments are applied consistently to prevent research-drift. 480 Ian A.C. Rule, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Meaning(s) of “Curriculum (NY: Unpublished PhD Thesis New York University, 1973). 481 Lazarsfeld is quoted in Mauritz Johnson Jr., “Definitions and Models in Curriculum Theory,” Educational Theory, 17 (1967) 127.

Introduction to part three │ 255

er intended or unintended, which affect the nature or outcomes of learning.”482 Lisa R. Lattuca and Joan S. Stark, for whom the concept is just a step on the way to a comprehensive model of “curricular planning,” offers a definition of “curriculum” as an “academic plan” – including “at least the following elements: 1. Purpose[…] 2. Content[…] 3. Sequence […] 4. Learners […] 5. Instructional Processes […] 6. Instructional Resources […] 7. Evaluation […] 8. Adjustment […].”483 Ronald Barnett, Gareth Perry, and Kelly Barnett, whose purpose is to create a typology of higher education curricula as they relate to different categories of disciplines, define the concept as “an educational project forming identities founded in three domains: those of knowledge, action and self.”484 These definitions are only examples meant to illustrate the semantic span of the concept; the literature affords many more, none of which seem to have become particularly authoritative. My interest in this study, as explained in the introduction, lies with curricula as the form and content given to educational programs in the Norwegian humanities by the individual degree-granting institutions – or, in other words, curricula as these are formulated in curricula documents from particular universities.485 This must be distinguished from the (no less important) impact which the teaching styles of individual teachers on the one hand, and the contributions made by the students themselves in the actual interaction of teaching/learning on the other, makes on the educational experience. Attempting to be comprehensive, many newer theoretical discussions of the “curriculum” insist that all educational factors influence each other, and hence refuse to make any clear conceptual distinctions between them. But as Mauritz Johnson Jr. rightfully insisted, it makes no sense to define “curriculum” in a way which does not permit us to separate it analytically from teaching. 486 My focus on the organizational level also means that I am interested in the intention or prescription to be found in curricula documents, and I will not be able to take

482 Tony Becher, “The State and the University Curriculum in Britain,” European Journal of Education 29.3 (1994) 231. 483 Lisa R. Lattuca and Joan S. Stark, Shaping the College Curriculum (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997) 9-10. 484 Ronald Barnett, Gareth Perry, and Kelly Coate, “Conceptualizing Curriculum Change,” Teaching in Higher Education 6.4 (2001) 438. 485 This means that for the purposes of this study I do not consider the degree structure, which in Norway is regulated by law, as part of the concept of curricula. But of course, the degree structure, and changes in it, has had profound influence on Norwegian humanities curricula, and I therefore offer a brief outline of the particulars of the Norwegian degree structure below. 486 Mauritz Johnson Jr., “Definitions and Models in Curriculum Theory,” 130.

256 │ The transformation of humanities education

into account how the actual teaching/learning experience might play out differently than intended, not to speak of how the actual learning outcome might be otherwise than stipulated.487 The question of outcomes or goals with respect to curricula is a tricky one. I have elsewhere availed myself of Niklas Luhmann’s work on education and pedagogy, and regarding the issue of educational goals, it might be helpful to quote his and Karl-Eberhard Schorr’s discussion on the concept of curriculum: “Curriculum is concerned with the codifying of materials. Materials do not mean goals of learning: they are not potential states in which people can find themselves. Materials are the means used in learning processes, and they have traditional-forming effects, which cannot be measured by looking at how much material actually stays in the heads of pupils. Beyond this attempt to get materials into pupil’s heads, another perspective becomes an issue: the function of the form in which the material can be accessed. Material must find a form within the curriculum, which is set up in such a way that teaching and learning cannot be combined in just any way.”

488

For Luhmann and Schorr, then, curriculum cannot be defined primarily by reference to outcomes or goals. In Social Systems, Luhmann elaborated this point about institutionalized practices on a higher level of abstraction through his general concept of “programs” for communication in any function system, considered as a “re-specification” of the function system’s code (see part one for further elaboration). “A program,” Luhmann says, “is a complex of conditions for the correctness (and thus the social acceptability) of behavior. The level of programs becomes independent of the level of roles to arrive at this level of abstractness if the behavior of more than one person has to be regulated and made expectable.”489 The fact that programs are on a level of abstraction above that of social roles means, among other things, that they are not detailed recipes dictating all operations. Providing a measure of choice for participants is essential. In keeping with this, Luhmann distinguishes between programs which specify conditions, goals, or both of these. Judging from the quote above, it might seem that Luhmann and Schorr considered “curriculum” to be a kind of program based solely on conditions, and not on goals, because of the contingencies which prevents education from predicting its output

487 In this I take another route than Mauritz Johnson Jr., who defines curriculum as precisely “a structured series of intended learning outcomes.” Ibid, 136. 488 Niklas Luhmann and Karl-Eberhard Schorr, Problems of Reflection in the System of Education, 105. 489 Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems, 317.

Introduction to part three │ 257

(the attainment of learning) and the even more radical uncertainties involved in envisioning the eventual outcome (what the learning translates to in the world outside education). However, as Luhmann stresses in Social Systems, even if such contingencies exist – and they do – the system of education (in its concrete manifestations as organizations) has no choice, if it is to retain its autonomy, but to stabilize its operations by the use of input-output programs, which by logical necessity involve stating some form of goal. Given universities’ dependence on external resources (government funding, students), they cannot just keep their practices esoteric or hermetic; communication is expected, and under conditions of autonomy externally directed communication takes the form of self-description (see part one). For professional education, the goals envisioned by the system of education are not so different from goals as viewed by society at large, and so involves no insurmountable problems (although there is the continual discussion about whether the curriculum is too “theoretical,“ and whether a “praxis chock“ can be avoided).490 In the material I will consider in this part of the study, the role of humanities education as teacher education, especially in the 1960s and early 1970s, answer to this description, at least to some degree. However, for education in disciplines which do not qualify for professional occupation, or where a professional career is recognized as only one option among several, the notion of goals poses problems which cannot necessarily be resolved on the level of “programs” in Luhmann’s sense. It is at this level in the hierarchy of goals that Luhmann introduces another interesting concept. He stresses that what cannot be controlled by programming is often if not controlled then at least contained by the use of values, or, to use the more specific term he developed for function systems, by applying “contingency formulas”. “Contingency formulas” Luhmann and Schorr write “make the unity of the system accessible to reflection in the system. […] They offer the possibility of reacting to the necessity of contingency.”491 For the system of law, the contingency formula is “justice,” and for religion “God” serves this paradoxical function of being both the system’s fundamental premise and its ultimate goal. In the case of the system of education, Luhmann and Schorr conclude – after a prolonged historical exposition – that the contingency formula has since the early 19th century been

490 Teacher education notoriously involves a lot of ambiguities, tensions, and discrepancies regarding the formulation of goals, but in most cases a compromise is reached and a goal actually formulated. In Norway and many other countries the state has taken an active role in securing consensual formulation of goals by regulating curricula, usually by use of standards or framework regulations. 491 Niklas Luhmann and Karl-Eberhard Schorr, Problems of Reflection in the System of Education 394. Emphasis in original.

258 │ The transformation of humanities education

Bildung, whereas this idea has since the 1970s been in the process of being replaced by the formula of “learning to learn.”492 What this means with reference to the concept of curricula, is that when forced to formulate a “goal” or “purpose” for its educational programs, even though the actual learning experience and (even more so) the eventual outcome for individual students’ future careers and other uses they might make of their humanist competencies and credentials are contingent upon factors beyond their control, humanities faculties will have recourse to the formulas of “Bildung” or “learning to learn” as the most that can be said on the subject, ex ante. To summarize, the points I want to adopt from Luhmann and Schorr for my discussion of the curricula are: 1) that curricula are programs for coordinating action, 2) that curricula are mostly concerned with materials and forms (that is, conditions), and 3) that insofar as ultimate goals are concerned (beyond what can be deduced from the materials themselves, as in “the goal is to provide students with knowledge of these materials”) only professional education can be very specific; other forms of education (and here the humanities are the paradigmatic case)493 will tend to make use of “contingency formulas.”494

492 Ibid, 66-105. In Norway, this formula has been associated with the idea of lifelong learning, which had a breakthrough – after many previous discussions, by the Ottosen committee in the 1960s, for instance – in the 1990s. In the field of schooling it has surfaced as an explicit major educational mission for “the school of the future” in a recent commissioned report, cf. Norwegian official report, NOU 2015:8 Fremtidens skole. Fag og fagfornyelse, 26ff. 493 Luhmann and Schorr are discussing education in general, and it is of importance to them to identify a “contingency formula” which applies to all forms of education, thus representing the unity of education as a system. “Learning to learn” is the only formula they find which is able to do that since the advent of mass education and the “knowledge economy.” It is possible, however, that the humanities in particular have identified so strongly with the Bildung-tradition that there is an unwillingness to let go of it, even in the face of grave difficulties with its continued use, both internally and (in particular) externally. 494 Towards the end of the period studied here, there was a policy wave of formulating “learning outcomes” in tertiary curricula which entered the Norwegian higher education with the Quality reform of 2003. See Per O. Aamodt & al., Læringsutbytte i høyere utdanning. En drøfting av definisjoner, utviklingstrekk og måleproblemer (Oslo: NIFU, 2007) 16. It could perhaps be argued that this new form of curricula in some respects invalidates Luhmann and Schorr’s points as general insights about how curricula function in the system of education. However, the persistent criticism of “learning out-

Introduction to part three │ 259

Curricular documents Until now I have discussed the curricula in the abstract, but it is in the form of texts – documents – that curricula in the sense specified above are accessible to us. Historically, the genres and formats of curricula texts have varied significantly, but the expansion and internationalization of higher education in the later decades of the 20th century seems to have entailed considerable isomorphism, resulting in the dominance of some widely recognized formats, such as the course catalogue, the program description and the syllabus or reading list. In Norway – a comparatively homogenous country as far as higher education is concerned – the curriculum of any given program has since the 1950s been presented with the use of two or three types of documents. These formats have remained fairly constant throughout the period I study: 1) the program descriptions or prospectuses (“studieplaner”) printed in a yearly “Handbook for studies” (Studiehåndbok) – which in this study I will refer to as “program plans” to preserve the emphasis on “plan” in the Norwegian, 2) entries for each program/discipline in a “Course catalogue” (Katalog or Forelesningskatalog), and 3) separate syllabi (or reading lists) printed and distributed by each department (until the mid-1970 these were for the most part printed in the “Handbook for Study”).495 Of these, the program plans have been by far the most comprehensive presentations of the fixed elements of the curriculum. Typically they have contained information about goals, structure, a description of each curricular part and the relations between them, regulations regarding examinations and grades – and in more recent years, information about

comes” as a curricular formula, many years after their introduction, may indicate that the problems and paradoxes Luhmann and Schorr pointed to with regards to educational goals are not conclusively solved yet. At any rate, my use of Luhmann and Shorr’s argument in this study applies to a period before this form of curricula was in widespread use. 495 However, in the mid-1990s the question of curricula formats was complicated by the increased use of the Internet. Texts had to be structured differently to fit the operational logic of this new medium, and new reader expectations and habits had to be accommodated. Institutions also struggled to streamline huge amounts of information while continually having to change technology At least for a while it seems every institution were forced to invent new curricula formats for themselves. In Norway and many other countries this coincided with a marked increase in the institutions’ ambitions to use curricula texts, along with brochures and other advertising material, to attract more new applicants.

260 │ The transformation of humanities education

career options.496 Entries in the course catalogue have contained information about courses offered within programs (title, name of teacher(s), time place, frequency, etc.). In the subsequent chapters on the four humanities disciplines, the program plans will be my main source of information, supplemented by information from the course catalogues – and in some cases from separate reading lists. As I have already stressed, a curriculum as I understand it is a set of texts which in the final instance is authored by the higher education institution in question. Usually – at least in Norway – the responsibility and right of HEIs to authorize curricula is sanctioned by law. This is why the relevant law(s) and regulation(s) have been printed in Norwegian “Handbooks of study” as a form of preface since the 1950s. However, in practice it has obviously not been the institutions as such (the board or other central authorities) who have written the actual documents. In keeping with the internal differentiation of research and of higher education, the writing process has been delegated to the department, under some supervision by the faculty. But no matter who have come up with guidelines, and who have done the actual writing, curricula documents have always been subject to a series of institutionalized decision processes which ultimately has made the university itself the responsible party.497 Who, then, are the supposed readers of curricula documents? Prospective and enrolled students are of course the primary target groups. They need information when deciding whether to apply for admission, and subsequently when deciding which courses/lectures/seminars to enroll in or attend. Furthermore, they need information in order to plan their individual learning activities. However, as I said above, an important function of curricula considered as social programs is to coordinate action, or in the words of Luhmann to make behavior “expectable.” This

496 As mentioned, until the mid-1970s the program plans contained the syllabi, but thereafter syllabi were provided separately. This differentiation was made necessary by a gradual enlargement of the reading lists, and by increased use of elective topics, courses, or other forms of specialized study (the variants of which took up much more space). Also, producing separate reading lists allowed for incremental revision of syllabi without having to revise whole program plans. 497 We should remember, however, that this also works the other way around. It is not only the university which authorizes the curricula; the university is to a considerable degree constituted – given meaning and identity – by its curricula, at least as viewed by the students (and also by most external parties). The “author-function” for curricula documents, as Foucault would have called it, is therefore legally unambiguous, but otherwise not very easy to pin down. See Michel Foucault, “What is an author?” Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology, ed. Jammed D. Faubion (NY, New York Press, 1998).

Introduction to part three │ 261

of course involves not only students but also teachers and other personnel at the HEIs as readers of curricula. In addition to fulfilling these primarily internal functions – coordinating the activities of teachers and students – HEIs are well aware of being observed from the outside: by the world of politics (as sponsors and legislators), by the economy (as future employers), and by the media and other societal systems who might consider themselves “stakeholders” in particular educational programs. As official and publicly accessible documents curricula also function as the HEIs’ self-descriptions vis-à-vis these external systems. Following Luhmann, I have said that curricula should be considered as “programs,” i.e. as binding decisions which limit future action. Their rhetorical function, we could therefore say, are prescriptive rather than simply descriptive – or in Searle’s terminology, curricula are “declarative speech acts.”498 By declaring that a particular set of documents constitute the curriculum, the university makes it so. Does this mean we can rely on curricula to be accurate descriptions of educational experience as well? Not necessarily, because as I have said curricula are inherently ambiguous in many respects, and different teachers and student groups (and the different interaction systems they constitute) may perform differently within the boundaries set by the curriculum, or sometimes break out of the boundaries altogether. A set of curricula documents for a single educational program (for instance a course that is offered only once, and then abandoned) may therefore not be a very accurate indication as to the educational experience. In the case of the Norwegian humanities, however, we are in a position to study yearly revisions of curricula documents for over forty years, pertaining to the same educational programs. Assuming some form of feedback loop to be in place, the study of curricular changes may therefore give us some indication as to whether curricula in individual programs have been considered adequate or not. We should not, however, presume too much learning ability on the part of the institution as a premise for our investigations. If a course remains unchanged for many years, for instance, we cannot from that information alone draw the conclusion that it was successful, or that no considerable influence was exerted to change it. At any rate we must expect – following what was said in part one about the systemic nature of higher education – that any feedback from students or other parts of the environment will be interpreted from the viewpoint of the educational system and its representatives (faculty), and that changes (if any) will be made and implemented accordingly.

498 See John Searle, Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).

262 │ The transformation of humanities education

Curricular change In the literature, we can distinguish four major kinds of theories about curricular change in higher education. One strand, of which the systems theoretical tradition partakes, is the theory that curricula in higher education changes mainly because of developments within academia, and that the most important driver for curricular change is new research in relevant disciplines. This view was discussed in the previous section, where research-based curricula was seen to be dependent upon a form of structural coupling between research and higher education in which research takes priority.499 Another theory type – often labeled “demographic” or “market-oriented” – emphasizes students’ choices and participation. The assumption here is that changes in the students’ preferences are registered by institutions, who then (to a certain extent) respond to these, much like suppliers in a market. Students’ preferences may in turn be influenced by various factors: new groups entering higher education, various cultural changes concerning identity politics, subcultures/ alternative lifestyles or broader trends or “fashions.”500 One important variant of this theory, often associated with “human capital theory,” assumes that a major concern for students is career prospects, and that student preferences is an input whereby higher education institutions are linked to the labor market.501 A third major theory strand, often but not always associated with Marxist theory, attempts to demonstrate how the curricula changes as a consequence of larger, economically driven changes in society, such as industrialization, the economic outcomes of war, or the advent of the “knowledge economy.”502 A fourth type, which has gained in importance since the 1990s, focuses on the role of the state, and of transnational agencies like the EU, the OECD and the Bologna process, in

499 This general view of curricular change is obviously not limited to writers in the systems theoretical tradition; it is propounded or implied in the work of such diverse figures as Thomas Kuhn, Joseph Ben-David, and Tony Becher as well. 500 Cf. for instance Cornel DaCosta and K. Moti Gokulsing, A Compact for Higher Education (London: Ashgate, 2000) 501 The classic study in human capital theory remains Theodore Schultz, Investment in Human Capital: The Role of Education and of Research (New York: Free Press, 1971). A very different kind of work which is also highlights the effects of the labor market on higher education is Randall Collins, The Credential Society: An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification (NY: Academic Press, 1979). 502 See for instance Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System (NY: Academic Press, 1974). Cf. also Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society Vol. 1: The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture (NY: Wiley-Blackwell, 1996).

Introduction to part three │ 263

shaping curricula through indirect means such as accreditation and quality assessment programs.503 In addition to these four, there are important contributions which emphasize the impact of social protest movements and professional organizations.504 As I have said in part one, I do not consider different approaches such as these as mutually exclusive – although the polemics between them might lead one to think so. I see no theoretical reason why curricula in, say, an undergraduate course in English, could not be conditioned by several considerations, including the state of research in the field, the perceived “tastes” of applicants, their career prospects, the influence of social movements, and several more factors at the same time. The precise weight to be assigned to each of these factors cannot be decided at the theoretical level; it will have to be judged on the concrete evidence in each case. However, as the discussions in previous sections have demonstrated, it is reasonable to expect that after disciplinary research has achieved autonomy, curricular design will first and foremost be a process whereby research is given educational form. According to the systems theoretical perspective outlined above, all other societal forces will then ultimately tend to be treated as external to the coupling of research and education, and even when successful in impacting the curricula, they can only be so by being “filtered” through it, i.e. through the institutionalized decision processes of universities and other HEIs. If this is an adequate understanding of how “research-based curricula” are devised, it means that all concessions to concerns such as students’ career prospects, or the interests of the women’s movement, will tend to be translated into a form acceptable to the “research-teaching nexus” of the university. This can happen by treating such inputs as material for scientific consideration, or, when skills are concerned, either by incorporating them into research methods, or by treating them as add-on curricula of a professional/vocational nature.

503 Cf. for instance Tony Becher, “The State and the University Curriculum in Britain,” European Journal of Education 29.3 (1994), and Berit Karseth, “Curriculum Restructuring in Higher Education After the Bologna Process: A New Pedagogic Regime?” Revista Española de Educación Comparada 12 (2006). 504 On the role of protest movements, see Sheila Slaughter, “Class, race and gender and the construction of post-secondary curricula in the United States: social movement, professionalization and political economic theories of curricular change”, Journal of Curriculum Studies 29.1 (1997); on the role of professions, see Andrew Abbott, The System of Professions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).

264 │ The transformation of humanities education

Humanities curricula and change What, then, is characteristic of the way curricula change in the humanities – as opposed to, say, the natural sciences, or the professions? Although my final answer must await the document analysis below, a few general observations can be made here. One of the most important characteristic of humanities curricula is perhaps that the materials studied are usually handled as belonging to the cultural heritage. In other words, age can be accepted as a valid argument for including something as material for study, as when an item is considered representative of a period in human history, or when it has survived in the curriculum so long as to become canonical. Whereas the natural sciences and (to some extent) the social sciences tend to relegate older contributions to the historians of science as they are surpassed by new research, the humanities continue to feed upon their canon of classics. This makes for a certain immanent conservatism in humanities curricula.505 Another trait commonly attributed to the humanities, which also makes a difference for the process of curricular change, is of an epistemological nature. Unlike curricula in the natural sciences, where the progress from introductory courses to intermediate and advanced courses is a unilateral movement from dealing with simplified material to handling complex “real” problems (and once learned, there is no need to revisit the textbooks of introductory courses), progress in the humanities most often take the circular form we associate with hermeneutics. In the terms of Ruth Neuman and Tony Becher, curricula in the “soft pure domain” (i.e. the humanities and some of the social sciences) are “reiterative” and “spiral in their configuration” – whereas “hard pure curricula” has a “cumulative, atomistic nature.”506 This means that the nature of the materials of the curriculum in the humanities need not change from undergraduate to graduate studies; it is the mastery of the materials by application of more advanced theory and methods which attests to educational progression. Whether this is an exclusive trait of the humanities, or is to some extent true of other disciplines too, can of course be discussed; what is important in this context is that the “reiterative” nature of the humanities’ approach to the materials, which is obviously related to the mentioned conservatism regard-

505 Many writers, from Mathew Arnold to Harold Bloom, have considered canon-making the essential characteristic of the humanities, especially in the aesthetically and philosophically oriented disciplines. See Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (Oxford: Oxford’s World Classics, 2009 [1869]) and Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (NY: Riverhead, 1995). 506 Ruth Neuman and Tony Becher, “Teaching and Learning in their Disciplinary Contexts: A Conceptual Analysis,” Studies in Higher Education 27.4 (2002) 407.

Introduction to part three │ 265

ing choice of materials, may put a pressure on curricular change in theory and method.507 A third characteristic concerns the broader educational orientation in the humanities. As mentioned above, Ronald Barnett, Gareth Perry, and Kelly Coate break the concept of curricula down into three domains: “action,” “knowledge” and “self,” and with the help of these domains they analyze changes in three kinds of curricula: science and technology, arts and humanities and professional subjects. Not surprisingly they find the humanities to be dominated by the “knowledge” dimension. “Self” is also of importance, but less so. However, they find the “self” dimension to be integrated with the “knowledge” dimension – indicating that personal development (Bildung) is expected to happen through knowledge acquisition. “Action” they find to be the least important concern in the humanities. Moreover, they consider this element, when present, to be an add-on rather than integrated with the two others. This is in contrast to professional education, where action takes precedence over knowledge and self.508 These three characteristics – a certain “conservatism” in the choice of materials, a reiterative or hermeneutic approach to these materials, and a preference for knowledge and self over action – are perhaps as much as it is useful to say in general about humanities curricula, at least at this stage. Beyond this, a specific context must be given for observations to be valuable. Humanities curricula in Norway The “humanities,” in Norway as elsewhere, can mean a great many things, but however one defines it, it covers such a wide array of research disciplines and educational programs that comprehensive treatment of all of the curricula for the whole forty-year period between 1960 and 2000 is beyond the scope of this study. I have therefore had to settle for a selection, regarding both disciplines and levels.

507 Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht has made an interesting observation in this regard: “Wellunderstood and successful academic teaching, finally, demands from the instructor that he or she refrain from transforming every content and every phenomenon taught into a preanalyzed and preinterpreted object, which means that these contents and these phenomena, as challenges in untamed complexity, can never lose their status as physical objects.” Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, The Powers of Philology (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003) 7. 508 Ronald Barnett, Gareth Perry, and Kelly Coate, “Conceptualizing Curriculum Change,” 439.

266 │ The transformation of humanities education

To represent the breadth of the humanities I have chosen the following disciplines: history, English, philosophy, and general literature studies509. These are major humanities programs with relatively large enrollments and correspondingly large academic staff numbers, although as we shall see some of them were fairly small in the beginning of the period studied.510 Fairly large programs have been chosen to ensure a certain level of representativeness for the humanities student population as a whole, and also to avoid becoming too caught up in the particular historical contingencies which characterize very small academic communities (idiosyncrasies of individual professors, closures or mergers with other programs, etc.). The four disciplines cover what I take to be four major categories within the humanities: languages, aesthetic disciplines, ideational disciplines, and historical disciplines.511 Furthermore, English and history have traditionally been (and to some extent still are) disciplines which have been integrated into Norwegian universities’ teacher education, while philosophy and general literature studies on the other hand have been more research-oriented.512 As we shall see, this distinction has been important in many ways regarding the development of curricula. Two other criteria for the selection of these four disciplines should be mentioned. As noted above, the humanities in Norway played an important part in the “invention” of a national culture in the 19th and first half of the 20th century, and history has been one of the disciplines most actively engaged in this endeavor – an endeavor which changed in interesting and significant ways in the period under considera-

509 In English, “comparative literature” is the most common name for this discipline. See the first footnote in the section on this discipline below for a brief discussion of the name in the Norwegian context. 510 At least this applies to Norway. As we have seen in part two, general literature studies and philosophy grew in size, especially during the 1990s, and are probably larger in Norway (relative to other fields of study) than in many other countries. 511 Of course, these are not meant to be mutually exclusive categories. For instance, English studies is not only a language program; it has an aesthetic component and an historical dimension also. 512 “Philosophy and general literature studies emerged as the intellectually dominant subjects of the humanities of this period [from the 1970s onwards].” Roar Høstaker, “University Life; A Study of the Relations between Political Processes and Institutional Conditions in Two University Faculties” (Bergen: Unpublished PhD dissertation at the University of Bergen, 1997) 120. My translation.

Introduction to part three │ 267

tion.513 Secondly, the inclusion of philosophy and general literature studies will allow me to gauge two distinct but related influences on curricula in the 1960s and 1970s: the rise and on-campus presence of protest movements, and the evolution of social critique (mostly based on neo-Marxism) as a research paradigm. The question of which educational levels to investigate within these four disciplines brings me to the issue of the degree structure in the Norwegian humanities. As mentioned above, the Norwegian degree system, regulated by law, was changed in the late 1950s.514 The new degrees were still called “civil service degrees” (embetseksamener), but as a sign of the academic standing they accorded, they were also designated by Latin names: candidatus magisterii (cand. mag.) and candidatus philologiae (cand.philol.). For most of the forty-year period discussed in this study, the four-year undergraduate cand. mag. degree (initially it was four and a half years) consisted of a half-year propaedeutic program in philosophy (examen philosophicum), and three one-year introductory programs (grunnfag) elected among humanities disciplines (from 1973 it was possible to include grunnfag programs from the social sciences, and in rare cases from the natural sciences). One of the grunnfag programs (two of them in the early period) had to be expanded by a halfyear intermediate program (mellomfag). All programs were intended as full-time studies to be completed consecutively, and only rarely would a student pursue two or more programs at the same time. The graduate degree (cand.philol.) had the standardized duration of two years (although many used more time), and consisted of a set of courses in addition to the writing of a thesis. The entry requirement for this program was completion of the undergraduate degree with a one and a half-year specialization (mellomfag) in the same discipline one wanted to pursue at the graduate level. There was also the more research-oriented degree of magister, which in the early years of the period was usually completed in one go, without taking the undergraduate degree first. Total time-to-degree was approximately 6-7 years for the cand. philol,, and 7-8 years for the magister.

513 Ideally, Nordic studies should also have been included. This program and research discipline has been highly important in the construction of a national culture, and has also been the largest program of relevance for Norwegian teacher education. However, for reasons of space I have had to exclude this discipline. It would have necessitated quite a lot of contextualizing to analyze Nordic studies curricula in English for readers with little or no prior knowledge of Norwegian cultural history. At any rate, in my estimation I have been able to discuss the most important aspects mentioned above through analyzes of curricula in history and English studies. 514 For a fuller outline of the changes in Norwegian degree structure, see appendix 1.

268 │ The transformation of humanities education

Humanities candidates with a cand.mag. or a cand.philol. degree who wanted to teach at the secondary school level, were required to complete a half-year program in pedagogy in addition to the academic programs. This program in “practical pedagogy,” which together with the academic degree certified candidates as adjunkt or lektor, was offered by an institution which in the beginning of the period was affiliated with the university but not part of it, the Pedagogical Seminar. As we shall see, the pedagogical program for teachers was expanded to a full year of studies in 1993. Regarding the choice of which educational levels to focus the analyses of curricula documents on in the following sections, it will probably have transpired from the outline above (see appendix one for a fuller discussion) that the one-year undergraduate grunnfag program is a suitable unit. Introduced to take candidates from the entry-level to the proficiency needed to teach the subject in secondary school, the grunnfag curriculum in many ways came to represent the identity of a discipline in Norwegian universities. For a topic or a publication to be accepted into the grunnfag curriculum was a sign of its canonization. An interesting question, therefore, is how stable the canons of the four grunnfag curricula have been during the forty-year period, and how changes have been made – whether through substitution or addition, gradual or more wholesale change, etc. Given the research questions posed by this study, it is also of great interest to study changes on the graduate level, where one might expect to find less fixed canons, and where new trends in research, as well as possible influences from other spheres of society, might register before they “trickle down” to the undergraduate level of the grunnfag. To get a grasp on issues like these, the analyses of curricula documents will focus on the most common form of the graduate degree, the hovedfag (which for several decades was associated with the “civil service degree”). When relevant, comparisons will be made with the more research-oriented degree of magister.515

515 There has been a tendency to equate the magister with research and the hovedfag with teacher education, but since the hovedfag in the last half of the 20th century became increasingly research-oriented, as will be demonstrated below, I agree with Marte Mangset who argues that “it is more fruitful to analyze he magister degree’s influence on the cand. philol. degree, than to oppose the two.” Marte Mangset, The discipline of historians. A comparative study of historians’ constructions of the discipline of history in English, French and Norwegian universities (Bergen: University of Bergen/Sciences Po, 2009) 422.

Introduction to part three │ 269

Norwegian humanities curricula ca. 1960 From what has been said so far, it would have been reasonable to think that Norwegian humanities curricula around 1960 were distinctly “professional” in orientation. Not only was humanities education traditionally associated with teacher education; the main building block of the degree structure, the one-year basic course (grunnfag), was explicitly designed to meet the demands of secondary school teaching.516 “Professionalism” is not what strikes one when reading the available documents, however. Features we associate with professional education today (attention to the history of the profession, professional methods, professional ethics, etc.) are for the most part missing. One of the first observations one makes browsing through the curricula documents of this period is actually how little effort they make to explain things to an outsider, how little initiation there is. Written in an official tone of voice, conscientiously supplying the most basic information but not much else, there is in this material a notable absence of rhetorical intent vis-à-vis the implied reader, albeit with a few exceptions. This is of course often the case with texts produced within bureaucratic organizations, but as we shall see, there are major changes regarding this aspect of curricula texts from the 1970s onwards, and so the “flatness” of much (not all, as we shall see) curricula texts in the early period cannot be said to belong to the genre as such. Rather, I think, it is more plausible to interpret this feature as an indication of how much pre-knowledge was taken for granted by an academic culture which had for a long time recruited its students mostly from the social elites. It might indeed have been a period in which the notion of a “hidden curriculum” was especially pertinent.517 Another factor which may go some way to explain the flat style and the lack of didactic orientation in these texts is the absence in this period of any need to use curricula documents to actively recruit more students. As we shall see, this also changed subsequently. Not all curricula texts, and not all parts of curricula texts, were similarly devoid of rhetorical flourishes, however, and this brings me to another striking characteristic of the whole body of humanities curricula around 1960, namely the variations between disciplines in length, topics covered, and rhetorical style. It seems genre conventions regarding especially the important program plan, but also entries in the course catalogue, must have been relatively vague, with very little standardization

516 As we shall see below, facilitating an orientation towards research was a more latent function of the new degree structure. 517 That students not necessarily had this pre-knowledge can be gleaned from the students’ own handbook, which was published at irregular intervals by student organizations in the postwar era.

270 │ The transformation of humanities education

from the faculty or the central administration, and little isomorphism across disciplines. For a single department, however, curricula formats (structure, types of information offered, etc.) could last for decades once established, with curricular changes accumulating gradually, until a major revision might occur. As we shall see, the genre conventions of curricula documents became more stabilized later in the period. One reason for this was outright standardization measures regarding structure, size, mandatory features, etc., coming from either the faculty or the central administration of the university, partly for technical reasons having to do with the printing of the handbook (or, in the 1990s, online publishing), but also towards the end of the period as part of quality assurance procedures. However, more indirect drivers for isomorphism may have been just as important in aligning curricula across institutions and disciplines. Within disciplines the requirement throughout the period that an external examiner should be present at both undergraduate and graduate examinations made academics well acquainted with the curricula in their own discipline at other institutions. Also, from 1965 onwards the Norwegian association of universities has organized disciplinary committees (nasjonale fagråd) where (non-binding) discussions of program plans has been among the most important tasks.518 From about the same time, Norwegian political authorities (and the universities also) have wanted to further student mobility between institutions, which has to some extent limited curricular diversity. Moreover, competition for candidates, at least from the 1980s onwards, became an incentive for departments to emulate the “best practice” of competing departments, domestically, as well as internationally. Curricular analyses and disciplinary history In the following four chapters, the major aim is to analyze curricular changes in the Norwegian humanities during the period 1960-2000. Focus will be on formally authorized curricula documents from two Norwegian universities. The degree system (regulated by law), prevalent teaching methods (largely based on tradition and the preferences of individual teachers), and assessment procedures (to some extent regulated by law) are considered as contextual factors, and will be discussed only inasmuch as they are important for understanding issues raised by the curricula documents.

518 All the four disciplines discussed in this study have had such national committees. However, the activity and ambitions of these committees have been dependent upon the enthusiasm of individuals, and has varied over time. Per Nyborg, Universitets- og høgskolesamarbeid i en brytningstid (Oslo: Fagbokforlaget, 2007) 292-3.

Introduction to part three │ 271

It follows from the discussion above that it is reasonable to expect, from a certain point in the evolution of modern humanities disciplines, that curricula will tend to be conditioned first and foremost by disciplinary research. Based on this hypothesis, it has been deemed necessary to preface each of the chapters about the four selected humanities disciplines with fairly substantial historical expositions of how the research disciplines in question have evolved in the Norwegian context. All four disciplines, it will be seen, have their roots in the 19th century, and their trajectories in the 20th century display interesting similarities as well as discrepancies. In order to understand and gauge the increasing impact of disciplinary research on the curriculum in each discipline, rather detailed discussions of the organizational conditions for research (and for teaching and learning) are offered, in particular for the post WWII era, when disciplinary communities in Stichweh’s sense (see above) were established in the Norwegian humanities. The historical accounts are based partly on secondary sources, partly on my own research. Highlighting organizational and institutional questions viewed in a systems theoretical perspective (rather than just the history of ideas), the disciplinary histories offered here differ somewhat from previous accounts. Each of the four disciplinary histories is followed by an analysis of curricular change during the period 1960-2000 for the corresponding educational programs. Key questions in these sections are when and how disciplinary research begins to make an impact, and which traces can be found of the function of teacher training. Of the four Norwegian universities in operation during the period, I have chosen to focus on curricula from the oldest and arguably most influential institution, the University of Oslo, making comparisons with curricula from the youngest of the research universities in this period, the University of Tromsø. As discussed in part two, the University of Tromsø was established in 1968 with a specific mandate to become a new type of HEI, more dedicated to the specific societal needs of the region than the Humboldtian institutions in Oslo and Bergen had been. Whether this difference produced curricular differences in the humanities is among the questions which will be discussed below. As far as I know, Norwegian humanities curricula have not been subject to comprehensive analyses before. After the four chapters on history, English, general literature studies, and philosophy, a concluding chapter will summarize the findings and interpret them in the light of the overall theoretical framework established in part one.

12 History

In Norway, the academic field of history is often considered coeval with organized academic work itself, since when the University of Oslo opened in 1813, its group of only six permanent chairs included one in history. A few years later, another chair in “history and statistics” was added. Admittedly, two chairs in history at a time when only meager funding and few qualified candidates were available testifies to high relative importance being accorded this field of learning in the early 19th century. However, these chairs were mainly teaching posts. The emergence of historical scholarship (vitenskap/Wissenschaft), considered as a specialized textual production based on a distinct methodology, belongs more properly to the second half of the 19th century.519

12.1 19 TH AND EARLY 20 TH CENTURY HISTORICAL RESEARCH From the 1840s onwards, Norwegian academic historians became instrumental in a campaign to provide the young nation with a suitably heroic national narrative – a “tale of the tribe”.520 The narrative which emerged from this endeavor traced the Norwegian Volk back to ancient Northern tribes, carefully avoiding any association with the Danes. It showcased the aristocratic culture of the Viking age, as well as the idealized figure of the medieval freeholder. The years under Danish rule from 519 See John Peter Collett, 1811 – 1870. Universitetet i nasjonen, Vol. 1, Universitetet i Oslo 1811 – 2011, ed. John Petter Collett (Oslo: Unipub, 2011) 520 A brief and poignant exposition of Norwegian 19th century historiography is given in Narve Fulsås, “Norway: The Strength of National History,” Nordic Historiography in the 20th Century, eds. Frank Meyer and Jan Eivind Myhre (Oslo: UiO/Tid og Tanke Publication Series, 2000).

274 │ The transformation of humanities education

1380 to 1814 were treated mostly as an undifferentiated period of suffering and exploitation, causing Henrik Ibsen, in Peer Gynt, to coin the ironic phrase “the 400year long night.” The achievement of national independence in 1814 could thus be construed as a “rebirth” of the Norwegian nation. A problem with this national narrative was that, although it projected a familiar pattern of golden age – fall – rebirth, it provided little room for agency on the part of the Norwegian people. It fell to the historian Ernst Sars to solve this problem, which he did by foregrounding the societal dynamics in Norway during Danish rule, and by emphasizing the active role of Norwegians in the strife for freedom in the years preceding 1814. With these revisions it became possible to write a continuous Whiggish national narrative, which Sars gave canonical form in the fourvolume work Udsigt over den norske Historie (“Overview of Norwegian History”), published from 1873 to 1891.521 While Sars’ work was certainly original in many respects, it should not be forgotten that he stood on the shoulders of his mid-century predecessors (especially Peter Andreas Munch). Despite the brief and somewhat caricatured form I have given it here, the nationalist historiography of the 19th century should not be dismissed wholesale as pre-scientific mythmaking. As elsewhere in Europe, Norwegian historians of this period aligned themselves with the broader cultural tendency towards nationalism, including the effort that was later to be termed “the invention of tradition.”522 But they also subscribed, at least in principle, to the Rankean ideal of subordinating historical narrative to “facts,” and not only to facts, but to facts derived from the critical examination of sources (quellenkritik).523 Thus, one can say that in the late

521 Ernst Sars, Udsigt over den norske Historie, 4 vols. (Oslo, Universitetsforlaget, 1967 [1873-1891]). 522 Cf. Eric Hobsbawn and Terence O. Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 523 Aronsson & al. argues that historical scholarship in Norway has been more consistently nationalistic than history writing in any other European country. Their explanation, which seems persuasive, is that in Norway, unlike other countries, national independence, constitutionalism, and democracy (at least as a principle) were achieved simultaneously. Because of the amalgamation of nationhood, statehood and democracy, nationalism – which in many countries is a distinctly “conservative” preoccupation opposed by “progressive” forces (e.g. in Sweden) – has in Norway been a shared concern for both sides of the political spectrum, as well as a legitimate framework for academic study and various forms of cultural production. It should perhaps be added that a certain ambivalence, erupting occasionally into satire, has accompanied this tradition, especially since Ibsen. Nationalism was revived in the period leading up to 1905, when Norway

History │ 275

19th century, an historical methodology, largely imported from Germany, had been established in Norway. But methodology does not make a modern research discipline, as we shall see. In the early 20th century, the nationalist historiography of Sars was supplemented, rather than replaced, by Marxist approaches. The two principal figures of the interwar period, Halfdan Koht and Edvard Bull Sr., for the most part retained the Norwegian nation as their prime object of study, but replaced previous idealist perspectives with materialism. Bull’s brand of materialism was fairly orthodox Marxism, but Koht’s materialist contribution was more inventive. His theory of how the Norwegian nation had evolved by continually integrating the lower social classes (farmers in the 19th century, laborers in the early 20th) into the fabric of society became highly influential, and seemed to serve the self-image of the nascent Norwegian social democracy quite well.524 Until the 1920s, contacts with historians and history departments in other countries, so important in national discipline building, had been rather sporadic and based on personal initiatives. Mostly, attention had been directed towards Germany and Denmark. In the interwar period, Koht and Bull were of crucial importance in two interesting initiatives to institutionalize relations with what was by then an international community of historians. One of these ventures was the Institute for comparative cultural research (Institutt for sammenlignende kulturforskning), established as a freestanding organization in Oslo in 1922. Today we would probably call this an independent interdisciplinary research institute, but to avoid anachronism we should perhaps rather describe it as a platform for research into a broad field which in the 1920s had not yet been sharply demarcated into disciplinary territories, and where the full range of relevant methodologies were therefore employed: history, archaeology, philology, ethnography, anthropology, and folklor-

gained full independence from Sweden, and it was further strengthened by the five years of German occupation during WWII. There were also important nationalistic revivals in conjunction with the referendums in 1972 and 1994, when Norwegian membership in the EU was turned down. These events may help explain why “methodological nationalism” in the discipline of history remained hegemonic at least until the 1970s – and some, among them an evaluation of the Norwgian history discipline from 2008, would say it remains so even today. See Peter Aronsson, Narve Fulsås, Pertti Haapala, and Bernard Eric Jensen, “Nordic National Histories,” The Contested Nation: ethnicity, class, religion and gender in national histories, eds. Stefan Berger & Chris Lorenz (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008). 524 Bull and Koht were both cabinet ministers for the Labor party in the interwar period.

276 │ The transformation of humanities education

istics.525 The other initiative was a strong engagement with the Comité international des sciences historiques, of which Koht was the first serving president (1926-33). It was for the collaboration with this international organization that Koht and his colleagues set up the Norwegian committee for historical research (Norsk komité for historisk vitskap). Important and interesting as these initiatives were, neither was successful in the long run. The international ambitions of the Norwegian historical discipline waned in the 1930s, and came to a halt during WWII, even though the Norwegian committee for historical research was revived in the post-WWII period, and served an important function in domestic discipline building in the 1960s and 1970s.

12.2 HISTORICAL RESEARCH AFTER WWII Despite the important foundational work done by Munch, Sars, Koht, Bull, and several other illustrious names from the 19th and early 20th century, I will argue that the emergence of a modern Norwegian historical research discipline (in the sense discussed with reference to Stichweh’s work in a previous section) only came about in the post-WWII era, with disciplinary growth passing a threshold level around 1970. Furthermore, I will argue that the research discipline co-evolved with its educational programs: their expansion and transformation were mutually dependent. While not directly opposed to precursors such as Koht and Bull Sr. (who were still active), the historians who would dominate the post-WWII years, chiefly Jens Arup Seip and Sverre Steen, assumed a skeptical stance towards any forms of ideology, were critical of both synthetic narrative and grand theory – whether idealist or materialist – and sought, ostensibly at least, to (re)anchor historical research in primary sources. Partly inspired by advances in the Norwegian social sciences (under the auspices of the influential philosopher Arne Næss), there seemed to be a willingness, even an eagerness, among historians in the first decade after WWII to demarcate true historical research from “metaphysics”. From this stance a new historiography evolved, later codified by Ottar Dahl under the name of

525 The foundational idea was comparative research on national cultures based on evolutionary theory, serving ultimately the international understanding and peace championed by the League of Nations after the Great War. See Jon Røyne Kyllingstad, ‘Menneskeåndens universalitet’: Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning 1917-1940; ideene, institusjonen og forskningen (Oslo: Unipub, 2008).

History │ 277

“critical empiricism,” which proved useful as a platform for discipline formation.526 In the 1940s and 1950s, however, two conditions in particular hampered the emergence of an autonomous Norwegian research discipline. First, in the atmosphere after WWII, Norwegian historians felt called upon to partake, and even take a leading role, in the effort to interpret the recent dramatic events and incorporate them into the national narrative for the benefit of the wider public. In particular Sverre Steen, but also Magne Skodvin, shouldered this task.527 The call to be of service to the general public made withdrawal into intra-disciplinary problems difficult. The other major reason why history did not take off as a disciplinary system (in the sense of a community of researchers) in Norway prior to the 1960s can be indicated by a few staff figures. The two chairs from the early 19th century had not been supplemented by a third until the appointment of Ernst Sars in 1874. The size of the staff in history at the only university in the country then stayed at about the same level until WWII. In the early 1950s, after a slight increase, there were still only 6 tenured historians in Norway, in addition to a handful of temporary research fellows (stipendiater) – hardly an adequate size for a national discipline.528

526 Ottar Dahl, Grunntrekk i historieforskningens metodelære (Oslo. Universitetsforlaget, 1967). 527 For Steen this effort included leading the governmentally appointed commission of inquiry after WWII, writing the updated five-volume Norwegian history, Det frie Norge (1951-62) and producing hugely influential radio program, Langsomt ble landet vårt eget (Norwegian Broadcasting Company, 1967). 528 Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig speaks of the staff in history at Oslo as particularly strong in the early 1950s (“a collegium of seniors”), but this judgment is based on a comparison with other humanities disciplines at Oslo at the time, which, as we shall see for English and general literature studies, were even weaker. Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen, 138ff. By international comparison, the Norwegian discipline of history was certainly not very robust in this period. Speaking of professional Dutch historians, who “remained few in number and woefully under-resourced until after the second world war,” Peter Lambert pities the loneliness of Huizinga among the “paltry dozen professors of history” – which was actually twice the size of the Norwegian discipline. See Peter Lambert: “The professionalization and institutionalization of history,” Writing History. Theory and Practice. 2 ed. eds. Stefan Berger & al. (London: Bloomsbury, 2010). 41. The international evaluation team from 2008 also regards the mid-20th century group of Norwegian historians as small, but seems to conceptualize “discipline” in a way which disregards size: “[t]he discipline of history was established and professionalized before the Second World War, but the re-

278 │ The transformation of humanities education

Fortunately, at this point real expansion began. By 1961 tenured historians in Norway numbered around 20, and in 1973 the number had more than doubled again, to 51. In 1977 there were 61, and in 1983 the number peaked at 66. This level was more or less maintained until the early 1990s, when another wave of students caused extensive hiring. By the turn of the century, 112 tenured historians were at work at a relatively large number of HEIs around the country.529 The increase in quantitative size went along with two important organizational change processes. One has already been discussed in part two of this study, namely the establishment of new universities – in Bergen, Trondheim, and Tromsø – and, from the 1970s, university colleges around the country. The other was the introduc-

searchers were few. From the interwar period until the end of the 1950s, the research staff consisted of around ten people.” See NFR, Evaluering av norsk historiefaglig forskning. Bortenfor nasjonen i tid og rom: fortidens makt og fremtidens muligheter i norsk historieforskning (Oslo: NFR, 2008) 32. By contrast, Germany (or the German speaking areas which later became Germany) had 28 chairs in history as early as 1850. Before WWI, the number of ordinarien was 185. Peter Lambert: “The professionalization and institutionalization of history,” 43. In the US in 1880, the professoriate “barely scraped into double figures; just a decade and a half later it was into three figures.” Ibid., 45. While Germany was the first, with a discipline established in the mid-19th century, the U.S., France and the U.K. followed, and had self-sustaining national disciplinary communities established by WWI at the latest. 529 I concentrate here on tenured faculty because this part of the study is concerned with the evolution of the research discipline as it impacted curricular change at universities, but of course temporary staff and historical research taking place outside universities and university colleges are also crucial to discipline building. A national report on the discipline of history published in 1973 gives a sense of the broader picture. It estimates the total number of Norwegian “research personnel” in history to have been 80 in 1961. In the next decade it doubled, to 169 in 1972. NAVF, Humaniora-utredningen. Del 10: Rapport om status og perspektiver i humanistisk forskning i Norge i 1973 (Oslo: NAVF, 1975). The evaluation of the Norwegian discipline of history from 2008 estimates the total number of “professional historians” shortly after the millennium to be in excess of 500 (NFR 2008: 32ff.). The estimate of between 500 and 550 “professional historians” seems based on the widest possible definition, however, and is hard to reconcile with numbers from other sources. At any rate, to speak of “[t]he growth from 1950 […] from around 10 professional historians to half a thousand” is surely misleading – the large majority of the 500 from around the millennium were surely “professional historians” in a completely different sense than the 10 in 1950. NFR, Evaluering av norsk historiefaglig forskning, 32.

History │ 279

tion of the department (institutt) at the faculties of the humanities at all of these institutions, also discussed previously.530 The growth in personnel together with these organizational changes resulted in a situation where historical research in the 1970s was pursued in history departments at four universities, in addition to several department-like units at university colleges. Of these, three departments were relatively large (over 30 positions in Oslo, around 20 in Bergen and Trondheim). Hence, even though mobility between HEIs in Norway has never been as high as in Germany or the United States, a national network of disciplinary nodes was in place at this time which made possible continuous communication, reciprocal influence, and a certain flexibility as regards career trajectories. An indication that the discipline was now taking on the character of a national communication system, is that research from the 1970s onwards became less dependent upon individuals, and more inclined towards collaborative work. A comparison of two surveys of academic historians from 1972 and 1984 shows that, although certainly not at the level of the natural or social sciences, the share of research performed as “teamwork” had increased from 7 % to 35 %.531 The last of the undisputed Norwegian “giants” of the historical scholarship – Jens Arup Seip – did his most influential work in the postwar period.532 In the years from 1960 to the late 1980s, Ottar Dahl and Sivert Langholm were perhaps the last who could be regarded as “grand old men” of the whole history discipline as such – Dahl as “a creator of disciplinary norms,” in the words of Knut Kjeldstadli, and Langholm as

530 The postwar Norwegian department (institutt) was chair-based, after the German model. The chair, or department head, would tend to be loyal towards the dean (and rector) by whom he or she had been appointed. In the early 1970s, following the period of student protests, this model was transformed into something that resembled the American model, with all researcher-teachers put on an equal footing, and with representation in the department board of students and the administrative staff. The Norwegian solution differed from the American model in that department heads were elected by the staff, however. This meant that thenceforth the loyalties of department heads were mostly towards the staff, an arrangement which supposedly should lead to management “from below.” Whether or not this worked as intended has been a matter of much dispute. After the millennium many departments have preferred to switch from elected to appointed department heads. 531 Tore Pryser, “Noen konsekvenser av fagpolitikken i 1980-åra,” Historisk tidsskrift 68 (1989) 467. 532 In a survey conducted by Marte Mangset in the first decade after the millennium, Seip is mentioned by almost all respondents in the Norwegian historical discipline as a canonical figure. See Marte Mangset, The discipline of historians.

280 │ The transformation of humanities education

the leader of the broadest research program from the 1970s onwards (social history), and as a developer of what he called the “infrastructure of history”.533 However, in the next generations there are so many perspectives, specialisms, and “schools”, and so many nodes in the disciplinary network that it is hard to imagine consensus across the whole discipline on how to bestow “greatness” or “grandeur” on select individuals. At any rate, from the 1980s onwards it became increasingly clear that contributions ultimately would have to be judged from an international perspective, which obviously changed the game. I will return to the internationalization of the Norwegian discipline below. The idea of the Norwegian discipline of history as a communications network highlights the importance of communications media such as publications and associations. In Norway, the first association for historians, Den norske historiske forening (the “Norwegian historical association”), and its journal Historisk tidsskrift (the Journal of history) date back as far as to 1869 and 1870, respectively. These dates have been interpreted by many as marking the establishment of Norwegian history as a “profession,” a “science” and a “discipline”.534 A problem with treating this association and its journal as a point of origin, especially for the “discipline” in the conceptualization I am employing, is that neither was reserved for historians exclusively, but welcomed everyone interested in history as members and contributors. Since the historically interested in late 19th century Norway was practically the whole societal elite, this meant that members of the association included the king, half the cabinet, and around 80 members of Parliament.535 While certainly beneficial to the field in many ways, this widespread lay interest in history, which persisted throughout the 20th century and continues today, seems to have put some restrictions on the development of history as an autonomous and specialized research discipline, as we noted for the post-WWII period. Entrenchment in what Fredrik W. Thue has termed the common “cultural circuit” of Norwe-

533 Knut Kjeldstadli, “History as science,” Making a historical culture. Historiography in Norway, eds. William H. Hubbard & al. (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1995) 71. 534 This genealogy seems to have become a commonplace in Norwegian historiography. For a recent example, see Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975 Den store transformasjonen, 138. 535 Sivert Langholm, “The Infrastructure of History,” Making a Historical Culture. Historiography in Norway, ed. William H. Hubbard (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1995).

History │ 281

gian civil society made boundary work problematic.536 Historians who were active in academic research therefore had to devise additional organizational mechanisms to handle disciplinary development.537 In other words, a research community of historians had clearly not been differentiated from other societal elites at this point. In my view, the achievement of systemic autonomy for historical research happened much later, in the postwar era, and then with the university departments as the primary organizational platform. As regards journals, the Journal of history (Historisk tidsskrift) has arguably been the most important throughout the 20th century, although as Jan Eivind Myhre reminds us it has only gradually become an exclusive outlet for “the insiders of history”.538 It appointed a dedicated editor (thus demarcating the journal from the

536 Fredrik W. Thue, “Humaniora: Fra ‘lærdomskultur’ til ‘forskersamfunn’,” Nytt norsk tidsskrift 29.2 (2012). 537 As mentioned above, Koht set up a more exclusively academic organization, the Norwegian historical committee, to handle international disciplinary relations in the interwar period. Sivert Langholm has demonstrated that this organization, which was more or less dormant after WWII, was revived in the 1960s and 1970s to handle domestic disciplinary development, mainly at the universities. Sivert Langholm, “Omkring et oligarkis opprinnelse og uforbederlighet. Fra historikernes organisasjonshistorie,” Revolusjon og resonnement. Festskrift til Kåre Tønnesson på 70-årsdagen den 1. januar 1996, eds. Øystein Rian & al. (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1995). Gradually, however, important tasks in this respect were taken over by the National disciplinary council of history (Nasjonalt fagråd i historie), established under the umbrella of the Norwegian association of universities. In 1983, when the history departments had stopped hiring new staff, a new organization was set up to handle the interests of academically trained historians who turned to freelance work. By that time, the association from 1869 and the Norwegian historical committee had both lost much of their energies. In 1990 these three associations were merged into the new Den norske historiske forening (HIFO). While not an exclusive “professional” association in the sense of admitting only researchers, the entry requirement was now a graduate degree in history. 538 Jan Eivind Myhre has outlined the Norwegian discipline (or what he calls the “profession”) of history as four concentric circles, of which the first and innermost is academic researchers, the second is researchers employed outside universities and university colleges, the third is secondary school teachers and other people with a graduate degree in history, and the fourth and outermost is the general historically interested public. Jan Eivind Myhre, “‘A strong common professional identity.’ Professionalisation and the creation of a discipline in Norwegian historical scholarship in the 20th Century,” Nordic

282 │ The transformation of humanities education

association) in 1955, and took up the practice of peer-review as late as in 1998. A few specialized channels for research have supplemented this journal, e.g. the Tidsskrift for arbeiderbevegelsens historie (“Journal for the history of the labor movement”), published from 1976 onwards. In addition, in-house publications series, for the most part anchored at the history departments, have published monographs and anthologies, and have played a more important part for historical research than in many other countries.539 One particular publication series, Studies in historical methods [Studier i historisk metode], seems to have been important as a methodological foundation for the emerging Norwegian discipline in the 1960s, and can also serve to illustrate how discipline formation by this time meant discarding other concerns to be able to concentrate on research. Appearing from 1965, this series of yearly publications (mostly printed by a Norwegian university press) was based on a series of Scandinavian conferences for academic historians. Interestingly, the conference series was initiated because of didactic challenges that came to light in teaching methodology to the large classes of the 1960s. Four of the organizers of the first conference had recently published textbooks on methodology for use in history teaching at universities in the various Scandinavian countries – among them Ottar Dahl’s highly influential Grunntrekk i historiefagets metodelære.540 However, after the second conference the participants turned away from educational matters and engaged problems of a theoretical nature, pertaining first and foremost to the research

Historiography in the 20th Century, eds. F. Meyer and Jan Eivind Myhre (Oslo: Tid & tanke, 2000). 539 In the interwar period, the previously mentioned Instituttet for sammenlignende kulturforskning inaugurated its series by publishing Marc Bloch’s Les Caractères Originaux de l’Histoire Rurale Française. At the University of Oslo, the series Tid & Tanke (“Time and Thought”) was published as recently as 1997-2009, although by this time, in-house publication was regarded by some to fall short of international academic standards (because not using peer-review). The already mentioned evaluation report from 2008 made the clear recommendation that Norwegian historians should rather publish through international channels than through such series. The Oslo series was discontinued the year after. 540 A preprint copy of this book was circulated and used by students at Oslo from 1964. The first published version was: Ottar Dahl, Grunntrekk i historiefagets metodelære (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1967).

History │ 283

dimension.541 From 1969 it was explicitly decided that the conference should not be oriented towards educational matters.542 What happened around 1970, then, was that the growth in size, the organizational changes, and enhanced means for communications combined to create a national disciplinary community. More specifically, historical research in Norway was transformed from a small Oslo-based coterie, whose internal differentiation was based mainly on the idiosyncrasies of individuals and the pressures of political contingencies, to a distributed and autonomous communications network spanning the whole country, which almost immediately established more continuous international contacts and, partly under this international influence, began differentiating itself according to specialisms and theory-based “schools.” The impact of the emerging historical research discipline on university education in history will be the topic of the curricular analysis below. Before we engage the actual curricular documents from the 1960s onwards, we need to highlight the importance of certain arrangements regarding the coupling of education and research that had been made long before this period. The reform of the degree structure in 1905, in particular the introduction of the hovedfag, was salient because it allowed for the training of secondary school teachers as well as researchers (see appendix 1). However, the latter function was subordinated the former at least until the post WWII period, and the general obligation of historians towards secondary school, as well as to the wider public, museums, and archives, went undisputed. Largely because of its function as teacher education, history was a highly popular discipline among humanities students in the period before WWII. In student numbers, it was second only to Norwegian (Nordic) studies. When student numbers began to rise in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, history expanded even faster than other disciplines. The growth was especially strong in the early 1970s.543 As repeatedly underscored, this educational growth was an absolutely necessary condition for the establishment of history as a national community of disciplinary researchers. As with the humanities in general, student numbers fell through the

541 See Sivert Langholm, “Fagkonferanser om historisk metodelære,” [Swedish] Historisk tidskrift 39.2 (1970) 68ff. 542 Stein R. Helland and Jarle Simonsen, “De nordiske fagkonferanser for historisk metode 1965-1983,” Norwegian translation of article published in Scandinavian Journal of History 9 (1984). 543 In 1968 there were 750 history students in Norway, and only six years later, in 1975, the number had almost trebled, to 2171. Statistics Norway

284 │ The transformation of humanities education

1980s, before they rose again in the 1990s.544 History was then the largest humanities discipline in terms of student numbers (English and Norwegian being the runners up). As regards educational content prior to the period covered in this study , it seems fair to say that political history had dominated. The dominance was not as strong as in many other European countries, however. As many have pointed out, the fact that Norway did not have a long dynastic history contributed to the inclusion of what was later to be called social history – i.e. the history of farmers and (later) the working class – into mainstream nationalist historiography already in the 19th century. It should also be remembered that history before the 1960s contained within its purview humanities fields that would later come into their own as separate disciplines, such as the history of ideas.545 The social sciences (especially sociology, political science, and national economics) were on the rise in Norway in the 1950s, and as Marte Mangset has demonstrated, the disciplinary development of history – in education as well as in research – was conditioned by the need for boundary work in the face of these.546

12.3 HISTORY CURRICULA In the following I will outline the major findings from a review of curricula documents pertaining to educational programs in history from 1960 to 2000. I have studied developments at the University of Oslo and the University of Tromsø (which admitted the first students in history in 1973), concentrating on the undergraduate one-year program grunnfag, and the two-year graduate program hovedfag. The most important type of document I have consulted is the program plan (studieplan). The program plans were printed in a yearly Handbook for study (Studiehåndboken).547 In addition to the program plans, I have consulted the rele-

544 In 1988, there were 1690 history students in Norway; only four years later, in 1992, the number had risen to 3164. Statistics Norway 545 Actually, both political science and the history of ideas had been established as disciplines at the University of Oslo immediately following WWII, but with only one staff member each. It was only during the 1960s and 1970s that these took off as disciplines in Norway, leaving history to consolidate the remaining territories. 546 Marte Mangset, The discipline of historians. 547 The Handbook for study (Studiehåndboken) was published annually from the 1950s until 2003 by the humanities faculties at Norwegian universities, and usually sold only on campus. Edited with separate sections for each discipline (which for much of the pe-

History │ 285

vant entries in the course catalogues (Forelesningskatalogen).548 As William Clark has demonstrated for the German university of the 19th century, much revealing information about academic activities can be extracted from course catalogues.549 Since neither the handbooks nor the course catalogues are easily available for consultation, they are referenced here as archival material.550 Oslo 1960 The overall educational aim of the grunnfag in history at the University of Oslo in 1960 was unambiguous. The very first line in the program plan runs as follows: “The grunnfag shall provide the students with the knowledge and the insight required to be able to teach history and social studies [the school subject samfunnskunnskap] in lower secondary school [realskolen].” The program plan goes on to say that students who continue to the mellomfag (the half-year intermediary program) will be qualified to teach upper secondary school (gymnaset). Neither the

riod corresponded to a department), the actual program plan for each program level (in our case: the one-year undergraduate program grunnfag, and the two-year graduate program hovedfag) is for the most part presented separately, but they are sometimes prefaced by shorter or longer general introductions. These introductions, often highly interesting, are also taken into consideration in the following. 548 The catalogues were published in a paperback format and distributed free of charge each semester by all Norwegian universities during the period in question. The course catalogue listed all lectures and seminars for the whole institution, in addition to a lot of practical information pertaining to examinations, office hours, addresses, etc. 549 William Clark, Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006) ch. 2. 550 The program plans are fairly short documents conveniently ordered by discipline and program level in each yearly handbook, hence the year and program name/level is sufficient to retrieve the document, and is therefore given as the only reference in the following discussion. The same applies to entries in the course catalogues. The cited material from the University of Oslo: Faculty of humanities, the Archive in Niels Treschow’s building, basement stacks II, small room: rack 1, subject 1, Studiehåndbøker (shelf 1-3), and subject 2, Forelesningskatalogen (shelf 1-3); supplementary copies of the course catalogue (Forelesningskatalogen ) made available from the Archive at the University of Oslo, Management and Support Units. The cited material from the University of Tromsø: Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education. Archival section, series x: in-house printed matter: Box 1-8 Studiehåndbøker UiT and Forelesningskatalogen UiT (1972 – 2003).

286 │ The transformation of humanities education

academic profession nor qualifying for research work is mentioned at all, even though the grunnfag was also the first rung on the ladder to an academic career for many. This school-teacher-centeredness in the grunnfag curriculum – at least as regards the overall aims – was probably the result of the recently implemented reform of 1959, which as mentioned earlier had freed the degrees at the Humanities faculty from formally certifying teachers, on the condition that the grunnfag should specifically cater to teacher education. Still, knowing how completely this preference was changed later on, it is important to note here just how accentuated the vocational aim was in 1960. The other general impression one gets from the 1960 grunnfag program plan, is that it was heavily knowledge-centered. A prospective student could expect to immerse him- or herself in a mass of historical facts: periods, events, names, and dates in Norwegian and “world history” (which was overwhelmingly Western history), all of it conveyed through and held together by narrative conventions, periodization, and the demarcations of political geography. There is some mention of the importance of historical method in the program plan, but compared to the sheer volume of established historical knowledge the student was expected to acquire, the process whereby this knowledge had been established is accorded very little emphasis. What is perhaps even more startling, when viewed in hindsight, is the utter absence of the topic of personal maturation or Bildung/dannelse. A syllabus is presented in the program plan itself, and what is remarkable about it is that it is full of fairly old books. Only a few of the titles are published after WWII. A small selection of textbooks is listed specifically for the grunnfag (about which more below), and in addition there is a long list of further reading that runs for many pages, addressed to students on all program levels (grunnfag, mellomfag, and hovedfag). The course catalogue lists a full load of lectures and seminars to cover the topics of the reading list, a significant portion of it with compulsory attendance. The teaching consisted of survey lectures and seminars with titles suggesting treatment of broad themes in the main stream of the discipline. Research-based teaching in the sense of specialized topics based on research literature or primary sources was not on offer. Unlike later developments (as we shall return to), it seems much of the curriculum in 1960 was covered by teaching, but doubtless much independent reading was needed to supplement it. The graduate program of hovedfag at the University of Oslo was less explicitly oriented towards school teaching than the grunnfag. Although completion of the hovedfag was a requirement for students who aspired to a teaching post as lektor in upper secondary school, it also served as the main qualification for research work (the magister and dr.philos. degrees being relatively rare). But as was the case for

History │ 287

the grunnfag, the function of researcher training was not mentioned explicitly as a goal. Whether by intent or not, the department bypassed the duality of the educational function by formulating the goals of the hovedfag at a more general level. The stated aim in 1960 was “to provide insight into history and the working methods of the historian.” As mentioned earlier, the core of the hovedfag had increasingly become the thesis, at least since WWII. Subsequently the theses would change character and grow substantially longer as the research orientation gained ground. But even around 1960, the theses were taken very seriously. The program plan stipulated that a hovedfag thesis could be either research-based or synoptic (i.e. outlining a historical trajectory based on secondary sources). As we shall see, the option of a nonresearch based thesis disappeared later on. In addition to thesis work, students would specialize in the history of either a specific period or a country. Within this specialized topic, students were expected to “be familiar with newer research work in the field.” Source criticism was emphasized, along with familiarity with the “development of historical scholarships (historiegranskningas utvikling)” in Norway or another chosen country, as well as with certain classics of the discipline. The reading list for hovedfag was the abovementioned long list addressed to students at all program levels. There was no sharp distinction (at least not in the program plan) between required and cursory reading, but while the whole list was clearly not required reading for undergraduates, one must assume that hovedfag candidates were expected to be familiar with most items on it. The program therefore demanded quite substantial independent reading in addition to the teaching on offer. Teaching at the hovedfag level was given in the form of seven lecture series. As for the grunnfag, these were on broad topics in the mainstream of the discipline, and they seem to have been specifically designed for the educational purpose of providing students with an overview, rather than flowing from the particular research interests of the staff. There were also seminars with “exercises” in source work. For the hovedfag students attendance was not compulsory, but candidates had to self-report their attendance upon registering for the final exams. Developments 1960-1980 During the twenty years from 1960 to 1980, an increased research-orientation eclipsed the function of teacher education in the history curriculum. From 1967, the program plan for the grunnfag at the University of Oslo would contain the following disclaimer after a statement about the qualifications offered of relevance for

288 │ The transformation of humanities education

school teaching: “However, the students cannot expect to acquire, during their university education, all the knowledge which they will need to make the material come alive and become understandable for children and adolescents – especially not the knowledge of events and personalities in history. History teachers must continue their education after graduation.” While the last advice is no doubt valid at any time, it is not unreasonable to interpret the passage, when viewed in the context of the developments I have described above, as an indication of how the discipline of history in Norway was now gradually unburdening itself of the responsibility for school matters, and even – as we shall return to in part four of this study – for the professional careers of its graduates at all. As of 1970, the primary educational aim in the program plan for grunnfag is no longer vocational. “Understanding” history is now the stated major aim – as it was in 1960 for hovedfag. Competency needed for the school teacher profession is still mentioned explicitly as a goal, but only after about a page of more general reflections on the discipline of history and its characteristics. Furthermore, the importance of research is now accentuated in the grunnfag curricula, too, as it had not been a decade earlier. The program plan of 1970 explicitly states that grunnfag students should become familiar with research methods and should develop the mindset of a researcher: “In order to gain a deeper understanding, it is […] of great importance to have some knowledge of the history of research on the various problems and views that have been discussed.” Critical perspectives, especially as regards sources, are underscored. Also, the completely revised syllabus now contains much more specialized and research-based reading, some of it of quite recent date. There are new books on method, of which Sivert Langholm’s Historisk rekonstruksjon og begrunnelse (1967) is on the syllabus for the grunnfag, while the more ambitious and demanding Grunntrekkene i historieforskningens metodelære (1964/1967) by Ottar Dahl, which I have mentioned previously as paradigmatic for the Norwegian discipline of history, is reserved for the hovedfag candidates, as yet. Thus, there is still a clear distinction between the two levels as regards orientation towards research. But even at the grunnfag level theoretical issues (some of which were imported from the social sciences) were making their appearance in this period, for instance in a section of the syllabus on “modern economic history and theory.” Apparently, the 1960 reading list with its many old, synoptic works had become something of an embarrassment to the department already by the mid-1960s. From 1964 the program plan contained warnings like this: “The students should be aware that, unfortunately, there are few synoptic works (oversiktsverker) which have the scope and perspective that would make them suitable for a university program, especially since these historical accounts rarely provide information about what

History │ 289

their narrative is based on.” To this was added the warning that “one should always be aware that the perspectives and selection of material in the synoptic works may be colored by the interests of the author, or by the aims of the book; many accounts will for these reasons be one-sided. […] The students must therefore read critically, also when synoptic works are concerned”. Among the works alluded to in this passage were the hitherto canonical ones by Ernst Sars on Norwegian history. From 1974 the program plan for hovedfag stated explicitly that “elementary synoptic works” could no longer be a part of the curriculum. The 1960 syllabus had been full of precisely such works. As regards teaching, there is still quite a lot of it on offer for grunnfag students in 1970, in the form of both lectures and seminars. The seminars are noticeably more specialized than in 1960, however, especially in Norwegian history. Attendance is no longer compulsory, clearly signaling that the students are now responsible for achieving their own individual goals. We can also note that from 1967, the introductory statement on overall goals began to refer to, and even cater to, the particular interests of the individual student. Concluding a passage on the nature of the discipline of history, the following advice was offered: “The program will therefore be best suited for those who are interested in social issues, including politics, whether contemporary or in the past.” As discussed in part two, the importance of individual choice for higher education, with reference not only to the individual nature of talent, qualifications, and professional ambitions, but also to personal preference as a matter of identity and taste, was highlighted by the Ottosen committee from the mid-1960s onwards as part of its advocacy of considering higher education first and foremost as a welfare good. This was an essential part of the argument for letting the applicants’ preferences determine capacity building. There is also a certain affinity between highlighting the individual interests of students and the emergence of individualized “research interests” of the staff as the central premise for increasingly specialized research within a democratized department structure (as opposed to a chair system where research was subject to centralized planning to a greater extent). At the level of hovedfag, too, there was an increased emphasis on research in 1970. In the program plan it was repeatedly stressed that the candidates should be familiar with “important newer research works” in the periods and topics relevant for the thesis, and in the other elective parts of the curricula. The introduction to the program plan underscored “understanding” and “independence of judgment” as aims, which might be interpreted as an indication that even though factual knowledge is obviously still important, the ideal of Bildung is now emerging as an explicit educational goal. The salience of “understanding” (the term is italicized twice in the opening paragraphs) can also be seen as part of the boundary work

290 │ The transformation of humanities education

performed to distinguish history from the social sciences, with reference to Johann Gustav Droysen’s classic distinction between verstehen and erklären.551 In keeping with the changes in the program plan, the teaching offers at the level of hovedfag also becomes more extensive and more research-based from around 1970. The course catalogues show that particularly Norwegian history is differentiated into many specialized areas, with seminars on fairly narrow topics. For instance, a whole seminar is dedicated to a particular Norwegian worker conflict in 1911. Specialized topics in world history are also on offer: Czechoslovakian history, decolonization, and the Russian revolution. Furthermore, we now begin to see the effects of the disciplinary differentiation into various theoretical schools and specialisms reflected in the regular teaching. New approaches and perspectives form the basis of separate seminars and lecture series on neo-Marxism (from Marx to Marcuse and Gramsci), social history, and statistics. The course catalogues show that these new topics and theoretical perspectives were for the most part introduced by temporarily employed junior staff, of which there were quite many around 1970. At the University of Tromsø, which admitted its first students in history in 1973, the program plans at both undergraduate and graduate levels were for the first four years the same as at Oslo, taught by faculty recruited from that university. In 1977, however, new program plans developed by the new permanent staff at Tromsø come into effect. In them, we can see the same developments as at Oslo, but even more pronounced. At the level of grunnfag, teacher education is no longer mentioned as a goal at all – the aims are articulated at a generic, knowledge-focused level, without mention of any vocational purpose. “Historical method and work with primary sources” is specifically underlined, and according to the program plan an elective “special subject” is “designed to draw research and teaching closer together.” An introductory course includes the topic of “research history” (forskningshistorie), and students are expected to form “an opinion on the value of historical works.” The elective topics are now much more specialized than what we saw at Oslo in 1960. Seminars are offered in e.g. the history of Northern Norway, Sami history, women’s history, world history, African history, and international politics after WWII. As one would expect, the hovedfag program plan of 1977 at Tromsø is even more research-focused. The goal at this level is “deepened insight into historical research and problems in history.” The last phrase is telling. What counts is not only the state of historical research at present, which could provide a foundation for dissemination and teaching, but the “problems” that provide fertile ground for future research, and which is the concern for the academic historian. Furthermore,

551 See Johann Gustav Droysen, Outline of the Principles of History (NY: Ginn, 1897).

History │ 291

the student is supposed to achieve “increased understanding of methods and theory in historical research, and […] develop a more independent attitude towards source material and accounts”. Compared to Oslo – and to most modern universities, one suspects – there was very little teaching on offer at Tromsø in the 1970s, presumably because the staff was so small at the newly opened university. Interestingly, what little teaching there was at the level of hovedfag was highly specialized. This may be an indication that the historians who transferred to Tromsø were mainly oriented towards research. At any rate is suggests that the department at this time was not too concerned with providing a broad common ground in the graduate program. The reading on the syllabus that was of a more general nature was not covered by teaching, but left to independent reading.552 Developments 1980-2000 When we come to 1980, the grunnfag at Oslo seems to be consolidated as primarily a generalist program. The fact that it also happens to provide the competency needed to teach in lower secondary school is still mentioned in the program plan, but the sense of being the program’s raison d’être is completely gone.553 Specialization has now become a staple even at the grunnfag level, and there no real attempt to claim a comprehensive coverage of (Western) history. In both Nordic and world history students choose particular periods. Nordic history, for instance, is divided into three main periods. In the first period, students can choose the time until 1319, or 1150-1550; in the second period, either 1500-1700 or 1640-1800. The third and last period, from 1800, is compulsory however. A somewhat different periodization is used for world history. Students choose either Greek or Roman antiquity; then there are options in the Medieval, Early Modern, and Modern periods. But in world history it is only the time after 1914 which is compulsory. The fact that the compulsory period in modern Nordic history begins a hundred years earlier is obviously a concession to the continued importance of the Norwegian nation as a frame of reference. It should also be noted that students are not allowed to choose only older periods or only newer periods – as yet. Even though it had been clear since at least WWII that very few professional historians could contribute significantly to histori-

552 It is worth noting that at Tromsø, history (as well as philosophy) was organized in a department for social sciences – there was no unit dedicated specifically to the humanities other than the Department of language and literature. 553 As discussed in part two, the structure of secondary school as well as requirements for the teacher profession changed from 1973.

292 │ The transformation of humanities education

cal scholarship in widely different periods, it remained an important feature and tenet of the Norwegian historical discipline for many decades that the whole of history should be within its purview, and that grunnfag students should be exposed to it as a totality.554 In addition to elective periods, grunnfag students in 1980 were allowed to choose two special topics, of which one could be “of a theoretical-methodological kind” – the aim being that “students shall attain knowledge of the work with sources and of the research literature.” It is furthermore interesting to note that Ottar Dahl’s influential book on methodology – which had previously been considered too specialized for undergraduates – is now recommended to grunnfag students as well. As one might have expected, specialization escalated during the 1970s at the level of hovedfag, too. By 1980, a new program plan allows for in-depth study of two elective topics. No mention is made of school teaching or other occupations, while the aim of researcher training is now made explicit: “By working on his own dissertation (avhandling), the student shall acquire research experience and practice in the construction of an historical account.” The preoccupation with theory and method that we noticed entering the curriculum at Oslo in 1970 (and even more noticeable at Tromsø in 1977) is consolidated by stipulating an elective theory and methods syllabus of 200 pages. Furthermore, one of the two special topics can be theoretical or methodological. The program plan specifically mentions theoretical specializations such as gender theory and the theory of the working classes, and relatively new issues such as humanist informatics (later to evolve into the digital humanities) are introduced. At Oslo, the lectures and seminars offered in 1980 – to a large extent taught by the new generation of faculty staff – seem even more research-driven than in 1970.555 Interestingly, it seems the students’ own research ambitions at this point

554 The underlying fear has been that, given the choice, too few students would choose to study older history. Not only would this make it harder to legitimize research on older history; it would also, over time, make it more difficult for history to demarcate itself from the social sciences. Only shared disciplinary norms made it possible to maintain a “holistic” curricular approach at the various universities and university colleges for several decades. However, in the 1990s the University of Trondheim divided the grunnfag into two courses, one in older and one in newer history, and offered them separately. As we shall see below, the other universities resisted this solution throughout the period covered here – but in recent years at least Oslo has also given in to it. 555 The number of full professors at Oslo declined from 7 to 4 during the 1970s, while the permanent junior staff increased from 5 to 8, judging from the course catalogues. There

History │ 293

have become aroused to such an extent that some caution was in order from the department. The program plan states that the dissertation should be of “reasonable” length (which is specified as 70-100 pages), and the reading list, most of which is elective, “should not exceed 2000 pages.” One of the most interesting developments in the curricula of the 1980s is an attempt to deal with the realization that the discipline of history – like many other humanities disciplines at the universities– was now on the verge of losing its foothold in secondary school. While this development began in the 1950s, it seems a point of no return was reached sometime in the 1970s. I have so far stressed that for several decades the universities and the humanities faculties were eager to shed their obligations to secondary school, which – quite understandably – were seen as major obstacles to an emerging research agenda. However, when the financial crisis hit in the 1970s, the precarious situation resulting from this quest for autonomy became gradually visible. Not only were there fewer students and an unfavorable labor market in general, but in the still expanding traditional labor market of secondary school teaching positions, the candidates from such university programs as history were now losing out in the competition with candidates from the other teacher education institutions around the country, which had since 1973 been granted status as university colleges. Further discussions of this development will be offered in part four. Of course, the scarcity of career options was at first largely a problem for the candidates themselves, but gradually it also began to undermine the financial situation of the departments in question. Preoccupied with their own priorities during the 1960s and 1970s, the history departments registered the changes in their relations with the societal environment only belatedly. Moreover, upon realizing that there was a problem, they engaged it mostly from an academic perspective, i.e. as a topic for reflection. Hence, when the initiative to do something came, it was not from the discipline at all. It came from the rector at Oslo, and from a national project sponsored by the Ministry of education which since 1978 had aimed to reestablish the universities’ coupling with secondary school and with the teacher profession.556 One of the action points of this project was to introduce a compulsory course in disciplinary didactics (fagdidaktikk) into the relevant humanities program plans (i.e. those that were taught as subjects in secondary school) at both the grunnfag and the hovedfag level.

were probably several reasons for these changes, but the underlying driver was undoubtedly the financial crisis which hit the humanities in the last half of the 1970s, making it risky for departments to hire permanent staff. 556 See Kim G. Helsvig, 1975-2011. Mot en ny samfunnskontrakt? Vol. 6., Universitetet i Oslos historie, ed. John Peter Collett (Oslo: Unipub, 2011) 48.

294 │ The transformation of humanities education

Viewed against the historical background outlined here, this measure may seem to reveal a recognition that the programs had become too specialized, too oriented towards research, and too neglectful of the fact that many of the candidates would have to address not peers in the history discipline, but youths between 13 and 19 years of age. However, as we shall see, the situation was ambiguous, and allowed for different perspectives and preferences. The didactics modules were first piloted in Nordic studies and English studies (and also in some programs in the natural sciences), before they were implemented in other programs in the mid-1980s. History was thus quite late in joining the game. This was at least in part because of skepticism, which had by now become widespread in the humanities’ disciplines in general, towards ideas perceived as coming from the outside.557 It is not very surprising, therefore, that the didactics course was only half-heartedly implemented in the history curricula. At least it is my clear impression from examining the development of the program plans in history from the mid-1980s onwards that there was no serious intent to curtail academic drift and reconnect with the school teacher profession. In the program plan for history at the grunnfag level at Oslo in 1984, the disciplinary didactics course is introduced in the statement on overall aims: “The program shall give an introduction to, and stimulate reflection over, the aim, function, legitimation and problems of dissemination [formidlingsproblemer] in the discipline of history – e.g. in its relation to the way history is taught in schools.” However, when the idea of disciplinary didactics is fleshed out under a separate heading a little further on, it is as a meta-reflection on the historical literature. The stated goal is that students, upon evaluating historical accounts, should be able to ask the following types of questions: “Is this (strictly speaking) scientific [vitenskapelig] literature, more popularized historical literature, or textbooks/handbooks, and in the latter case, written for whom? In which historiographical tradition does the work belong? Is a specific view on historical interpretation voiced, or are more than one discussed – if so, which ones?”

Interesting and relevant as they are to any program in history, these questions are obviously not specifically intended to address how history is taught in secondary school. However, the issue of schooling is addressed in a separate section on teaching: “The school subject [of history] is attended to and discussed, e.g. in

557 Kim G. Helsvig says, with an understatement, that both the humanities faculty and the faculty of natural sciences were “less than welcoming towards the shifting leaderships’ efforts to integrate practical-pedagogical components […]” Ibid.

History │ 295

dealing with school curricula and textbooks.” But this seems almost an afterthought; the primary attention in the didactics curriculum is focused not on the particular target group of school pupils, or on the challenges a school teacher in history meets, but is reflected back on the identity of the discipline itself. It is telling in this regard that when the program plan for grunnfag lists all the curricular elements, didactics is merged with historical method: “Disciplinary didactics/historical methods [Fagdidaktikk/historisk metode]” It seems disciplinary autonomy now has reached a stage where “operational closure,” to use Luhmann’s concept, makes real engagement with activities in the environment, such as actual school teaching, very hard to envision. It is of course possible – and even likely – that in the teaching of the didactics course, the topics of secondary school and the role of the professional teacher were more accentuated than in the curricula documents. As previously stated, it is one of the limitations of this study that information about what was actually said in lectures and seminars is not available. However, since the phrasing quoted above regarding disciplinary didactics was retained verbatim for more than ten years at Oslo, and a very similar approach and presentation was used at Tromsø, it does not seem that there was any serious desire on the part of the history departments to adjust the didactics component in the direction of its original intent. On the contrary, in 1994 the quoted passage about drawing school curricula and textbooks into the grunnfag teaching was removed (as the only change to this part of the text). I am not claiming that the history departments deliberately attempted to subvert the intent of the university leaderships or the political authorities. It rather seems that for a prolonged period the departments were unable to use the notion of didactics as anything but a pretext for more theoretical and methodological reflection. In the light of this, the outcome of the didactics venture is not surprising. In the first half of the 1990s, when the recruitment to humanities programs as well as the labor market for humanities candidates (and hence the finances of humanities departments) had improved considerably, the responsibility for didactics in all humanities disciplines was transferred to the pedagogical seminar, which was expanded from a half to one year, and renamed the practical-pedagogical seminar. Once again the discipline of history – like the other humanities disciplines – had rid itself of the responsibility for teacher education. Another curricular change in the 1980s should be mentioned in conjunction with the agenda – whether seriously entertained or not – to improve the relevance of the history programs for teacher education. I have mentioned above that in 1980 the grunnfag had become differentiated into a host of periods and specialties which the students could choose from, albeit with some restrictions. In the mid-1980s, however, at around the same time as the disciplinary didactics scheme was launched, the

296 │ The transformation of humanities education

curriculum was reformed to provide a more coherent unity. The program plan of 1984 was organized around a “main trunk,” consisting of “an overview of European societal history from Greek-Roman antiquity until ca. 1970. The major economic, social, political, and cultural strands shall be studied, insofar as this is possible, as parts of a whole […].” The syllabi from 1984 and 1985 indicate that this “major trunk” of European history took up almost ¾ of the reading. There were elective parts also, but compared to the curriculum in 1980, the reformed program plan of 1984 indicates a clear intent to counteract the centrifugal forces of specialization. In this way, the grunnfag after 1984 provided once again a relatively stable “content,” and thereby also a better foundation for school teaching. It is doubtful whether this reform was effectuated only to make the grunnfag more suitable for the training of future teachers, however. A clear indication that there must have been other reasons is that the notion of a main curricular “trunk” and the restrictions put upon specialization are maintained until the late 1990s, by which time the disciplinary didactics elements have been abandoned, and the identification of the humanities with teacher education has reached an all-time low. Of course, several other good reasons might always be offered for a move in the direction of greater curricular unity. From a purely educational perspective, the long tradition of liberal education (as well as the Bildung tradition) is a reservoir of arguments for a holistic approach and against fragmentation.558 More specifically, and more to the point in the case of the Norwegian history discipline, there was, especially from the late 1980s onwards, a voiced concern in the community of researchers that history had become too fragmented, not only in the educational dimension, but also as a research discipline.559 With historians working on ever smaller and more “esoteric” historical material, and approaching it from incommensurable and continually changing perspectives, the danger was that at one point it would become impossible for each of them to connect their findings to those of other historians in a way that maintained any narrative or analytical coherence. As usual, there were several views on what the problem really was, and how it should

558 See e.g. Sheldon Rothblatt, “The Limbs of Osiris: Liberal Education in the EnglishSpeaking World,” The European and American University Since 1800, eds. Sheldon Rothblatt and Björn Wittrock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 559 See Francis Sejersted, “Norsk historisk forskning ved inngangen til 1990-årene – et oppgjør med den metodologiske individualisme,” Historisk tidsskrift 4 (1989) 395-411; Jan Eivind Myhre, “Den norske historiske kultur. Om sammenheng og fragmentering i norsk historieforskning” and “I historiens hus er det mange rom. Noen hovedtrekk i norsk historieforskning 1970-1995,” Mange veier til historien. Om historiefagets og historikernes historie (Oslo: Fagbokforlaget, 2009).

History │ 297

be remedied, but the outcome seems to have been an awareness among academic historians that without some form of unity, the discipline would disintegrate, with uncertain consequences for those implicated.560 The curricula documents from Tromsø do not display the same tendency towards synthesis and unity in this period. But on the other hand there had been no modularization, and at least in that sense a measure of coherence in the grunnfag program was maintained. As I have noted above, history at Tromsø had since 1977 taken an even more research-oriented path than Oslo. By 1986, the program plan explicitly states that the grunnfag aims to “provide knowledge of developments in research (historiography)” and to allow for practical exercises in the use of historical methods. The formulations for grunnfag are now not very different from hovedfag. Interestingly, however, there is from this period onwards a tendency to pay less attention to the particular topics which the history department at Tromsø accentuated quite heavily when it was established in the 1970s, such as social history of the Northern region, and gender studies. The only region specific topic that is maintained is the history of the Sami people (and to drop this topic would be politically impossible).561 This change with respect to regionalism should probably also be seen in the light of the increased international influence that affected the department at Tromsø as well as Oslo from the late 1980s. Particularly in the 1990s, attention was directed to global history, and – in the case of Tromsø – to the aspects

560 Perhaps this is a reminder that there are also centripetal forces at work in the evolution of research disciplines. Even in the context of continuous disciplinary differentiation, it seems specialisms will risk disengagement from the mother discipline only when the academic gains from staying put sinks beneath a certain level, and, additionally, if there is sufficient external support for the specialism to make it on its own. With the exceptions of local history and economic history (one might also count the history of ideas, even if that discipline sprang from philosophy and the history of literature in Norway), the specialisms in history, at least in the period covered by this study, did not have any real exit opportunities, and might also academically have felt that they had more to gain by maintaining a common boundary against the environment (especially against the social sciences). 561 A governmentally appointed committee had recently proposed several measures to strengthen the position of the Sami people in Norway. See Norwegian Official Report, NOU 23:1984 Om samenes rettstilling. The appointment of this committee followed major protests in the 1970s against a dam construction at Alta that interfered with the livelihood and culture of the Sami people. It could be argued that the prevalence of the history of the Sami people in the curricula at Tromsø is an example of (mostly indirect) curricular influence exerted by a social protest movement.

298 │ The transformation of humanities education

of regional history that resembled the regionally situated historical work now in vogue in other countries, namely the history of indigenous peoples. Of course, both Tromsø and Oslo, as well as the other Norwegian history departments, were subjected to international influences throughout the period covered here. A large proportion of items on the reading lists were always imported, and many of the institutional characteristics closely resembled those in other Western countries. However, until well into the 1980s, there were distinct Norwegian colorations on the domestic variants of Marxism, social history, women’s history, etc. Moreover, some particular Norwegian traditions, such as the propaedeutic course examen philosophicum, were kept from earlier times. Other features were homegrown in the postwar era, such as a very “flat” and almost anarchical departmental structure and an almost non-competitive publication practice in domestic journals and in-house publication series.562 Most importantly, in the 20th century as well as in the 19th century, the hegemonic historiography in Norway had a strongly nationalist frame of reference. The previously mentioned an international evaluation from 2008 found “methodological nationalism” to be prevalent in Norwegian history, and detected at least remnants of provincial professional practices. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that there was a marked shift in the 1990s, and an increased impact of the global history discipline on Norwegian practices, including curricula. As mentioned, Tromsø began to accentuate world history and to subdue its local particularities in the curricula as early as the mid-1980s. At Oslo, “globalization” arrived somewhat later, at least as regards curricula. At the grunnfag as well as the hovedfag level, curricula at Oslo actually remained almost unchanged from the mid-1980s until the late 1990s. When we come to the millennium, however, there are major changes in the program plans. The first paragraph of the new program plan addresses the major change head on: “Traditionally the discipline of history has been strongly oriented towards Norwegian and European history, but now the rest of the world is also given attention. Global history has become an important feature of the grunnfag.” Non-Western history had been addressed previously also (the assignment was 300 pages out of a syllabus counting 4250 pages), but now the whole perspective is changed. It is no longer one massive block of Western history alongside a small nugget of non-Western history; the global perspective henceforth encompasses all continents and nations, even though Norway and Europe are still treated more extensively. Another major change around the millennium, clearly visible in program plans at both Oslo and Tromsø, is that what we might call constructivist epistemology is foregrounded. At Tromsø the aim of providing students with knowledge of histori-

562 See NFR, Evaluering av norsk historiefaglig forskning.

History │ 299

ography (cf. quote above) is given the following new motivation in 1999: “…and thereby enhance the understanding of how different views of history are historically and socially conditioned.” At Oslo a similar formulation is included in the grunnfag program plan of 2000: “To have knowledge of the shifting history of the discipline of history helps one to understand that knowledge and perspectives, for instance in textbooks, are results of both internal research processes and of societal conditions.” Lastly, it should be mentioned that in the history curricula around the millennium, the orientation towards research practices and formats – which had been steadily increasing in importance since 1960 – was turned up another notch. At both Oslo and Tromsø, the grunnfag students were now required to write papers in accordance with the genre conventions of the research article before registering for the final exam, and at the hovedfag level there were formal procedures in place for submitting project proposals regarding topics for theses. Seminars were organized where students could present chapters from their thesis work – at Tromsø, these seminars were simply called “research seminars.” Although the memorization and understanding of an established body of historical knowledge was still important (and still the subject of regular exams), it was the initiation into professional research work on new historical problems that was now the major aim of Norwegian higher education in history. Concluding remarks If we now view the whole trajectory of history curricula at Oslo and Tromsø from 1960 to 2000 against the introductory overview of the rise of history as a research discipline in Norway, a few observations can be made. First of all, the reorientation of the curriculum from a preoccupation with established historical knowledge for the purpose of school teaching towards a research-oriented generalist curriculum, which we have seen taking hold from around 1970 onwards, was, as we remember, preceded by a major expansion of the national community of academic historians. Counting around 20 people in the beginning of the 1960s, the group of academic historians evolved into a distributed disciplinary communication system of around 50 members a decade later. The size of the discipline continued to grow subsequently, but the curricular transformation we have noted above, clearly discernible in curricula documents from around 1970, may be an indication that a new level was reached regarding the priority of research during the 1960s. We shall have occasion to compare disciplinary growth as it relates to curricular change with similar developments in the tree other selected disciplines in the succeeding chapters.

300 │ The transformation of humanities education

As we saw in part two, the growth of the academic staff in the 1960s was necessitated by educational expansion that had been advocated by the research community – precisely in order to foster research expansion in turn. Once recruited in sufficient numbers, the young history faculty seem to have had their research ambitions as easily aroused as those of the other humanities faculty – even if history was among the two or three humanities disciplines where especially older faculty may have been inclined to advocate a sense of responsibility towards secondary school. Such an educational ethos might even have lingered in the discipline for quite a while, but if so the effects of such a stance seem to have been modest. Once the formal coupling to secondary school was dismantled with the new degree system in 1959, and once the discipline of history established itself as a branch of the function system of research during the 1960s, the transformation of the curricula seems to have run its course without major obstacles.563 This goes to show the strength of the research drift set in motion, but perhaps also the lack of an active and firmly articulated educational rationale for the traditional form of history curricula. An interesting illustration of changes in the relative strengths of research and education at this time is the abovementioned Scandinavian methods seminars from 1965 onwards. As we recall, these grew out of educational concerns, but were soon were transformed into a research venture. Apparently, it was deemed more interesting or rewarding to apply the code of research to the methodological issues that arose in these seminars than to refer to them using the code of education. At any rate, since the context was higher education, it could probably be easily justified to settle methodological questions as research issues first (since research should supposedly be the foundation for education) and postpone the educational application to a later stage. But of course, research issues are almost never solved to the satisfaction of the whole discipline, especially not in the humanities – and so the educational side of the question will tend to be postponed indefinitely. Perhaps it was this realization that motivated the 1969 decision to abandon the attempt to use these seminars to establish some sort of didactic guidelines. Despite major curricular changes, the actual societal function of history as primarily a teacher education program remained the same until the last half of the 1970s, as we shall return to in detail in part four. That is, the great majority of the graduates continued to enter the teaching profession, and it was only after 1985 that this share fell below 50 percent. This may explain why no countermeasures against the weakened position in this labor market niche were implemented until late in the

563 Whether there was any such resistance towards curricular transformation would be an interesting topic for further research – even if it was in the end ineffectual.

History │ 301

1970s. For viewed from the outside – from the labor market, or from politics – nothing much had changed. Curricula, it seems, was mostly visible from the inside, by teachers and students. Once the changes were noted, they were too profound to be changed, at least from without. The attempt by the rectorate and the political authorities to reestablish a link with secondary school by the introduction of disciplinary didactics was largely seen as an unwelcome intervention, and eventually rejected. A last observation is that few other direct influences on history curricula than disciplinary research and the concern for secondary school can be detected. It can be argued that social movements (or more generally: extra-academic societal developments) were behind the inclusion of such topics as the history of the Sami people, women’s history, world history etc., but it could equally well be argued that interest in such issues sprang from within the discipline. At any rate, it seems that these topics, to the extent that they were inspired by “external” developments, were for the most part transformed into research problems when they were introduced into the curricula, hence preserving the autonomy associated with modern – i.e. research-based – higher education.

13 English studies

The major breakthrough for English studies as an academic field in Norway came after the dominance of Latin in secondary school was broken with new school legislation in 1869. From then on, English was included – along with other modern languages and the natural sciences – in a new track of modern subjects (reallinjen) in upper secondary school, which was offered as an alternative to (one could even say: in opposition to) the classical learning of the Latin track (latinlinjen). This new track, which later was split in two – the English track (engelsklinjen) and the natural science track (reallinjen) –, caused a great demand for English teachers, fueling the growth of English studies at the University of Oslo.

13.1 ENGLISH STUDIES IN NORWAY IN THE 19 TH AND EARLY 20 TH CENTURY All of this was of course part of a larger historical development. Having been a minor language of low prestige in Norway, as in many other European countries, English rose to prominence as a world language in all societal spheres during the second half of the 19th century. The reasons for this are well known. The political, technological, and economic sway of the British Empire in the Victorian period, as demonstrated in the Crystal Palace exhibition in 1851, and the subsequent arrival of the United States as a global player with new-found cultural self-confidence, especially from 1918 onwards, allowed the English language to gain influence and eventually surpass its competitors, German (in science and scholarship) and French (previously the diplomatic and administrative language). In Norway, Britain had a longstanding reputation as a great trading and shipping nation, and was Norway’s most important trading partner in the 19th century. The tradition of British liberal political philosophy, from Adam Smith to John Stuart Mill, was relatively well known among Norwegian intellectuals and academics.

304 │ The transformation of humanities education

Strange as it may seem now, for many 19th and early 20th century Norwegians, Britain represented cutting edge modernity, especially in the political and economic dimensions. Gradually, the United States acquired a similar status, as the number of Norwegian transatlantic emigrants demonstrates. As if this was not enough, the importance of English language, literature, and culture in Norway was greatly increased in the 20th century by the Norwegian alliance with Britain and the United States during the two world wars. In academia, however, English was for a long time only “prominent” as an educational program within the framework of the civil service degree [embedseksamen] where it was one of the three most popular humanities subjects, along with history and Norwegian/Nordic (German and French being the runners up). Scholarly work produced specifically on English language and literature was in fact quite scarce until WWII. The lack of scholarly strength resulted partly from the fact that English, unlike humanities fields like history, Norwegian/Nordic, archaeology, folkloristics, etc., had very little to contribute to the major humanities project at the time, namely to articulate a Norwegian national culture. But since the scholarly ambitions (and results) in German and Romance studies were significantly higher, this cannot be the full explanation.564 Most likely, English was held back as a discipline by its previous low academic standing in Norway, which had caused professors whose chairs often covered several languages and literatures to prioritize studies in French, German, and, most of all, Norwegian (including Norse language and literature) over English.565 With English studies a problem arises which must be addressed before its academic history in Norway can be traced, namely its unity as a discipline. In the period I cover in this chapter, English seems to consist of first two and then three separate strands: language, literature, and – in the period after WWII – civilization.566 Faculty have tended to identify with mainly one of these, and have

564 It should be taken into account that German and French studies had fewer students than English studies at Oslo, and the faculty affiliated with those languages therefore had more time for scholarly work. Moreover, the professors responsible for English often had their training in other languages and literatures. 565 In German studies, for instance, there was a scholarly production since the late 19th century, mainly in the history of the German language, and often with a comparison with Norse and Norwegian, these belonging to the same language group. There was also a production of textbooks in German grammar, phonetics, etc. 566 Throughout this chapter, I will use “civilization” as a generic term for the third strand of English studies – the one that is added to language and literature. In the early period, the

English studies │ 305

done most of their research and teaching under one heading. Obviously, there has also been overlapping interests, and some have done work across two or all three fields. But especially in the research dimension many faculty members in English studies have become specialized to the extent that they have established strong affiliations with e.g. linguists, literary scholars, or historians and political scientist from other departments. Some university historians even suggest that English studies has never really been a discipline at all, but should be conceptualized as a conglomerate of three separate disciplines joined together for educational purposes only.567 While it is hard to deny that differentiation has increased throughout the 20th century, the emergence of English studies in the 19th century tells a different story, or so I shall argue. Like the other modern language and literature studies, English studies in Norway emerged from the academic tradition of philology.568 Influenced by German neo-humanism, philology in Norway evolved from the early 19th century onwards as a broad field which included the mastery of languages, literary scholarship, editorial work, and even archaeological and curatorial methods for discovering and preserving textual fragments. From the 1840s, this broad conception of philology applied not only to what has traditionally been called classical languages, i.e. Sanskrit, Hebrew, Greek and Latin, but also to Old Norse. In addition to the respect commanded by the classics, the association with Old Norse gave philology a heightened importance in the period of Norwegian nation building (as we have seen in the previous chapter), and contributed to its establishment as the academic paradigm for language and literature studies. The early advocates of introducing modern languages and literatures such as English into academia (beyond practical

term most often used was “background,” but from the 1960s onwards the terms “civilization” and “culture” come into use. Obviously, the use of different terms at different times or at different institutions may signify important differences in approach and content. But this is not always the case. Even towards the end of the 20th century, the third strand is not stabilized as a distinct sub-discipline, and terms like “culture” and “civilization” (and occasionally “institutions”) are used very loosely. Employing the term “civilization” as a generic term in this study is only a matter of convenience, and does not indicate any preference on my part. 567 See e.g. Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen, 117ff. 568 For an interesting discussion of the emergence of disciplinary research from the tradition of philology in Norway, see Fredrik W. Thue, “Det historiske fagfeltets historie.” Universitetet i Bergens historie, Vol. 2, ed. Astrid Forland (Bergen: Universitetet i Bergen, 1996) 470ff.

306 │ The transformation of humanities education

language instruction), would therefore refer to the philological model in order to gather support and academic prestige.569 Moreover, in the mid-19th century, when the establishment of a permanent position responsible for English studies was first considered at Oslo, the whole of modern national philology (the vernaculars) was still perceived as one field, even though it could be divided for practical purposes, as it was in the degree structure from 1869, when German and Norwegian philology formed one group, and Romance and English philology another. This expansive academic configuration, so foreign to us today, was prevalent partly because of the importance accorded to comparative methodology (which was deemed a necessary precondition for scholarly/scientific work), partly because the rising conflict between the “classical” and “modern” learning tended to align the members of each group with each other, and last but not least because resources at any rate were too scarce to allow for positions in each of the modern languages and literatures. One of the most important factors in the evolution of English studies, however, would for a long time be the educational dimension. Even in the latter half of the century, when scholarly/scientific aspirations had gained some ground, it was in practice the educational program of English studies in the civil service degree which provided the structure of the evolving discipline – at least as it could be observed from without. Language and literature were distinct entities in the curriculum and in the exams of this program, but there were two important coupling mechanisms which held them together. One was the teaching method inherited from classical philology, the so-called grammar-translation method, in which samples from canonical literary works – from Beowulf to Byron – would be used as essential pedagogical tools in language instruction, much like students in classical studies learnt Latin by rehearsing Horace and Ovid. The other thing was the idea of the organic unity of national cultures. The English language, King Lear, and the Glorious Revolution might be analytically separated as belonging to separate subfields, but they were united in the idea of Britishness, which it was the central aim of English studies to get at.570 This early “national-philological” conception of English studies in Norway has sometimes been disregarded by later historians who treat literature and language

569 Jürgen Kramer, “Modern (national) philologies and European languages,” Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning, eds. Michael Byram and Adelheid Hu (NY: Routledge, 2013). 570 On the idea of distinct national cultures and the role of philology in that respect, see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (NY: Verso, 1991) 70ff.

English studies │ 307

(and later civilization) as having always been sharply demarcated. A possible reason for this is the inheritance from the portal figure of modern English studies in Norway, who was also the first significant Norwegian contributor to international research in English studies, Johan Storm. Storm’s fame rests on his treatise Engelsk filologi, which was published in Norway in 1879, and in an influential and much enlarged German edition, Englische Philologie, between 1881 and 1896. In this work, Storm critically surveyed the contemporary status of English studies, and laid the foundation for a whole new method of phonetics-based and practice-oriented language training which in the early decades of the 20th century, under the banner of the Reform movement (and with important contributions from other scholars) came to supplant the Grammar-translation method. In many ways, Storm thus helped to end the influence of classical philology in Norway and in many other countries.571 It could be argued, therefore, that Storm’s career provided the foundation for English studies as a research discipline and simultaneously contributed to a cleavage in it which would later become a permanent – and problematic – feature. But although Storm’s main interest was language studies (Sandved quotes him confessing or bragging that literature was “alien to his being”), he did include literature, especially Old English literature, in both his teaching and research. As Andrew R. Linn has pointed out, English studies at Oslo from 1871 had “a syllabus that covered the full range of Filologi as it was understood at the time – literary history, the history and comparison of the languages and the development of practical skills.”572 Storm was not quite alone teaching English at Oslo. From the 1870s onwards there was an associate professor in European literature, whose purview was Romance and English literatures. The successive holders of this position, Olaf Skavlan and Christen Collin among them, spent much of their time working on Norwegian literature, and neither published much on English literature. But they did offer lectures on the English literary canon. In addition, a native English speaker held a lecturer position to help with practical language instruction. As student numbers grew, the teaching load would prohibit an ambitious research agenda for this small handful of English teachers. Thus, Storm’s promising start for English research and his success on the international scene with Englische philologie did not result in permanent growth in the last decades of the 19th century. However, in the late 19th and early 20th century another process gathered force in

571 See Aud Marit Simensen, “Paradigmeskifter i engelskfaget. Men hvor kom ideene fra?” Universitetet og lærerutdanningen, eds. Geir Knutsen and Trude Evenshaug (Oslo: Unipub, 2008) 75ff. 572 Andrew A. Linn, Johan Storm: dhi grétest pràktikal liNgwist in thi werld (Oxford: Philological Society, 2004) 59.

308 │ The transformation of humanities education

the field of language studies, namely an internationally ambitious but informal research community centered around a Norwegian journal on comparative IndoEuropean linguistics. However, this milieu was not integrated with the educational programs or the formal organization of the university, and had problems sustaining itself in the interwar period.573 The research ambitions in linguistics were revived again after WWII, but could still find no foothold in the university organization, and therefore remained an informal network until it came to an end with the death of its primus motor Alf Sommerfelt in 1965.574 For English studies in Norway the real low ebb came with the successor of Storm, Adam Trampe Bødtker. This might seem paradoxical, because Bødker was from 1914 the first professor whose chair was dedicated to English studies exclusively. Arthur O. Sandved, author of the only full-length history of English studies in Norway, seems to think that the personal shortcomings of Bødtker was the main reason for the demise of English studies in Norway, which lasted from 1914 until its revival in the 1950s. There might be some truth in this.575 However, as Sandved also acknowledges, the process which led to the establishment of a dedicated chair in English actually resulted in an even smaller staff in English than previously. From 1914 there was only the one professor and a lecturer. Additionally, a few relevant lectures were offered by the professors in European literatures. A professor of superior talents and capacities might possibly have succeeded even under these circumstances – or more likely, succeeded by attracting reinforcements. But it seems more fair to say that the organizational footing, with less than three positions in the whole country,576 was utterly insufficient to build a research discipline on.577

573 Jon R. Kyllingstad and Thor Inge Rørvik, 1870-1911. Vitenskapens universitet. Vol. 2, Universitetet i Oslo 1811-2011, ed. John Petter Collett (Oslo: Uniped, 2011) 355ff. 574 Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen, 123ff. This “invisible college” of researchers with positions at national literature and language departments (Thue and Helsvig’s expression) is not only a symptom of an inherent cleavage in the national philologies; it is also the genealogy of the emerging discipline of general linguistics, which was revived in Norway after the death of Sommerfelt, but has remained relatively small. 575 Fredrik W. Thue shares the estimation that Bødtker “was not a particularly major figure [ikke av noe spesielt stort format], neither as a researcher nor as a teacher.” Fredrik W. Thue, “Det historiske fagfeltets historie,” 485. 576 The establishment of English studies was a relatively late occurrence in many European countries. As in most other disciplines, Germany led the way, and almost all of the German-speaking universities had dedicated chairs (ordinarien) in English studies established by 1900, in addition to the other categories of faculty. See Andrew A. Linn,

English studies │ 309

Even more than in the previous century, teaching from now on absorbed all of the capacity, and in the period from 1910 to 1943 only two books (in Norwegian) were published by English scholars in Norway. Worse than the lack of output, however, was the lack of recruitment. As mentioned above, the popularity of English studies among students rested on its centrality in secondary school. This meant that English students even more than other humanities students were headed towards a teaching career. Partly because English studies was not anchored in Norwegian nation-building, it was not seen as a promising entry point for an academic career, especially not during the lean 1930s. Thus, when Bødtker retired in 1936, no qualified applicants for his chair were to be found in Norway, and it proved difficult to attract anyone from abroad. There were several committees at work, but the position remained vacant for no less than thirteen years, until 1949.578

Johan Storm: dhi grétest pràktikal liNgwist in thi werld, 74. In Denmark, which had a more similar population to Norway, the situation in the interwar period was only slightly more favorable than in Norway. At the University of Copenhagen (still the only Danish university), English studies was handled by two professors, a reader and some teaching assistants. Like Oslo, Copenhagen also had trouble recruiting qualified personnel, though not with such long vacancies and devastating results. See Jørgen Erik Nielsen, “The History of English Studies in Denmark,” European English Studies: Contributions towards the History of a Discipline, eds. Balz Ebgler and Renate Haas (London: The English Association, 2000) 130ff. 577 There are conflicting assessments on this matter in Sandved’s study. On the one hand he says that “[a]t the university, Johan Storm had built a scholarly/scientific milieu [fagmiljø] in English language studies which was among the strongest in Europe” (p. 18). But half a page later he stresses that “[t]he milieu in English studies was small and vulnerable” (p. 19). It seems that disciplinary “strength” here is judged on the basis of the quality of individual research contributions, in this case mostly the one great book by Storm. The question is whether the emergence and evolution of modern research disciplines can be understood with such an individualist-idealist perspective. See Arthur O. Sandved, Fra “kremmersprog” til verdensspråk. Engelskfaget ved Universitetet i Oslo 1945-1957, Vol. 2, (Oslo: Unipub, 2002). 578 In addition to the scarcity of suitable candidates, WWII obviously hampered the recruitment process. However, a vacancy of thirteen years in a period with growth in student numbers would also seem to indicate administrative mismanagement.

310 │ The transformation of humanities education

13.2 ENGLISH STUDIES AFTER WWII Despite the economic difficulties of the immediate postwar period, the 1940s and 1950s saw not only the recovery, but an unprecedented disciplinary growth in English studies in Norway. In 1940 there had been only the one (vacant) chair, a lectureship, and some temporary language instructors in English at an academic level in the whole country. By 1959 there were four chairs, two readers (dosenter), and seven permanent lecturers, in addition to quite a few temporary and part time lecturers.579 Most importantly, these thirteen permanent staff members were employed at two universities (at Oslo, still by far the biggest, and at the recently opened University of Bergen). They were also affiliated with newly established department structures at these universities. The upshot of this rapid development is that when we enter the period I am mostly concerned with in this study, 1960-2000, the organizational basis for English studies was approaching a level where we can talk about a self-sustaining disciplinary community of researchers.580 The growth involved two problematic cleavages, however. The first one, between literature and language, has already been touched upon. It had been present as a demarcation line within English studies at least since Johan Storm. But because research ambitions since Storm’s retirement had been low, and because certain unifying tendencies prevailed in the educational program well into the 20th century in spite of the Reform movement, language and literature seems to have co-evolved as mutually dependent rather than opposed sub-disciplines.581 With the appointment of new staff in the postwar era, the cleavage became more problematic.582 Later historians have tended to view the problems which surfaced around 1950 at the level of personal conflicts. In this narrative, a new chair in English language, Asta Kihlbom, figures prominently. Kihlbom arrived from Sweden in 1949, eager to raise the academic standards in English at Oslo, which were acknowledged by students, faculty and even politicians to have reached a substandard level. Since the interwar period the undergraduate bifag program in English had acquired a reputa-

579 See Arthur O. Sandved, Fra “kremmersprog” til verdensspråk, 44 and Fredrik W. Thue, “Det historiske fagfeltets historie,” 487. 580 See the introduction to part three for a conceptualization of disciplines as communities and communication systems, following the work of Rudolf Stichweh. 581 As Fredrik W. Thue has pointed out, the literary curriculum after the reform of 1905 articulated the inheritance from philology in the demand that literary texts should be studied from three viewpoints: linguistic, literary, and socio-historical (“sproglig, litterært, og realt”). Fredrik W. Thue, “Det historiske fagfeltets historie,” 470. 582 Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen, 66-72.

English studies │ 311

tion as an “easy” option for the civil service exam. Kihlbom’s major strategy to remedy this situation was to make the curriculum in English language more rigorous and more demanding, at the expense of literature. Whether intended or not, this created the impression that the blame for academic slackness was put on literary studies and literary scholars as such, and the fight was on. According to Sandved, who himself was an English student at the time, the conflict stalled the development of the discipline in the early 1950s, and caused much personal animosity. 583 If we view the situation from an institutional point of view, however, the most interesting thing about the conflict is that it could only occur because the postwar University of Oslo had expanded from one to three chairs in English studies. Moreover, the reason the conflict could end the way it did three years later, when Kihlbom was offered a chair at Bergen, was that English studies in Norway was now distributed across two universities, and was beginning to attain systemic properties. The particulars of an individual like Kihlbom, and of her opponents, were of course still highly important, but could no longer determine the development of the discipline for a generation, as had Trampe Bødtker’s. The other important cleavage in English studies was the one between British English and American English, which surfaced shortly after WWII when a chair in American studies was established. The story behind this establishment is a complex and highly interesting one, but the short version is that it resulted from a combination of a political reorientation towards the new geopolitical situation after WWII among Norwegian parliamentarians, considerable goodwill and support from various American institutions, and the extraordinary scholarly and entrepreneurial abilities on the part of Sigmund Skard, the chair-holder from 1946 until 1973. 584 Not only was Skard instrumental in securing the chair; he also raised the money, secured the decisions, and even collected the library holdings necessary for the foundation of a separate department of American studies at Oslo from 1948. The entrepreneurial efforts of Skard on behalf of American studies coincided with Kihlbom’s campaign for curricular reforms, and added to the complexity of the conflict, in particular since Kihlbom’s plan to increase the weight on language studies collided with Skard’s plan to expand the share of American literature and civilization in the same curriculum. For a period it seemed possible that American studies would have to establish itself as separate field alongside British English studies in Norway. The dedicated chair and the department of American studies (established in 1948, whereas a British department was only formally established in

583 Arthur O. Sandved, Fra “kremmersprog” til verdensspråk, 113-114. 584 In this period Parliament still funded specific chairs, and American studies and Russian studies were among the first chairs established after WWII (already in 1946).

312 │ The transformation of humanities education

1951) seemed to point in that direction.585 But it soon became evident that anything but an integrated model of English studies as both British and American studies would be impossible for the important undergraduate program of bifag because of the way English was taught in secondary school. Service to the educational system being still the primary academic function (and an absolute precondition for government funding), the two departments and their personnel had no real choice but to cooperate closely, and once Kihlbom had left for Bergen in 1953, it proved possible to find pragmatic solutions for peaceful coexistence between American and British studies – as well as a balance between the fields of literature and language (and later civilization). At the newly established department of English studies at Bergen, Kihlbom was in a position as the only chair to implement the curriculum she wanted. Thus, during the mid-50s English studies at Bergen leaned somewhat towards language studies, and towards British English. By 1959, however, Kihlbom had retired, an additional assistant professor in English literature had been appointed, and the balance was being redressed in favor of literary studies. Based on interviews with former faculty, Thue has described the ensuing curricular reforms in English in the 60s and 70s at Bergen as “a tug-of-war [drakamp] between the interests of language and literature.”586 But while Thue and other historians have had reasons to return repeatedly to this internal schism,587 as I shall have below, it is also an indisputable fact that since the postwar era a balance between language and literature has been attained – and thereafter maintained – at all English departments in Norway. In the same period civilization has been slowly ascending as a third pole, but has remained a junior partner. At the graduate level, students have had to specialize in either a language or a literature track, and in research the gulf between the two major subdisciplines has been considerable. However, viewed from the outside the unity of English seems to have been taken for granted, and no distinction between students from the two tracks have been made regarding, for instance, the competence for teaching secondary school. A degree of recurrent dissatisfaction with the situation felt by (and expressed by) faculty identifying with one of these poles might not so much be a symptom of a discipline falling apart, as the measure of a working compromise dictated to a large extent by external factors, most importantly by secondary school. While acknowledging the importance of several internal cleavages, I will therefore argue that English studies in Norway evolved in the second half

585 Arthur O. Sandved, Fra “kremmersprog” til verdensspråk, 195. 586 Fredrik W. Thue, “Det historiske fagfeltets historie,” 487. 587 Ibid., 574.

English studies │ 313

of the 20th century as one discipline.588 Educational matters and research issues pertaining specifically to either English language, English literature or English civilization will in the following be discussed as sub-disciplinary matters under the general heading of English studies.

13.3 ENGLISH STUDIES 1960–2000 Around 1960, the prospects for English studies as a research discipline in Norway seemed more promising than ever. The framework for a distributed organizational basis had been established, and the departments in Oslo and Bergen were headed by fairly ambitious and internationally respected scholars such as Sigmund Skard, Bertil Sundby, Maren Sofie Røstvig, and Kristian Smidt. But growth had only just begun. As we have seen for the humanities in general, student numbers climbed sharply in the 1960s, and by 1970 there were almost 1300 English students at the Norwegian universities. The number peaked at 1387 in 1975, and then fell to under half that number in the following decade. As we shall return to below, English was for several reasons hit harder than many other humanities disciplines by the setback around 1980. The late 1980s and the 1990s saw a resurgence, as for many other disciplines. The wave of students in the 1960s necessitated more faculty, and after a period of unprecedented growth, the disciplinary group in the late 1970s counted more than 70 professors, senior lecturers, and lecturers at the four universities in Oslo,

588 As regards the demarcation between British and American studies, the unity of English studies was confirmed when the two departments at the University of Oslo merged in the 1980s. At the other Norwegian universities, American studies and British studies have been grouped together, in the same departments, since they were established. The cleavage between language, literature, and civilization has been more difficult to handle, and also poses a more difficult conceptual problem. Obviously, English professors can over time develop research interests in general linguistics, or general literature studies, or political science – just as professors in history can reinvent themselves as political scientists, or vice versa. The “invisible college” of Norwegian philologists-turnedlinguists mentioned above is an example of this. But even when this happens with a certain frequency, as it admittedly has done in English studies and other national language and literature studies, it does not necessarily mean that the disciplines of origin are falling apart. It can just mean, for instance, for that positions in a preferred discipline – often a newer or more prestigious one – are scarce, and hence people stay put and do “interdisciplinary work” in the direction of their interests.

314 │ The transformation of humanities education

Bergen, Trondheim, and Tromsø.589 When student numbers declined, the hiring of faculty did too, but only from around 1980, and nowhere near as fast as the student numbers. The low point of 57 professors, senior lecturers and lecturers arrived in 1989, just before the new wave of students led to new hiring in the 1990s. I shall return to the problems of the 1980s, but if we view the period from 1960 to 2000 as one trajectory, the major tendency is disciplinary growth. The quantitative growth was not quite matched qualitatively, however. An international evaluation of English studies in Norway in 1991 found some strengths, but many weaknesses. Regarding research, the assessment was harshest for language studies. The conclusion was that “after the retrenchment in the 1980s, none of the university departments (with the partial exception of Oslo) is what could be considered, within an international context, as an active, self-sustaining centre of postgraduate research.”590 For literature studies the evaluation was somewhat less damning. Recalling “a number of world-renowned scholars” from the post-war period, the evaluation team “assumes an initial position of strength” for English literature studies in Norway.591 Upon closer inspection, however, the evaluators found stagnation, a lack of interesting new initiatives, and even provincialism to be widespread around 1990 – with the exception of Tromsø, which was singled out as the most promising and also most understaffed department. For civilization, the situation was such that the evaluation team had difficulties articulating an assessment: “The range of topics chosen for research is often determined by factors which have nothing to do with any academic strategy. They reflect the interests and idiosyncrasies of particular individuals.”592 Several arguments can be used (and were no doubt used at the time) to counter the criticisms of the evaluation team. I cannot go into the details here, but it was certainly unfortunate that the evaluation seems not to have considered the developments prior to 1970. It may therefore have misconstrued the 1980s to be a regrettable decline from a prior situation of stable strength. It might also be argued that the comparison with other, larger countries created a wrongful picture. To say that none of the Norwegian departments except Oslo had an “active, self-sustaining centre of postgraduate research” in language studies seems too fatalistic. They may have been small by international standards, and qualitatively weak also, but they were at least self-sustaining in the sense that they continued to operate, and indeed went on to grow considerably.

589 NAVF, Evaluation of English Studies in Norway (Oslo: NAVF, 1991) 15. 590 Ibid., 29. 591 No names of such “world-renowned scholars” are mentioned, however. 592 NAVF, Evaluation of English Studies in Norway, 33.

English studies │ 315

It seems to me, however, that the evaluation team was perceptive in locating the reasons for the shortcomings of research in English studies not in a lack of resources or an unusually heavy teaching burden, but in inadequate organizational mechanisms for making the academic strategies necessary to take the next step in disciplinary development. I cannot pursue this interesting topic here, and I mention it only to balance the weight I have given to quantitative growth so far. Undoubtedly a critical mass of faculty staff is a precondition for modern disciplinary research, but past a certain level, further development seems to require what I in part two have discussed (with reference to Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen) under the term second-order autonomy – i.e. not only an ability to react (defensively) to changes in the environment, but also an ability to plan ahead. In the case of a department of English: to make what the evaluators referred to as “academic strategy.” For Norwegian humanities faculty around 1990, however, this was almost a contradiction in terms, their ideal being that both direction and momentum of academic research should flow spontaneously “from below.” In this, English faculty resembled most other Norwegian humanities faculty before the millennium. A few more points should be made about the research discipline of English studies before I turn to the curricula documents. In keeping with the introductory discussions in this part, I have stressed the development of English studies in Norway as a national disciplinary community. However, in the case of English, more than for the other three disciplines discussed in this part, the other Scandinavian countries and also English-speaking foreigners need to be taken into account. We have seen how Swedes and Danes came to the rescue of the discipline in the 1950s.593 In 1991 almost 1/3 of the permanent staff at universities and regional colleges was of non-Norwegian origin. These scholars must have exposed the Norwegian disciplinary community to considerable international influence, but judging from the evaluation cited above we cannot infer from the presence of international scholars that the Norwegian community of researchers has always been very eager to attune its practices to international trends. The opposite may also have been the case; the non-Norwegians may have adjusted to Norwegian disciplinary norms, or moved elsewhere. It should also be mentioned that measured by the degree of organized communality, English studies in Norway has been significantly less tightly knit and less professionalized as an academic corps than history. In the period covered in this study, there was no overarching national professional association comparable to what the Norwegian historians had had since the 19th century, nor were there any

593 Åsta Kihlbom and Bertil Sundby from Lund in Sweden; Paul Christophersen from Copenhagen, Denmark.

316 │ The transformation of humanities education

Norwegian journals dedicated to English studies specifically.594 Reasons for this include the cleavages I have discussed above, insufficient numbers, and possibly also an experience of existing in a diaspora – exiled from the “true” scholarly compatriots in English-speaking nations. However, Norwegians have been among the initiators of professional associations at the Nordic level. It was at Oslo that both the Nordic Association for American Studies (NAAS) and the Nordic Association for English Studies (NAES) were founded, in 1959 and 1980 respectively.595 In summary, then, English studies in Norway has its roots in 19th century philology, and although several differentiation processes has rendered it a tripartite entity multiplied by the number of English-speaking countries one wishes to include, it has nevertheless been held together as one discipline, partly by educational concerns, and partly by methodological nationalism (or, more positively put, by the continued relevance of nation states as meaningful entities in modern society). How these characteristics of the discipline impacted the educational dimension in general and curricula in particular will be discussed in the following section.

13.4 CURRICULA In the introduction to the program plan for English studies at Oslo in 1960, the importance of practical language skills and of the teacher profession are underscored already in the first sentences: “A major aim for the study of English on all levels is the acquisition of practical language skills […] The candidate must have a good pronunciation, and he must, as a future teacher, be able to account for how English language sounds are produced, for the English sentence melody, for the location of stresses, etc. […] He must be familiar with the theoretical grammar 596

he will need to be able to account clearly for the language usage in his school teaching.”

594 However, in the early 1990s the American Studies Association of Norway (ASANOR) was founded. An important reason for this move was that the U.S. funding for Scandinavian American studies was slowly evaporating after the fall of the iron curtain. See Ole O. Moen, “ American Studies in Norway: Past and Present “, European Journal of American Studies [Online], 1.1 (2006), downloaded on 6 June 2014 from: http://ejas.revues.org/1083 595 The primary activity of these associations has been academic conferences, organized biennially and triennially. The NAAS has published the journal American Studies in Scandinavia from 1968, whereas the NAES did not establish a journal until 2002. 596 See note 114 above for reference to the cited archival material.

English studies │ 317

Civilization and literature, the two other sub-disciplines, are thereafter outlined. Civilization is treated on the one hand as background information (“the most important traits of English geography, history, political and social affairs”) and on the other hand as an intangible normative structure (“insight into traditions and customs”). Literature, it is said, is studied “both for its own sake, and as a part of the life of the mind [tankeverden] of all polite/educated [dannede] Englishmen.” In addition, literature is presented as a means of language training, and as a way of enhancing the “feeling for the language.” Interestingly, the students are in this context encouraged to “read as much modern literature as possible, not the least “light material” [lettere stoff].” Newspapers are especially recommended. The general impression given by the introduction to the program is that the three sub-disciplines, although presented separately, are firmly linked with each other, and that the two major threads connecting them are the vocational goal (school teaching) and a notion of a distinct British national culture. Perhaps as a consequence of the last point, American studies is presented almost as an afterthought, along with more practical and administrative matters. The syllabus for the grunnfag level in 1960 holds few surprises, except for its sheer volume (which was reduced two years later). It is a collection of standard textbooks and handbooks in grammar, phonetics, the history of language, cultural background, and literary history, in addition to a fairly orthodox excerpt of the English literary canon as it was taught in other countries at the time. None of the items on the syllabus are authored by Norwegian scholars, and none of it can be characterized as research literature. The international standardization of the literary canon is demonstrated by the reference in the syllabus (for most of the shorter texts) to The College Survey of English Literature, the Harcourt Brace anthology which dominated the American marked before the advent of the Norton anthologies in the 1960s. Notable absences from the Norwegian grunnfag canon of English studies are Beowulf and Chaucer. The reason is obviously that proficiency in modern English, and knowledge of modern English civilization and literature, is prioritized over the time consuming study of Old and Middle English at this level. On the other hand, there is almost no contemporary literature either. The only (then) living authors on the reading list are Spender, Auden, and Greene. At the hovedfag level, more comprehensive treatment of English language and civilization is offered. The literary canon is expanded, and selections from Old and Middle English are included (in Sweet’s anthologies). The approach to the material is very similar to what we have seen at the undergraduate level, however. Of course, the hovedfag student had to write a thesis (as had been the case since 1905),

318 │ The transformation of humanities education

and in conjunction with the thesis an elective syllabus was to be drawn up.597 But the scope of the thesis was deliberately restricted. It was not to exceed 50-60 typed pages, and the program plan explicitly warns that the work on the thesis and the elective syllabus should not get out of hand: “However, one must not lose sight of the primary concern, which is to enhance the general knowledge of English language and culture [åndsliv].” In line with this, there are no original research contributions on the hovedfag syllabus either, unless one counts the fairly old works by the linguist Otto Jespersen (which are suggested, not required reading) or George Macaulay Trevelyan’s English Social History from 1942 (which by 1960 was considered a hopelessly old-fashioned synoptic work by most professional historians). The rest of the syllabus consists of slightly more comprehensive textbooks than was used at the grunnfag level. As for the teaching on offer in 1960, two things stand out. First, the importance assigned to practical language training and the general view that the students need close supervision. At the grunnfag level, there was no less than 15 hours of compulsory classes each week, much of it practically oriented. Second, one notes the absence of almost any trace of the teachers’ research interests. All lectures were mainstream survey lectures, with titles such as “English verse 1600-1800” and “History of the language,” and almost all items on the syllabus were covered by teaching. In addition to survey lectures and language training seminars, there were seminars for writing commentary papers. Judging from the course catalogue, the formats and approaches were not very different at the hovedfag level, with the exception of work on the thesis, which the students were encouraged to do in conjunction with topics that were taught in the survey seminars. The comprehensive course plan is neatly presented in tables and lists, with the teachers’ names indicated by initials. As we shall see in a subsequent chapter, this is different in a very meaningful way from how the course offers in philosophy were presented.

597 Around 1960, most of the hovedfag candidates wrote literary theses. See Leif Amundsen, Universitetet i Oslo 1911-1961 (Oslo: Universitetet i Oslo, 1960). This is hardly surprising. As the English language had become more common, being taught in school from a fairly early age and figuring more prominently in general and popular culture after WWII, students had attained greater language proficiency, and a larger proportion of the students could treat the language as a means to an end – namely the understanding of a particular literature and culture. While in the 19th century, English appealed to students with a particular penchant for philology, it had now become a broader field, attracting more “generalists.”

English studies │ 319

Developments 1960-1980 The stated aim of English studies at Oslo did not change from 1960 to 1970. Teacher education is still the unquestioned primary function a decade later; indeed, the general introduction to the program plan is almost identical to the one from 1960. However, some changes have been made to the contents and procedures at the various program levels. At the grunnfag level, the major change (which took effect in 1966) is a further reduction of the literature syllabus. The fairly extensive sampling of the English canon is now reduced to two Shakespeare plays, and then there is a hiatus until 1890. Furthermore, attendance in class is no longer compulsory as of the spring semester in 1970 – which means in practice that students can read independently, and register for the exams whenever they feel ready. This was undoubtedly to a large extent a result of the massive influx of new students which made it very difficult to make room for everyone in the classes. However, in English studies like in other humanities disciplines such practical considerations from this period onwards would also tend to be glossed over with reference to the Humboldtian notion of Lernfreiheit.598 The outcome was at any rate that English studies (like other humanities disciplines) from now on seemed to be able to restrict their educational responsibilities to offering a framework for study and assessment, while the students themselves were made responsible for attaining their educational goals. The other interesting change at the grunnfag level in 1970 is that titles by Norwegian faculty members are beginning to appear on the syllabus. These titles, all of them textbooks (not original research contributions), include two volumes on phonetics, one on grammar, one on literary history, and one on American civilization. At the hovedfag level, changes are of the same kind as for grunnfag. There is less emphasis on close supervision and compulsory attendance, and more opportunities for individual choice and for independent reading. For instance, students are no longer actively encouraged to write their theses in conjunction with seminar topics. Moreover, a revision has expanded the elective curriculum from one “special topic” to two, in addition to two elective “main topics” – all four of which are to be freely chosen by the students, only restricted by certain rules designed to counter too much overlapping. The new titles on the hovedfag syllabus are the same Norwegian items I mentioned from the syllabus for grunnfag. Still, very little of the literature – if any – can be characterized as research literature in a strict sense, although some of the sub-disciplines make more of an effort to keep up with new research than others. Trevelyan’s English Social History is still being used in

598 See John Petter Collett, “Historiens kvalitetsreformer,” Morgenbladet, 4 April 2003.

320 │ The transformation of humanities education

British civilization, whereas American civilization is covered by a much more updated work by A.N.J. den Hollander and Sigmund Skard, American Civilization: An Introduction, published in 1968. Interesting contributions to curricular developments in English studies in Norway are the new program plans at the recently founded University of Tromsø in the 1970s.599 The first year the grunnfag was offered there was 1974, and the hovedfag was taught from 1978. As one would expect, and as we have seen for history, many features at Tromsø are emulated from Oslo – or perhaps it is more appropriate to say in this case that they are both borrowed from the international discipline of English studies, and then adapted to the Norwegian context in much the same way at Oslo and Tromsø, albeit with some interesting variations. Similarities include, first and foremost, a pronounced vocational aim. “[A]s a vocational program [yrkesstudium],” the introduction to the program plan for 1974 states, “the aim of English studies is first and foremost to educate qualified teachers for the various levels of lower and upper secondary school […].” Moreover, although educational aims for the grunnfag are given separately for the three fields – language, literature, and culture – the program plan at Tromsø puts the same stress on the integration of the three as we saw for Oslo. Only practical language skills are mentioned as more basic, and thus made a priority at the undergraduate level. There are two very interesting departures from the Oslo program plan at Tromsø, however. Both of these should be seen in the context of the overall goal of Tromsø as a non-traditional university to experiment with new formats and approaches. In the program plan for English grunnfag, one such novelty is an even more accentuated concentration on modern literature than we have seen at Oslo, with almost no literary works older than 1930 on the syllabus. The whole literature syllabus consists of twelve novels (six British and six American) and a selection of short stories and poetry from the period after 1930. There are only 300 pages of older literature (in addition to some literary history). This is clearly a deliberate departure from Oslo, where at least Shakespeare was kept, and where required reading in modern literature began in 1890 (thus including “modern classics”). The other novelty is the use of “problem oriented” methods in teaching – especially in the seminars. In addition it should be noted that the teaching on offer actually seems more comprehensive (many classes, and small groups) than what we have seen at Oslo in 1970 – probably because of the relatively few students at Tromsø at this time.

599 In the first years, until 1975, the program plans at Tromsø are printed in the Katalog [“Course Catalogue”]. Later program plans are printed in the Studiehåndbok [Study handbook], as in Oslo. See the note on documents and sources above.

English studies │ 321

At the hovedfag level, which opened at Tromsø in 1978, there is no mention of the teacher profession, other than what is said in the general introduction. But an emphasis on research training is now beginning to appear. The graduate program “gives students insights into research methods, and skills in using them,” according to the program plan. With reference to progression from the undergraduate level, the aim of the hovedfag is to provide “deepened insight and greater skills” in all of the three sub-disciplines. As at Oslo in 1970, the hovedfag curriculum is to a large extent elective, and is structured in exactly the same manner, with two “special topics” and two “main topics.” A departure from Oslo, however, is that the hovedfag is stipulated to take only three semesters of study (i.e. one semester shorter than at Oslo), although a thesis of approximately the same size (50-80 pages) is included. As we have seen, English studies curricula in Norway did not go through dramatic changes during the period from 1960 to the mid-1970s. From then on, however, some of the trends that had slowly gathered momentum in the previous period caused several – and at times conflicting – curricular changes to be made. As we shall see, these changes concern the same issues that we have noted in the previous chapter for history, namely 1) the extent to which English studies should prepare for a career in teaching, and 2) the weight assigned to research. Developments 1980-2000 Especially in the 1980s the picture gets complicated. For roughly at the same time when the internal disciplinary orientation of English studies towards research seemed about to reach a new level, the previously discussed measures taken by the Norwegian universities and the humanities faculties to try to regain some of their standing as teacher education institutions were implemented. In the previous chapter I showed that in the discipline of history, curricular elements designed to further the function of the programs as teacher-education were implemented in such a way as to make them independent of the “main body” of the history programs. The disciplinary didactics and the new sections on “vocational options [yrkesmuligheter]” in the general introduction to the Study Handbook (where the program plans were published), were add-ons of the kind one often sees when reforms are externally initiated. Thus, there was in reality nothing to prevent research drift in the continued evolution of the core of the program plans. It might have been a case of what the organizational theorist Nils Brunsson has called

322 │ The transformation of humanities education

“organizational hypocrisy.”600 In English studies, however, a more genuine U-turn towards teacher education appears to have occurred in the mid-1980s, with an explicit intent to regain a lost position. Interestingly, this accentuated intention did not prevent a complete reversal, i.e. a renewed orientation towards research, just as we saw for history, in the early 1990s. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, research drift in English studies had continued at a slow but steady pace. Thus, in the program plans for both grunnfag and hovedfag at Oslo in 1980, all traces of teacher education were gone, in stark contrast to the decade before. This had not happened by accident. Formulations that had been left standing from previous revisions regarding aims and contents (for instance the one cited above about the level of theoretical grammar needed to explain language to pupils) had now been edited so as to erase the reference to schools or the teaching profession. As mentioned, there was at this time (since the mid-1970s) a lengthy section on the qualifications needed for the teacher profession printed in the general introduction to the handbook itself, but it contained nothing which was binding for English studies in particular. Of other interesting developments from this time we note that American literature and civilization had been integrated into the main body of the program plan, and American English was now treated throughout on an equal footing with British English. There was also a separate course offered at the grunnfag level on American civilization. The paragraph in the program plan (cited above) which set up British “polite society” as a cultural ideal, had by now been edited to comply with more egalitarian values: Literature is presented as belonging to “the life of the mind of all English-speakers” (emphasis mine). At Tromsø we can see another interesting development at the grunnfag level around 1980. The particular features we noted in the 1974 program plan, which distinguished the curriculum at Tromsø from Oslo’s, are now disappearing. As of 1979, the period studied in literature at the grunnfag level begins in 1800, not 1930 (although still with “an emphasis on the 20th century”). Furthermore, the previously stressed “problem oriented” pedagogical approach has been abandoned. These changes should probably be interpreted as examples of how difficult it is to uphold specific curricular features which departs from other departments in a highly standardized field like higher education. Around 1980 the forces of isomorphism are gaining strength, and the standards – especially as regards the research dimension – are increasingly established internationally.

600 Nils Brunsson, The organization of hypocrisy: talk, decisions, and actions in organizations (Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School Press, 1989).

English studies │ 323

Otherwise, English studies at Tromsø saw the same development around 1980 as we have noted for Oslo. Teacher education, which was the primary goal for the grunnfag in 1974, is in the 1980s mentioned only in passing as one of several possible occupations for English graduates. At the graduate level, the lectures and seminars are more specialized, and the thesis is explicitly spoken of as “a research project.” In 1983-84, however, the abovementioned teacher education elements (the disciplinary didactics curricula and the highlighting of the teacher profession in sections on career options) are introduced at both Oslo and Tromsø. To give an impression of how the intended change of direction was construed as a continuation of the original intention of the grunnfag, I would like to quote in full the two first paragraphs from the section entitled “Aims” in the grunnfag program plan at Oslo from 1984: “English grunnfag gives an introduction to the language, literature and culture of the Englishspeaking world. Ever since English grunnfag was first offered in 1957, the subject has had a content designed to qualify the candidates for school teaching. The sectioning of the grunnfag program into the main disciplines of language, literature, and civilization, as well as the choice of materials [lærestoff], has been made with reference to [under hensyn til] the demands which are made upon English teachers in lower and upper secondary school. All the [sub]disciplines will designate time in the first week of classes every semester to discuss problems and issues regarding disciplinary didactics which will permeate the teaching throughout the year, that is, to formulate the questions pertaining to disciplinary didactics which the students should keep in their minds when working with the materials on the syllabus.”

In addition to this general statement, the relevance for teacher education is underscored in the descriptions of each sub-discipline. The language teaching will contrast English and Norwegian because “[m]any of our students will face the same problems when they themselves will be teaching.” In literature, the courses “are designed to offer practical help, methodically and content-wise, for teachers who will be teaching literary texts in schools.” The teaching in civilization also seems to be primarily legitimized with reference to school teaching: “In later years an increasingly large share of language teaching in lower and upper secondary school has been done in conjunction with texts taken from British and American social life, and the courses the grunnfag students in English are offered in this field are therefore directly relevant for future teachers.”

324 │ The transformation of humanities education

At Tromsø the same kind of changes are made to the grunnfag curricula in this period. From 1983 there is a separate section on disciplinary didactics printed in the general introduction to the program plan, but from 1986 it is integrated into the descriptions of the different program levels. The curricular changes and the teaching of the new elements at the department in Tromsø are done in cooperation with the Department for practical-pedagogical education [Avdeling for praktisk-pedagogisk utdanning]. As a general statement of purpose, the program plan underscores that “aspects of the discipline that are relevant for school teaching are emphasized on all levels.” At Oslo the changes in the 1980s mostly pertain to the grunnfag level. Disciplinary didactics and the subject of school teaching are actually not mentioned at all in the hovedfag program plan. Here, it seems the orientation towards research continues much as before. At Tromsø, however, there is a part of the curriculum dedicated to disciplinary didactics at the graduate level, too. These new, school teacher-reoriented curricula are maintained in almost identical form until the early 1990s at both Oslo and Tromsø. Disciplinary didactics are then transferred to the separate departments of practical-pedagogical education at both universities, as we have seen was also the case for history. From about the same time, the topic of vocational goals – which is now being handled as information about vocational possibilities – is transferred to a separate section of the program plan, where school teaching is mentioned only in passing as one among many such options: “In addition to qualifying for school teaching, a degree in English can be valuable in other parts of the labor market, such as the media, the cultural sector, travel and tourism, foreign affairs, publishing, and the public and private educational sector.” Otherwise, all reference to school teaching, which according to the program plans had “permeated” English studies from around 1984 to 1991, is now removed entirely. As mentioned above, English studies in Norway was subjected to a disciplinary evaluation by an international panel in the early 1990s. The panel’s assessment of the curricula, based on the program plans of 1990, was rather critical. In 1991, the major curricular changes outlined above were implemented. However, since the evaluation report was published in late 1991, these criticisms were probably not the whole reason for the curricular changes made the same year.601 Most likely, the

601 The background information was collected in late 1990 and early 1991, see NAVF, Evaluation of English Studies in Norway, 4. It seems unlikely that the evaluation team was not informed at all about the substantial curricular changes that were to be implemented in the fall of 1991, but for whatever reason these changes are not mentioned in the report. Interestingly, the mandate for the evaluation, which was formulated some-

English studies │ 325

assessment of the evaluation team pointed to features that the departments also considered as weaknesses, and the reform of which was already underway. The overall conclusion of the evaluation is that, “[i]n general, the committee finds that both the curricula and the teaching structure in English have become too conventional.”602 According to the committee, the reading lists are not always up to date, “especially on the literature side.”603 The sub-discipline of literature is also faulted for a lack of research-orientation: “Literary theory…is not widely disseminated into the literature curriculum.”604 Language and civilization are not spared, either. In English language, the committee finds that too much weight is put on phonetics and on correct Received pronunciation, and too little on newer areas such as for instance pragmatics, socio-linguistics, and discourse analysis. Civilization is “being conceived of and taught in different ways in different universities” and is not subject to any systematic thinking but rather “reflect the interests and idiosyncrasies of particular individuals”. While some variation is to be found (as mentioned previously, Tromsø is singled out for praise on some accounts) the English departments in Norway and their curricula are perceived by the team as very similar around 1990: “There are surprisingly few differences between the universities in terms of the coverage of the discipline.”605 In many ways, curricula in English studies in the 1990s returned to the researchoriented path they had travelled during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The evaluation report might have been a push in that direction, but the research drive also seems to have been inherent in the disciplinary community of English studies in Norway. Some curricular changes which were not necessarily intended to be research-oriented, but which turned out to be conducive to such an orientation, were made already while program plans ostensibly were oriented towards teacher education. For instance, in the curricula for the grunnfag at Tromsø in the late 1980s, grammar became distinctly more theoretical, and in the sub-discipline of literature,

time in 1990, was very concerned that English studies in Norway should be viewed in the light of the discipline’s role in teacher education: “The assessment shall take into due regard the research group’ extensive obligations to train future teachers of English and to provide them with the necessary practical language skills.” NAVF, Evaluation of English Studies in Norway, 5. Whether this should be interpreted as expressing intent to maintain these obligations, or was merely a disclaimer lest the discipline should be found lacking, is hard to say. 602 Ibid., 38. 603 Ibid., 40. 604 Ibid., 31. 605 Ibid., 40.

326 │ The transformation of humanities education

genre theory and more advanced interpretative methods came into play. Also, the writing of papers (of 5-7 pages) was introduced, a format which was subsequently modeled more and more on the genre of the research paper. The evaluation team commended this practice, and suggested that other departments adopt the same model. At Oslo, similar developments were also discernible in the late 1980s. Lectures and seminars gradually attained a more specialized character. For instance, in the teaching of literature, great emphasis was placed on genre theory and on the distinction between literary texts and non-literary texts – “literariness” being a central preoccupation (probably taken over from general literature studies, cf. the next chapter). At the hovedfag level, of course, this development was even more pronounced. Already in 1970 the structure of the hovedfag had been based on elective “special” and “main” topics, but while the course offers for these in the earlier period had for the most part been broad, traditional subjects in the mainstream of the discipline, there was from the 1980s onwards a development towards more specialization. It seems this development was fueled by the departments as well as by their graduate students. In the mid-1980s, for instance, topics for seminars at Oslo included “The function of comedy,” “Minority cultures in the U.S.,” and “Women in fiction.” At Tromsø titles are at a similar level of specialization, e.g. “American popular literature” and “Ronald Reagan and political leadership in America.” As regards topics for the hovedfag theses, the evaluation committee from the early 1990s notices a similar beginning tendency towards specialization among students, and comments specifically on “a strong preference for American literature, and cultural and feminist approaches.”606 In addition, the students by this time seem much more prone to introduce fairly narrow topics of their own choosing in the form of elective syllabi for independent reading. Of course, measured by today’s degree of specialization – and also by the standards of the evaluation committee, apparently – the cited course and thesis topics seem broad and “conventional” enough, but the contrast with the generic titles used previously, especially for the courses, is striking. When we come to the 1990s, another interesting development is discernible. It now becomes clear that the break with the domination of British, which began with the challenge of American studies, was only a first step towards a conception of English as a “world language.” Already in the 1980s, the general introduction to the program plans in English studies at Oslo had opened with a formulation about English being spoken as a maternal language by over 300 million people. In the

606 Ibid.

English studies │ 327

1990s a statement is added to this information about English also being “the language which is most often used in international communication, not the least in an academic context.” Obviously, neither in Norway nor elsewhere could English studies, as a result of this expanded conception, suddenly take the whole of “international communication” under its purview. Thus, at the grunnfag level, what the students encountered in the 1990s was still mainly British and American literature and culture. But the perspective was beginning to change – and to expand. The Department of British and American studies at Oslo, which originated in a strongly anglophile British department and an American department equally dedicated to Americana (both established around 1950), presents itself in the program plan of 1990 as “conducting research in and teaching the language, literature, and civilization of the English-speaking world, with an emphasis on Great Britain and the United States.” At the hovedfag level, there is from 1991 an explicitly stated option of writing the thesis on “subjects from other English-speaking parts of the world.” This development towards “global English” did not reach its full potential in the 1990s, however, but continued apace beyond the period covered in this study. The status for curricula in English studies at the two universities around the year 2000 can be briefly summarized as follows. At the grunnfag level, a substantial amount of the material is still introductory textbooks and synoptic works, but in contrast to the beginning of the period, undergraduate students now encounter a sizeable amount of original research, and, most importantly, they encounter teachers who consider themselves primarily as researchers. As a consequence, fairly advanced theoretical and methodological issues are featured on the syllabi and in lecture halls and seminar rooms. This is the case especially in the sub-discipline of literature, whereas in language, theory is not accentuated (at least not much) beyond what is deemed useful for the acquisition of language skills. Interestingly, it seems to be in Tromsø that the grunnfag is most research-oriented. Again, this is most clearly visible in the literature part of the curriculum. Previously a brief and somewhat light-weight introduction to modern English literature, the literary syllabus now complies with the standard Anglo-American canon as established by the international research community, beginning with the middle ages. There is also a separate course entitled “Literary theory and analysis,” and students are required to write four compulsory papers (which, as mentioned above, seem to be minor exercises in research work). While the contrast to the grunnfag curriculum of 1960 is striking, it would not be fair to say that English studies at the undergraduate level in the year 2000 is very specialized or research-driven when compared to the grunnfag level of other Norwegian humanities disciplines (such as general literature studies, for instance). Practical language skills are still foregrounded, and for most of the sub-disciplines

328 │ The transformation of humanities education

the aims are still to “provide an introduction.” There is also a clear sense of favoring balance and integration between the different curricular elements, thus providing an educational unit which can be utilized for various purposes other than research – such as school teaching. Even at the hovedfag level, English studies in Norway at this time cannot be characterized as entirely divorced from other considerations than research, for, somewhat surprisingly perhaps, “disciplinary didactics” actually reappears in the late 1990s at both Oslo and Tromsø. This time, disciplinary didactics is not a compulsory element, but an optional track for those who aim for teaching careers (or who pursue the graduate degree as continuing education, while employed as teachers). Apart from this, however, research is at the center of attention, and there are few bars against specialization, especially at Tromsø. Students there choose either a literature/civilization or a language track, while at Oslo restrictions ensure a minimum of one course in language. The attempt to keep the hovedfag at three semesters in Tromsø (one semester shorter than Oslo) was abandoned, and the recommended length of theses was by 2000 80-100 pages. At both universities, courses around the year 2000 are mainly given in seminar form with compulsory essay writing, and some of these are on highly specialized topics, such as the Tromsø courses from 1999, entitled “The meaning of monsters: Scientific fantasies from romanticism to cyberpunk” and “Ideology and the rise of the novel.” At Oslo, the program plan for 1999 informs the students that seminars shall “provide an introduction to research methods [vitenskapelig metode], and require that students participate with critical-methodical contributions related to the writing of essays.” At Tromsø, too, “a critical and independent attitude towards primary and secondary literature” is required at the hovedfag seminars in 1999. As we shall see in the next sections (and as we also saw in the previous one) there are other humanities disciplines that have reached higher degrees of specialization at the hovedfag level, but it seems clear from the above that even if school-teaching continued to take up a corner of English studies, what was now the chief aim of the hovedfag in English studies was to foster the ethos as well as the craft of disciplinary research – not unlike the situation in history. Concluding remarks In the first part of this chapter we saw that, compared to history, English studies experienced greater difficulties in attaining unity and autonomy as a research discipline. Because of its importance for teacher education, the staff in English studies grew substantially in the postwar era – as it did in history. Judged by the growth of the academic staff in the 1960s alone, it is somewhat surprising that that

English studies │ 329

the discipline’s research ambitions and the curricular orientation towards research were not stronger in the 1970s and 1980s. But as may also be gathered from the initial discussion, the overall size of the academic staff can be somewhat misleading. The internal differentiation of language, literature, and civilization as distinct sub-disciplines, and the demarcation between British and American English, meant that critical mass within each of these branches, for instance American literature or British civilization, could be lacking. Furthermore, conflicts between the subdisciplines, whether open or latent, seems to have diverted the energies and hence delayed the evolution of a Norwegian disciplinary communications system for English studies. The fact that internal demarcations stood in the way of a joint researchorientation might be one explanation for a considerably weaker research drift in the curricula of English studies than in history. This was especially noticeable during the 1980s, when English studies – judged by the curricula documents – seem to have taken the challenge to reorient itself (at least to some degree) towards teacher education again quite seriously, whereas in history the disciplinary didactics venture strikes one as implemented only half-heartedly. It is interesting to notice, however, that even at the turn of the century, when English studies in Norway had certainly consolidated itself (despite having been found lacking by the evaluation team in the beginning of the 1990s), and when the curriculum had become researchoriented in much the same way as in history, disciplinary didactics suddenly reappeared. This may indicate that there has been a sense of an underlying cultural obligation to the teacher profession in English studies, perhaps all along, which in itself may have acted as a bar against research drift.607

607 As previously mentioned, a comparison with Nordic studies could be an interesting avenue for further research. There is reason to believe that this sense of cultural obligation to schooling has been even more strongly felt in Nordic studies.

14 General literature studies

General literature studies (allmenn litteraturvitenskap) is the youngest of the four Norwegian humanities disciplines discussed in this part of the study. 608 Its prehisto-

608 The Norwegian name of the discipline discussed in this chapter was for a long time “general literary history” (“allmenn litteraturhistorie”). Then, during the 1960s and 1970s, it changed (via a short-lived phase as “general literary knowledge” [“allmenn litteraturkunnskap”]) to “general literature studies” (“allmenn litteraturvitenskap”). At some points along the way there have been different names for the educational programs and for the research discipline, but over time these have converged. Although the term “allmenn” means “general,” the name of the discipline is frequently translated as “comparative” literature, presumably because this is a more common name internationally. However, since comparative methodology (in a strict sense) has not been central to the Norwegian discipline, at least not since the early 20th century, I will in this study employ the more direct translation of “general” literature. The Norwegian suffix “vitenskap” poses some problems, too. It has the same etymological roots as the German “Wissenschaft” and is equally untranslatable to English. It covers both science and scholarship, and predates the concept of research (“forskning”/ “forschung”), which unlike “vitenskap”/ “Wissenschaft” is associated with a particular modern program of knowledge production, namely that of continuous, critical reexamination of established truths. To avoid becoming caught up in the complexities entailed in the conceptual histories of the English terms “science,” “scholarship,” and “research,” I have chosen to use the more generic term “studies.” The only problem with this term is that the (important) association which at least some figures in the discipline have sought to establish with the natural sciences via the common Norwegian term “vitenskap,” is lost. This will have to be compensated by adequate commentary in the relevant places. The resulting compromise, then, is that the denomination “general literature studies,” although not entirely idiomatic, will be employed as the name of the Norwegian discipline through-

332 │ The transformation of humanities education

ry is long, however. There had been teachers of literature at the University of Oslo since its opening in 1813, and several of the 19th century professors at the Faculty of philosophy (later termed the Historical-philosophical faculty) have at least in retrospect been referred to as “literary” scholars. Of these, a few teachers occupied chairs dedicated specifically to the study of literature, mostly covering European literature with a specialization in two or three national literatures. Late 19th century professors such as Einar Skavlan and Cristen Collin, for instance, were academic teachers of literature in several languages and also wrote extensively on literary matters. However, their publications were for the most part addressed to a general audience, and were not based on any articulated methodology which could provide a platform for discipline formation in the modern sense of the term. An academic education dedicated specifically to general literature studies was first established in Norway in 1923, after the research-oriented magister degree had been introduced. A highly specialized but loosely organized program (if program is even the right term), this degree in general literature studies never attracted many students. The real consolidation of the discipline came only when an undergraduate program (the grunnfag) in general literature studies for the civil service degree (embedsstudiet) was established in 1959.

14.1 THE INHERITANCE OF PHILOLOGY In a long-term evolutionary perspective, general literature studies is the outcome of the same process of academic differentiation that was described in the previous chapter on English studies. When the tradition of philology expanded to include modern languages and literatures around the middle of the 19th century, it became evident that in spite of the ideals of academic unity it was now practically impossible for anyone to cover the whole field – even if the natural sciences were eventually taken out of the group of “modern disciplines” (and thereafter gradually reserved the previously broader name realfag for themselves). The inevitable specialization within philology at first followed the distinction between classical philology on the one hand, and new or modern philology focused on the vernaculars on the other.609 But as we have seen in the previous chapter, the latter field was soon further

out this study. Reference to variants and shifts in name will be made only when the implied distinctions are important for my argument. 609 Should not be confused with the distinction within classical philology between older and more scholastic study of the classics and the modern, critical philology after Friedrich August Wolf.

Genereal literature studies │ 333

differentiated into national philologies, and these were in turn differentiated into the sub-disciplines of language and literature (later, civilization was added). This complex process of differentiation was not without its strains, overlaps, and contradictions. Specialization according to nationality, based on the idea of distinct “national cultures,” was successful in many respects, but was at odds with a simultaneous and equally (but differently) successful tendency towards a differentiation of language studies from literary studies. Sometimes this has been interpreted as a contradiction between differentiation dictated by educational concerns (ultimately anchored in the manpower and competency demands of secondary school) versus one driven by an internal research dynamic.610 According to this line of thinking, English studies, French studies, German studies, etc. were essentially educational programs (although the teachers were granted some time for research), whereas general literature studies and general linguistics were the proper research disciplines. While I have tried in the previous chapter to complicate this picture as regards the emergence of these disciplines, stressing their common origin in the broad tradition of philology, I do not wish to deny that in their continued evolution, the national disciplines were for a long time markedly more contingent upon the educational dimension than a discipline like general literature studies was. Thus, English studies, as we saw in the previous chapter, became one of the largest educational programs in the Norwegian humanities but remained insignificant in the research dimension until the 1950s, whereas the reverse relationship between education and research characterized general literature studies. As we shall see, however, the rise of a modern self-reproducing disciplinary community in general literature studies only became possible in Norway when its educational dimension gathered sufficient strength and stability in the postwar period. It might be, therefore, that the developments in disciplines like English studies and general literature studies are indicative of a more general propensity of academic evolution, namely that although the research and educational dimensions of a discipline are autonomous at their level of operations (to use systems theoretical parlance), their structural coupling in the organizational setting of the modern research university make them mutually dependent upon each other to the extent that neither can thrive alone. I shall have occasion to discuss this co-evolutionary aspect of education and research in the concluding section of this part.

610 See the discussion in the previous section on English studies.

334 │ The transformation of humanities education

14.2 THE EARLY 20 TH CENTURY Like the other disciplines discussed in this part, the emergence of general literature studies in Norway was obviously conditioned by international academic developments. Its particular trajectory in Norway, however, was shaped by domestic disciplinary entrepreneurs. Two such entrepreneurs, with half a century between them, deserve special mention. The first is Gerhard Gran, chair in Nordic literature at Oslo from 1900. Shortly after his appointment, Gran provided an organizational footing for academic literary scholarship across the boundaries of national literatures by establishing a seminar in literary history at Oslo, in emulation of what he had seen on his travels in Germany.611 A few years later, he instigated an in-house publication series affiliated with the seminar, and in 1914 he founded the journal Edda, dedicated to studies in Nordic literature, which is still extant.612 According to Arne Hannevik, author of a short history of general literature studies at the University of Oslo,613 it was the efforts of Gran which secured the establishment of the first dedicated and permanent position in general literature studies in Norway in 1921, two years after Gran’s retirement.614 In the same year, the first educational program in general literature studies was founded – the abovementioned magister degree program. Under favorable circumstances, these organizational innovations would probably have engendered general literature studies as a self-sustaining discipline in Norway, demarcated from the national disciplines of literature and language stud-

611 In the early decades of the 20th century, general literature studies or “general literary history” in Norway was still intimately connected with the study of Norwegian literature, and especially with Norwegian literary history. This was of course an inheritance from the same nationalist campaign that was discussed in a previous section on the discipline of history. The earliest attempt to write a national literary history dates back to Welhaven in the 1840s. Thus, for both Gran and his successors the historical perspective was self-evidently constitutive of the emerging discipline. The major novelty of general literature studies was that the broadened scope allowed for tracing influences, parallels, and contrast across national literatures. 612 The in-house series was called Småskrifter fra det litteraturhistoriske seminar. 613 Arne Hanevik, Fra litteraturhistorie til litteraturvitenskap. Allmenn litteraturvitenskap ved universitetet i Oslo. Skisse av en faghistorie (Oslo: Unipub, 2001). 614 The position was a reader (dosent) in comparative literary research (sammenlignende litteraturforskning).

Genereal literature studies │ 335

ies.615 In many other European countries, the discipline (often called comparative literature) had emerged in the late 19th century, and although it could nowhere compete with the national disciplines, it had acquired a respectable size in several countries. The first chair was established in Italy in 1870, and from then on chairs mushroomed across the continent. In Germany, there was considerable activity for a few decades, as one would expect from the leading country in nearly all branches of Wissenschaft. But with the rise of German nationalism from the 1890s onwards, it became increasingly difficult to gather support for respectful international comparison and study of the varieties of “a common humanity.” Instead it was France which took the lead. Under the influence of Hippolyte Taine, a positivist version of comparative literary scholarship attained paradigmatic status at several French universities, notably at Lyon and Sorbonne.616 Even in Britain and the United States the new discipline was beginning to get a foothold, and particularly in the United States disciplinary expansion was very rapid. By 1900, disciplinary journals had been established in several languages; international conventions were being held; and programmatic statements on behalf of the new discipline had been published by such figures as Max Koch, Joseph Texte, and Hutchinson Macaulay Posnett. Thus, there was a wide array of templates for a new discipline available in the larger Western nations, and at least some of these were well known to contemporary Norwegian literary scholars.617 But for several reasons, neither the many international influences nor the organizational efforts of Gran (or even the combination) were sufficient to produce a strong and unified disciplinary community of general literature studies in Norway in the interwar period. One reason was the economic downturn, which, as we also saw with English studies, was an inhospitable environment for newly born disciplines. It could also be argued that the person who occupied the only position dedicated to general literature studies from 1921 to

615 In some ways, Gran played a similar role for general literature studies as Alf Sommerfelt did for linguistics by organizing an “invisible college” for collaboration across the organizational boundaries of the national philologies. 616 Much of this section is based on René Wellek, “The Name and Nature of Comparative Literature,” Discriminations. Further Concepts of Criticism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970). 617 For instance, there was in 1928 an international congress of historians at Oslo, at which a session was dedicated to modern literary history, with the aim of facilitating international cooperation and discipline building for literary studies. See Paul van Tuighem, “Le premier Congrès international d’Histoire littéraire et la crise des méthodes,” Modern Philology 29.2 (1931) 131.

336 │ The transformation of humanities education

1938, Herman Jæger, was not up for the task.618 There were, however, several other very able students of Gran who became professors in various national literatures at Oslo, and whose energies might have contributed to discipline formation on behalf of general literature studies (or something similar) had they not been consumed from the late 1920s onwards by a standoff between two Norwegian schools of literary scholarship, the so-called “historical-biographical” and the “aestheticphilosophical” schools.619 This conflict, the crux of which can be deduced with sufficient clarity for present purposes by the names of the schools, petered out in the late 1950s when the last of the main antagonists, Francis Bull (of the “biographical-historical” school), retired. None of the schools could claim a full victory in the sense that the other position was abandoned, and general literature studies and literary scholarship in the national disciplines continued more or less in the same eclectic manner as previously, i.e. with interpretive methods combined with varieties of literary history. The theoretical debates, for those who were interested in such matters, were from about the same time eclipsed by the advent of New Criticism, Russian formalism, and Czech structuralism on the Norwegian academic scene.620

618 An interesting parallel is the consequences of the passive role played by Adam Trampe Bødker from 1914 to 1936 in the discipline of English studies, see the previous section. 619 This debate has been thoroughly covered by others, and I shall not go into the details of it here, other than to say that if one disregards some distinctly Norwegian colorations its core problem seems to be inherent to literary studies, namely whether literature is an autonomous field which demands a particular aesthetic approach, or is ultimately made of the same stuff as other human activity, and therefore eligible for study by standard historical methods. While there seems to be no end of those who subscribe fully to one side of this issue and seeks to obliterate the other, it is fairly obvious to an outside observer that this is the kind of issue where partisans cannot hope to be victorious for long. It belongs to the class of problems which, as Andrew Abbott has demonstrated, engenders fractal patterns within a discipline. See Andrew Abbott, Chaos of Disciplines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). 620 Viewed from the perspective of late 20th century post-structuralism, it might have seemed that it was the “aesthetic-philosophical” school that won, as e.g. Leif Longum has argued, see Leif Longum, “Norsk” som forsknings- og studiefag. Historiske perspektiver – aktuell utfordringer (Oslo: LNU/Cappelen, 1989) 135. But as we shall see below, the historical dimension of the discipline was never really abandoned; among other things it reappeared as New Historicism. Furthermore, the particular idealist vocabulary of the “aesthetic-philosophical” school largely disappeared in the 1960s and has never become fashionable again. It could be argued, however, that this school con-

Genereal literature studies │ 337

Of course, theoretical and methodological debates, even deep schisms like the Norwegian debate between the two mentioned schools, can be invigorating for an emerging discipline. German science in the 19th century gives ample proof of this. But for literature studies in Norway in the 1930s, the organizational platform was just too weak to allow for several camps to challenge each other in a manner which could expand the field. With only one university and a handful of tenured positions, the study of literature in the interwar period was a zero-sum game, and a very small one at that.621 In 1921 there were only four chairs covering Nordic, English, German, and Romance literatures. In addition there was the abovementioned reader in general literature studies and a handful of lecturers and postgraduate students with scholarships.622 As student numbers in the national disciplines had risen significantly since the turn of the century, this staff faced heavy teaching loads. With students consuming most of the professors’ time, and with no common methodological or theoretical ground on which to build a new disciplinary community, general litera-

tributed significantly to a conceptualization of “literature” which restricted the object of study in general literature studies to texts and genres belonging to the autonomous realm of art. The Norwegian term skjønnlitteratur captures this distinction in approximately the same way as belles lettres does in French. In systems theoretical terms we could say that when art was established as the system reference, it was not strange that “aesthetic qualities” – including the question of meaning – took center stage. But of course, art also exists in time, and is coupled with many other systems, and thus historical methodology is an unavoidable supplement to close reading. For a rhetorical analysis of the publications of the two schools, see Jonas Bakken, Litteraturvitenskapens retorikk (Oslo: PhD dissertation at the University of Oslo, 2007). 621 After WWII, and especially after 1970, proponents of new research agendas had the opportunity to establish themselves elsewhere if the alma mater proved inhospitable. Mobility among Norwegian academics has remained low, however. 622 In addition to the academic scholars, there were of course several other types of contributors to literary criticism, scholarship, and debate in the interwar period. Most of these were literary intellectuals without much formal training (figures such as Nils Kjær and Carl Nærup). Then there were the novelists (e.g. Sigurd Hoel and Johan Borgen ) and poets (e.g. Olaf Bull and Vilhelm Krag) who were also engaged in publishing, newspaper criticism, etc. In addition came contributions from academics in neighboring disciplines, such as Halfdan Koht (history) and Anathon Aall (philosophy). Graduates from the magister program in general literature studies only began to make an impact on literary criticism outside academia in the late 1930s (Philip Houm and Ebba Haslund, for instance).

338 │ The transformation of humanities education

ture studies remained an almost insignificant specialty, of interest only to a select few. Research publications which could be said to originate from the discipline of general literature studies were not many. Francis Bull, the leader of the “biographical-historical” school, was a prolific writer on what could be called general literary history (i.e. on the authors of the Western canon), but most of his publications were directed at a general audience, and Bull had no ambition of contributing to the establishment of a specialized research discipline.623 On the contrary, his position as chair in Nordic studies was in many ways comparable to that of historians like Ernst Sars or Halfdan Koht – a tenured national sage rather than a disciplinary researcher in the modern sense. His major rival, Peter Rokseth, was more of a specialist, but he published very little – only one monography on French tragedy, and a collection of essays.624 Herman Jæger, the reader in general literature studies, published a critical study of Hippolyte Taine in 1917 (mostly dismissive) and a short study of Dryden in 1925, both of them in Norwegian. The rest of the time he seems to have spent teaching, and preparing his multi-volume edition of Henrik Wergeland. Paulus Svendsen, who succeeded Jæger in 1946, had before he was appointed published a monograph on the ideas of the golden age and the third Reich, explicitly labeled “history of ideas,” but already in 1950 he left general literature studies for Germanistik. The publication which closest resembles a program for general literature studies in Norway in the interwar period is Lorentz Eckhoff’s short study from 1930, Den nye litteraturforskning [“The new literary research”], which was also singled out for mention by Paul van Tuighem in a survey of the state of “literary history” in Europe

623 Possible exceptions are two articles in French on Norwegian authors (Holberg, Ibsen, and Bjørnson) in Revue de littérature comparée (in 1922 and 1929), see Kaare Haukaas and Jorunn Gule, Francis Bull. Bibliografi (Tromsø: Det norske språk- og litteraturselskap, 1998). 624 In addition to his importance as teacher and spiritual leader of a group of aesthetically oriented students (mostly in French literature), Rokseth’s major contribution to the “modernization” of literary studies was in many ways his plan for the development of a new campus for the University of Oslo on the outskirts of the city, a campus where he envisioned new disciplinary developments for the Norwegian humanities. This visionary plan, vigorously opposed by his antagonist Francis Bull who wanted to maintain the close link between the university and the public sphere of the nation’s capital, was realized in the postwar era. See Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen, 23ff.

Genereal literature studies │ 339

and the United States.625 But this strongly polemical work, which in the main was supportive of Rokseth’s “aesthetic-philosophical” school, served mostly to confirm Eckhoff’s position as an outsider at Oslo (where he remained an untenured assistant professor until he finally was appointed to a chair in 1940), and it had little impact on discipline formation. Thus, while certainly not devoid of literary scholarship and criticism, the interwar years were not a rich period for disciplinary research in general literature studies. The educational role of the discipline was possibly even smaller. During its first 25 years, only 41 persons graduated as magister candidates in general literature studies, according to Hannevik.626 Of these, more than half wrote their theses on Nordic literature, and almost everyone worked within the confines of one national literature. Only four candidates chose comparative or general literary topics. A specifically comparative approach was not seriously encouraged by the curriculum, either. In addition to two national literatures (of two to three semesters’ duration each), there was a core curriculum of twenty Western classics from Homer to Goethe, and an elective reading list to be drawn up in conjunction with the topic chosen for the thesis. Many of the documents pertaining to this period are lost, but according to Hannevik it is highly doubtful if any literary theory or method was required at all. Only one of the forty-one candidates refers to a work of literary theory in his registration for the final exam. It seems, then, that in spite of Gran’s efforts, research outputs were meager due to a combination of understaffing and the absence of a shared methodology, and the educational dimension of general literature studies was hampered on the one hand by the pull of national disciplines (regarding the choice of topics for theses, as well as the teaching obligations of the undermanned staff), and on the other hand by the lack of an independent disciplinary profile in the magister curriculum. But compared to English studies, the discipline of general literature studies had at least one advantage in the interwar period: The recruitment situation for the next phase was not altogether bleak. Although most of the magister graduates actually became teachers in secondary school, just like the graduates from English studies (a career they were qualified for if they chose the appropriate national literatures), there was a group of around ten candidates who seem to have actively sought an academic

625 Lorentz Eckhoff, Den nye litteraturforskning. Syntetisk metode (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1930). Tuighem’s survey is reported in Paul van Tuighem, “Le premier Congrès international d’Histoire littéraire et la crise des methods.” 626 The information in this paragraph is based on Arne Hannevik, Fra litteraturhistorie til litteraturvitenskap, 43ff.

340 │ The transformation of humanities education

career in literary studies – if not necessarily in general literature studies. Among them were the people who would restart the discipline in the postwar era.

14.3 THE POSTWAR PERIOD Herman Jæger, the first reader in general literature studies at Oslo, died in 1938, and due to the nature of the funding of the position, it was then revoked. After the war the position was reestablished for a few years, and then revoked again in order for the person who held it, Paulus Svendsen, to be appointed as chair in German literature in 1950. With more magister students than ever before in general literature studies, and with exciting new theoretical approaches beginning to make an impact in the early 1950s (especially New Criticism), the utter lack of staff, office space, and organizational framework seems in hindsight a paradoxical situation. The person who came to the rescue was Sigmund Skard, the second entrepreneur (after Gerhard Gran) on behalf of general literature studies in Norway.627 A graduate from the magister program from 1931 with a doctoral degree from 1938 on the Norwegian writer A.O. Vinje and his view of classical antiquity, Skard had deliberately avoided siding with either of the contesting Norwegian schools in the interwar period. Skard spent WWII in the United States, and upon his return he was appointed as the first chair in American studies, a field he had not done much work in. Skard’s position as regards literature studies in the 1950s continued to be bi- or nonpartisan. While sympathetic to some aspects of the New Criticism, he also defended the virtues of literary history and the inheritance of philology, and he maintained throughout his career an eclectic stance in his own scholarly work.628

627 For a brief account of his role in establishing American studies in the 1950s, cf. the previous chapter. 628 See Jon Haarberg, “Da den allmenne litteraturvitenskapen kom til Norge og fant seg en plass mellom historien og teorien,” Norsk litteraturvitenskapelig tidsskrift 2 (2001). According to Haarberg, Skard was sceptical of New Criticism. It is certainly true that Skard protested against formalism when it was pursued at the expense of historical context, but as Haarberg also recognizes, Skard was sympathetic to the efforts inherent in New Criticism (considered not only as the methodology of close reading, but as a more general program for literary research) of transforming literature studies into a “science” (“vitenskap”). In Haarbergs view, Skard saw “scientism” as a tertium between the two Norwegian schools from the interwar period, and meant for the transformation of literary studies to occur on the basis of “method.” While the former conjecture seems convincing, the latter does not make much sense in view of the inconsistent use Skard

Genereal literature studies │ 341

His impact on the discipline of comparative literature in Norway hinges not on his scholarly publications, however, but on his administrative work. In the chapter on English studies we saw how Skard as the first chair in American studies had positioned himself during the early 1950s as a “literature man,” to use the parlance of the time, rather than as a linguist (although he also became a strong proponent for the third branch, civilization). As such, he was involved in a bitter conflict with the Anglophile linguist Asta Kihlbom. But since Skard’s position as a literary scholar was viewed as fairly balanced, he was in the late 1950s trusted with the chairmanship of the Committee on literary history at Oslo, whose members were the chairs in the national literatures. In this capacity, Skard surveyed the general growth in student numbers in the various literature programs in the 1950s, and naturally took particular notice of the increase of students pursuing the magister degree in general literature studies, his old discipline. Hannevik estimates the number of magister students to have been around 50 already in the postwar years, more than the combined number of candidates during the preceding 25 years.629 Inspired by his broad knowledge of how literary studies was organized in the Anglo-American world, as well as in the rest of Europe, Skard seized the opportunity when the Norwegian degree system was reformed in the late 1950s, and in less than a decade he succeeded in establishing a new organizational structure for general literature studies, this time one that could sustain a self-reproducing disciplinary community in Norway.630 The first step was the establishment of the grunnfag program in 1957. Since academic credentials were now decoupled from the certification of school teachers, it

makes of the term “method,” a use which often differs from Haarberg’s. Haarberg is right, in my view, when he concludes that general literature studies in Norway never came to rest (at least not for long) on a fixed methodology, but I doubt that this was ever Skard’s intention. A principled eclectic, he wanted methods – in the plural. It should be noted in this connection that the grunnfag program plan of 1959, which Haarberg bases his analysis on, was changed two years after, primarily because the exam soon acquired a reputation of being “easy.” In this revised program plan Hannevik sees exactly the opposite of what Haarberg does: “The literary historical angle, rather than the textual-analytical angle, was thus the central focus of the original program.” Arne Hannevik, Fra litteraturhistorie til litteraturvitenskap, 78. I shall return to this question below. 629 Arne Hannevik, Fra litteraturhistorie til litteraturvitenskap, 57. As always with student numbers it should be noted that a sizable share never graduated. 630 Of course, he had help from several others, chiefly by Arne Hannevik, who was charged with the responsibility for the program, and eventually for the department, after the “reestablishment phase” around 1960.

342 │ The transformation of humanities education

was possible to have educational programs at the undergraduate level without other aims than those dictated by the dynamic of research. I shall return to the question of career opportunities for the candidates, as well as their actual career trajectories in the fourth part of the study, but it is interesting to note in this connection a reflection which Hannevik, who was himself at the helm of the discipline from the mid1960s onwards, makes in his study about the rationale for an undergraduate program like the grunnfag in general literature studies: “I have not seen any specific reasons provided for this great expansion of the disciplinary spectrum at the undergraduate level. A likely reason must have been that study programs at the faculty of the humanities (which still included most of the social science studies) should 631

be able to provide an education aimed at other career paths than the teacher profession.”

The absence of any exogenous motivation, or even of a stated motivation at all, for the establishment of an educational program in a public university, is a clear indication of the degree of autonomy attained by academic institutions at this stage. The curriculum for the new grunnfag in general literature studies, to which I shall return in more detail below, was mainly authored by Skard, and he also served as the program’s main administrator during the first years. When funding for lectureships became available in the wake of the degree reform, he secured one for general literature studies in 1963. From then on, things changed quickly. In 1965 a department of general literature studies was established, and by 1970 there were four academic positions affiliated with it. Still a small specialty compared to the national disciplines, the Department of general literature studies had difficulties finding permanent office space at a cramped university campus, but despite this and other practical problems the general atmosphere seems to have been one of optimism and ambition. An additional reason for optimism on behalf of the discipline in this period was its establishment at the second university in Norway, the University of Bergen. Literature had been taught at Bergen since the university was founded in 1946, from 1951 mainly by Harald Beyer, the only chair in “European literature, especially Norwegian and German.” A prolific literary historian and comparatist with interests that crossed national boundaries, Beyer was the kind of figure who could have had a role in establishing the discipline of general literature studies, but he belonged to the previous generation (he died in 1960), and moreover the University of Bergen in the 1950s was still in the process of building up capacity in the various national literature and language disciplines. The chair in European literatures had been a

631 Arne Hannevik, Fra litteraturhistorie til litteraturvitenskap, 67.

Genereal literature studies │ 343

necessity resulting from scarce resources, not from a program of comparativism. Thus when Beyer’s chair became vacant at the same time as more public funding was available because of the influx of new students, the university split it into four chairs in national literatures. According to Fredrik W. Thue, the establishment of general literature studies at Bergen resulted from a united initiative from these chairs, following a period of increased theoretical interest among students and junior staff.632 The first step was to put together a grunnfag program, which opened at Bergen in 1967. For a number of years, the two lecturers Asbjørn Aarseth and Eilif Eide were responsible for the discipline, but in 1974 Atle Kittang was appointed as Norway’s first chair in general literature studies, and from then on the continued existence of the discipline at Bergen seemed confirmed. The ambitions of disciplinary entrepreneurs like Skard at Oslo and Aarseth, Eide, and Kittang at Bergen were borne on the wave of new students in the 1960s and early 1970s. Without the funding that followed these students, research capacity would probably have remained at a bare minimum. The research discipline was still small in the mid-1970s, but the cross-subsidizing from education turned out to sustain it beyond the first wave. Unlike history and English, general literature studies did not experience a dip in recruitment of students in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In fact, disciplinary expansion continued (although at a reduced rate) from the 1970s through the 1980s, when the departments and programs were established at Trondheim and Tromsø. However, the main expansion in student numbers came in the 1990s, with an ensuing growth in staffs at the various departments as well. Around the turn of the century there were 26 permanent positions in general literature studies at the four universities (9 at Oslo, 7 at Bergen, 5 at Trondheim, and 5 at Tromsø). Compared to history, this is a very small number, and even the number of faculty in English is much larger. It should be remembered, however, that some of the literature professors in the national disciplines have been at least associated members of the expanded research discipline. One would expect that with such an expansion of a discipline that, unlike history and English studies, had been established in Norway for relatively specialized and research-oriented purposes, the disciplinary community would concentrate its energies on research. The ambitions of the staff recruited in the 1970s indeed pointed in that direction. As it turned out, however, much of the increased capacity was swallowed up by teaching obligations. According to Hannevik, the workload in the 1970s was dominated by the influx of grunnfag students, while in the 1980s it was the supervision of graduate and post-graduate students that took up much of the time. Many students in the two latter categories worked on ambitious projects

632 Fredrik W. Thue, “Det humanistiske fagfeltets historie,” 503.

344 │ The transformation of humanities education

which took a long time to finish, and quite a few never finished at all. For this reason (and perhaps for other reasons as well), research projects by the staff members themselves in this period were not very numerous, and not overly ambitious. Even literary theory, which was where general literature studies was thought to have its comparative advantages over the national literature studies, was not a ripe field. In a report on the Norwegian humanities initiated by the NAVF from 1984, the chapter on literary studies [litteraturvitenskap] first gives a portrait of a very diverse and ambitious branch of studies, but summarizing the responses from a survey study among the researchers acknowledges that basic theory “has up until now been a rather neglected field in the Norwegian disciplinary community.”633 Since the 1970s, literary research in Norway had indeed been “theoretical,” but in the form of rather dogmatic appropriations of international schools (such as neoMarxism, structuralism, and the sociology of literature). These camps were fiercely opposed to one another, not unlike the situation in the interwar period, but with more camps than two this time. By the mid-1980s, the report states, “we find ourselves in a pluralistic period, where one attempts to integrate various kinds of insights, theories, and aims.”634 Whether these mid-1980s ambitions for a rejuvenated and joint research effort can be called successful in the end, is highly doubtful, however. An evaluation of general literature studies at Oslo from 1992 commends the department’s work in the educational dimension (although with reservations regarding the drop-out rate and time-to-degree for graduate and post-graduate students), but is fairly critical regarding the publication of research. The general assessment of the evaluation team, consisting of literary scholars from Denmark and Sweden and a Norwegian theologian, is that “the purely scientific production among the tenured staff has not been highly prioritized.” 635 According to Hannevik, this conclusion is reached on the basis of published work. Hannevik himself, however, disputes the assessment, and thinks that “[i]n an overall assessment, the scientific activity [den vitenskapelige

633 NAVF, Humanistisk forskning i Norge. Vol. 2, (Oslo: NAVF, 1985). The chapter on “literature studies” includes literary scholarship in the national disciplines, and is written by a Romance scholar and a Nordic scholar. 634 Ibid. 635 Jørgen Dines Johansen, Tarald Rasmussen, and Sigbrit Swahn, “Evaluering av forskningsmiljøet ved Avdeling for allmenn litteraturvitenskap ved Universitetet i Oslo 1981-1990” (Oslo: UiO, 1992) 17. The educational dimension was not part of the evaluation team’s mandate, and beyond some elementary statistics and interviews with faculty members they really had no basis for assessing the quality of the educational programs.

Genereal literature studies │ 345

virksomhet] in the discipline has been fairly good [ganske god ], when viewed in the light of the teaching load that the staff always has had to work under, the economic conditions of the discipline, and the relatively meager opportunities for sabbaticals until the early 1990s.” 636 It is difficult to assess whether this is a biased defense by a former department head, but judging from the major publications it seems that general literature studies at Oslo in the 1970s and 1980s was neither very productive, nor very groundbreaking. Several things suggest that productivity and ambitions in this period were somewhat higher at Bergen, where Toril Moi reached an international audience with her doctoral work, published as Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory, and where Atle Kittang, Norway’s first chair and later grand old man of the discipline, published several foundational texts, and led many collaborative projects.637 In the 1990s the situation changed, however. Researchers from the relatively new departments at Tromsø and Trondheim were beginning to make an impact, and research ambitions at Oslo seem to have been raised, not the least with the arrival of the prolific Swedish scholar Arne Melberg. As regards publication channels for general literature studies in Norway, the major journal was for many years the previously mentioned Edda, which was focused on Nordic literature – as were most Norwegian literary scholars. In-house publication series were important channels for monographs and anthologies which were too specialized for Norwegian academic publishing. One such series was Skrift at Oslo, established in 1989. International publication was a relatively rare occurrence in the 1970s and 1980s, but became more common in the 1990s. The first peer-reviewed disciplinary journal, Norsk litteraturvitenskapelig tidsskrift, was established in 1998. The discipline of general literature studies in Norway as such has not founded any national professional or disciplinary organizations, and during the period before 2000, Norwegian faculty seems not to have been very active in international organizations either. Nordic cooperation has been extensive, though, and many have had individual international networks. Like the disciplines of history and English studies, there has been cooperation between the sister departments at the various universities regarding development of curricula and coordination of examinations through the National disciplinary council [Nasjonalt fagråd ] under the umbrella of the National association of universities.

636 Arne Hannevik, Fra litteraturhistorie til litteraturvitenskap, 120. The evaluation team, on their part found that the teaching load had not been heavier in general literature studies than in other disciplines. 637 According to Otto Hageberg, this was at least the case in the 1970s. Otto Hageberg, “Framfor nytt. Aktuell refleksjon og faghistorisk vandring,” Nordlit 16 (2004) 164.

346 │ The transformation of humanities education

14.4 CURRICULA When the grunnfag in general literature studies was first offered at Oslo in 1959, the opening paragraph in the program plan was a complex set of warnings for prospective students: “The grunnfag program in general literature studies is not aimed at [tar ikkje sikte på] any specific subject taught in school. The program is designed to be complementary to the regular undergraduate and graduate programs, especially those in language and literature [i.e. such programs as English, French etc.], and will provide a wider overview than is possible in the other language and literature programs. General literature studies can therefore not be isolated 638

from the regular literature and language programs [...]”

It was thus very clear from the outset that the grunnfag program in general literature studies, by itself, had no direct vocational aim. Partly because of this, students could not register for the exam before they had completed at least one other grunnfag in a national language and literature. Obviously, the acquisition of language skills was one reason for this requirement – the curricular documents stressed the importance of reading as many works as possible in the original – but the phrasing of the program plan also indicates that the Faculty of humanities (the Department of general literature studies was established later, in 1965) was concerned that the candidates upon completing a civil service degree (embedsstudium) should, like most other humanities candidates, acquire the qualifications needed for careers as school teachers – which they could only do if the other two programs chosen for the degree were subjects taught in school.639 It is important to note in this connection that the students would have to proceed to another discipline in order to do graduate work towards the civil service degree, since a hovedfag program in general literature studies was not offered in Norway until the late 1980s.

638 See note 114 above for reference to the cited archival material. 639 Atle Kittang, the first chair in general literature studies at Bergen, formulates the intended function of the program in its first years as follows “The relationship of general literature studies to the national literature programs was rather straightforward: It should be a service discipline with particular duties in theory and method, and would be best suited as a third undergraduate program for students who aimed for a graduate program in either Nordic language and literature or another national language and literature program.” Atle Kittang, “Allmenn litteraturvitskap – finst den framleis?” Nordlit 16 (2004) 143.

Genereal literature studies │ 347

As previously mentioned, the warnings in the program plan did not intimidate prospective students at all. The grunnfag soon became very popular, one reason being that the program plan of 1959 was perceived as an “easy” one. On the other hand, the grunnfag had – unlike most programs (see part two) – a numerus clausus and yearly admitted only around half of the ca. 50 applicants. This is one reason why Hannevik can speak of a highly competent and enthusiastic group of students during the first years, even if the reading list was less than demanding. Compulsory reading consisted of a few works on theory and method, a dozen works from the western canon (Homer to Goethe, including samples from Edda), and a short work on literary history. In addition, students had to specialize in either Danish or Swedish literature, or in a particular epoch or a topically defined field. The fact that Norwegian literature was not an option for specialization may indicate that the faculty assumed students in general literature studies to be familiar with at least the major Norwegian writers from secondary school, and from their own reading. At any rate, students would be expected to complete at least the grunnfag in Nordic studies, where Norwegian literature was heavily emphasized. Suggestions for specialties based on periods or topics in the grunnfag were fairly traditional: “medieval heroic poetry, the renaissance, the enlightenment, romantic poetry, the realist or naturalist novel.” The syllabus for the specialty amounted to a dozen works. Those who opted for a topical specialty had to select works from three national literatures. All in all, two dozen literary works and a handful of theory and reference books for one year of study was clearly too slight, and after only a few years the program plan was completely revised.640 Developments 1960 to 1980 In the new program plan from 1962, the first paragraph is a statement of purpose: The grunnfag “shall give a wider overview of the world literature and provide the foundation for a more confident literary culture [en sikrere litterær kultur] than is

640 It should be remembered that around 1960 the grunnfag was a completely new curricular format. At the same time the university now attracted far more students from nonacademic backgrounds than before. These are probably general reasons why several disciplines had difficulties hitting the mark as regards volume and other requirements in the new program plans. It does seem strange, however, that the program plan for grunnfag in general literature studies, which is well known to have been written by Sigmund Skard, was so slight, when the program plan for English studies, which must have been well known to Skard as professor of American studies, (see the previous section), was so huge.

348 │ The transformation of humanities education

possible in the more specialized language and literature studies.” The phrase “world literature” should not be taken too literally; there is still no non-Western literature on the syllabus. The aim of providing “literary culture” is interesting, however, and should probably be interpreted as a variant of the Bildung-formula.641 The disclaimer about the program not qualifying for the teacher profession is no longer foregrounded, but is mentioned a few paragraphs further down, along with other issues concerning degree requirements. The volume of the syllabus has been greatly expanded. The sampling of the western canon is about doubled in size, and now numbers two dozen works, from the Old Testament to Melville’s Billy Budd, including a selection of lyric poetry. In addition, there is a relatively large compulsory reading list of Nordic works (more than a dozen novels and dramas, and a selection of poetry). As if this was not enough, students also have to choose two non-Nordic national literatures of 6-8 works, plus lyric poetry – both of which have to be read in the original language. Of theory, however, there is much less: one compulsory textbook and one other work to be selected from a list of “works on method” (which are all actually works of theory) ranging from Aristotle’s Poetics to Wellek and Warren’s Theory of Literature from 1948. As regards literary history and other handbooks, there are only minor changes from the previous program plan. During the first three years, from 1959 to 1962, all teaching for the grunnfag students was offered by staff from the departments of national language and literature studies. From the revision of the curriculum in 1962, attendance at lectures and seminars was made compulsory, probably as part of the general effort to get rid of the reputation as an “easy” program. Lectures were of a fairly traditional and generic kind, with the clear intent of providing an overview. However, there was not enough capacity to teach the new, comprehensive syllabus in extenso. Hence, much of it was left to independent reading. The new program plan from 1962 remained unchanged until around 1970, when there were several interesting revisions. The most significant was perhaps the abandonment of one of the two national literatures. In view of the massive syllabus from 1962, it is not surprising that the volume was somewhat reduced. But an important consequence of this revision was that grunnfag students hereafter only had to master two languages (which would be Norwegian and English for the large majority). At least in part, these curricular changes seem to have been responses to

641 The Norwegian term most commonly used to cover the German concept of Bildung (dannelse) was in this period mostly used by conservatives, and, furthermore, the program plan is written in a variant of modern Norwegian (nynorsk) which eschews terms which smack of Danish. These might have been reasons why the term “culture [kultur]” was employed instead.

Genereal literature studies │ 349

changes in student recruitment. Around 1970, the program was no longer allowed to uphold a numerus clausus, and thus had to accept all formally qualified students. The reduction in volume and the lowering of language demands in the curriculum at this time indicate the department’s recognition and acceptance of this change. Furthermore, the revisions suggest that the department no longer saw it as its responsibility to restrict the combination of study programs or offer guidance on the vocational prospects of the students, as it had done in 1960. Another change in line with this was that attendance in lectures and seminars were no longer compulsory as of 1970. In the 1960s, the grunnfag had mainly aimed to provide “an overview” of the Western classics, and although Sigmund Skard had intended – inspired by New Criticism – to “professionalize” Norwegian literary studies, there are few traces of research-orientation in the program plans or in the course catalogue before we come to the 1970s.642 Two steps in that direction are taken in the above-mentioned program plan of 1970, when a separate course in “research methods [vitenskapelig arbeidsmetode]” is introduced, and the syllabus in literary theory is much expanded. There is now a compulsory reading list of classical poetics from Aristotle to Boileau, and selections of literary criticism from Pope to Croce. Modern theory is covered by a new textbook and an optional work of theory from the 20th century. A list of suggestions for such theoretical works is provided, which the students “are obviously not restricted by.” It is interesting to note here that while the expansion of the student body may have contributed to lowered language requirements and reduced curricular volume, it clearly did not preclude a drift towards theory. On the contrary, the increased emphasis on theory and the aim of initiating students into the realm of research is spelled out explicitly in the revised program plan of 1974. In the opening paragraph, it is now emphasized that the grunnfag shall “further a critical attitude and provide contact with research in general literature studies and with literary criticism.”643 Theory is further expanded in the reading list by an additional elective work from the 20th century, and in teaching by offering a

642 Of course, research was much more accentuated in the curricula and especially in the thesis work of the graduate magister students, which I for several reasons – space considerations among them – cannot discuss further here. As regards the agenda of Sigmund Skard, see note 192 above. 643 The expression “literary criticism” as used here must be understood in the context of the contemporary disciplinary debates, especially in the influential Anglo-American tradition from the 1930s onwards, in which “criticism” was used by René Wellek, Northrop Frye and others to designate literary scholarship which was concerned with the “immanent” qualities of literary works, as opposed to the old “historicism.”

350 │ The transformation of humanities education

separate theory course with the duration of two semesters – a course which becomes a mainstay in the program for many years. In literary history, the old and obsolete work by Francis Bull is replaced by a new Swedish two-volume work as a textbook, and other references to larger works of literary history are also updated. On the other hand, the last elective national literature is now removed. Partly this is necessitated by expansions elsewhere in the curriculum. Especially with the previously mentioned change in student recruitment it becomes important to avoid overload. But the removal can also indicate a decline in the importance of national distinctions in the new, more theoretically informed approach to literature, which was obviously part of a broad international development. Neither of the new theories, whether of textual or contextual (i.e. mostly neo-Marxian) orientation, were particularly interested in viewing literary works as expressions of “national culture” anymore. As I have mentioned above, a hovedfag program was not offered in general literature studies before in the late 1980s. This was also the time when programs in general literature studies were established at Tromsø and at Trondheim (NTNU), and – as we shall see – the beginning of a new era for the discipline in several ways. However, this later period was foreshadowed by an interesting development which took place at Oslo from the early 1970s, when an intermediate program, i.e. a halfyear undergraduate program which was an extension of the grunnfag – the so-called “intermediate level extension program [mellomfagstillegg]” – was established. According to Hannevik, the intermediate program was established because of student demand, but also because the capacity of the staff had grown to such a size in the early 1970s that it became possible to take on new tasks.644 It is the format of the program which mainly interests me here, however. From its inception in 1971 and throughout the period covered by this study, the program was entirely composed of a special topic of the students’ own choosing, with a reading list consisting of twelve elective works. One or two seminars on suitable topics were offered each semester, with titles such as “Modern novels and theories of the novel” and “Newer drama,” but students were free to choose other topics as well, as long as someone from the staff agreed to supervise it. In 1971, the only restriction which applied to the program was that at least two of the twelve works should be theoretical. It is probably an indication of (at least some of) the students’ appetite for theory that a few years later a new requirement demanded that at least three of the works should be literary. Interestingly, the program introduced a compulsory essay of 15-20 pages. After a few years this essay was incorporated into the examination procedures, and

644 Arne Hannevik, Fra litteraturhistorie til litteraturvitenskap, 105ff.

Genereal literature studies │ 351

regulations on the format were also specified. Like a regular research paper it should conform to disciplinary standards regarding citations, notes, and bibliography. Hannevik emphasizes the function of the mellomfag as a means of allowing for increased specialization, among the undergraduates themselves, but also among (especially the non-tenured) staff in the early 1970s: “Because the course offerings were so limited and the students’ interests were so diverse, the mellomfag was a program of the kind which leans heavily on the supervision capacity of the staff. At the same time the program gave an opportunity for experiments with teaching new topics such as the sociology of literature, popular literature, surrealist poetry, the crime novel, women’s literature, rock lyrics, and much else. These were opportunities which research fellows [for the most part PhD candidates with a scholarship] seized, and were allowed to 645

teach. The funding for part time lecturers was also used to this end.”

Developments 1980-2000 The curricular evolution I have traced so far, from the rather traditional 1960s survey of the literary “greats” of the Western national literatures, to a more theoretically motivated study of literary “texts” in the 1970s, continued in the same direction in the 1980s, at least up to a certain point. Since general literature studies’ relations with teacher education were so distant (quite simply because the subject – as taught at the university – had never been taught in Norwegian schools), its curricular development had few external constraints.646 Importantly, the programs in general literature studies were not enlisted in the efforts I have described in the previous two chapters to reconnect humanities disciplines to teacher education by way of disciplinary didactics and information to students about the requirements and opportunities for teaching careers.647 This strategy, which seems to have acted

645 Ibid., 106. 646 Of course, Norwegian literature had been taught, but that was the purview of Nordic language and literature studies. Likewise, but to a much lesser degree, there was some literature taught in the school subjects of English, German, and French, but of course the teacher education for these school subjects belonged to the respective national philologies. 647 However, in the early 1980s there were changes in the regulations about teacher certification which technically made it possible to use a grunnfag program in general literature studies towards qualification as a teacher (lektor or adjunkt). There was also now a new opening for schools to offer classes in literature and a few other subjects, such as philosophy. This was duly noted in the program plans for general literature

352 │ The transformation of humanities education

as a bar against further research drift and theorization for almost a decade in at least the grunnfag programs in history and English (albeit in different ways), did not stand in the way of research drift in general literature studies. On the other hand, grunnfag curricula in general literature studies from the 1980s show that there are limits to how much theory an undergraduate program can accommodate. At more advanced levels, literary theory can become a fairly selfcontained activity (as we have seen indications of at the mellomfag level) but at the introductory level it seems a balance must be maintained between “literary texts” (texts belonging to the function system of art) and theoretical texts (belonging to the system of research) – even when the latter are beginning to encroach upon the former, as in the case of some post-structuralist approaches. This balance is explicitly referred to in the reformed grunnfag program plan at Oslo from 1982, where a “double aim” is advanced, namely “to provide a basic outline of the major strands of the western literary tradition by the reading of major works from the most important European national literatures from classical antiquity to our time, and to give an introduction to selected major topics in literary theory, such as genre theory, the theory of interpretation, historical poetics, and major modern schools of 648

criticism and methods of literary analysis.”

Since familiarity with the European literary canon cannot be presumed beyond the Norwegian classics taught in secondary school, it has to be provided, and a core of classic works from Homer to Goethe thus prevails in the grunnfag syllabus

studies (and for philosophy, cf. the next chapter) as a possible career opening, but as the general information about career opportunities in teaching also underlined, such classes were offered in only a few schools in the whole country. At a time when even the traditional disciplines like history and English struggled to maintain a much reduced stake in secondary school teaching, the likelihood that a specialized and highly theoretical discipline such as general literature studies should advance much in that direction, was soon revealed to be illusory. Literature as well as philosophy remained extremely marginal in Norwegian secondary schools, and the recruitment of university educated teachers continued in practice to exclude those without the sufficient amounts of credit-hours in the traditional school-subjects. See further discussion of career trajectories in part four. 648 As implied in this citation, there is a third branch of the discipline also, a branch which was previously prominent but which has tended to disappear from view from time to time in later decades, namely literary history. Further on in the program plan, under the section of grunnfag, it is indeed stated that “the reading of literary works, theory, and literary history are the three branches of the discipline.”

Genereal literature studies │ 353

throughout the period covered here – and still prevails at the undergraduate level today. An introduction to literary history likewise seems indispensable. But even if some material seems to have, if not permanence then at least a very slow turnover, specialization still continues in some areas of the grunnfag in the 1980s. For later periods in literary history, i.e. after 1800, students are now allowed to choose works in the various genres, either from a list of fixed alternatives, or under some general restrictions. In modern theory students are also allowed considerable freedom to choose. Concerning the students’ Lernfreiheit, which we have noticed that the department provided for to an increasing extent from the early 1970s onwards, possibly to be relieved of too heavy obligations at a time when students flooded the campus, it is interesting to note that from 1982 onwards, the program plans explicitly warn against adopting a too independent mode. While admitting that it is indeed possible to study the grunnfag away from campus, the program plan of 1982 advises that “most students will find it best to make extensive use of the offered lectures and seminars.” General literature studies did not experience the same decline in student numbers as some other humanities disciplines in the 1980s, and so the concern for the size of the student body (which had previously been the problem of overpopulation, and which for neighboring disciplines had now turned into a concern for scant recruitment), was replaced with a concern for laxity and underachievement. As previously mentioned, the department of general literature studies at Oslo experienced problems with dropout and slow throughput of magister and doctoral students in the 1980s. This was one of the reasons why the establishment of a graduate hovedfag program was put on the agenda at this time. The hovedfag and the degree of cand.philol. had originally been established as part of the civil service paradigm (regulated by the embedseksamen), and had been strongly associated with the disciplines that qualified for the school teacher profession. But developments in the intervening years had gradually broken down the old distinction between research-oriented disciplines (for which the magister degree had been established) and school-oriented disciplines (associated with the civil service degree). By the late 1980s, almost all educational programs in the humanities were in effect research-oriented and open-ended with respect to career options. The fact that some of them also contributed towards qualifying some of the students as teachers did not make them essentially different. It was as part of this overall transformation that the curricular structure of the hovedfag had now become a generic and dominant format of academic study in Norway. In addition, it should be noted that the establishment of a more structured hovedfag program obviously would entail more supervision, teaching and grading, and thus bespeaks increased ambitions on the part of the discipline as regards both

354 │ The transformation of humanities education

the production of candidates and the academic level of operation. After the influx of graduate students into the hovedfag program in the 1990s, it is easy to forget that the discipline in Norway was for many years largely associated with the grunnfag program, the candidates from which often went on to pursue graduate study in other disciplines. While it was obviously not possible at the time to foresee the consequences, the establishment of the hovedfag was thus a major step in the history of the discipline. Above I outlined briefly how a first step towards shifting the balance in favor of more advanced study was taken with the introduction of the mellomfag. As Hannevik also points out, it was the unit of mellomfag – the twelve-works-in-onesemester special topic – that provided the template for what would later become an important building block for the hovedfag.649 With this format, established specialisms in research could be addressed, and if needed, new specialisms could be explored. Furthermore, if the distinction between undergraduate and graduate study was relaxed a little bit (which it often was at Oslo, and in Norway generally at this time), the mellomfag and hovedfag students could be offered the same courses.650 As if this was not enough, there was also the advantage that magister and hovedfag students could be used as student-teachers at grunnfag seminars. Evolving into a self-recruiting system, the disciplinary community in this period found many ways of pooling its resources. The stated aim of the hovedfag in the first program plan from 1988 runs as follows: “The hovedfag program in general literature studies is a comprehensive theoretical and comparative program. It offers a comprehensive approach to the basic problems of literary theory and methodology. At the center of the program is work on a thesis and an affiliated elective curriculum. Independent work on the thesis and the study of the elective curriculum is intended to provide in-depth insight into the research method of general literature studies, and practice in the employment of this method. “

In addition to the thesis, the program consisted of four main parts: a short syllabus of classic literary works intended to complement the canon taught at the grunnfag level (six works from classical antiquity, one 18th century novel, and 150 pages of poetry), 1000 pages of theory (half of it an elective modern theoretical school), a

649 Arne Hannevik, Fra litteraturhistorie til litteraturvitenskap, 105ff. 650 For general literature studies the effect of this blurring in the 1980s and 1990s seems to have been that the undergraduate program of mellomfag acquired a graduate flavor, rather than the other way around.

Genereal literature studies │ 355

special topic of 12 works (like the mellomfag), and the above-mentioned elective syllabus related to the topic of the thesis (15 works). The establishment of the hovedfag at Oslo was part of a general expansion of the Norwegian discipline in the second half of the 1980s. As mentioned, the two departments at Oslo and Bergen were supplemented at this time by somewhat smaller disciplinary nodes at Trondheim and Tromsø. The newcomers soon established grunnfag programs, and a few years later they were able to offer hovedfag programs as well. At Tromsø, the grunnfag program admitted its first students in 1986. It then had a curricular structure and a syllabus very similar to the one at Oslo. The dual aim of the program was to provide knowledge of the western literary canon and the methods (or, rather, theoretically inspired skills) needed for analyzing it. The program plan explicitly foregrounds the ideals of a “critical” approach and “independence of mind.” The syllabus of literary works has a few openings for including more recent and non-traditional items (such as “world literature”), but is otherwise quite traditional. Not unlike the situation at Oslo in the 1960s, many of the lectures and seminars listed for the grunnfag program in the course catalogue were offered by staff from the national literature and language programs. However, even with limited staff resources, Tromsø managed to establish a hovedfag program only two years later – i.e. simultaneously with Oslo. This new graduate program was explicitly research-oriented from the start, and thus functionally equivalent to the magister degree, albeit with a tighter structure. According to the program plan of 1988, the new hovedfag “can be the basis for further research at universities,” and a clear curricular priority is “general literary theory.” Method is also accentuated. As at Oslo, elective topics allows for specialization. There is little teaching on offer, however: only a few introductory lectures and seminar series, for instance one on “modernism and postmodernism.” In the late 1980s, the staff was very small and the courses few at Oslo, too. Aside from a handful of generic courses on classic works and the genres of the novel, drama, and lyrical poetry, there were 2-3 courses of the graduate level each semester that were more research-driven, with titles such as “Postmodern metafiction” and “The essay.” But this would soon change, for as we have seen in part two, the 1990s saw a great expansion in the student numbers of general literature studies. And with students, the faculty staff expanded, too. By the mid-1990s, the growth resulted primarily in two things: more course offers, and more structure. Whether this was a desired development or a necessity due to the influx of students (of which an even larger share than previously did not have an “academic” background), is difficult to tell. Most likely, it was both. At any rate, the teaching was now organized in pre-packaged introductory courses in which lectures, seminars,

356 │ The transformation of humanities education

and colloquiums were designed to ensure progression. Since numerus clausus was still enforced (after 1990), these courses were only offered to students admitted to the faculty, and some of the classes even had mandatory attendance – a rarity since 1970. At the hovedfag level, a forum was introduced for new graduate students where they would write project proposals for their thesis work, another example of a procedure familiar from research projects which is now entering the curricular procedures as well. There were no major changes to the program plans themselves during the 1990s, however. But around the millennium, when student numbers were on a slow decline and the consequences of the massive expansion of the last decade was beginning to sink in, some telling adjustments were made. The fist noticeable change was a new presentation of the discipline as an introduction to the program plan. By 2000 it seemed a matter of course that such an introduction should explicitly take the research discipline as its point of departure, and only after analyzing its various components it comes around to the educational program: “The educational programs of general literature studies includes all of the major components of the discipline: literary texts from antiquity to our times, literary history, historical poetics and modern literary theory. It is a priority to provide students with insights into earlier and more recent research in the discipline.”

Interestingly, some key terms that were present when the hovedfag was established in 1988, but were edited out of the introduction to the discipline in the first half of the 1990s, now reappear in the very first sentence: Once again, the discipline “has an historical and comparative orientation.” Course offers in 2000 are much more varied and more research-driven than they were a decade earlier, at both Oslo and Tromsø. Especially at Tromsø is seems that newer theory and more specialized topics (”The flâneur,” “Landscape in literature,” etc.) have been introduced by younger research fellows, but there are several of the more experienced faculty that also seem eager to keep up with new developments. Unlike history and English studies, the traces of globalization in general literature studies around 2000 are still few. The newly revised program plan is explicitly focused on the Western literary tradition. The signs are there, however. In the fall of 2000 there is one graduate course at Oslo entitled “World literature.” Also, it is now possible for graduate students to apply for permission to write their theses in English or one of the other major European languages – even though it is underscored that it “is normally written in Norwegian.” Perhaps the most striking change in the program plan around the millennium concerns career options. As we have seen, there had previously been a tendency in

Genereal literature studies │ 357

the program plans to claim that the grunnfag program was of relevance for school teaching, and when the hovedfag was launched in the late 1980s, it was marketed as at least the first step towards a job in academic research. By 2000, after a decade of massification, it seems the realities in the labor market had become so obvious as to defy any pretentions. The two paragraphs in the section on “general literature studies in working life” are so different from the previous ones that they are worth quoting in full: “The educational programs in general literature studies do not provide a vocational education [yrkesutdanning]. But the training in textual analysis, the reflection upon the conditions for interpretation, and the handling of the literary inheritance that the discipline entails will qualify the students for a wide spectrum of tasks in society, for instance in publishing, public cultural administration, cultural journalism, and – in combination with other disciplines – in schools. Many fiction writers and poets have also studied general literature studies. Experience shows that a majority of the hovedfag candidates should be prepared for a longer period as temporary employees or as a freelancers after graduation. On the other hand, there is seldom a scarcity of available projects [oppdrag].”

What we have arrived at around the millennium, then, is a discipline that seems to be academically self-confident and organizationally resilient, thanks to the second wave of expansion, at the same time as it realizes that working life – including academic labor market in the discipline itself – now has little to offer its graduates, for precisely the same reason. As we shall see in part four, this situation and the dynamic that had produced it is not unique for general literature studies, but it is quite rare, if not exactly unique, to see it confronted head-on like this. Concluding remarks Norwegian general literature studies has come a long way from its origin in 19th century philology. Not unlike linguistics, it emerged as a site for specialized research into one of the sub-disciplines in the national philologies. Well into the 20th century it was mainly driven by the enthusiasm of individuals. While it did not produce researchers of international stature (as linguistics did), it had more success in establishing itself as a program for study, and as such it acquired an organizational platform whereby it could later expand in the research dimension. The magister degree, which was designed to ensure the self-recruitment of research disciplines, fulfilled precisely that function – but in a way that consumed all the resources and left almost nothing for the development of an actual research agenda.

358 │ The transformation of humanities education

It was only after the grunnfag was established in 1959 that general literature studies could expand in a way that allowed for a national system of disciplinary research to emerge. Explicitly subordinated to the civil service paradigm and the humanities faculty’s societal function of providing teacher education in the first period, general literature studies shed its role as a “service discipline” (to use Kittang’s term) in the 1970s, and in the late 1980s it used the graduate program of hovedfag to acquire the same status as the previously much larger school-oriented disciplines. Increasingly specialized in literary theory, the discipline became one of the major importing agencies for new ideas and schools of thought from the international academic scene, and especially from the late 1980s onwards, the research-oriented and theoretically inclined curriculum proved attractive to a large group of students. It had been a remarkable transformation. In the course of forty years the little brother had, largely through curricular developments, reached the same level as its academic siblings in size and stature, if not surpassed them.

15 Philosophy

Generally speaking, philosophy is not only the oldest of the humanities disciplines; it is arguably the oldest in all of academia. With a canon of texts dating back to classical antiquity, its status as a demarcated academic field was confirmed already by the time of the first medieval universities. Since later disciplinary developments are in many ways offspring from the trivium and quadrivium taught at the medieval philosophical faculties, it is even possible to speak of philosophy as the “origin” of the modern humanities. In the context of the comparatively young Norwegian academic culture, philosophy also enjoys a position of priority. When the University of Oslo was established in 1811, it was with the traditional four faculties of theology, law, medicine – and philosophy.651 However, on the model of the recently founded Berlin University, the idea was that the philosophical faculty should no longer be considered the “lower” faculty with a mainly propaedeutic function in relation to the “higher” professional faculties. On the contrary, it was supposed to provide the professional faculties with a rational footing, applying the Enlightenment instrument of critique, hence strengthening the professions’ relevance for social progress. At least this was the theory.652 As it turned out, however, philosophy in Norway retained its propaedeutic function for quite a while. Unlike the German development (where the philosophical faculty actually took the lead during the first half of the 19th century, not so much by realizing the programs of Kant or von Humboldt as by evolving into the discipli-

651 There had been initial debates about a new kind of university, with the number of faculties ranging from none to eight, but these innovations were all abandoned in the end. 652 The most comprehensive account of this period at Oslo is John Peter Collett, 18111870. Universitetet i nasjonen, Vol. 1, Universitetet i Oslo 1811-2011, ed. John Peter Collett (Oslo, Unipub, 2011).

360 │ The transformation of humanities education

nary Wissenschaft which would since dominate the universities) the new Norwegian university would for a long time be centered around the traditional function of training (or at least certifying) priests, lawyers, physicians – and teachers.653 Throughout the 19th century, Norwegian philosophy professors’ main official duty was to teach and examine a propaedeutic program that could be compared to the Anglo-American tradition of liberal arts. Beyond this program, no university education in philosophy was available in Norway until the doctoral degree became an option in the late 19th century, and, more importantly, when the magister degree was established in 1921.654 Even in the later 20th century, when the discipline of philosophy attained research ambitions in the modern sense, it remained highly contingent upon its teaching mission related to the propaedeutic program, which is still extant in a reformed and shortened version in Norwegian higher education.

15.1 PHILOSOPHY IN THE 19 TH CENTURY The beginning of academic philosophy in Norway is conventionally associated with the figure of Niels Treschow, one of the prime architects of the University of Oslo, and its first chair in philosophy. Due to his central role as one of the “founding fathers” of the Norwegian constitution in 1814, and subsequently as a minister of church affairs, his publications in philosophy as well as his other work has attracted much attention, but his tenure as a philosophy professor at Oslo was short, and his eclectic brand of philosophy had few (if any) immediate followers.655 In the decades following Treschow’s retirement from the philosophy chair, which happened already in 1814, it was difficult to find his replacement, and the position was filled mainly by Danish academics on a temporary basis. In addition to these, philosophy was taught by domestic notables like the classical philologist Georg Sverdrup and the poet Johan Sebastian Welhaven, neither of whom is remembered for original

653 Ibid. For the German development, see for instance Joseph Ben-David, Centers of Learning (NY: Transactions, 2002) and Charles E. McClelland, State, Society and University in Germany 1700-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). 654 Thor Inge Rørvik, Historien om examen philosophicum 1675-1983 (Oslo: Forum for universitetshistorie, 1999) 34. I owe a great debt to Rørvik’s study for much of the information in the outline offered here. 655 In 1963, H.O. Cristophersen calls him “the first and foremost” Nordic philosopher. As Treschow was a professor in philosophy at Copenhagen before he came to Oslo, the first epithet is not unreasonable, but the second is absurd. See H.O. Christophersen’s introduction to Niels Treschow, Menneskeværd og menneskevel (Oslo: Tanum, 1963) 5.

Philosophy │ 361

contributions to philosophy. In 1839, a position as lecturer was added to the chair to cope with the teaching load, and for the rest of the century there were only these two (more or less) permanent positions in philosophy at Oslo. The first Norwegian figure whose work and publications were primarily dedicated to academic philosophy was Marcus Jacob Monrad, who occupied the chair in philosophy at Oslo for half a century, from 1851 to 1897. During this period, philosophy in Norway became synonymous with Monrad’s somewhat idiosyncratic form of Hegelianism. Trained in theology, Monrad wrote extensively on the philosophy of religion, but he also published voluminous, systematic works in other branches of philosophy, such as aesthetics, metaphysics, and logic. The readership for such publications in Norway being very scarce, his major influence was probably though his textbooks for the propaedeutic program in philosophy, the teaching of which consumed much of his time. While Monrad’s seriousness as a philosopher was never questioned, his conservative stance on contemporary political and aesthetic matters, as well as his persona and writing style, attracted much criticism and ridicule, especially from the 1880s onwards, when he came to be seen as the personification of academic conservatism, and of backwardness in general. In the assessment of his successors, Monrad’s work, although expansive in duration as well as volume, had little positive influence on the further development of philosophy as a discipline in Norway.656 However, a development from Monrad’s period which had lasting importance for the discipline of philosophy in Norway was the series of transformations that the propaedeutic program underwent.657 Originally this had been a one-year undergraduate liberal arts program, under the name of examen philologico-philosophicum, consisting of classical philology, some natural science, and philosophy. A continuation of the subjects covered by the examen artium (which was simultaneously the final exam of Latin school and the university entry exam), the examen philologicophilosophicum was more commonly referred to as “the second exam,” (“anneneksamen”). It was modeled on a similar course at Copenhagen, and had to be passed before students could move on to professional training. The reforms of this program began around the mid-19th century, and were mostly initiated by Parliament and resisted by the university, especially by the philosophical faculty. A particularly drastic change was made in 1845, when classical

656 However, in other disciplines, mainly in the history of ideas but also among historians and literary scholars, there has been some interest in Monrad’s work in the late 20th century. See for instance Rune Slagstad, De nasjonale strateger, 25ff. 657 The following account of the propaedeutic program is based on Thor Inge Rørvik. Historien om examen philosophicum, 63ff.

362 │ The transformation of humanities education

philology was taken out of the curriculum altogether, while the role of the natural sciences was greatly expanded. The result was a program with the duration of one and a half years, consisting of mathematics, natural history, zoology, astronomy, physics, chemistry – and philosophy. After loud protests from the philosophical faculty and from students, this rigorous curriculum was loosened up somewhat in 1857, when some of the natural science subjects were made optional. Then, in 1875, a completely new arrangement made philosophy the only compulsory subject, in addition to five optional subjects to be chosen from a list of alternatives, of which at least one had to be from the humanities, and one from the natural sciences. Finally, in 1903, the program was redefined as one of two propaedeutic courses (the other being Latin) with the combined duration of one semester – this time consisting only of philosophy (although, as we shall see, a wider conception of philosophy than we have today). This trajectory of reforms has to be interpreted in the light of two contemporary processes of differentiation: the demarcation of the natural sciences from the humanities, and of university education from secondary school. The rather aggressive insistence on expanding the natural sciences in the examen philosophicum program plan to the exclusion of nearly everything else in 1845 had been motivated by the fact that there was nowhere else in the contemporary degree structure where these subjects could be taught. When a separate faculty for natural sciences had been established at Oslo in 1860, this stance could be relaxed. The natural sciences had come into their own, so to speak, and when in 1903 the whole examen philosophicum was reduced to one semester, it was even acceptable for the proponents of “modern subjects” to let philosophy be the only remaining propaedeutic subject (in addition to the comeback of Latin).658 Another important explanatory factor was the changed relationship between the university and secondary school (to use an anachronistic generic term). Traditionally, Latin schools had prepared pupils for university study, without any other vocational purpose. The university therefore knew exactly which subjects and which levels were appropriate for incoming students. But when school reformers around the second half of the century transformed secondary school – the gymnas – into an independent form of education (they were granted the right to administer the examen artium in 1883), pupils could either transfer directly to working life, or continue to different forms of higher education, for which they since 1869 received specialized preparation in different tracks. In this new situation, the question of

658 With this reform, the name of the program was changed from examen philosophicum to the “preparatory exam” (“forberedende prøve”), but since the Latin name was since reestablished, I will use it throughout this chapter to avoid unnecessary confusion.

Philosophy │ 363

which common academic platform to give them all at the entry level of university education became a difficult one. Having tried classical learning as well as the natural sciences as an “academic common ground,” the conclusion arrived at with the reform in 1903 was that only philosophy could serve this purpose. An additional rationale for this conclusion was that philosophy was not taught in Norwegian secondary school (and, since 1893, neither was Latin), and hence an introduction to these distinctly “academic” subjects could legitimately be made compulsory for all students. But not just any form of philosophy would do. After Monrad it was evident that teaching one man’s philosophical “system” (whether Hegel’s or Monrad’s or someone else’s) could no longer be legitimated. To make a long story short, three alternative avenues suggested themselves at the turn of the century – for the examen philosophicum, but also for the discipline of philosophy as such.659 The most obvious option was that philosophy could be taught in the form of its own history (although, as we shall see, there are several ways of going about this). Alternatively, although time constraints certainly prohibited comprehensiveness, one could seek to demonstrate for at least one of philosophy’s traditional branches the relevance to contemporary issues, either to the students’ academic interests, or to social affairs. A third viable alternative – strange as it might seem to us today – was to admit that traditional philosophy had been overcome by modern research, and, rather than resist the new experimental method, seek to reestablish philosophy on this new footing. The 1903 reform of the examen philosophicum was a compromise which incorporated all three of these avenues. It set the stage for the 20th century debates on the Norwegian discipline of philosophy by establishing a tripartite curriculum for the examen philosophicum, consisting of 1) the history of philosophy, 2) logic, and 3) psychology.

15.2 PHILOSOPHY IN THE 20 TH CENTURY The towering presence of Monrad in Norwegian philosophy had resulted not only from the (at least quantitative) magnitude of this oeuvre, but also from the fact that he was almost without competition. He was Norwegian philosophy. In the 1850s and 1860s he had Welhaven for a colleague, but Welhaven had so many other projects going that he was happy to teach Monrad’s textbooks, and his successor, Georg Vilhelm Lyng, was a devoted student of Monrad who shared the Hegelianism of the grand old man. The first signs of a departure from idealism came with

659 Thor Inge Rørvik, Historien om examen philosophicum, 123ff.

364 │ The transformation of humanities education

John Mourly Vold, who occupied the second chair from 1890 to 1907. Vold was also trained as a theologian, and did not publish much in philosophy except a dissertation on Spinoza, but he did introduce a topic that was to become important in the next phase of Norwegian philosophy, namely psychology. Psychology had been an integral part of Norwegian philosophy since the opening of the university, but what was new with Vold was his interest in an experimental approach, inspired by Wilhelm Wundt. Vold’s ideas were far from revolutionary, though. What he wanted was to combine the idealism of Monrad with the new experimentalism, which he did in works on dreams that were ridiculed by his students (but later cited favorably by Freud).660 The real break with Monrad, and a new beginning for Norwegian philosophy, came with Vold’s successor, Anathon Aall, and with his contemporaries, Arne Løchen and Harald K. Schjelderup. Together, these three followed through on Vold’s opening towards psychology to the extent that in the interwar period Norwegian philosophy in the old sense was almost completely eclipsed by psychology. In 1909 Aall managed to establish an institute of psychology at the university, and by 1928 the pull of psychology was so strong among Norwegian academic philosophers that when Schjelderup applied to have his chair changed to a chair in psychology, the other philosophers supported him. If the interwar psychology venture did not take over philosophy completely, it was certainly not due to a lack of enthusiasm. A more fundamental restraint was the lack of funds in the 1920s and 1930s, which, as we have seen for the other three disciplines, put quite severe restrictions on any academic ambition in the period.661 But the group was also anchored in a more traditional conception of philosophy through their teaching obligations in the examen philosophicum – which continued in the tracks laid out in 1903, retaining both logic and the history of philosophy. After the departure of Schjelderup, the situation for academic philosophy in Norway was precarious. Aall was the only remaining chair in philosophy in the country, and he was so far removed from philosophy in the traditional mode that he

660 See the entry on John Mourly Vold in Norsk biografisk leksikon, downloaded from https://nbl.snl.no/John_Mourly_Vold on 15.1.2016. 661 Given the entrepreneurial drive of Aall and his generation, and considering the flow of influences from the Continent in the early 20th century, it is not inconceivable that Norwegian philosophy might have developed into a modern disciplinary community in the interwar period if the organizational resources had been provided. However, the situation in Norway, with only to chairs, was very unlike the German-speaking area, where over a hundred professional philosophers were coordinated enough to sign a letter of protest against the hiring of psychologists as chairs in philosophy. Thor Inge Rørvik. Historien om examen philosophicum, 136.

Philosophy │ 365

advocated the abandonment of both the history of philosophy and logic from the examen philosophicum – which would have left only psychology. When Aall retired in 1938, one of his students, who had showed an interest in experimental psychology, was chosen as his successor.662 No doubt, Aall envisioned a continued development of philosophy in the direction of psychology.663 But on the eve of WWII, psychology had evolved into a separate discipline, and it was no longer possible to cover both disciplines beyond an elementary stage. Aall, Schjelderup, and others of their generation who had been trained in idealist philosophy were already bypassed by specialists, and Schjelderup’s textbook on psychology for the examen philosophicum (which remained popular among the students of that program) was being criticized as speculative and outdated by professional psychologists. Moreover, the new chair, Arne Næss, although still interested in psychology and supportive of empirical approaches, had since his graduation from Oslo received formative impulses during further studies in Vienna and California, where he had seen how philosophy could become a modern discipline in another direction. Upon his return to Oslo, Næss’ primary interest, and also his program for disciplinary philosophy, was centered not on psychology, but on language and logic. Immensely influential in Norwegian academia, Arne Næss’ long and variegated career is beyond the scope of this thumbnail history.664 Suffice it to say that with inspiration from logical positivism, Næss redefined Norwegian philosophy in the postwar era on the basis of a particular brand of practically oriented logic. His ambition, fueled by wartime experiences, was to use philosophy to cleanse not only academia but public discourse in general of shoddy and “metaphysical” rhetoric by

662 Standard application procedures at Oslo in this period still secured a place for the retiring chair in the appointment committee, which of course gave recruitment an academically conservative bias. 663 Karl Halvor Teigen has emphasized that, at least in Norway, this process of differentiation was not a case of psychology “emancipating” itself from philosophy: “Philosophy was to a large extent about the human soul, and so the adherents of “the new psychology” also called it “the new philosophy.” It was the new, exact, and measurable which was set against the old, hypothetical models of thought, not psychology contra philosophy.” Karl Halvor Teigen, “Den nye psykologien,” Klinikk og laboratorium. Psykologi i hundre år, eds. Siri Erika Gullestad, Bjørn Killingmo, and Svein Magnussen (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2009) 22. 664 For a good introduction to his academic legacy, see the articles in the special issue on Arne Næss of Filosofisk tidsskrift 1-2 (2002).

366 │ The transformation of humanities education

applying a set of simple but demanding argumentative rules.665 This gospel of rationality, conceptual precision, and logical stringency became highly influential among Næss’ students, many of whom later transferred to other disciplines, especially to the social sciences.666 Besides the supervision of a few magister students (about which more below) Næss’ major responsibility was teaching the large examen philosophicum classes. This propaedeutic program thus became an important vehicle for the shift from psychology to logic as the paradigmatic philosophical branch. As hinted at above, the curriculum from 1903 provided a structure which was open enough for Næss’ plans to be implemented without changing the formal regulations (a process which has always been fraught with difficulties). Psychology could be taught as before, only with less interest invested, whereas logic in the new form outlined in Næss’ textbooks took center stage. But when Ness tried to reinterpret the third leg of the examen philosophicum, the history of philosophy, in the light of the same problem-oriented, topical approach he had used in logic, he encountered resistance. Actually, the problems arose from a countermeasure that a group of professors who had been opposed to Næss’ candidacy as philosophy chair in the first place had been foreseeing enough to make shortly after his appointment. Fearing – not without reason, as it turned out – that the cultural and historical aspects of philosophy would be marginalized under Næss’ leadership, this group had advocated the establishment of separate chairs in the history of ideas and the culture of classical antiquity. And in 1946 funding for these chairs was actually provided – along with several other new chairs established in an effort to rebuild and renew the university after WWII. The two new chairs, A. H. Winsnes and Eiliv Eide, were charged with teaching the historical part of the examen philosophicum along with Næss, and so, during the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, a tug of war was on, especially between the (largely conservative, aesthetically oriented) history of ideas discipline and the (for the most part logical positivist, but increasingly diverse) discipline of philosophy. This debate has sometimes been pictured as a Swiftian battle of books, but it seems that on a day-to-day basis it played out very calmly, and in the 1950s the three professors and their two groups of students were even organized on one department – the Department of philosophy and the history of ideas – without much

665 See his textbook for the examen philosophicum, Arne Næss, En del elementære logiske emner, 11th ed. (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1982 [1941]). 666 See Fredrik W. Thue, “Empiricism, Pragmatism, Behaviorism: Arne Næss and the Growth of American-styled Social Research in Norway after World War II,” The Vienna Circle in the Nordic Countries, eds. Juha Manninen and Fredrich Stadler (Amsterdam: Springer, 2010).

Philosophy │ 367

fuss.667 The problem of how to teach the history of philosophy in the examen philosophicum was resolved pragmatically by allowing the students to choose between different variants. In the long run, however, the history of ideas developed into a discipline of its own, and although interdisciplinary relations with philosophy has prevailed (and at certain times organizational links, too), the outcome of the postwar debates was that Norwegian philosophy as a research discipline would concentrate on systematic rather than historical approaches.668

15.3 PHILOSOPHY AS RESEARCH 1960–2000 During the 1960s, Norwegian philosophy was transformed. In the previous pages I have sketched out several marked shifts in the discipline, from Hegelianism to experimental psychology to logical empiricism, and it has been possible – and meaningful, I will argue – to affix the names of particular chair-holders to each of these stages. What changed fundamentally in the 1960s was that the discipline, because of an unprecedented quantitative expansion, was suddenly able to allow for a simultaneous qualitative diversity. As we shall see, there are names of signal importance in this period of transition, too. But the outcome – not unlike the other disciplines I have discussed in previous chapters – is a national disciplinary community of philosophers from the 1970s onwards which is much less dependent in its systemic properties and operational dynamic upon the idiosyncrasies of particular individuals.669

667 At Oslo, the joint department was separated into two sections in 1960, and in 1966 the historians of ideas established their own department. When the two disciplines were later reunited in one department for a period in the 1980s and again in 2005, the department had acquired another, more administrative function for which critical mass, not disciplinary unity, was deemed important. 668 Differentiation, which has been the leitmotif of philosophy since the medieval period, is clearly operative in the 20th century Norwegian trajectory too. All of the three branches of philosophy which since 1903 formed the examen philosophicum forked into disciplines of their own. Psychology went experimental and left philosophy in the interwar period, although pockets of Freudianism and other humanist approaches survived. In the hands of Arne Næss, logic was developed into a positivist methodology for new behavioral sciences (mainly sociology and political science), and from the conflict regarding the history of philosophy arose the history of ideas as a distinct discipline. 669 Whether the quality of the philosophical work itself is more or less dependent upon individuals is a different matter.

368 │ The transformation of humanities education

There had been attempts to expand the discipline previously also. Soon after his appointment, Arne Næss had proposed to the university board that seven additional positions were needed to cover all the branches of philosophy.670 At the time, this was of course wholly unrealistic, and the proposal serves to indicate how little Næss knew about the university he had joined after spending much time abroad. The only additional permanent positions granted were the two chairs in the history of ideas in 1946 (which Næss supported, despite the more or less open agenda of countering his own brand of philosophy). Otherwise, Næss was alone with a small staff of temporary teaching assistants. The teaching load was mainly that of the examen philosophicum, as had been the case since the 19th century. There was also, since 1921, the graduate magister degree, but so far this was a very small program, with only about one graduate per year.671 However, as philosophy was not taught in secondary school, these magister candidates had no real alternative but to pursue academic careers, and considering that there was also a number of Norwegians who studied philosophy abroad, the recruitment situation in the late 1950s was actually not bad for what had hitherto been a small and specialized discipline. Thus, when a position as reader in philosophy was added at Oslo in 1954, there were no less than nine Norwegian applicants.672 Knut Erik Tranøy was appointed, but soon transferred to Bergen. A chair in philosophy had been established there soon after the university opened in 1946, and there had been qualified applicants, but in two rounds the appointed candidates had opted for chairs abroad.673 Thus it was only in 1959, when Tranøy arrived from Oslo, that a department of philosophy at Bergen came into operation. But in 1959, this was the full extent of academic philosophy in Norway: one chair, one reader and a handful of temporary staff and graduate students (plus the chairs in the history of ideas) at Oslo, and one chair and a handful of graduate students at Bergen. A little over a decade later, a national report on the status in humanities research gives the total number of faculty at the university departments of philosophy in 1973 as 44 (22 at Oslo, 10 at Bergen, 6 at Trondheim, and 6 at

670 Ingemund Gullvåg, “Arne Næss og Oslo-skolen i norsk filosofi,” Filosofi på norsk I, ed. Inga Bostad (Oslo: Pax, 1995) 105. 671 From 1921 to 1966 only 30 magister candidates in philosophy graduated from the University of Oslo. See Else Wiestad, “Kvinnene i norsk filosofi – var de der?” Filosofi på norsk I, 85-86. 672 Thor Inge Rørvik, Historien om examen philosophicum, 181. 673 Sidsel Aamodt, “Linjer i institutthistorien. Filosofisk institutt 1959-2009. Universitetet i Bergen,” (Bergen, UiB, 2009)3.

Philosophy │ 369

Tromsø).674 Compared to history and English, 44 is not a huge number, but it is clear from the above that the growth rate of Norwegian philosophy in the 1960s was tremendous. Of course, only a few of these 44 were full professors, but since the department structure had in the meantime been redefined as a democratic, bottomup forum, seniority was no longer what it used to be. The main driver for the expansion in personnel, as I have stressed throughout this study, was educational expansion. In the case of philosophy, this occurred on several levels. There was as always the examen philosophicum, which expanded at the rate of the overall number of new university students. There was also considerable growth in the magister program. I have already mentioned that only 30 magister students graduated between 1921 and 1966, but during the mere seven years from 1966 to 1973 the program produced another 34.675 However, the most important form of expansion was arguably in the new grunnfag programs, which allowed the discipline of philosophy to develop research-based teaching (which examen philosophicum had never really been) on a large scale and with a certain continuity (which the magister degree had never had). In the 1980s, this effect was further enhanced by the establishment of the hovedfag programs, which provided graduate studies in philosophy with a more structured framework than hitherto. The fact that philosophy became a popular discipline among Norwegian students in the 1960s cannot be explained by domestic factors alone. As I have stressed earlier, it had to do with the rise of youth culture in the 1950s, which in turn fueled the student protests of the 1960s – both of which were global phenomena.676 But some factors were particular for Norway. The examen philosophicum may of course have played a role in recruiting young people to further studies in philosophy. As in the case of general literature studies, free tuition and governmen-

674 NAVF’s utredningsinstitutt, Humaniora-utredningen. Del 8. Filosofi og idéhistorie i Norge (Oslo: NAVF, 1975) 120. Including historians of ideas and philosophers affiliated with other departments the report counts a total of 63 researchers. 675 According to Viggo Rossvær, who was a philosophy student in the 1960s and since became professor at Tromsø, there was an unofficial count of 112 magister students in philosophy at Oslo in 1968. Whether this was an accurate number, or was inflated for polemical purposes in the ongoing student protests, is hard to tell. At any rate, the number who graduated was nowhere near this number. But regardless of accuracy the reported number is an indication of how central philosophy was perceived to be for students of the period. Viggo Rossvær, “Fra Oslo-skole til studentrevolusjon,” Filosofi på norsk II, ed. Inga Bostad (Oslo: Pax, 1995) 61. 676 See the discussion of youth culture and student expansion in part two.

370 │ The transformation of humanities education

tal loan and stipend programs also facilitated a choice of studies which otherwise may have been deemed too risky for many with respect to career options. But in addition to exogenous factors, philosophy also held an attraction for many Norwegian students in the 1960s because it was at the heart of one of the most important intellectual debates of the postwar era, namely the Norwegian take on the Positivismusstreit. Briefly put, the Norwegian debate began in 1959 when Hans Skjervheim, later a professor in philosophy at Bergen, formulated an influential critique of Næss’ positivism, especially as regards the application of Næss’ position to the theory of the emerging social sciences.677 Prefiguring the position of the Frankfurt school in the German debate, Skjervheim marshaled (and reinterpreted) the Hegelian and phenomenological traditions in order to argue that the social sciences should not be modeled on the natural sciences, but should rather assume an historical and critical perspective. As in Germany and elsewhere, this position had affinities with intuitions among academics in many disciplines, and also in social movements outside academia, with repercussions I cannot go into here.678 It should be mentioned, however, that the Department of philosophy at Oslo in 1969 became the site of demonstrations directed at the reform proposals of the Ottosen committee (cf. part two) and at modern society in general, but also against academia (including philosophy) at the service of “technocracy.” Philosophy students were generally among the most active student protesters, and a considerable share of the staff also sympathized.679 In the narrower context of Norwegian philosophy considered as a research discipline, the longtime effect of this debate was bifurcation. A split emerged in the Norwegian discipline that over time has become roughly similar to the international (and controversial but seemingly indispensable) distinction between analytic and continental philosophy. Since the 1960s, Skjervheim has been cast as the godfather of the continental or “critical” tradition, whereas Næss has been given the role as arch-positivist, and in some ways (but not all) a founding figure for Norwegian analytic philosophy. In the period since 1970, variations on both of these strands,

677 The locus classicus for the Norwegian academic debate is Hans Skjervheim, Objectivism and the Study of Man (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1959). A more popular, and possibly even more influential text is Hans Skjervheim, “Deltakar og tilskodar,” Deltakar og tilskodar og andre essays (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1996 [1957]). 678 An overview of positions in the Norwegian academic debate is available in Rune Slagstad, Positivisme, dialektikk, materialisme. Den norske debatten om samfunnsvitenskapens teori (Oslo: Universitstsforlaget, 1976). 679 See e.g. Bjørn Hoelseth (ed.), Ideologien bak studentopprøret. Lærere og studenter drøfter ny-marxisme, universitet og samfunn (Oslo: Elinaard, 1969).

Philosophy │ 371

dispersed across the whole spectrum of sub-disciplines, have cohabited in Norwegian philosophy. The manner of coexistence has changed, however. If we compare two national reports on humanities disciplines from 1975 and 1984, it is striking that in the former, leading Norwegian philosophers speak of the discipline as marked by “quite deep differences of opinion about how philosophy should be conducted, and which topics are important” whereas the latter (after repeating the formulations in the former) emphasizes that “the difference between analytic and continental angles has been diminished in the past ten years” and speaks of the current situation as “characterized by pluralism, regarding both topics and styles of philosophizing.”680 Precisely how power balance of the two strands developed during the three last decades of the 20th century is a moot question, but I do not think it would be very controversial to say that continental philosophy (much of it with affinities to neo-Marxism) had the upper hand in the 1970s, that an equilibrium was reached in the mid-1980s (as the quote above attests), but that analytic philosophy (especially in the form of neo-Kantianism) has gradually taken over in the departments of philosophy. By the millennium, continental thinking had found more hospitable environments in other disciplines, such as the history of ideas and general literature studies – and some of the social sciences.681 As for the size of the discipline, its growth was halted in the late 1970s and the 1980s, but resumed again in the 1990s – for the same reasons I have discussed in part one. I have not been able to find very precise statistical records for the year 2000,682 but a recent national evaluation indicates that the four oldest universities in

680 NAVF, Humaniora-utredningen. Del 8. Filosofi og idéhistorie i Norge, 20; and NAVF, Humanistisk forskning i Norge. Eigenart, målsetjing og utviklingstendensar (Oslo: NAVF, 1984) 43. 681 At any rate, this is my impression from following some of the relevant literatures. As far as I know, no empirical studies have been made of the impact and spread of the two strands in Norwegian philosophy and neighboring disciplines. 682 I take this opportunity to mention the strange fact that no-one has yet written a comprehensive history of Norwegian academic philosophy. The two-volume work edited by Inga Bostad (see references above) gathers some interesting contributions, mostly in the form of reflective memoirs, but as a whole it gives a rather confusing picture of the discipline. A more recent contribution, Lars Fr. H. Svensen’s Hva er filosofi?, deliberately shuns the historical dimension: “There is no comprehensive Norwegian history of philosophy because there is hardly any such history to write. […] Norway is not a country which stands out on the world map of philosophy. The most unique characteristic of Norwegian philosophy is probably the high number of professional philosophers, which

372 │ The transformation of humanities education

Norway (Oslo, Bergen, Tromsø, and the NTNU) had between 100 and 150 full-time positions in philosophy in 2007.683 A more relaxed definition gives a total of 197 “scholars with a master level degree in philosophy” employed at the four universities.684 The numbers were most likely a little lower in 2000, but not much. At any rate, this means that by European standards, Norwegian university departments of philosophy around the turn of the century, especially at Oslo and Bergen, were quite large, and capable of covering many of the sub-disciplines from different angles.685 The cited report lists the following: aesthetics, epistemology, ethics, gender studies, logic, metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, phenomenology and existential philosophy, philosophy of education, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, social and political philosophy, and Wittgenstein studies. From this diversity, the history of philosophy, applied ethics, and Kant-studies are singled out as particularly strong fields in Norwegian philosophy, whereas logic is said to be relatively weak, as are meta-ethics and the history of philosophy between antiquity and the late 18th century.686 Formal organization has never been a particular strength (or interest) in the Norwegian discipline of philosophy. No national professional organization has been established, and cooperation among philosophy departments has been limited to the

is due to the demand for teachers in the examen philosophicum.” Lars Fr. H. Svensen, Hva er filosofi? (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2003) 13. 683 This seems to fit with an estimate made by Gunnar Skirbekk, chair in philosophy at Bergen, of around 50 positions at Oslo and 20 in Bergen in 1995, see Gunnar Skirbekk, “Vi er mange – og aparte,” in Inga Bostad, Filosofi på norsk I, 27. 684 NFR, Philosophy and history of ideas in Norway. Evaluation of research 2004-2008 (Oslo: NFR, 2009) 18-21. My rough estimate of 100 to 150 is based on figures for employees with a minimum of a philosophy master degree (and “unspecified education” which the report says most likely includes many philosophy masters and doctors from abroad) at the four university departments of philosophy, cf. p. 18. I have adjusted the estimate for the information on p. 21 about extensive use of part-time employees at Bergen. 685 Gunnar Skirbekk even makes the claim that the philosophy department at Oslo “are among the largest in the world.” Gunnar Skirbekk, “Vi er mange – og aparte,” 27. 686 NFR, Philosophy and history of ideas in Norway, 56-72. There is something strange about the categorizations here, however. If there is little work done on the history of philosophy between antiquity and the late 18th century, it is probably more adequate to say that classical philosophy, Kant-studies, and the history of modern philosophy are strong fields.

Philosophy │ 373

national disciplinary council under the Norwegian association of universities.687 It seems group formation has rather happened around journals, of which there has been several in the postwar era, e.g. Inquiry (est. 1958), Norsk filosofisk tidsskrift (est. 1966), and Agora (est. 1983). The two former concentrate on analytical philosophy (broadly conceived), while the latter – self-ironically subtitled “Journal for metaphysical speculation” – was established as an outlet for continental philosophy. As has been the case since the 19th century, funding provided for the teaching of the examen philosophicum has been crucial for the development of the national philosophy discipline. Without it, the discipline would hardly have attained this size and scope. But since at least the 1960s, the propaedeutic mission has probably been more important as a form of general academic Bildung than as a disciplinary concern governing the interests of the staff at the philosophy departments.688 As with the rest of the humanities, it was research (and graduate studies considered as research training) which eventually became the major focal points for academic philosophy in Norway in the late 20th century.

15.4 CURRICULA The first program plan for the grunnfag in philosophy at Oslo is in excess of 30 pages long, by far the longest in the Handbook for study at the Faculty of humanities in 1960. Although much of the space it taken up by presentations of a long list of elective topics and a 13-page alphabetical list of literature, the sheer volume of the document seems to indicate a certain disciplinary self-esteem. The opening paragraph strengthens this impression: “The majority of scientific and scholarly disciplines originate in philosophical research. In the history of science and scholarship, philosophy therefore has a central position. Among the

687 The lack of cooperation was criticized by the most recent evaluation, but this is hardly a new phenomenon. See NFR, Philosophy and history of ideas in Norway. 688 It is interesting to note in this connection that in Denmark the examen philosophicum was abandoned as a compulsory program in 1971 because it was seen by both politicians and radical students to be an expression of an outdated, conservative, and coercive academia, whereas in Norway the same kind of program was defended by a coalition of students and faculty as a stronghold of Bildung and social critique, effective weapons against “technocratic” reform initiatives.

374 │ The transformation of humanities education

latest to differentiate themselves from philosophy as independent disciplines are psychology and sociology.”

689

Upon closer inspection, however, what transpires from the introduction to the grunnfag program plan – all of which is concerned with mapping out the status of philosophy and its relationship to other disciplines – is that the discipline’s sense of, and projection of, centrality does not so much arise from self-assured autonomy as from an eagerness to impact and be of use to other disciplines, and to the academic world at large. Knowing the background outlined above, one also gets the impression that the disciplinary self-reflexivity results from a sense of pressure – a pressure to reformulate philosophy’s function at a time when many of the traditional tasks are taken over by newer disciplines. According to the program plan of 1960, philosophy has two major functions. On the one hand it aspires to “attain a comprehensive and integrative perspective or overview of human thought and experience.” This is important because “the other disciplines move in the direction of increased specialization. Philosophy is one of the few (maybe the only) discipline that offers systematic opportunities to counteract and ameliorate the harmful consequences of this tendency towards specialization.” The other function of philosophy is “to contribute to the clarification of questions which often arise at the intersections between two or more single disciplines. Philosophy in this way becomes a natural site for work on certain ‘surplus problems’ [‘overskuddsproblemer’] which it is not convenient, for methodological or other reasons, to address within the confines of other disciplines.” It seems, then, that philosophy in Norway around 1960 was in a peculiar and somewhat awkward position when presenting itself to a larger audience of students. Historically, it clearly took precedence over other disciplines, and since the neohumanists in the 19th century it had also enjoyed a rather prestigious standing, at least in the academic world. The aura of this position still lingered, even after the rise of the natural and social sciences, and even in a country where history clearly had much stronger cultural impact.690 But now philosophy had no turf of its own anymore, and was thus mainly defined by what other disciplines could not do: achieve “comprehensiveness,” and address “surplus problems” which did not belong to anyone else’s jurisdiction. These, however, are presented – in a quietly heroic tone – as “tasks that are no less important than those [philosophy] has had in the past.”

689 See note 114 above for reference to the cited archival material. 690 As evidenced by the change of name at Oslo from the Philosophical faculty to the Historical-philosophical faculty in 1861.

Philosophy │ 375

The curricular structure of the grunnfag in 1960 consists of a compulsory and an elective part. The compulsory part is made up of three sections: 1) selections from textbooks in the history of philosophy (extending the reading from the propaedeutic examen philosophicum) and in “contemporary (analytical) philosophy,” 2) selections from textbooks in “logic, semantics and methodology”; and 3) one original work of philosophy (subject to change each semester). The available special topics are: “the history of philosophy, logic, methodology, epistemology, contemporary philosophical schools, ethics, or political philosophy.” Upon choosing one of these, the grunnfag student was to select a combination of textbooks and original philosophical works, subject to detailed restrictions. As regards career opportunities, the program plan is utterly silent. There is no mention of the teaching profession, not even to say – as does the program plan for general literature studies – that unlike most grunnfag programs this one does not contribute towards a degree in teacher education. Neither is there any reference to career options in academic research, or in any other field. Some general reflections concerning the combination of philosophy and other disciplines towards a degree are offered, however. The introduction closes by emphasizing that “the gains of a philosophical education are not exclusively philosophical. It often becomes fruitful and stimulating for other disciplines one is engaged with as well.” This notion of being a service-program for other disciplines is particularly highlighted in the section on the special topic of “methodology [metodelære]”, where it is explicitly recommended that students (i.e. those choosing this topic) should ideally come to philosophy towards the end of their degree. The soundness of this advice is evidenced by the reading list under the heading of methodology, which consists of highly specialized literature on single disciplines, such as Ottar Dahl’s doctoral dissertation on historiography (which at this time was considered too advanced for both grunnfag and hovedfag students in history),691 Einstein and Infeld’s The Evolution of Physics, and Durkheim’s Régles de la methode sociologique. Another philosophical special topic that is explicitly related to the study of other disciplines is ethics. At least the normative part of ethics is, according to the program plan, “a practical discipline in the sense that it first and foremost deals with human agency. A certain social science orientation is therefore useful.” Students are therefore required to choose a work from the disciplines of psychology, sociology, or anthropology.

691 Grunnfag students in history were instead assigned a lighter textbook by Langholm, while hovedfag students read Dahl’s more advanced textbook (to some extent based on the dissertation). See the section on the discipline of history above.

376 │ The transformation of humanities education

As we shall see, the attempt on the part of philosophy to take the role as the keeper of advanced methodology on behalf of the other disciplines soon had to be abandoned. As other disciplines developed their own internal discourses for theoretical and methodological reflection, philosophy could quite simply not keep up, and for educational purposes had to content itself with more general “philosophy of science,” which has grown more and more isolated from actual scientific methodology.692 With ethics, however, it seems philosophy has had more success in carving out a niche of its own, and this branch has consequently been kept on in the curriculum. The last special topic I would like to comment on is the one entitled “contemporary philosophical schools.” What is remarkable about this part of the 1960 curriculum is the extent to which it exposes students to some of the most advanced of fairly recent philosophical work. Students are required to read a textbook (in German) and six original works chosen (according to some rules of representativeness) from seven “schools” (phenomenology, existentialism, neo-Thomism, contemporary analytical philosophy, logical empiricism, dialectical materialism, and non-Western philosophy). There is nothing “undergraduate” about the texts on the reading list, which includes Husserl, Heidegger, Camus, Sartre, Moore, von Wright, Ayer, Marx, Stalin, and Hiriyanna. To sum up, then, the grunnfag program plan in philosophy at Oslo in 1960 is clearly at pains to define the territory covered by the discipline for curricular purposes. Its proclamation of being able to provide a unity for all of academia remains for the most part a postulate, and the attempts to take it seriously – as for instance in the case of the special topic of methodology – ends up with the form of specialization it is designed to combat. The general impression of the grunnfag program is also that – even though half of the curriculum is compulsory – it allows for a much higher degree of specialization than the other humanities disciplines, and, furthermore, it does so in a way which is almost completely determined by developments in academic philosophy.693 Unlike the grunnfag programs in history, English, and general literature studies, then, philosophy grunnfag starts out already in 1960 as a firmly research-oriented program.

692 The exceptions are under-theorized disciplines or professions which tend to subscribe to generalized and mostly outdated notions of “the philosophy of science” in their efforts to achieve a higher academic standing. 693 However, the reading list at this time still admits some works by non-philosophers, either to illustrate ideological positions (Stalin, Hitler), or because they concern other disciplines and are of a sufficiently abstract nature to be classified as philosophical (such as the mentioned works by Dahl and Durkheim).

Philosophy │ 377

The program plan for philosophy grunnfag is revised already in 1964. The most important change is a further expansion of elective special topics – from seven to twelve. The additions are: semantics (which corresponds loosely to what today would have been called the philosophy of language); metaphysics and ontology; the philosophy of religion; aesthetics; and the philosophy of pedagogy. Quite a few changes are made in the reading lists for the first seven special topics – for a variety of reasons, it seems.694 But the broad tendencies remain the same, and the contents of all twelve special topics in 1964 display roughly the same degree of abstraction and specialization as previously. The compulsory part of the curriculum is essentially the same, although not identical. As regards the general presentation of the discipline, the phrasing has been slightly changed, but the dual structure of the discipline remains intact: Philosophy is “the mother of science” with a responsibility for providing a “holistic” perspective; at the same time it is a discipline in its own right with its particular kinds of research problems. According to the program plan, these problems are still found at the intersections between disciplines, but they are now presented as “fundamental problems [grunnlagsproblemer]” rather than “surplus problems [overskuddsproblemer].” There is still no mention of career options in 1964, presumably because there is not much that can be said on the matter. The silence might also be an indication that the program’s orientation towards research was obvious, and that no one mistook the program for something it was not. Although several of the new elective topics may seem to flow from a continued intent to be of service to other disciplines (such as pedagogy, aesthetic disciplines, political science, etc.), only a few comments are made in this regard. From the way the program plan presents them, most of the special topics actually seem to be designed from a distinctly “philosophical” perspective. Developments 1970-1985 In the 1970s, the diversity or differentiation of the grunnfag at Oslo became even more pronounced. In 1970 the program plan stated that “in principle, the option of adding new special topics is open,” and by 1980 there were 21 of them. Among the additions were: dialectics, the philosophy of nature, the philosophy of jurispru-

694 For instance, the former category of methodology has been renamed “philosophy of science and methodology [vitenskaps- og metodelære],” and the weight is now much more on general philosophy of science (Popper and Kuhn are both in place) than on methodological issues pertaining to single disciplines – even if there is still an opening for the latter.

378 │ The transformation of humanities education

dence, ecological philosophy, ancient philosophy, and “great philosophers and systems.” Some of these were no doubt added because of student demand (which in turn reflected the contemporary social and cultural preoccupations), whereas others seem to have grown out of internal disciplinary developments. However, philosophy’s duty to preserve the unity of science was still stressed in the introductory section, and certain curricular measures were taken to contain, if not counteract, disciplinary specialization. First and foremost, there was still a compulsory syllabus, and introductory lectures and seminars to go with it. During the 1970s this syllabus was expanded, with more attention paid to the history of philosophy (in the form of a canon of great philosophers, and also a number of philosophical cruxes and arguments associated with these). At this time, more recent works from the continental tradition (e.g. Habermas and Horkheimer) were also included in the philosophy of science section. Secondly, the program plans gradually developed innovative ways of categorizing the specialisms. These merit a few comments. In 1964, when there were 12 special topics, there was an accentuation of four of them which were “especially central.” These were logic, epistemology, metaphysics, and the history of philosophy. When the number of special topics had risen above 20 in the late 1970s, they were grouped under a handful of “major fields.” Under each of these fields, which were essentially generic key words (“thinking and language,” “knowledge,” “reality,” “praxis,” “man,” and “philosophy and history”) there was a list of between two and five special topics. The first four of the major fields contained the four special topics that were now considered to be the most central to the discipline: logic, epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics (which had now replaced the history of philosophy). In this way, new specialisms were allowed to mushroom, while an emerging disciplinary structure kept things in place. For instance, under the main field of “reality” the following special topics are listed: metaphysics, the philosophy of religion, aesthetics, and the philosophy of nature. While metaphysics has remained at the center of the curriculum (as we shall see below), the other tree have turned out to be more peripheral (or more interdisciplinary) specialisms of relevance mainly for postgraduate research, at least at Oslo. The same could be said for the field “praxis,” which lists ethics fist, and then political philosophy, social philosophy, the philosophy of law, and ecological philosophy [økofilosofi]. As we shall see below, there are interesting continuities but also significant changes in the categorization of sub-disciplines and specialisms in Norwegian philosophy. As mentioned in the first part of this chapter, the first department of philosophy to be established outside Oslo was at Bergen in the late 1950s. Tromsø and Trondheim followed suit in the early 1970s. Tromsø, which I shall have a closer look at here, began teaching philosophy at the grunnfag level in 1973. The program plan

Philosophy │ 379

from that year is on the one hand more traditional than the one at Oslo, staying fairly close to the established canon of great philosophers, but it also contains more recent contributions in the continental tradition, e.g. Habermas and Marcuse, and the contemporary Norwegians Skjervheim and Hellesnes. All four of these were highly popular with Norwegian students at the time. Not unlike Oslo, the presentation of the discipline at Tromsø is torn between a traditional approach – it explicitly refers to “rationality” as philosophy’s defining characteristic – and a more iconoclastic one, evidenced for instance in a strong emphasis on a “critical approach.” It seems this was before it became a widespread notion in Norwegian philosophy that criticism could be applied to the ideal of rationality itself.695 As at Oslo, there is no mention in the program plan of any vocational aims or career options. However, the research-orientation of the program is fairly explicitly articulated. The research profile of the department is outlined (and described as diverse, including analytical, existential, phenomenological, and dialectical philosophy), and students are advised that “[c]ourses will be closely related to ongoing research.”696 By the early 1980s, the grunnfag at Tromsø had developed in much the same way as at Oslo. In the revised program plan of 1981, elective special topics had multiplied, and although many of them belonged to the disciplinary core branches, some were explicitly designed to approach other disciplines and academic fields (e.g. topics like “social science” and “natural science”). The seminars on offer also reflected this tendency, with titles such as “The philosophy of law,” “Aesthetics,” and – more specialized still – “Philosophy and laughter.” The volume of reading was 2000 pages, of which 800 pages were compulsory and 1200 pages elective. Interestingly, the presentation of philosophy as a discipline in the program plan at Tromsø in the early 1980s is much more focused on individual development and personal growth than was the case at Oslo. Philosophy is said to address the prospective student’s “attempt to arrive at clarity, overview, and coherence in [his or her] own life.” A disclaimer is soon made, however. Students cannot expect to find readymade “solutions” to such problems in the academic study of philosophy. As for vocationalism, the situation in the early 1980s is still the same as in the 1970s, and similar to what we have seen at Oslo. However, unlike Oslo, the department at Tromsø would turn out to be slightly more influenced by the general 1980s tendency towards vocationalism, especially by the effort to gear curricula towards per-

695 Seven years later, in 1980, the course catalogue at Oslo listed a seminar entitled “The philosophy of science: the negative character of rationality.” 696 As a newly established department, Tromsø had a young staff, recruited to a large extent from Bergen and Oslo.

380 │ The transformation of humanities education

ceived demands in secondary school. Thus, from the mid-1980s a new elective special topic entitled “philosophy of life [livssyn]” is introduced at the grunnfag level, with the specific intent of meeting the competency criteria for teaching a relatively minor and elective subject of this name in lower secondary school (ungdomsskolen). But of course, the introduction of this single curricular unit cannot be compared to the effort we saw in the case of English studies (and to some extent in history) to shift the direction of the entire curriculum. The syllabus for the special topic is thoroughly research-oriented, and contains only one title which could actually have been taught in lower secondary school.697 According to the program plan, the topic had a general philosophical aim as well as a vocational one: It should be “understood both as a general concern for us as human beings and as a subject taught in secondary school.” Philosophy at Oslo was not entirely exempt from the 1980s vocationalism, either. As previously mentioned, all program plans at Oslo from 1982 had to include a section on “recommended program combinations and career options [fagkombinasjoner og yrkesmuligheter]”. In the program plan for the grunnfag in philosophy in 1982, this section opens with the following remark: “Philosophy is a discipline which should preferably be studied con amore, a fact which is also signaled by the discipline’s name.” This attitude was probably regarded as too nonchalant, because the next year it is edited out, while the body of the text is left standing. In the remaining text what had previously been implicit is now made very clear: “Philosophy is not directed towards a particular vocation, but is a typical generalist discipline of greater or lesser relevance to most other disciplines.” In contrast to several other humanities disciplines that were tempted to over-sell the relevance of their programs for the graduates’ future careers, the Oslo philosophy department displays an unusual degree of realism and restraint in this section. The option of using philosophy as a means to achieve competency as a teacher (in the subject “philosophy of life”) is qualified with informed advice on which other disciplines to study, and the “generalist” profile is not overstated as a ticket to all kinds of careers. Career opportunities in the civil service, in publishing, or in the media are said to “presuppose that [the program in philosophy] is combined with experience from organizational work or similar practice.” I shall return to the question of career trajectories for humanities graduates in part four, where I will specifically discuss how in the 1980s things changed in the relationship between humanities education

697 A Norwegian 1958 existentialist bestseller by a young philosophy student, Gunnar Skirbekk, Nihilisme? Eit ungt menneskes forsøk på å orientere seg (Oslo: Grundt Tanum, 1958).

Philosophy │ 381

and the world of work, bringing questions of generic competencies and open-ended careers to the fore. Developments 1985-2000 The next major step in the curricular development of Norwegian philosophy was the establishment of the hovedfag programs. The magister degree had provided an opportunity for graduate study in philosophy since the 1920s, and in the postwar period a considerable number of magister candidates had graduated. However, it was only with the hovedfag that graduate study in philosophy experienced organized “massification.” At Oslo, the hovedfag in philosophy was first offered in philosophy in 1985 – several years before general literature studies, we may notice. According to the first program plan, the hovedfag provides “greater breadth in philosophical knowledge” than undergraduate study. More specifically, it “aims first and foremost to provide a disciplinary foundation for independent philosophical work, in such a way that the internalization [tilegnelsen] of the philosophical tradition makes students capable of posing basic philosophical questions in the contexts of both research and everyday life, and to discuss them according to disciplinary standards, for instance regarding ethical and aesthetical values, as well as norms, argumentation, rationality, and communication.”

In addition to what is said in the abovementioned general section on career options (a text which remains unchanged for many years) the program plan for hovedfag emphasizes that students will acquire the competency needed for teaching the examen philosophicum (which is at this time a realistic opportunity), and also for teaching philosophy in secondary school (which is less realistic) and at universities and university colleges (which might reasonably be entertained as a long term plan, since the PhD is gradually becoming a requirement, as least for tenured positions). As regards content, the syllabus for the hovedfag is around 4000 pages, and allows for considerable freedom of choice (but subject to a set of restrictions). The curriculum is divided into four parts: 1) the history of philosophy, 2) main orientations in 20th century philosophy, 3) contemporary “systematic philosophy [systematisk filosofi],” and 4) the hovedfag thesis. The first two of these are fairy traditional elements, consisting of the canon of great philosophers, and a list of more recent “schools.” The third element captures an interesting curricular development. The term “systematic” had been used in Norwegian philosophy primarily in contradistinction to an historical approach. Now, the “systematic” curriculum is divided into four parts, which actually corresponds to the “special topics” which since the late

382 │ The transformation of humanities education

1970s had been presented as the most essential to the discipline: 1) logic and the philosophy of language; 2) epistemology and the philosophy of science; 3) metaphysics; and 4) ethics. One interpretation of this structural change in the curriculum is that Norwegian philosophy, especially at Oslo, was now beginning to deal with the split between analytical and continental philosophy by relegating the latter to be handled historically, while the former would provide the actual research foundation for the discipline, under the name of “contemporary systematic philosophy.” Below we shall see how this disciplinary structure was implemented at the grunnfag level some years later. At Tromsø, the hovedfag was first offered in 1988. As usual, the general outline of the program plan is not very different from the one at Oslo. There are units on the history of philosophy, and on more recent schools. A slight departure is more weight put on “practical philosophy.” This may have had to do with the issue of vocational opportunities, which receives more attention than previously, and also as compared to Oslo. The option of using the hovedfag in philosophy to be certified as lektor (teacher in secondary school) is foregrounded.698 Research as a career is also explicitly mentioned – the program “provides a foundation for research training.” In general, the impression is that Tromsø, as a small university operating in an area with much fewer jobs for academically trained people than Oslo, by necessity must be somewhat more adaptable to “external” concerns. Nevertheless, disciplinary developments clearly have the upper hand, and the program plan is firmly founded on disciplinary research – to some extent also on the specific research interests of the staff. Judging from the hovedfag section in the course catalogue in 1985, Habermas was clearly one such interest, as was “Philosophy and medicine.” In 1992 the grunnfag at Oslo was completely revised. As we know, this was at a time when students again were flooding the Norwegian humanities, and the changes in the program plan must be interpreted in the light of the increased teaching load. The rather extreme degree of specialization (with 22 special topics to choose from in the years prior to the revision) was reversed completely. The new program plan is neatly divided into four equally large and compulsory units which are taught and examined separately, namely: “1) metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, 2) epistemology and the philosophy of science, 3) ethics and practical philosophy, and 4) logics and the philosophy of language.” As we can see, these are roughly the same as the four branches I have traced above. Three of them were identified as especially central in the discipline already in the grunnfag program plans in the

698 As I have repeatedly stressed, this was technically correct, but nevertheless a very unlikely career trajectory. However, it might be that it was less unlikely in the north of Norway, due a perennial lack of qualified teachers there.

Philosophy │ 383

1960s, and all four came to define “contemporary systematic philosophy” at the hovedfag level from 1985. Now, in 1992, they are not only the structural principle in the new program plan for grunnfag; in the introductory presentation of the discipline (which has also been completely revised), they are presented as the four pillars on which the Norwegian discipline of philosophy rests. The hegemony of the “systematic” or problem-oriented perspective is evident in the way each of the four areas are presented by way of a long list of questions, of the kind “What is being?”; “What is knowledge?”; “How should we act?” and “What is meaning?” The history of philosophy is now gone as a separate curricular unit at the grunnfag level.699 Of course, ancient Greek, medieval, and early modern philosophical works are still on the syllabus, but only within the frameworks of the four units, and studied for the positions that can be derived from them on particular philosophical “problems” that are deemed important from a “systematic” perspective. One could probably interpret this as belonging to a general movement of Norwegian academic philosophy in the 1990s, especially at Oslo, in the direction of the analytical mainstream of the international discipline, whereas the various currents of continental thinking, which had always been more interested in historicity, were gradually marginalized (even though there were some exceptions, e.g. the Norwegian Habermasians).700

699 As we know, new students would have some elementary knowledge of the history of philosophy from the examen philosophicum. 700 One possible explanation for this development is that many Norwegian philosophers perceived recent continental philosophy (especially in the French post-structuralist tradition associated with such figures as Foucault, Derrida, and Latour) to be too irresponsibly constructivist in epistemology and too metaphorical in style for a “serious” academic discipline to build paradigms for research on. Traditionally based on logic rather than on rhetoric, the Norwegian discipline of philosophy found no use for a school of thinking which did not even attempt to construct logically consistent “positions,” but insisted instead on arriving at self-reference and aporia. Partly because the continental tradition was largely rejected by philosophy, a neighboring discipline – the history of ideas – could take off in Norway by investing massively in it, especially in Foucault. The success of the history of ideas in Norway in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, measured by student numbers but also by research output and general cultural impact, was probably also enhanced by the resistance to French theory in the mainstream of the discipline of history (again, with some notable exceptions). It would have been interesting to make a comparative study of how French continental thinking (especially Foucault) impacted the boundary-work in the disciplines of philosophy, history, the history of ideas in Norway, but this is unfortunately not possible within the scope of

384 │ The transformation of humanities education

An interesting feature of the new grunnfag program plan at Oslo is the examination format. First of all, the four units were taught, examined, and marked separately (two each semester).701 This was clear departure from the Norwegian tradition, which had insisted on the unity of the grunnfag (and before that, the bifag) and on the need students had to undergo a prolonged process of maturation, a line of reasoning that would often refer to the German Bildung tradition. Moreover, students were now required to submit short essays of 5 pages in each unit, before being allowed to present themselves for a relatively short (four hour) unit exam. Essay-writing had been introduced in philosophy in the 1970s, with optional papers ranging from 5 to 25 pages, with requirements regarding notes and bibliography. To make them mandatory was a big step, however, partly because it signaled a departure from the Lernfreiheit ideology, and also because it could be expected to increase the staff’s workload in marking the essays. As mentioned previously, these two (the ideology, and the guard against teaching overload) were probably related. However, the increased workload was mitigated by the function the mandatory essays had in preventing immature students from presenting themselves for the exams. Moreover, with a sizeable hovedfag program in operation, the pressure on tenured staff could be alleviated by using graduate students to teach and mark essay-writing seminars – just as we have seen in the case of general literature studies. At any rate, to assign the writing of problem-oriented essays definitely went well with the movement towards conceiving the practice of philosophy as systematic “research work.” At Tromsø, the grunnfag was also revised in the 1990s, in the same general direction as at Oslo, but not to the same extent. Grunnfag students there were still allowed to choose special topics, but the range of options was reduced, and available topics were kept within the mainstream of the discipline. The sub-disciplines outlined in the program plans of 1990 and 2000 are similar to the corresponding ones at Oslo (but grouped somewhat differently): “metaphysics/ontology,” “the philosophy of mind,” “ethics,” and “social philosophy.” In addition there is the philosophy of science, which is subdivided into “the humanities” and “the natural sciences.” Interestingly, the special topic in “the philosophy of life” designed

the current work. However, see Bjarne Riiser Gundersen, Da postmodernismen kom til Norge (Oslo: Flamme, 2016). 701 The modularization of the grunnfag was not allowed to go too far, however, and it was only possible to use the credits for the four units when all of them were successfully completed – i.e. it was not possible for regular degree-seeking students to choose only ethics, for instance.

Philosophy │ 385

(ostensibly) for future teachers, has been discontinued by 1990, signaling a farewell to the vocationalist venture – at least to the one directed at school teaching. The last significant development in the period covered by this study is the revision of the hovedfag at Oslo in 1994. We noted above that when it was established in 1985, the hovedfag program was aimed at providing “greater breadth of philosophical knowledge.” Seen in retrospect, this is somewhat surprising. Usually breadth is provided by undergraduate study, while graduate programs aim for specialization. However, in 1985 the grunnfag was highly specialized (to some extent, this was also the case for the intermediate programs of mellomfag and storfag, not discussed here), and the department therefore seems to have used the graduate program to make sure their candidates completed their graduate degree with a well-rounded understanding of the whole of philosophy as a discipline.702 After the revision of the grunnfag in 1992, however, the situation was changed. Now the grunnfag provided a comprehensive and compulsory overview of all the four areas which were considered central to the discipline, in its largely systematic/analytic orientation, and specialization was only allowed at the intermediate level. The rationale for keeping the breadth at the hovedfag level was therefore gone, and the revision in 1994 accordingly opened up for specialization. The new program plan for hovedfag divides the curriculum into four parts: two special topics, an elective syllabus in conjunction with the thesis, and the thesis itself. A list of special topics is provided by the department, categorized under the four major branches discussed above. The curricular unit on the history of philosophy has been removed; from now on, the whole trajectory from undergraduate to graduate study in philosophy is based on a systematic approach. As in the discipline of general literature studies (cf. the previous chapter), the modules of special topics are the same for the intermediate level and the graduate level – thus allowing for

702 Before the establishment of the hovedfag in 1985, the undergraduate half-year programs mellomfag and storfag in philosophy had served a similar function as the mellomfag in general literature studies had done; they offered grunnfag candidates an opportunity for more advanced and in most cases also more specialized study, without necessarily having to pursue graduate studies in this discipline. At the same time, it gave the staff and the discipline, which had traditionally been occupied mainly with teaching loads at an elementary level, increased opportunities to direct its attention towards problems at a slightly more advanced level. But as noted above, the grunnfag program in philosophy already allowed for much specialization (unlike the canon-based grunnfag program in general literature studies), and hence the program plans for mellomfag and storfag in philosophy contained certain restrictions explicitly designed to ensure a measure of breadth – in addition to depth.

386 │ The transformation of humanities education

coordinated teaching of these two student groups. A measure of breadth is ensured by a requirement that students who have not chosen a special topic listed under “Ethics and practical philosophy” at the intermediate level, must do so at the graduate level. At Tromsø, the hovedfag program is not as fundamentally altered in the 1990s as we have seen at Oslo. Compulsory elements are maintained in the program plan throughout its first twelve years, and the opportunities for specialization are somewhat restricted. This does not preclude the appearance of fairly research-driven graduate seminars (on topics such as feminist theory and eco-philosophy) in the course catalogues of the late 1990s. If we were to emphasize similarities, we could perhaps say that the outcomes of the curricular trajectories at the two philosophy departments at the turn of the century were grunnfag programs which offered non-vocational generalist education composed of reading material from stabilized sub-disciplines, studied from a systematic approach and using a combination of textbooks and original canonical works, including some fairly recent ones. The graduate programs (and intermediate programs), however, were relatively specialized and explicitly oriented towards further research work. Were we to emphasize differences, it should be mentioned that the balance between breath and in-depth study was more evenly distributed across the levels at Tromsø than at Oslo. Secondly, the bias in favor of a systematic approach (and a corresponding weakening of the historical perspective) seems to have been somewhat more pronounced at Oslo. Concluding remarks As an ancient intellectual tradition with a vast canon of works, philosophy may seem guaranteed a place in the groves of academe, if only out of veneration for its glorious past. But as we have seen, the precise rationale for its continued existence has been a vexed problem throughout the 20th century in Norway. At one point in the interwar period, the Norwegian branch even seemed willing to give itself up in order to strengthen psychology, which would presumably have relegated the old canon of philosophical works to the history of ideas. When academic philosophy in Norway did not disappear (or shrink to an insignificant size), it was to a large extent due to the continued importance of the examen philosophicum, which in changing forms has sustained Norwegian philosophy for more than two centuries.703

703 In 2002, when a major reform of Norwegian higher education was underway, Dagfinn Føllesdal left no doubt about this: “The greatest danger for our philosophical discipline

Philosophy │ 387

For several decades after WWII, philosophy’s main function was to be of service to the rest of academia, partly as the provider of the propaedeutic program, and partly as a site for methodological and theoretical reflection on foundational problems in other disciplines. But as we have seen, in the later decades of the 20th century it turned out to be possible, after all, to establish philosophy as a research discipline in its own right, and to have autonomous educational programs affiliated with it. Like the three other disciplines studied here, philosophy attained systemic properties as a research discipline only when a national network of researchers came into existence following the influx of students in the 1960s. But unlike the other disciplines, where we have seen the impact of disciplinary research on the curriculum gradually increasing during the forty years covered in this study, the grunnfag program in philosophy was research-oriented and specialized already in 1960. One reason why this was possible was the lively intellectual milieu that had gathered around Arne Næss in the 1950s, inspired by wide reading in the international philosophical literature. Unlike the other disciplines, philosophy could also build directly upon the examen philosophicum, which was at once a perfect recruitment mechanism and an introductory course which heightened the entry-level of the grunnfag. Paradoxically, a third reason seems to have been that philosophy through the grunnfag could present itself as a service-discipline to other disciplines, rather than a self-sufficient and free-standing form of education. As an infra-academic venture, the program was not obliged to provide overarching goals (not even in the form of a contingency formula), or to demonstrate its societal “usefulness.” It could allow students to specialize in various directions, trusting the legitimation to rest with the other disciplines the students happened to choose. It probably also facilitated specialization – especially in the direction of systematic/analytical philosophy – that the historical dimension beyond the introductory level of the examen philosophicum fell under the purview of another discipline, the history of ideas. Systematic/analytical philosophy was by no means the only orientation in Norwegian philosophy, however. From the late 1960s to a least the late 1980s, varieties of continental philosophy also attracted the attention of many students and teachers, and contributed to an increase in the number of possible specializations. Of course, social movements of various kinds fueled these interests, especially in the 1970s. As regards discipline formation, the effect of this extra-academic impact seems to have been twofold. On the one hand it made a lot of people flock to philosophy,

is the closing of the examen philosophicum.” Dagfinn Føllesdal, Næss, examen philosophicum og Filosofisk institutt,” Norsk filosofisk tidsskrift 1-2 (2002) 54.

388 │ The transformation of humanities education

including many whose dedication was unusually strong.704 On the other hand the diverging interests, and especially the analytical/continental-divide, made it hard for the discipline to achieve any form of unity, as evidenced by the unusual relationship, when the hovedfag program was established in 1985, between the highly specialized undergraduate programs, and the weight put on comprehensiveness at the graduate level. But sometime between 1985 and 1994 a shift seems to have occurred in this regard. The grunnfag was restructured to provide a comprehensive coverage of the four sub-disciplines that had by this time become more or less stabilized, while the hovedfag became more oriented towards specialization. Two factors should probably be mentioned in this connection. First of all, the new flow of students from the late 1980s onwards released funds which provided increased opportunities for dedicated disciplinary research in philosophy. Secondly, there was at the same time a great expansion in neighboring humanist disciplines that for several reasons became important outlets for continental philosophy – especially the history of ideas, but also general literature studies, French studies, science and technology studies, etc. I am not able to discuss this development in any detail here, but it seems a likely hypothesis that the continued autonomization of philosophy in Norway, both as a research discipline and as a self-sufficient form of higher education, was conditioned by a shift towards analytical philosophy in the 1990s, which in turn was made possible by this division of labor with other disciplines as regards continental philosophy, especially at Oslo.705

704 The many autobiographical contributions to the previously cited two-volume anthology on Noregegian philosophy edited by Inga Bostad give ample evidence of this. 705 Obviously, this hypothesis is not intended to diminish the Norwegian contributions to the tradition of continental philosophy; nor is it meant to suggest that all of philosophy necessarily falls into one of these two categories. I am aware that the above is a gross simplification, and I use it here only to discuss larger structural shifts. But it is nevertheless my impression that the mainstream of the Norwegian discipline since ca 1990 has flowed in the direction of analytical philosophy.

16 Conclusions to part three

There are some striking similarities between the trajectories of the four humanities disciplines studied in this part of the study. As we have seen in the thumbnail histories prefacing each of the previous sections, the evolution of all four disciplines was highly dependent, well into the postwar era, upon the abilities and characteristics of individual chair-holders. Men like Sars, Koht and Seip in history; Storm, Smidt, and Skard in English studies; Gran and Skard in general literature studies; and Monrad and Næss in philosophy – these men were the disciplines in question, some of them for many decades. It is no exaggeration to say that if these chairs had been occupied by different people, the Norwegian humanities would have developed differently. The two-volume 150th anniversary history of the University of Oslo from 1961 tells the story of scholarship at the Faculty of humanities as a series of academic biographies.706 This bespeaks a “giants” historiography of science which on many accounts is outdated today, and – by international standards – was so even at the time of writing. But at the domestic, institutional level, this way of writing university history nevertheless seems accurate in the sense that it reveals how dependent scholarship before the 1960s had been upon single professors for the selfreproduction of the fields that fell under the purview of their chairs. As demonstrated previously, the same point can equally well be made with reference to how the evolution of these disciplines fared when individual professors were not able to shoulder the heavy burden put on them, such as Trampe Bødker in English studies and Jæger in general literature studies – or when they abandoned their disciplines, as Schjelderup and Aall (more or less) did with philosophy.707

706 Leiv Amundsen, “Det historisk-filosofiske fakultet. Lærere og forskning,” Universitetet i Oslo 1811-1961 (Oslo: NAVF, 1961). 707 This is not to say that these individuals were necessarily responsible, morally or otherwise, for the decline (or at least lack of progress) in these disciplines. Even the highly

390 │ The transformation of humanities education

In the postwar era, however, all four of these disciplines changed fundamentally. Sometime during the transitional period from roughly 1965 to 1975, a threshold was passed, and thereafter the main operational mode of all four disciplines was no longer a series of monological “teachings” by particular academic sages – often heavily conditioned by their other roles in society and their more general worldviews – but rather an accelerated flow of specialized research contributions circulating among peers in differentiated national communication networks. In systems theory, this transformation is conceptualized as the achievement of autonomy, or autopoiesis, in the function system of research. As outlined in part one of this study, autopoiesis in this sense means that research – in our case at the sub-systemic level of the research discipline – begins to reproduce itself with the use of its own output – to the exclusion of other viewpoints and concerns. Thenceforth, its evolution is primarily dependent upon how the system addresses the research problems it formulates for itself. This does not mean that the societal environment disappears, of course. But it means that secondary education, politics, the economy, etc., becomes just that: an environment. Adaptation to the environment becomes necessary (as when a discipline is faced with demands that it should be more “useful” for other systems, or when the budgets are cut), but the goals and interests of the environment will never really be adopted by the discipline as its own – unless, of course, they happen to overlap with agendas generated within the discipline. If this is a valid conceptualization of what happened during the period in question, what can now be said, more precisely, about how the episodes and gradual shifts we have traced in the previous chapters contributed towards effectuating this transformation of the Norwegian humanities disciplines? In the introduction to part three, I summarized my discussion of the theoretical literature on discipline formation – drawing on Rudolf Stichweh, Joseph Ben-David and others – by hypothesizing that important conditions for the emergence of a disciplinary community in a local setting like Norway include a disciplinary template (theory, methodology,

talented and productive Alf Sommerfelt, primus motor of the “invisible college” for linguistics, was not really able to make linguistics a self-regenerating disciplinary community in Norway in this period. The point is rather that, structurally speaking, some of the disciplines in this period had so weak foundations that they could not really be expected to sustain themselves in the long run. And neither did they have to. For ultimately, the responsibility for scholarship as well as education lay with the political system. This was a time when there were parliamentary debates and decisions on the establishment of new chairs, and when political concern was expressed if the recruitment situation for a particular chair was difficult.

Conclusions to part three │ 391

object of study), available positions, an organizational “home” for the discipline, and a network of competing disciplinary units to prevent it from stagnating. Even the simplified and stylized disciplinary histories offered in the four previous chapters contain so many twists and turns, sometimes running in parallel, other times forking into widely different routes or proceeding at different speeds, that it is impossible or at least unhelpful to try to compare the four disciplines across each of these dimensions. There has clearly been no standard procedure or set number of consecutive phases towards disciplinary autonomy. Nevertheless, the salience of the mentioned dimensions or conditions is clearly discernible in all four disciplines at various stages of their developments. The Norwegian discipline of history, for instance, had a topic and a methodology established early, and it has also been one of the largest humanities disciplines all along. Both of these factors contributed to its sense of identity and selfassuredness. But for a long time autonomous disciplinary research in history had to be balanced by two other obligations: dissemination to the wider public, and the education of history teachers for secondary school. Of these missions, the first one seems to have been more wholeheartedly pursued, probably because it turned out that it could, to some extent, be aligned with the discipline’s own research agendas. Dissemination to “the general reader” has legitimated (and thus helped fund) not a few fairly specialized works of Norwegian history writing. English studies was also for a long time one of the largest humanities disciplines, but with its internal differentiations and strains it struggled to establish unity (or at least cohesion) as regards topic and methodology. English studies also had obligations to secondary school, and one reason research drift seems to have been slowed down in the 1980s was that it took these obligations more seriously than history did (possibly because it had few other options). General literature studies and philosophy were less constrained by their societal environments, but both went through a series of internal difficulties (conflicting theoretical schools, diverging specialisms) before they were able to stabilize themselves in ways that allowed for unified self-reproduction.708 What was common for all four disciplines was the combined effect of the expansion of the staffs during the 1960s, the establishment of disciplinary departments, first at Oslo and then at other universities, and lastly the allocation of research time to all holders of academic positions. Thus, the four disciplines have

708 Although philosophy and general literature studies have both had ties to extra-disciplinary literary and intellectual circles, as well as to the media and publishing houses, these links were seldom formalized in ways that put the professors, the departments, or the disciplines under any particular obligations.

392 │ The transformation of humanities education

had different starting points, and have been differently conditioned by environmental concerns, but have nevertheless converged over time towards what is probably not a shared essential identity, but rather a family resemblance as humanistic research disciplines. What has propelled this convergence can also be conceptualized as institutional isomorphism. Mutual observation across organizational boundaries built up expectations. Once a field of research was demarcated, its representatives would expect an educational program to be established also, or vice versa. Whichever came first, the staff of the discipline in question would also demand – from the 1950s onwards in Norway – to be organizationally united in a department. And of course this emulation game worked across academic organizations, too. As we have seen, by the late 1980s, Norwegian universities and colleges of a certain size and scope had to establish general literature studies, and the disciplinary format, while amendable to local circumstances, came largely prepackaged. It can be argued with some justification that autonomous disciplinary research in the humanities was not something entirely new in the period covered here, however. Quite a few Norwegian scholars – Johan Storm and Arne Næss among them – had been active researchers in a mode many would characterize as modern well before the 1960s. However, this had been possible mainly because these individuals managed to hook up with their disciplines on the international level. With some exceptions (such as Indo-European language studies, if we relax the definition of discipline a bit), there had not been disciplinary systems in Norway that were able to reproduce themselves as such over extended periods of time. Nevertheless, acknowledging the important early starts, I should make clear that my claim in this part of the study is not that humanities research in the modern sense had not taken place in Norway previously, only that across most fields, Norwegian humanities scholars before the postwar era had been so few, so isolated, and so strongly conditioned by their responsibilities towards the educational system, and also by politics and cultural affairs (not the least by the forging of a national cultural and identity), that their activities and their understanding of their roles as university professors was qualitatively different from what was necessary to establish and sustain modern research disciplines.709 Rudolf Stichweh has found, based mostly on the history of German science, but also with side-glances to Anglo-American and French developments, that the establishment of membership associations and journals has been highly important in

709 See Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen, 115ff.

Conclusions to part three │ 393

the formation of national disciplinary communities in the Western world.710 Of the four Norwegian humanities disciplines studied here, however, it is only in history that separate communication channels of national outreach have been of crucial importance. In Norway, it has been the public universities themselves that have been the all-important organizational platforms as well as the channels for research communication. During the period covered here, the national distributed networks of disciplinary departments became so important that they largely made other organizational mechanisms if not redundant then at least insignificant.711 Publication was to a large extent anchored in the departments, whether by in-house publication series for monographs and reports, or by the practice of letting the editorial responsibilities for the national disciplinary journals circulate among the departments. Other forms of disciplinary exchanges and cooperation (conferences, joint research projects, curricular development, contributions towards research policy, and even textbook production) was also to a large extent organized from the departments, sometimes through the formalized Disciplinary councils under the auspices of the Council of universities.712 Along with the fact that the large, crossdisciplinary Researchers’ union [Forskerforbundet and its predecessors] has taken care of wage negotiations and most policy issues associated with the researcher profession, the dependence upon the university departments is probably a major reason why disciplinary associations with individual memberships – with the exception of history – have not been of crucial importance for the humanities in Norway. This may also go some way towards explaining the relatively small scale of academic publishing in the humanities in Norway. In the introduction to this part, I hypothesized on the basis of previous research that when disciplinary communities were being established in the Norwegian humanities, “a kind of mechanism will kick in, whereby research over time will take over as a prioritized function, to a large extent because of the powerful motivational dynamic inherent in disciplinary research.”713 This was based on the assumption that it was the actual publication of research which was motivational, because

710 Rudolf Stichweh, “Science in the System of World Society.” See the discussion in the introduction to this part. 711 The Academy of Arts and Sciences [Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi ] had traditionally been an important organizational platform for researchers, among other things functioning as an extended faculty club, but after WWII it was increasingly marginalized in what became a policy arena for research and higher education. See Kim G. Helsvig, Elitisme på norsk. Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi 1945-2007 (Oslo: Novus, 2007). 712 See Per Nyborg, Universitets- og høgskolesamarbeid i en brytningstid. 713 See the introduction to part three.

394 │ The transformation of humanities education

of the “reward system” as outlined by Merton. Having examined the histories of four Norwegian humanities disciplines, it is not clear, however, that the new orientation towards research, especially from the 1970s onwards, was associated with a particularly high research production in the form of academic publications. As we have seen, several evaluations in the 1990s were very critical on this account. To examine this question in detail is beyond the scope of this study, but even a cursory glance at the trajectories involved shows that several contextual factors must be taken into consideration when trying to understand this. First, the budget cuts in the late 1970s and early 1980s clearly hampered research productivity, at least as compared to the expectations from around 1970. Secondly, it might be that the forms of publication that dominated in the Norwegian humanities during this period (in-house series and disciplinary journals in Norwegian, mostly without proper peer-review procedures) were less motivational that those Merton had in mind, and therefore resulted in a modest production. Thirdly, as mentioned in the initial discussion of this issue, it may be that the existence of the reward system in itself – on the international arena, if not necessarily on the domestic scene – is sufficient motivation for many faculty members to want to identify themselves with the research mission rather than with the educational mission, even though the actual rewards are very seldom reaped by each individual. As with the arts, the media, and politics, the spectacular success of those on the top rains prestige and hence motivation even upon the more lowly members of the profession. This brings up a last issue concerning discipline formation that must be mentioned here. To what extent did the establishment of national disciplinary communities in the Norwegian humanities contribute, in the end – as Stichweh’s analyses showed – to the globalization of the disciplines in question? The brief answer is that it did, eventually. Some international channels opened up significantly around 1970 (in particular the already established Danish and German ones), but the disciplinary systems were not really going global until the 1990s, when especially French and Anglo-American influences became the inescapable frame of reference in most fields of study.714

714 Especially from the 1980s onwards, the literatures in the various disciplines have been internationally oriented, and the perspectives increasingly global. For the international influences of postmodern theory on philosophy, general literature studies and other disciplines in Norway, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, see Bjarne Riiser Gundersen, Da postmodernismen kom til Norge. For the impact of science studies, especially STS, on various Norwegian humanities disciplines, see Vidar Enebakk, Vitenskapsstudier (Oslo: Fagbokforlaget, 2008). And for reflections on the impact of international influences on

Conclusions to part three │ 395

16.1 CURRICULA DEVELOPMENTS IN THE HUMANITIES How, then, did the achievement of autonomy in the research disciplines of history, English studies, general literature studies, and philosophy impact the affiliated educational programs? The analyses of curricula documents above have shown that the overall influence of research was strong, but that it registered somewhat differently in the various programs. In 1960, the curricula in both history and English studies, especially the grunnfag programs, were firmly anchored in the mission to educate teachers. The stated aims in the program plans left no doubt about this. Even though changes were clearly underway during the 1960s, the primary ambition remained to transmit enough established knowledge to the students to allow them to teach it in turn. From around 1970 onwards this was increasingly deemed insufficient. The research ethos, which by then had come to dominate the agendas of especially the younger members of the academic staff, began to make an impact on educational aims, methodology, and materials as described in the curricula documents. The procedures for acquiring new knowledge were taking over as the primary consideration. But then further developments in this direction were stalled. Two major reasons for this have been described: 1) the budget cuts in the mid-1970s, which directly and indirectly put a cap on the staff’s research ambitions, and 2) the temporary reorientation towards school teaching, primarily through the disciplinary didactics initiative, which made it difficult to introduce new and more specialized topics or perspectives from the international research front into the program plans. As we have seen, the halt in the research drift was only temporary, even in these two disciplines which traditionally had a strong association in Norwegian schooling. With the flow of new students and fresh funds from the late 1980s onwards, and with a staff that in the meantime had become increasingly research-oriented (identity-wise, if not necessarily as regards actual research production) the attachment to school teaching was soon relaxed again, and if not abandoned then at least side-tracked when didactics was relegated to the expanded one-year program in pedagogy in 1993, leaving these humanities programs to establish themselves as “purely” disciplinary during the rest of the 1990s.

Norwegian general literature studies, see Jon Haarberg, “Herakles på skilleveien – Litteraturvitenskapen mellom scientismen og humanismen,” Norsk litteraturvitenskapelig tidsskrift 15.1 (2012). The debate on “methodical nationalism” and global perspectives in the discipline of history is critically examinated in Terje Tvedt, “Om metodologisk nasjonalisme og den kommunikative situasjonen – en kritikk og et alternativ,” Historisk tidsskrift, 91.4 (2012).

396 │ The transformation of humanities education

Compared to history and English studies, the two other disciplines studied here – general literature studies and philosophy – were much quicker to adopt disciplinary research as both their overall educational aim and their curricular foundation. General literature studies initially saw the grunnfag program as complimentary to the national language and literature programs, contributing towards a degree which still functioned mainly as a framework for teacher education. But in the course of the 1960s it abandoned most reservations in this regard. It dropped compulsory attendance as well as the requirement that students should also study national language and literature programs, thus signaling that students would thereafter have to take the full responsibility for the educational outcomes – including career options. Philosophy had never had any such qualms, mostly because it had grown accustomed to see itself, and to be seen by others, as an infra-academic venture with only indirect attachments to the societal environment.715 Around 1970, philosophy was faced with a number of challenges from social and political movements of various kinds, challenges it also benefitted from recruitment-wise and as regards social standing in the cultural climate of the time. But considering the publicity these movements were accorded, then and later, the curricula from this period carry surprisingly few imprints of them as political projects. Philosophy did not shift – as Marx had suggested, and many of his 1970s followers insisted – from attempting to understand the world to go about changing it. The same was true in general literature studies. Only to the extent that political projects such as neo-Marxism, the ecological movement, the civil rights movement, and feminism were translatable into theoretical schools of thought, with academically articulated critiques of established positions within philosophy and literary studies, were they incorporated into the program plans, and then mostly as elective add-ons. In the form of research, these strands obviously had considerable impact on further humanities research, and also on humanities curricula, but as academic ventures they soon became too esoteric to have major consequences in the societal environment. In addition to emphasizing the strong impact of modern disciplinary research, and taking note of the much weaker and more indirect impact of social movements, we should ask whether some of the curricular changes that we have traced in the

715 This is not to deny that for instance Arne Næss and his coworkers were motivated by a desire to influence society at large. In the postwar era, they were strong advocates of a more “rational” approach to social problems of various kinds. But this advocacy was mostly channeled through the examen philosophicum and also through crossdisciplinary engagements with the social sciences, and not so much directly from the discipline of philosophy.

Conclusions to part three │ 397

four previous chapters may have flown from dynamics that are inherent to humanities education itself. At the beginning of this part, I pointed to three characteristics of curricular change in the humanities that has been identified in previous research: 1) a certain “conservatism” in the choice of materials because of the humanities’ obligation to the historical dimension, 2) a reiterative or hermeneutic approach to these materials, and 3) a preference for “knowledge” and “self” over “action.” The surveys of the curricula documents in this part give full corroboration to the last of these, and partial corroboration to the first two, as far as I can see. We have noted that the knowledge dimension was overwhelmingly dominant in all four disciplines during the whole period studied, even though the “self” dimension (with reference to the Bildung ideal) surfaced here and there. Action has been almost entirely absent, except for research methodology. In one sense it is surprising that the concept of Bildung [dannelse] has not been more prominent in the curricula documents, given the importance of it in the humanities debates during the last decades of the 20th century. A possible interpretation of this is that the self-dimension has been closely but tacitly associated with the knowledge dimension. This may be an indication of how the Norwegian humanities disciplines have attempted to model themselves on the German tradition, where deep and specialized knowledge has been viewed as the path to selfhood (Bildung durch Wissenschaft), rather than on the Anglo-American tradition, where fostering a well-rounded personality has been more explicitly foregrounded as an educational aim in itself, to be attained through a variety of activities.716 The mentioned conservativism and reiterative-ness of humanities curricula seem to be connected. In all four disciplines studied here, the curricula have over time been prone to rework many of the same materials or canons with new interpretative methods and theoretical frameworks. But there have been interesting disciplinary differences in this regard. General literature studies and English studies have been remarkably loyal to their canons of literary texts, although the focus has shifted somewhat with changing theoretical lenses. A systems theoretical interpretation of this would be to point out that the object of study in this case is itself an autonomous system, namely the system of literary art. This system has its own selection mechanism, and even if literary research can select and highlight particular kinds of literary works for other reasons than artistic ones for a certain period of time, its coupling with the system of art (not the least through academic literary criticism)

716 See Joseph Ben-David, Centers of Learning. Britain, France, Germany, United States (NY: Transaction, 2009) ch. 4 and 5.

398 │ The transformation of humanities education

will over time tend to readjust the interest of research to the canon that is actually deemed interesting from the point of view of the art system.717 In history and especially in philosophy there have been more substantial curricula changes regarding objects of study. Even though a basic framework for Norwegian historiography has been fairly stable throughout the period studied here (with a periodization of the timeline and a mapping out of the social space on the basis of political entities) several formally dominant strands in the discipline of history, such as dynastic, military, and diplomatic history, have been eclipsed after the rise of social history in the 1970s and 1980s. In Norwegian philosophy, the canon of continental thinking has been on the defensive after the shift towards analytical philosophy (to some extent, there has been a takeover of this tradition by the history of ideas and general literature studies). Of course, these changes need not be permanent. In history, some of the fields that became unfashionable for a while have since managed to reinvent themselves and have reappeared in the curricula under new guises. And in philosophy there are still some practitioners who attach themselves to the continental tradition, even though it is hard to see how it can make a real comeback in the discipline at this point. In summary, the four longitudinal curricula studies in this part have shown that Norwegian humanities education during the period 1960 to 2000 coupled itself tightly to research while decoupling itself from secondary education. Trying to explain why and how this has happened, I think it is more fruitful to examine the evolution of Norwegian research and education considered as systems of communication than to ask for agency on the part of individuals or groups (for instance adherents to particular schools of thought, or networks of personal connections). What Atle Kittang or Sivert Langholm, or the baby-boomers, or the poststructuralists may have intended humanities curricula to be or to become are not uninteresting levels of analysis, of course, but more important in the long run has been the changing structural conditions for making curricula compatible with both the code of research and the contingency formula of education. As outlined in the beginning of this part, curricula are the products of organizational communication geared towards decision-making. The question then becomes: How has it been possible to arrange organizational decision-making on curricula in such a way that it could accommodate the autopoiesis of both education and research?

717 In the case of English studies, the theory of canon-making has been particularly strong, from Samuel Johnson and Thomas Carlyle, via Matthew Arnold, to Harold Bloom and Richard Rorty. See Harold Bloom, The Western Canon. The Books and School of the Ages (NY: Riverhead, 1995).

Conclusions to part three │ 399

Although in Norway formal decisions on curricula have always been made by the university boards or by the faculties, the actual practice of curricular development has since the 1960s been devolved to the department level. At the time when the multi-disciplinary Faculty of humanities at Oslo was the site for discussions on curricula, disciplinary research was unable to get a foothold in the program plans. But with the advent of departments wherein single research disciplines were coupled with single educational programs (albeit in several variants), the conditions were in place for the systems of research and education to co-evolve, or to “interpenetrate” each other – to use a term from systems theory.718 According to Niklas Luhmann, interpenetration is a form of coupling on the structural level which not only allows the autopoiesis of two systems to continue their operation, but where the two systems also grow mutually dependent upon each other through this coupling: “We speak of “penetration” if a system makes its own complexity (and with it indeterminacy, contingency, and the pressure to select) available for constructing another system. […] Accordingly, interpenetration exists when this occurs reciprocally, that is, when both systems enable each other by introducing their own already-constituted complexity into each other. In penetration, one can observe how the behavior of the penetrating system is co-determined by the receiving system (and eventually proceeds aimlessly and erratically outside this system, just like ants that have lost their ant hill). In interpenetration, the receiving system also reacts to the structural formation of the penetrating system, and it does so in a twofold way, internally and externally. This means that greater degrees of freedom are possible in spite (better: 719

because!) of increased dependencies.”

Now, to argue that humanities research and education in Norway had grown so interdependent by the turn of the 21th century that they would be unable to survive for long without each other may seem like overstating the case. For obviously humanities research can take place without education immediately attached to it.720 At least there is nothing to prevent it on the operative level, as evidenced across the globe by research academies and centers of advanced research in the humanities

718 Later on, from the 1980s onwards, the equivalence of department, discipline, and program was broken when many departments went through mergers in order to achieve administrative robustness. But the important thing for the evolution of humanities curricula, it seems, was that this equivalence or overlap between discipline and program was in place during the crucial establishment phase in the 1960s and 1970s. 719 Niklas Luhmann (1995) Social Systems, 213. 720 As I also argued in connection with Dirk Baecker’s paper on the university in part one.

400 │ The transformation of humanities education

where there are no students and no teaching takes place. But it is interesting that globally these are rather rare and exceptional cases – and in Norway they have been almost non-existent. In actuality, the overwhelming majority of humanities researchers also have teaching obligations, and work at institutions where these two functions are coupled. The reason is partly the cross-subsidizing mechanism, without which the expansion (and later maintenance) of the research capacity that we outlined in part two of this study would hardly have been possible.721 But funding is not the only relevant systemic requirement; there is also the functional demand of recruitment. New, competent researchers are needed to fill positions as old researchers retire, and only education can furnish them. In the system of research, this is not only a matter of placeholders and the reproduction of a particular discipline at the level of organization (which since the 1960s in Norway has taken place at the level of the departments); it concerns the operational mode of the research communication itself. New ideas and perspectives in research typically emerge within a discipline when innovative senior researchers are able to recruit students to their particular area of interest and their interpretation of it. Hence, senior researchers working without students on a permanent basis, even in disciplines that are oriented towards individual publication, will inevitably run the risk of stagnation. Cross-subsidizing and self-reproduction (re-staffing, as well as the evolutionary regeneration of disciplines through new schools of thought) may therefore be functional explanations for why, in the Norwegian humanities, the system of research has been – and still is – dependent upon the system of education. But what about dependencies the other way around? The short answer is that by the end of the period studied here, humanities education without humanities research would be even harder to envision, other than as rare exceptions that would prove the rule (such as internships, or other add-on curricula). Previously, Norwegian humanities education had for the most part been content, as we have seen, to recycle established knowledge. This was not seen as a shortcoming. A high degree of stability had even been required by the educational aim of further dissemination. But gradually this changed through the constant “irritation” of emerging disciplinary research, and eventually it became clear that in the modern era, research would be, if not the only, then certainly the most important source of legitimacy for curricular choices. To found higher education curricula mainly on alternative idea complexes like for instance cultural or religious tradition, or practical relevance, or a political agenda, would be very difficult, and would soon attract criticism, not the least from

721 See e.g. Burton R. Clark, Places of Inquiry: Research and Advanced Education in Modern Universities (Berkley: University of California Press, 1995) 226-28.

Conclusions to part three │ 401

research, which it would be very hard to answer. There simply seems to be no real functional equivalent, to use Luhmann’s favored term.722 What I have said about the organizational conditions for the interpenetration of humanities research and education should be supplemented by a few concluding remarks on coupling at the level of curricula, which Luhmann referred to as the level of “programs” (which fortunately corresponds, as regards the level of analysis, to the Norwegian curricula documents I have consistently called program plans). Perhaps the most important external condition for the subsequent development at this level was the change of the degree system in 1959, in particular that the new system allowed grunnfag programs to be established irrespective of whether they contributed to teacher education or not. This was a change in the legal framework which facilitated a structural drift in the disciplinary programs, which was within the devolved jurisdiction of the HEIs, that culminated in the late 1980s when the graduate hovedfag program, too, was being offered in disciplines unaffiliated with secondary school, such as philosophy, general literature studies, the history of ideas, art history, etc. Previously small specialisms associated with the more hardcore magister degree, these research-oriented generalist programs had now become the mainstream, and had taken over the regular degree system, whereas the teacher education mission was being marginalized. With the whole degree framework tilting in this direction, and the reading lists filling up with research articles, the didactics module intervention of the 1980s was clearly insufficient to effectuate a restoration. The fact that this initiative came from the rectorate and the ministry seems to have been a problem in itself. By the 1980s, the humanities disciplines also had very few points of contact with schools, and their relationship with pedagogy was distant at best.723 Hence, even with the best of intentions – as English studies at Oslo and Tromsø seems to have had – the effort to recouple humanities curricula with schooling found no foothold in the educational dynamic it was supposed to serve, and thus no credible way to sustain itself.

722 There are exceptions, such as creative writing programs, and programs in religious studies with an expressed confessional agenda – but again, they only prove the rule. Since 1996, the Norwegian legislation on universities and university colleges has stipulated that higher education should be based on research, artistic research and development [kunstnerisk utviklingsarbeid], and knowledge derived from experience. The latter two conceptualizations are designed specifically for the performing arts and professional education. 723 See Kim. R. Helsvig, “Mellom fag og pedagogikk. Universitetet og lærerutdanningen på 1970- og 80-tallet” Universitetet og lærerutdanningen. Historiske perspektiver, eds. Geir Knudsen and Trude Evenshaug (Oslo: Unipub: 2008).

402 │ The transformation of humanities education

So much for the decoupling from schooling; what about the new curricular coupling to research? How was it made possible? Certainly not by any dramatic shift in the articulation of educational aims in the curricula. As we have seen, the explicit aim of educating teachers (or explicitly not educating teachers) gradually faded, to be replaced in most cases not by a new intention of providing research training (although this was often mentioned as an auxiliary aim, especially on the graduate level), but by a generalized aim of providing “knowledge about” or “insight into” an area, or some such formulation. Although this gradual transformation of educational aims was connected to specific circumstances in Norway at the time (which we will examine more closely in the next part), it was also in accordance with the general tendency in the modern system of education that we noted earlier, namely to avoid as far as possible overly specific statements of goals, and to focus instead on what Luhmann and Schorr called “programs of conditions.”724 In the case of Norwegian humanities education, the conditions in question were mostly reading and writing assignments, lectures, seminars, and examinations – most of which turned out to be eminently compatible with research materials, methods and procedures, especially when it was accepted that specialization could be handled as elective curricula. A highly interesting curricular mechanism in this respect, one which illustrates quite nicely how humanities education managed to couple itself – indeed to coevolve – with research during the time period covered here, is the intermediate program [mellomfag] in general literature studies. Launched in the 1970s, this program can be seen as what in evolutionary theory is called a “pre-adaptive advance” in which the emerging research discipline sought out possible coupling mechanisms to its educational environment within the organizational setting of the department. The functional problem at this juncture was how specialisms and research projects in general literature studies (whether traditional, avant-garde, or cross-disciplinary) could be made the foundation for education, not only in the exclusive magister program, but also for undergraduate students, whose number funding was mostly dependent upon. The result was a curricular template based on an elective syllabus, graduate-style supervision, and a research-like paper that worked well as an in-depth educational experience, at the same time as it kept disciplinary specialisms such as structuralist narratology, the theatre of the absurd, and a host of others warm during the otherwise inhospitable 1980s. According to Hannevik, it was this curricular unit that eventually evolved into the graduate program of hovedfag, which in the 1990s caused a great and lasting expansion of

724 Niklas Luhmann and Karl-Eberhard Schorr, Problems of Reflection in the System of Education, 105ff.

Conclusions to part three │ 403

the discipline. A similar development happened with an intermediate program in philosophy, but it was probably of less consequence for the development of this discipline since the grunnfag curriculum already allowed for considerable specialization. The really important mechanism that has facilitated the co-evolution of research and education in philosophy is undoubtedly the examen philosophicum, which has provided an (almost) exclusive academic labor market much larger than most of the other humanities disciplines could have dreamed of. In its neat symmetry, the notion of interpenetration as discussed here might seem to confirm the contention of Burton Clark, discussed in part one of this study, that education and research are “essentially compatible” in their “knowledgecenteredness.”725 This is not my conclusion, however. First of all, I think this part has demonstrated that humanities education in Norway has been coupled to research mostly on the latter’s conditions. And secondly, as I argued in part one, Clark’s claim goes beyond acknowledging that the two systems have managed to co-exist on the organizational level. He takes the normative stance that they are a successful unity generally speaking, that is, from a societal perspective. This is exaggerated, in my view. Clark can make this claim only by restricting the province of what he calls “the higher education system” to “knowledge” plain and simple. This corresponds, as we have seen, to the self-conception of the two coupled systems in the Norwegian humanities after the attachment to secondary school was broken. Viewed in the light of this quite recent conceptualization, which bespeaks a purely academic (”insider”) perspective, the interpenetration of humanities research and education must indeed seem well-functioning. For research, being coupled to education brings all kinds of advantages, and the dependencies the other way have been outlined above. But to view the interpenetration of these two autonomous systems in isolation – “on its own terms,” as Clark says – is to misconstrue the idea of autonomy. While it is true that humanities research and education, once autonomy is achieved, will tend to disregard their societal environment, a research perspective on the humanities must obviously take this environment into consideration. A great advantage of sociological systems theory, in my opinion, is that while it highlights the distinctness and discreetness of the various function system logics, it also – and precisely therefore – insists on triangulating them with the use of other system references. In keeping with this, I have in part one viewed humanities education in relation to the

725 As mentioned in part one, Clark acknowledges the existence of “forces of fragmentation” within the compound of “higher education” (or “the university”) – but these are considered to arise from the fact that education and research are separate activities, and therefore compete for time and resources. Burton R. Clark, Places of Inquiry, 189ff.

404 │ The transformation of humanities education

political system. The conclusion was that the political system in Norway had found ways to use – and when necessary to influence – the developments in humanities education and research to serve its own ends, which we can summarize somewhat bluntly as the provision of higher education as welfare. From the perspective of politics, the coupling of humanities education and research as it developed from the 1960s onwards could therefore be viewed as, if not optimal, then at least acceptable. But politics is not the only relevant societal environment for humanities education. One must also consider the students. Unlike Clark and most higher education research, systems theory view students not as part of the system of education, but as separate entities existing in its environment. Students couple themselves to higher education for a while, and then leave for the world of work, where they are met with expectations as to their qualifications. These expectations, and the attempt to meet them with higher education credentials, involve another function system in the environment of humanities education, namely the economy. It is the students and their careers in working life that is the topic of the next part. As we shall see, the consequences of the curricular interpenetration of humanities education and research are somewhat more ambiguous when seen from this perspective.

Part four: Careers

17 Introduction to part four

This last part is about changes in the career patterns of Norwegian humanities graduates during the period 1960-2000. Perceptive readers will have noticed that this topic has tailed us all along. Although resistance to “vocationalism” and “instrumentalism” in all forms is unusually strong in the humanities’ corner of academia, most aspects of higher education, including the humanities, have always been conditioned by perceptions and expectations regarding the students’ future careers. For instance, we have seen in part two that throughout the second half of the 20th century policymakers and analysts, as well as the institutions themselves, have often been preoccupied with the labor market and changes in career expectations in their discussions of admissions policy and capacity building for humanities education – although perhaps not always as consistently and as straightforwardly as one might have expected (or as seriously as some would have wanted). We have also seen, in part three, that curricular changes have always been intimately connected with changes regarding career patterns. However, in the previous two parts the main aims have been to examine changes in admissions and curricula, whereas career trajectories have been more of a backdrop. Here I want to focus on the labor market for humanities candidates as a topic in its own right. The ambition is, simply put, to understand how and why the career trajectories of humanities graduates in Norway have changed in the ways they have from 1960 to 2000. I first introduce some key concepts that are frequently used in the study of higher education’s relationship to working life, and discuss how they relate to the systems theoretical framework that is used throughout this study. Then, on the basis of statistical evidence from various sources, I analyze the career trajectories of Norwegian humanities graduates with particular attention to changes in the period 1960 to 2000, and examine possible reasons for these changes. Lastly I summarize the findings and interpret them within the conceptual framework established initially. As in the previous parts, the central issue turns out to be the condi-

408 │ The transformation of humanities education

tions for structural coupling between systems, especially between humanities education and various parts of the labor market.

17.1 PROFESSIONAL VS. LIBERAL EDUCATION Viewed from the perspective of educational research, the relationship of higher education to the labor market is often conceptualized by use of the distinction between liberal (or general) education and professional education. The major difference, it is assumed, is that professional education qualifies for particular occupational roles, whereas liberal education does not.726 If asked whether humanities education belongs to one or the other category, it seems a safe bet that most Norwegian humanists as well as educational researchers today would opt for liberal.727 This is entirely understandable. The Norwegian concept of frie studier, which is often translated as “liberal education,” has for a long time been used in a way that groups the humanities along with many of the social sciences and the basic natural sciences, and contrast these with “professional education,” which includes educational programs for the three classic professions of priests, lawyers, and physicians, as well as newer professions such as engineers and nurses.728 But even though these two concepts have been widely used, separately or as a dichotomy, in ways that seem to capture essential traits of particular types of education, they are in fact rather slippery. Moreover, they do not travel well across languages. We therefore need to take a closer look at some important nuances in their application in various contexts before we can settle on a conceptual framework that allows us to

726 For a critical account of this conceptual distinction in the American context, but with relevance for Europe too, see David F. Labaree, “Mutual Subversion: A Short History of the Liberal and the Professional in American Higher Education,” History of Education Quarterly 46.1 (2006) 727 Jannecke Wiers-Jenssen & al explicitly places the humanities in this category, see Jannecke Wiers-Jenssen & al. Humanister i arbeidslivet (Oslo: HiOA, 2016) 22. 728 This usage can be found in numerous Norwegian reports on higher education, from those of the Kleppe and Ottosen committees in the 1960s, to the so-called Bildung committee [Dannelsesutvalget] from 2009. See Dannelsesutvalget, Kunnskap og dannelse foran et nytt århundre. Innstilling fra Dannelsesutvalget for høyere utdanning. Downloaded

on

15.06.2010

from

http://www.uib.no/filearchive/innstilling-

dannelsesutvalget.pdf. A fairly recent and emphatic use of this conceptualization of frie studier is Eivind Tjønneland, “Akademisk samfunnsansvar som universitær beredskap,” Arr 3-4 (2014).

Introduction to part four │ 409

capture the particular historical trajectory of the Norwegian humanities with respect to the world of work. As is well known, liberal education in Britain and the United States is a tradition that has a certain coherence. It is associated with broadly oriented, teachingintensive undergraduate education meant to foster holistic character formation, as outlined by for instance Sheldon Rothblatt.729 In the Norwegian context, however, frie studier is a concept with rather blurry edges, and it has been used to refer to educational formats and practices that are quite different from the Anglo-American tradition of liberal education. Until quite recently (at least until 2003, when the Norwegian Quality reform introduced the new Bologna degree system) frie studier has designated fairly specialized programs focused on one discipline (in some depth) at a time, rather than following the modularized Anglo-American system where breadth has been sought through shorter courses taught in parallel, many of which have not been intended to take students beyond the entry level. Moreover, as we saw in part three, the Norwegian university programs have for the most part not been teaching-intensive, but rather oriented towards final examinations.730 In this regard, the concept of frie studier bears more resemblance to the German tradition of Lehrfreiheit and Lernfreihet.731 But the German parallel should not be taken too far, either.732 For unlike the situation in Germany, where Bildung

729 Sheldon Rothblatt, “The limbs of Osiris: Liberal Education in the English-speaking world,” The European and American University since 1800, eds. Björn Wittrock and Sheldon Rothblatt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) 730 In the humanities, an exception needs to be made for entry level language instruction, which has obviously been rather teaching-intensive. 731 In the Norwegian case, the “freedom” referred to in the expression frie studier pertained primarily to free admission, in contradistinction to medicine, engineering, business and administration, and a few others where access was regulated – i.e. competitive. For this reason, law studies, which elsewhere is usually categorized as a professional program, was often counted among frie studier, as admission was open. A secondary meaning had to do with a less dogmatic and less procedural attitude towards the subjects taught. A third meaning, which did not apply in all cases, however, was the German idea of free (non-mandatory) attendance in lectures, seminars, etc. 732 In the Norwegian debate on higher education there has been a tendency to put a very high premium on the German university, especially as envisioned by Humboldt, and to emphasize the historical similarities between the Norwegian and the German systems in order to claim a share in this tradition. The Anglo-American university tradition, on the other hand, has not seldom been associated with instrumentalism, and viewed as a recent and mostly harmful influence on the Norwegian universities. This preference for

410 │ The transformation of humanities education

durch Wissenschaft had been a slogan as well as an actuality in higher education since the 19th century, the Norwegian examinations-based system was for a long time not very research-oriented at all, but rather geared, as emphasized throughout this study, towards certifying candidates for positions in the civil service – in the case of the humanities for teaching posts in the public secondary schools. Granted, the Norwegian degree system also served the purpose of academic credential and self-recruiting mechanism for the university, as it did in Germany and elsewhere, but as we have seen in the previous part, the humanities programs in Norway around 1960, especially at the undergraduate level, were still firmly entrenched in the civil service exam paradigm, and they did not become unequivocally oriented towards research in the modern sense until around 1970, and in some disciplines even later.733 In several important respects, therefore, the Norwegian humanities have differed significantly from “liberal” education in the Anglo-American tradition as well as from the Bildung-oriented German tradition, and regarding the relationship to the labor market, humanities programs actually had more in common with professional education until quite late in the 20th century. This becomes especially clear when we take a closer look at a Norwegian concept that has hitherto been mentioned only in passing. Until 1959, the Norwegian state had secured a firm coupling between humanities education and the vocation as a secondary school teacher by use of the legal instrument of an embede. This term refers to a position in the civil service, or, more accurately, to an “office” one is appointed to by the King in council – which was actually the case for teacher positions in secondary school as well as for chairs at the university since the nineteenth century. The educational programs that qualified for such an embede were called embedseksamener – “civil service exams.”734 The school system’s tight coupling to the university by use of this legal instrument had traditionally been a convenient solution, since both university education and secondary education were state monopolies and thus integrated at the level of organization in the hierarchic order of ranks in the constitutional monarchical state – the hoffs- og embetsrang. Thus, the law regulating the activities at the

the German system is particularly noticeable in the work Rune Slagstad, which has been highly influential domestically. See his “Kunnskapens hus i det norske system,” Norwegian Official Report, NOU 2000:18 Frihet med ansvar. Om høgre utdanning og forskning i Norge. 733 As previously mentioned, the exception is the magister degree, which attracted few students. See appendix 1. 734 From the Norse embætti, derived from Germanic ambahta- “servant”, see the entry on embete in Yann de Caprone, Norsk etymologisk ordbok (Oslo: Kagge, 2013).

Introduction to part four │ 411

University of Oslo (the only university until after WWII, as we remember) stipulated that the most important degree in the humanities should be an embedseksamen designed to serve as teacher certification – just as theology, law, and medicine certified priests, lawyers and physicians. The other side of the coin was the law regulating the public secondary schools, which required school authorities to hire only teachers with the same embedseksamen to teach humanities subjects to their pupils. Even though this legal coupling was severed in 1959 – after a prolonged debate between the university, the ministry, and the secondary school teacher organization – the character and name of being an embetseksamen directed towards school teaching lingered for quite some time with the humanities programs, as we shall see later in this part.735 Now, should we call this construction – the school teacher position as an embede – a “profession,” and hence the corresponding educational qualification – the embedseksamen – a “professional” form of education – for as long as it lasted? Although the term “profession” (and its derivatives) was seldom in use in Norway at the time in question, i.e. from the second half of the 19th century and into the early postwar period, there seems to be little to prevent its belated usage from an analytical point of view. Indeed, the case of Norwegian humanities education as teacher education and certification (when combined with a course in pedagogy) fulfills most of the criteria in the Anglo-American sociology of the professions.736 And as for the concept of “professional education,” the definition is often so wide that it easily covers our case. Joseph Ben-David, for instance, opened the chapter on professional education in his influential Centers of Learning by stating that “the term professional education will be used here loosely to describe all specialized and

735 See Åsmund Arup Seip, Lektorene, 121ff.; and Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen, 148ff. 736 See for instance Abraham Flexner’s classic definition: “[P]rofessions involve essentially intellectual operations with large individual responsibility; they derive their raw material from science and learning; this material they work up to a practical and definite end; they possess an educationally communicable technique; they tend to selforganization; they are becoming increasingly altruistic in motivation.” Abraham Flexner, “Is social work a profession?” Research on Social Work Practice 11 (2001 [1915]) 156. See also Andrew Abbott’s short and widely quoted definition of professions as “exclusive occupational groups applying somewhat abstract knowledge to particularc cases”. Andrew Abbott, System of Professions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988) 8.

412 │ The transformation of humanities education

nonspecialized higher education that is usually acquired with a view to entering specific occupations.”737 Based on these reflections, and mainly as a pragmatic consideration, I have decided to use the concept of “professional education” to frame Norwegian humanities education for the first fifteen years of the period I discuss, until ca. 1975 (the shift is obviously not sudden, as we shall see). But I use this concept with some reservations. The first one is that in much of the literature, “professional” seems inextricably linked to its counter-concept, “liberal.” However, the dichotomy these two concepts make up do not correspond to the realities of Norwegian higher education at all. It makes little sense to say about all or most Norwegian higher education programs that they are either liberal or professional, or to place them along a continuum where these two are the two extreme poles. Among other things, this means that even though Norwegian humanities education was for a long time fairly close to the definition of professional education in that it qualified mainly for the school teacher profession, it makes little sense to say that when it was “deprofessionalized” during the 1960s and 1970s, it was “liberalized” at the same time. I shall return below to another conceptualization that I think better captures the Norwegian humanities’ later development. The other reservation regarding “professional education” is that using such a concept seems to presuppose that the educational programs in question have been perceived in basically the same way by the various stakeholders involved (professors, students, politicians, employers, etc.). As we shall see, however, Norwegian humanities education – like higher education in general – has on the contrary been a site where different actors and observers have had entirely different interpretations and pursued diverging (and sometimes, but not necessarily, conflicting) interests. An educational program like the hovedfag in history in the 1980s, for instance, was not the same entity for the history professor as for the history student, or for the upper secondary school rector with a history teacher vacancy to fill. Most of the time such differences in perspective have remained tacit, but occasionally they have erupted into debates, involving representatives from the humanities as well as educational researchers and other observes, arguing about how particular humanities disciplines and programs – or, indeed, the humanities in general – should be understood. The underlying normative question in these debates, of course, has been whether higher education should be professionally oriented (to some extent, at least) or if it should only be committed to Bildung (as this concept was understood by the

737 Joseph Ben-David, Centers of Learning: Britain, France, Germany, United States (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2009) 30.

Introduction to part four │ 413

institutions). The humanities have always been considered as standing at the extreme Bildung end of this dichotomy, but the distance from the midway point to the position of the humanities increased dramatically from the late 1960s. As we saw in part two, it was normal for program plans in the humanities around 1960 to have explicit professional aims, and as we saw in part one it was unproblematic to address the future careers of the students as part of policymaking processes – even if the Bildung ideology was well known (and ardently championed by some). When this changed around 1970, the change did not only concern the humanities; it was part of a larger societal shift. This shift was socio-structural, but also entailed major changes on the semantic level. The concepts of “professions” and “professional education,” as well as the counter-concept of “frie studier,” were at the center of these changes. In order to arrive at an adequate conceptualization of how the Norwegian humanities have related to the word of work, and in particular to grasp the changes in this relationship, I need to take a detour through the Norwegian version of the “professions debate.” I also use this opportunity to offer some reflections on how the concept of “profession” as well as the actual historical evolution of professions relates to the sociological systems theory that is the governing theoretical perspective in this study.

17.2 THE PROFESSIONS DEBATE In the postwar period, many social scientists and other observers, in Norway as elsewhere, noted how vocational groups increasingly attached themselves to research, and how specialized higher education programs, often at the graduate level, emerged in response to the desire of these groups to increase their social standing. Hence the prophesy of “the professionalization of everyone,” as Harold Wilensky noted in 1964.738 On the other hand, there were also very noticeable societal changes that pointed in other directions. One such change had to do with the decline of trust in authorities that we have come to associate with the year 1968. This had consequences for how the professions were perceived. Beginning already in the 1960s and escalating in the 1970s, the professions came under attack as guild structures designed to protect insider privileges rather than client security or the common good.739

738 Harold L. Wilensky, “The professionalization of everyone,” American Journal of Sociology 70.2 (1964). 739 Often referenced as the first major critical approach to professional power in this period is Eliot Freidson, Profession of Medicine: A Study of the Sociology of Applied

414 │ The transformation of humanities education

Another kind of societal change that could be observed somewhat later resulted from new demands put upon organizations in working life. As both commercial and welfare state production grew in complexity in the postwar period, many organizations were forced to acquire greater capacity for adaptation to changes in their environment. By the mid-1980s they were all faced with the imperative to become “service-oriented” or “user-oriented.” In order to keep up, many industries and even public administration had to transcend the “standard procedures” that professionals of various types were socialized into.740 In public service and large corporations, for instance, the Weberian, stable and rule-based bureaucratic logic was increasingly relegated to separate departments for routine administration, while pride of place was given to a new paradigm of knowledge-based innovation, bringing with it a continuous reorganization of workflows.741 The professions had their roles to play under this new paradigm as well, but their jurisdictions were now challenged by managers mandated to instigate reforms, and if they were perceived to be too slow to adjust (as the older generations of legally trained bureaucrats were in many countries), they were exposed to competition from other educational groups (in the Norwegian public sector, mostly by people trained in the social sciences, as we shall see). Under these conditions, which eventually came to be known as the “knowledge economy,” flexible “knowledge workers” with generic competencies and transferable skills became a preference. It seems this was particularly the case in Scandinavia, where academically trained workers were relatively cheap to hire, while they at the same time enjoyed strong legal protection against being laid off, thus preventing continuous re-staffing as an adjustment measure on the employers’ part.742

Knowledge (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1970); in Norway, a similarly critical approach is voiced in Gudmund Hernes, Makt og avmakt (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1982 [1975]), and in many of the contributions to NAVF, Profesjonalisering: Samfunnsbehov eller gruppeinteresse? (Oslo: NAVF, 1977). See also Rune Slagstad, “Profesjonene i norsk samfunnsforskning,” Profesjonshistorier, eds. Rune Slagstad and Jan Messel (Oslo: Pax, 2014). 740 Regarding changes in the Norwegian public sector, see White Paper, St. meld. R. 83 (1984-1985) Langstidsprogrammet 1986-1989. 741 See for instance Rosabeth Moss Kanter, When Giants Learn to Dance (NY: Touchstone, 1990). 742 On the compressed wage structure in Norway, see Karl Ove Moene and Michael Wallerstein, “Solidaristic Wage Bargaining,” Nordic Journal of Political Economy 22 (1995) 79-94; on developments in management, see Tian Sørhaug, Managementalitet og autoritetens forvandling (Bergen: Fagbokforlaget, 2004).

Introduction to part four │ 415

Informed by such developments, the professions debate in Norway has continued, but the overarching question of whether the professions have been taking over, or whether they have rather been on the decline as a coupling mechanism between education and the world of work, has remained unresolved, not the least because it has proved impossible to disentangle it from the normative question of the desirability of such a takeover (or the regretability of its decline). Obviously, I shall not attempt to answer this question conclusively here either. But a few comments may serve to indicate where our case of humanities education as teacher education and its later transformation into something else (to be elaborated below) fits into the picture. In order to bridge the conceptual framework in this fourth part with the theoretical apparatus used in the rest of the study, I shall avail myself of a systems theoretical perspective on the professions offered by Rudolf Stichweh, whom I already have quoted several times previously. Stichweh suggests that the importance of the professions might be declining in the late modern period, and the reasons he offers have strong relevance, I think, for our attempt to understand the historical development of Norwegian humanities education. I also want to bring in another complementary perspective, advocated by Andrew Abbott, which allows us to view the development of the Norwegian humanities in the context of other neighboring professions and occupations. In an article from 1996, Stichweh argues that professionalism was a highly important societal mechanism that helped to make the transition from the society of the estates to the functionally differentiated modern society possible.743 The “disinterestedness” of the professions proved capable of attracting trust in the population at large, thus offering an alternative societal resource to heritage and property. Gradually, this form of generalizable trust contributed to make functional differentiation, rather than differentiation based on estates or classes, the primary structural principle of modern society, according to Stichweh. Stichweh contests the societal centrality accorded to the professions in the theories of e.g. Talcott Parsons and Andrew Abbott. For Stichweh, it is a crucial insight in systems theory that it is the societal function systems that have attained systemic properties – autopoiesis – in modern society, which cannot be said of the professions. He grants that several functions systems have evolved around particular professions, and that the professions – in some form – are probably indispensable in the foreseeable future at the

743 Rudolf Stichweh, “Profesjoner i systemteoretisk perspektiv,” Profesjonsstudier, eds. Anders Molander and Lars Inge Terum (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2008). A shortened English version of the paper was published in 1997: Rudolf Stichweh, “Professions in Modern Society,” International Review of Sociology 7.1 (1997).

416 │ The transformation of humanities education

level of interaction (between the roles of the performing professionals and their clients), but he nevertheless argues that in the differentiated modern society, professions must be studied in the context of the function systems they attach themselves to, and not as a freestanding principle of “professionalism” or “third logic.”744 The conclusion that the societal significance of the professions should be somewhat downplayed is not, in my view, simply an attempt to preserve the systems theoretical conceptual architecture by explaining away professionalism as a potential embarrassment. Rather, Stichweh’s caveat is a significant contribution to the understanding of how professions function and change in modern society. Acknowledging that the professions, at the threshold of modernity, helped to make function systems possible, but also explaining how function systems in turn have come to condition the further development of the professions, Stichweh raises the study of professions, which since the decline of Parsons’ influence has often been conducted at the level of individual professions (usually as measured against the template of the older and more established ones), to the societal level again. The relevance and importance of Stichweh’s contribution for the present study on the humanities can be seen in a highly interesting observation he makes about the teacher profession. Since the decline of Norwegian humanities education as teacher education and the corresponding rise of the general teacher [allmennlæreren] will be among the major topics of this part (as it has also been in the previous ones), I want to spend a few words on how the development of teacher education and the teacher profession looks from Stichweh’s systems theoretical view. Very briefly, Stichweh distinguishes between an older, academically oriented teacher occupation (which he also calls the teacher “estate”), and the modern teacher profession anchored in pedagogy. He views the transition from the former to the latter in the context of the evolution of the system of research: “While at one time it was reasonable to say that the teacher occupation was the only occupation that had solely the philosophical faculty to thank for its education, this changed radically when the system of research expanded. The philosophical faculty is the origin of ever new research-based occupations (chemists, physicians, biochemists, psychologists, art historians, etc.) which, in contrast to the teacher occupation, can no longer be understood as professions.

744 The expression refers to Eliot Freidson, Professionalism, the third logic: On the practice of knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).

Introduction to part four │ 417

Hence, there occurs a relativization of the professional structural pattern, which now appears 745

as one of several options, and therefore loses some of its status.”

The modern teacher profession, which Stichweh says “grew out of the older teacher occupation” (but here he must be thinking of Germany specifically; at least, it does not apply to the Norwegian case), has in many ways succeeded in becoming a profession since it has monopolized the “performance role” in the function system of education. But as is well known, it has done so at the cost of producing a certain cleavage. As Stichweh points out, the teacher profession “finds itself between the discipline-based knowledge system of modern research and pedagogy as a practiceoriented doctrine that deals with reflection and ‘technologies’ for upbringing and the dissemination of knowledge, and is therefore characterized by an inherent ambivalence.”746 What Stichweh argues, then, is that the hegemony of the older type of academically trained teacher was lost (at least in part) because of the internal differentiation in the system of research, whereas the new teacher profession gained a foothold in the modern function system of (primary and secondary) education that emerged in the second half of the 19th century with the aid of pedagogy. The role played by pedagogy in this teacher “professionalization,” of which the rise of the Norwegian general teacher in the postwar era is one instance, has been hard to grasp. This is partly because it has been assumed that pedagogy, because of its establishment at universities (although very belatedly in Norway), has been a regular research discipline, and that the teacher profession’s identity and legitimacy has therefore been firmly anchored in the function system of research. In the light of systems theory, it is possible to see, however, that even though university status had legitimizing effects for pedagogy at least in some quarters, the crucial contribution of pedagogy has in reality been its articulation of the core values and self-perspective of the function system of education, not research.747 Writing in 1988, Niklas Luhmann and Karl-Eberhard Schorr suggested a clear distinction between educational science (which observes education from the perspective of research) and pedagogy, and said about the latter:

745 Rudolf Stichweh, “Profesjoner i systemteoretisk perspektiv,” 390. Translated into English by the present author. 746 Ibid., 392. 747 In the Norwegian case, the general teacher education had university college status, which since 1973 has formally been on the same (tertiary) level as the universities – even though its academic and social status has continued to be somewhat lower.

418 │ The transformation of humanities education

“Pedagogy clearly [has] difficulty in establishing itself as a research-based discipline (= a discipline that practices science) in the context of the differentiated (from other systems) system of science. Measured according to the amount of independent research it does (research that is not dependent upon other disciplines), Pedagogy may appear to be a bit of a failure to itself and others. But it does not need to prop up its self-respect on this support. Pedagogy’s strive for independence does not need to be based on (dependent on!) science; it is better grasped – or at least in a way that is closer to the facts – if one looks at it from the perspective of the reflection functions of pedagogical theory as a special sort of inspection 748

and production of knowledge for the business of education.”

Now, whether pedagogy is a proper research discipline or not may seem an issue for science studies and of little relevance for our concern here, which is the professions in general and the teacher profession in particular. But as will become clear later on in this part of the study, to grasp the function played by pedagogy adequately matters greatly for our ability to understand the rise of the general teachers as the hegemonic profession in the system of education in Norway. And it is only when the issue of teacher professionalism is seen in the context of the difference between the function system references of education and research that the preference for the general teacher and the decline of the academically trained teacher can be understood. To me this indicates the relevance of systems theory, and particularly the theory of autonomous societal function systems, for the issues in this part of the study also. But although the intrinsic function system logic of education has conditioned the professionalization efforts within its purview since its establishment as a societal system in its own right in the last half of the 19th century, it is obviously not possible to deduce from the level of theory to the historical development at the level of actual organizations and interactions. Path dependency – the struggles and alliances of various established and incumbent groups – must be taken into account. This goes especially, I would say, for the teacher groups in the Norwegian postwar period, for whom the developments especially during the reform period from ca. 1960 to 1975 was experienced as a many-dimensional turf-war, as I shall return to below.

748 Niklas Luhmann & Karl-Eberhard Schorr, Problems of Reflection in the System of Education, 398. Ten pages later, Luhmann and Schorr reiterates the point: “Pedagogy – especially if it understands itself to be the reflection theory for the system of education – is not science. An academic subject – okay. That has to do with the organization of universities and the salaries of professors. But not a scientific discipline in the sense of Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Psychology, and Sociology.” Ibid., 408.

Introduction to part four │ 419

At this point, and at this level of analysis, it is useful, I think, to remind ourselves of the theoretical contribution of Andrew Abbott to the study of the professions, especially his concept of “jurisdiction.” While it should be noted that on some points there are discrepancies between Abbott’s theory and systems theory (notably on the conceptualization of “system,” which Abbott uses in the title of his famous study, and which usage Stichweh criticizes in the article quoted above), the truly important contribution of Abbott, in my view, is to provide a framework for studying something that systems theory has often been slightly blind to, namely power struggles – and without lapsing into “conflict theory.” Abbott instead offers an “ecological” way of thinking about how professions operate in an environment of other professions as well as other determinants in the worlds of education and work. According to Abbott, “[e]ach profession is bound to a set of tasks by ties of jurisdiction, the strengths and weaknesses of these ties being established in the processes of actual professional work. Since none of these links is absolute or permanent, the professions make up an interacting system, an ecology. Professions compete within this system, and a profession’s success reflects as much the situations of its competitors and the system structure as it does the profession’s own effort. From time to time, tasks are created, abolished or reshaped by external forces, with consequent jostling and readjustment within the system of professions. Thus, larger social forces have their impact on individual professions through the structure within which the professions exist, rather than directly.”

749

What Abbott’s perspective allows us to see, then, is that changes in the status and functions of one profession should not be studied as a solitary progression or regression on the abstract staircase of “professionalization,” but rather as a trajectory contingent upon changes in other, competing occupational groups, and upon “external forces,” such as the actions of other stakeholders, especially authorities with regulatory powers, but also more “cultural” influences. If we combine this insight with the recognition that even if a professional group is seen as homogenous from one perspective (from the competitors’ view, for instance), it might in fact harbor conflicting interests and tradeoffs internally (as we know was the case in the camp of the academically trained teachers in Norway), the picture begins to attain many dimensions. We see that functions that are manifest when seen from one perspective can be latent when viewed from another, and that the premium put on the various aspects of humanities education (the jurisdiction in the teacher labor market in lower secondary school, the function of graduate studies as recruitment to

749 Andrew Abbott, System of Professions, 33.

420 │ The transformation of humanities education

research, the cross-subsidizing between education and research) varies greatly between groups and subgroups. The really enriched picture emerges when we couple these insights to the historical dimension. What then appears is not really a picture at all, but a narrative in which the protagonist profession is not allowed to simply go about its business, running through predetermined stages of “professionalization”, but actually has to deal with constant disturbances and power plays it gets entangled in, whether it wants to or not, many of which it has only a partial understanding of. In addition it turns out that the protagonist, as the case may be in the modern novel, suffers from a deep personality split, and is moreover a deeply unreliable first-person narrator of its own history. Thus you can have a situation in a professional field like Norwegian secondary school teaching – especially in a transitional phase – where, below a tranquil surface, many things are going on at the same time: Educational programs in the humanities may function as quasi-professional qualification for secondary school teaching for some students, even though the providers of these programs (along with another group of students) considers it primarily to be a “liberal” type of education; simultaneously, another professional group may be expanding its jurisdiction by gaining admittance at the lower end, where no real fight is put up because of its relatively low prestige (as seen from the perspective of academics and teachers in upper secondary school), but where authorities with regulatory powers may have political reasons for privileging the incumbent group. Let me now try to recapitulate. In order to describe the historical trajectory of Norwegian humanities education, especially as regards its relation to the labor market, I will retain the concept of professional education for the traditional form of embedseksamen, the legal knot of which was cut in 1959, but the function of which lingered on and conditioned this form of education for 10-20 years more. The nature and function of humanities education in this period, and also the reasons behind the processes that eventually transformed it, will be studied in the light of the theoretical framework outlined above. For the Norwegian humanities programs after ca. 1980, however, – which some label “liberal” – I would like to introduce the somewhat ungainly concept of research-oriented generalist education. For the first part – research-based – I refer to part three of this study, where the research drift in the Norwegian humanities and its impact upon humanities curricula is documented and analyzed. Although there have been differences between disciplines in this respect, it seems fair to say that Norwegian humanities education in general was firmly anchored in the modern research paradigm – understood as the critical, reflexive, and methodical reexamination of established truths rather than the initiation into a shared cultural history – by the first half of the 1980s.

Introduction to part four │ 421

When it comes to the second part – generalist education – it could of course be argued that a certain generality has pertained to humanities curricula all along, making it possible for at least a few philologists ever since the 19th century to pursue other paths than school teaching, whether it be an academic career, publishing, journalism, or an administrative career. And this is true. But when I use it to characterize humanities education as such after circa 1980, the term generalist is meant to highlight that humanities education’s relationship to the labor market changes fundamentally when indetermination is no longer the exception, but the rule. This change necessitates another perspective that that of “professionalism” altogether in order to understand the new form of coupling of education with working life. If it is correct to say that indetermination regarding the students’ futures in working life became the rule for humanities education, and we also know (as we do) that the shift did not result in massive unemployment, the question becomes: how could coupling between this form of education and the world of work still occur?

17.3 THE CONCEPT OF “CAREER” If we take the perspective of the individual humanities students, the short answer is that the transition from “professional education” to “research-based generalist education” meant the emergence of “career” as a new and generalized form of coupling between themselves and educational as well as occupational organizations. Or, to rephrase this as seen from the societal level: when the tight “professional” coupling between humanities education and the word of work ceased to be compatible with the increased autonomy of the relevant function systems, it had to give way to a much looser social form – and one which shifted the burden of performing the actual coupling onto the individual students/graduates, resulting in a multitude of career trajectories. At the theoretical level, this means that the idea of a career is a necessary supplement to the conceptualization of humanities programs as research-oriented generalist education. Like the professions, the very concept of a career is inherently modern.750 However, it highlights a different aspect of modernity, and one that would eventually

750 “[T]he specific use of the term career within the sociological and psychological literatures does seem to have a short history – the word itself did not commonly appear in reference to one’s professional life or life course until the early 20th century (Oxford English Dictionary [OED], 1933).” Celia Moore, Hugh Gunz, and Douglas Hall, “Trac-

422 │ The transformation of humanities education

prove only partially compatible with professionalism, namely the freedom of choice and social mobility of individuals, in contrast to the relative stability and predictability of life-courses in the previous society of estates.751 Throughout the first half of the 20t century, a career trajectory, although conceptualized as recording achieved rather than ascribed social status, was conditioned by fairly stable educational and occupational formats and organizational structures. Many more people than previously had a real choice of careers in this period, but between rather fixed alternatives. To a large extent, a person would have to choose (at least if we limit the discussion to the educated middle classes) between mutually excluding alternatives such as engineer, nurse, priest, etc., and for each occupational or professional career there would most often be a definite set of alternative educational routes. In other words, the social structure in this phase of modernity was stable enough to allow one generations of youths to form their expectations about education and working life on the basis of the experiences of the previous one. Things have since changed, and higher education as well as working life is now significantly more complex, not to say chaotic, but it is important to remember that in the earlier phases of modernity the principle of “division of labor,” which many observers today tend to think of as a corrosive force in society, also implied a certain order. Durkheim conceptualized this order as “organic solidarity” – presumably on the model of the feelings of mutual dependency that might arise across vocations, professions, and businesses in a small 19th century provincial town. It is interesting in our context that Durkheim pointed to the professions as among the most stabilizing societal mechanism in the modern society; in this

ing the Historical Roots of Career Theory in Management and Organization Studies,” Handbook of Career Studies, eds. Hugh Gunz and Maury Peiperl (NY: Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 2007). In Norway the term karriere came into use even later, and for a long time it was mostly used in the limited sense of upwards social mobility through a succession of positions within an organization or an industry. 751 See Vilhelm Aubert & al, Akademikere i norsk samfunnsstruktur 1800-1950 (Oslo: ISF, 1960) 6ff. In pre-modern times, careers were also possible (for instance ecclesiastical or academic careers, both of which were organizationally anchored in the church) but then as exceptions legitimized through the notion of a “calling.” As Weber famously pointed out, the protestant ethic – especially Calvinism – in the early modern period allowed much more scope for individual careers than previously, because worldly success could now function as a symbol of being “elect.” With the breakthrough of modernity, ushered in by the semantics of liberalism in the economic sphere in the 19th century, the notion of a “calling” shed its religious connotations and reemerged as the secularized trinity of individual talent, ambition, and merit.

Introduction to part four │ 423

respect he thought professional associations and trade unions could be seen as “the heir of the family.”752 Just as one’s place in the social structure was previously determined by one’s family, it was now the chosen professional community that provided the individual with his or her primary identity. Later on, Parsons seems to have had much the same basic idea in mind when he placed “the professional complex” at the heart of his model of modern society.753 Durkheim and Parsons have both been criticized for their presumptions about order at the heart of modern society, and as general theories of modernity they leave many things to be desired.754 But in my view they do capture an aspect of societal predictability that prevailed from the 19th century and well into the postwar era – an aspect that should be all the more noticeable for us today since it has been on the decline since the 1970s. Among the most important stabilizing mechanisms in what Parsons referred to as the professional complex was the tight coupling between education and vocation/profession. In addition there was in the period we refer to here, from the first half of the 20th century and well into the postwar era, a high degree of acknowledged mutual dependency between employer and employee, with a high premium put on the value of loyalty.755 Taking this framework of societal stability as a given, a career was conceived of as the degree of individual flexibility and agency that was possible, and often encouraged – but still within the boundaries of this framework. This conception can be clearly seen in the writing of one of the pioneering researchers on careers, Everett C. Hughes: “[A] study of careers – of the moving perspective in which persons orient themselves with reference to the social order, and of the typical sequences and concatenations of office – may be expected to reveal the nature and “working constitution” of a society. Institutions are but the forms in which the collective behavior and collective action of people go on. In the course

752 Émile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society (London: Free Press, 1964 [1893]) 17. 753 Talcott Parsons, “The Professional Complex,” Action Theory and the Human Conditions (NY: Free Press, 1979). 754 See the discussion of general sociological theory in part one. 755 To conflict-oriented social scientists this might seem to be either a paradox or the result of ideology (in the Marxist sense of false consciousness), but conflicting interest does not preclude mutual dependency, and whether one chooses to call the cultural values growing up around it “ideology” is not really important here, as long as it is recognized that it had a stabilizing function on working life and hence on career trajectories.

424 │ The transformation of humanities education

of a career the person finds his place within these forms, carries on his active life with 756

reference to other people, and interprets the meaning of the one life he has to live.”

In Hughes’ publications from the 1950s, the concepts of profession and career seem highly compatible. Indeed, careers are most often thought to occur within professions, in career steps going from the entry level of physician or teacher and up the stairs to arrive, at least in some cases, at senior surgeon, or rector – or else remain at a lower level and receive in time the gold watch in recognition of loyal service.757 But by the end of the 1950s, the dynamic of working life was clearly beginning to change, and the changes were first noticeable – as so often in the postwar period – in the United States. In 1958, Hughes observed that “[i]n a considerable number of professions the basic techniques and intellectual skills are becoming something one learns as a condition of getting on the ladder of mobility. The engineer who, at forty, can still use a slide rule or logarithmic table, and make a true drawing, 758

is a failure.”

What Hughes points to here is that education was becoming an entry requirement, and the direction of the career from the entry level no longer followed a fixed path, and was even likely to move away from core tasks and over into more general executive work. It is not possible here to go into the details of how and why this shift occurred. Suffice it to say that when organizations began to notice that employees were often used for quite other purposes than they had been trained and hired for, the next step was often to consider a broader range of candidates from neighboring disciplines for the same positions, or even to redefine the positions. In this way, the tight coupling between education and positions was loosened in many industries and sectors – but certainly not everywhere. As we shall see, and as we hinted at above, there was simultaneously the opposite tendency of professionalization in other sectors. Although there is often the assumption of a general and unilinear evolution of the professions as such, with the professions either taking over completely or heading towards extinction, there is much to suggest that professionalization

756 Everett C. Hughes, “Institutional office and the person,” Men and Their Work (London: Collier-Macmillian, 1958) 67. 757 For a discussion of qualifications and careers in bureaucratic organizations, see Max Weber, “Bureaucracy,” From Max Weber, eds. H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (NY: Routledge, 2009 [1946]) 196-244. 758 Everett C. Hughes, “Institutional office and the person,” 137.

Introduction to part four │ 425

happens to some occupations or to some set of tasks under certain conditions, while not under others. Perhaps there is even a way in which professionalization in some areas (such as teaching in primary and lower secondary school) is made possible or at least facilitated by de-professionalization (or rather: generalization of credentials) in neighboring areas (such as the corresponding case of upper secondary school and various administrative positions for humanities graduates), and vice versa. But even if professionalism by no means fades away in the last half of the 20th century, it is no longer the unquestioned paradigm for how the occupational lifecourses of academically trained people are structured. Many people obviously continue to pursue professional education and thereafter enter professions where they spend all their life. But increasingly people with e.g. legal training or an education as a nurse will work with entirely different tasks than they were trained for. And in many occupations and professions, admission (and certification) is no longer restricted to graduates from a few well-known types of programs, but is opened up to a wider range of relevant programs, resulting in more heterogenic personnel groups. Especially in the 1990s, the last decade of the period covered in this study, it becomes apparent, in Norway as well as elsewhere (at least in the Western word), that modern working life has entered a phase in which individualized careers is the new paradigm. The concept of “boundaryless careers” is launched to capture a shift from more traditional career trajectories that have been firmly shaped by social mechanisms such as professions and hierarchical organizations, to careers that individuals are themselves responsible for continuously negotiating, often crossing organizational boundaries as well as the boundaries of function systems.759 As we shall see later, the socio-structural development discussed here, and the semantic shifts that went with it, had important implications for Norwegian humanities education. Conceptually, I will argue that humanities education in the last half of the period to be studied here (the phase from ca 1980, associated with what I have called research-oriented generalist education), will be most fruitfully interpreted with reference to the concept of career in this last sense – as “boundaryless” careers. More simply put: research-oriented generalist education presupposes this new conception of careers, and, as we shall see, the Norwegian humanities graduates begin to orient themselves according to it from the 1980s onwards. If we now ask for the reasons behind this development, the answer suggested by systems theory is, as we have seen in the discussion of the professions above, that the increased autonomy of the function systems makes professions problematic

759 See the special issue on “boundaryless” careers” in Journal of Organizational Behavior 15.4 (1994).

426 │ The transformation of humanities education

because they presuppose a tight coupling with limited scope for adaptation to increased complexity in the systems’ environment. To put it crudely: In order to pursue the dynamic that stems from its operational code, research needs to get rid of its obligations to schooling; schools in their turn need to get rid of academic disciplinary research (at least research that is not primarily committed to education), and governmental politics wants to free itself from obligations to what it sees as interest groups (at least interest group that run counter to the governing political programs). If we ask what the consequences of this shift in the coupling mechanisms between higher education and the world of work are, it seems the most significant one is that any problems henceforth, under the paradigm of individualized and boundaryless careers, will tend to become visible only when they generate challenges to the dynamic inherent in the implicated function systems – as when unemployment becomes a political embarrassment for the political system, or lack of competent manpower hampers productivity in the economy. As Luhmann has pointed out on several occasions, when functional differentiation reaches a certain threshold, there is no longer any position from which it is imperative, or even meaningful, to ask which performances one system can reasonably expect from another, or what the optimal solutions for society as such are.760 It all depends on system-reference, and problems will tend to be blamed on other systems. In practice, this means that to a much larger extent that previously the transition from education to work becomes an individualized problem for each graduate. It is precisely here that systems theory potentially can make a significant contribution. By observing and reporting, from the perspective of research, on these problems of transition and coupling, systems theoretical studies can attempt to feed these observations back into the function systems of education and politics – although, of course, the resonance it will find there will depend upon politics and education at the operative level, not on higher education research. Let us now return to Norwegian humanities education, and to the story of its transformation. In the following chapters I will trace, in a fairly chronological sequence, the shift from the “professional” phase in the postwar era when school teaching was the paramount concern of the humanities, through a transitional decade from ca. 1975 to 1985 when the research-orientation was consummated, to a new situation where the humanities educational programs no longer see it as a priority to prepare their candidates for school teaching, and schools no longer look first and foremost to humanities candidates from the universities for recruitment to teacher positions. Against the background of the conceptual framework outlined

760 See e.g. Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems, 411-12. See also the discussion of Luhmann’s theory of modern society in part one.

Introduction to part four │ 427

above, I shall attempt to describe and explain the many intertwined trajectories that together make up this transformation. I will be using statistics, especially on the first destinations of graduates from the universities, but also some longitudinal data. In order to follow up on the insights from Abbott discussed above, I will analyze the relationships between fields of occupational (or professional) practice and educational groups, considering also the humanities’ competitors – such as general teachers, social scientists, professional journalists, etc. The neat and symmetric periodization I employ – 1960-1975, 1975-1985, 19852000 – is chiefly a matter of convenience. As will become clear later on, there is actually some basis for the use of these years, but since the developments I am concerned with happen over long stretches of time, with some events working through causal chains of decades and more before they are consummated, the analyses will in some cases break with this periodization. Throughout the remaining sections in this part of the study I will be particularly concerned with the relative shares of humanities graduates that end up in the various sectors of working life. This, I will argue, is what chiefly determines the societal function of humanities education, although closely related issues, such as the size of the group of humanities graduates in an occupational field relative to other educational groups, and changes in the absolute number of graduate students in various fields, will also be discussed. There are many interesting and important issues I will not be able to discuss, or will discuss only in passing, such as salaries, gender issues, questions of social power or prestige, etc. Unfortunately, there is not much research on any of these issues regarding the Norwegian humanities, but even so it has not been possible within the limits of this project to go into them. After the historical exposition of the following three chapters, I will return to some of the more theoretical issues in a final chapter with conclusions to this part.

18 The period 1960–1975: Humanities education as teacher education

As I have underscored repeatedly throughout this study, the overwhelming majority of Norwegian humanities graduates from the 19th century and well into the period studied here became school teachers. Depending on the sources and definitions used, previous research stipulates that the share of humanities graduates who worked in secondary school was somewhere between 70 and 85 percent in the first half of the twentieth century. In a highly interesting study from 1967, on which much of my analysis in this section is based, the Norwegian sociologist Tore Lindbekk shows that in 1856 the share of humanities graduates who pursued a teacher career had been as high as 94 percent.761 This share then declined to 76 percent in 1910, mostly due to a growth in the number of available academic positions, in addition to increased opportunities in the press. After that, the schools’ share rose again in the interwar period, when the Norwegian “culture pause” during the Depression put a cap on academic work.762 The secondary schools expanded steadily in this period, and in 1940 almost 85 percent of the humanities graduates 761 Tore Lindbekk, Mobilitets- og stillingsstrukturer innenfor tre akademiske profesjoner 1910-63 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1967) 21. Lindbekk only considers humanities candidates with graduate degrees, and his figures excludes persons outside the workforce (and therefore many women). As a result, the share of school teachers among humanists – as well as the share of persons in academic positions – may seem higher in his presentation than in other analyses. For the same reason, the share of humanities graduates in other vocations, which is mostly a rest category in Lindbekk’s presentation, may have been somewhat underestimated. 762 The introduction of the magister degree in 1921 (see appendix 1) probably contributed, in and of itself, to a decreased share heading for school teacher positions, but Lindbekk’s numbers indicate that the combined effect of the economic downturn on academic hiring and the continued expansion of secondary school was greater.

430 │ The transformation of humanities education

worked there. Lindbekk shows that after WWII, the share of humanists who became school teachers declined somewhat again, reaching 78 percent of all employed Norwegian humanists in 1966, the last year he had numbers for. The three other categories of positions humanities graduates were eligible for, according to Lindbekk, were: 1) academic positions (including certain positions in museums, libraries, and archives), 2) the press (including publishing), and 3) public administration. The share of humanities graduates in academic positions reached a peak of 14,3 percent in 1910, before it declined slowly to 12,7 in 1940, climbing somewhat after the war, to 17 percent in 1966. Of course, since the production of candidates rose dramatically in the 1960s, the increase of humanities graduates in academic positions in absolute numbers was significant for the system of research. But what primarily interest us here is the actual function of humanities education vis-à-vis the labor market as a whole, and compared to the massive output of school teachers, the growth of the group of humanist academics was almost negligible. Lindbekk shows that the share of humanists in the press and public administration combined had also peaked in 1910, with 9,1 percent. Then it declined to only 3,1 percent in 1940 and remained at a low level after WWII, with 4,5 percent of the humanists working in these two categories in 1963. Below I will examine Lindbekk’s four categories of career options for humanities graduates separately, with a view to understand the fluctuations for each of them, as well as the interrelations between them, during the period from 1960 to 1975.

18.1 SCHOOL TEACHING Before WWII, almost all Norwegian humanities graduates who became school teachers were employed in the public secondary school system (den høyere skole), where they enjoyed a monopoly status.763 Lower secondary school had since 1935 been a two-year cycle called realskolen for pupils of 14-15 years, which pupils could enter after seven years of mandatory primary school. Upper secondary school, the gymnas, was a three-year cycle for pupils of 16-19 years, building upon the realskole.764 The whole of secondary education had traditionally been an elite system, recruiting pupils from the upper middle class as well as a few talents from lower social strata (mostly in the cities but also in certain rural areas) in order to

763 Together with graduates from the natural sciences, who held a monopoly in their subjects. 764 In some places there were also schools where the two tiers were integrated.

The period 1960–1975: Humanities education as teacher education │ 431

prepare them for university study. But around 1960 changes were underway. In the postwar period the realskole had gradually been attended by more pupils from middling and lower strata. This was a much desired development, especially for the ruling Labor party, and the realskole would eventually be transformed and incorporated into the compulsory and comprehensive educational system when this system was expanded from seven to nine years in the late 1960s. Upper secondary school – the traditional gymnas – retained a fairly selective recruitment (although mostly by self-selection based on tradition and economic capability) and its curricula around 1960 remained firmly oriented towards academia, even if some of the formal ties with the university had been cut.765 Teacher positions in secondary school were fairly specialized. Instruction was organized mostly on the basis of subjects, rather than following the class teacher system that was used in primary school (which later came to influence secondary school also). The teaching tasks in many ways resembled those at the university, with lecture-style classroom instruction and the grading of written work taking up much of the time – although obviously at a more elementary level than at the university. Recruitment to teacher positions was discipline specific, and only candidates with either a hovedfag or bifag in the disciplines taught as subjects in school were eligible – not, in general, candidates from research-oriented disciplines like art history or philosophy. Since disciplinary knowledge accumulation in the humanities was still considerably slower than in the natural sciences, school teachers trained in the humanities were able – if they were so inclined – to maintain throughout their careers an identity as “specialists” in their subject areas, and not a few of them would contribute to various forms of research, or publish work of a loosely scholarly nature for the general public, while holding teacher positions in secondary school.766 The educational level in Norway being still relatively low, secondary school teachers in the postwar era enjoyed a fairly high social status as members of one of the “learned” professions, although at a somewhat lower level than priests, lawyers, and physicians – and, as we shall see, university teachers.767 In addition to the certification from the university, the fact that secondary school teachers were part

765 Most importantly, the examen artium no longer served as the entry exam to the university as it traditionally had done, but as the final exam in the gymnas. See the chapter on philosophy and the discussion of propaedeutic exams in part three. 766 See Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen, 123. 767 Knut Grove and Svein Michelsen, “Lektorene: Lærere, embetsmenn og funksjonærer,” Profesjonshistorier, eds. Rune Slagstad and Jan Messel (Oslo: Pax, 2014).

432 │ The transformation of humanities education

of the civil service – in the position of an embede, thus representing public authority – was one reason for this status, which was jealously guarded by the secondary school teachers’ professional association, Norsk lektorlag. 768 In addition, it was generally known – at least in the upper, educated reaches of society – that ever since the nineteenth century it was the humanities students who had the best grades from the gymnas (a fact that began to change when admission to medicine was regulated in the 1930s, but which still lingered for a long time in Norwegian cultural memory).769 This gave teachers trained in the humanities a general reputation for intellectual capability.

18.2 ACADEMIC POSITIONS Even more respected than secondary school teachers, and serving the undisputed function of “center” of the “humanities profession,” to use Lindbekk’s terms, were humanities graduates recruited into academic positions – especially, of course, those who ended up as professors.770 As we have seen in part three, however, academic positions in the humanities in Norway had been extremely scarce before WWII. With only one Norwegian university and a small handful of other research organizations in operation, it was a very small and select group of humanities graduates that could aspire to an academic career. Mostly, the ones who went this way right after graduation were persons with research-oriented magister degrees, or regular degrees with the highest grades.771 Moreover, they would need financial backing from their families, or have the willingness to risk an austere lifestyle for an extended period of time, especially since, as Lindbekk has shown, many positions in the universities even in the postwar period were filled from the ranks of school teachers with a few years’ experience of teaching after graduation. A common route to academic positions, therefore, was to work some years in a secondary school, preferably in an urban area, waiting for a suitable opening at the university.

768 The formalities around the embete were terminated in 1964, but the sense of representing a delegated authority from the state and the government continued to inform especially the older secondary school teachers for quite some time. See ibid., and Åsmund Arup Seip, Lektorene. 769 Tore Lindbekk, Mobilitets- og stillingsstrukturer innenfor tre akademiske profesjoner 1910-63, 33. 770 Ibid., 39. 771 Ibid.

The period 1960–1975: Humanities education as teacher education │ 433

Obviously, this career pattern served to maintain the coupling between academia and the school system. Furthermore, academic positions in the humanities were quite teaching intensive, as discussed in part three.772 Time for research was scarce, even for tenured professors.773 In the lower ranks, among lecturers and assistant professors, teaching obligations almost drowned out research ambitions altogether in many cases. Nevertheless, positions at the university were undoubtedly the most influential in shaping the humanities disciplines, as well as the “profession” of school teachers, and as such they were clearly the most prestigious. Since the late nineteenth century, some of the most prominent academic disciplines had formed national associations, but since WWII it was increasingly the research council oriented towards basic research, the NAVF, along with the faculties of humanities at Oslo and Bergen that voiced the concerns of the Norwegian humanities academics. The first union for academic personnel, Fellesrådet for vitenskapelige tjenestemenn (later Forskerforbundet), was established in 1955. In addition to the universities at Oslo and Bergen and a few other HEIs, museums, libraries, and archives recruited humanists to positions where research was at least one of the tasks. In contrast to the natural and social sciences, however, there was no significant expansion of research outside the universities in the postwar period before the 1960s.774 As previously noted, even in the 1960s, when the universities were greatly expanded, the relative share of the candidates who embarked upon an academic career remained fairly small.

18.3 PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION We do not have much systematized information about the relatively few people trained in the humanities who went into public administration in the postwar period.775 Presumably there were some newly graduated candidates who began a

772 Which did not mean that the number of classes available for each student was very plentiful, however. 773 Fredrik W. Thue, “Universitetslærerne,” Profesjonshistorier, eds. Rune Slagstad and Jan Messel (Oslo, Pax, 2014). 774 Tore Lindbekk, Mobilitets- og stillingsstrukturer innenfor tre akademiske profesjoner 1910-63, 218ff. 775 One source of information is the national yearbook of graduates in the humanities and the natural sciences, published in 1950, Helga Sverdrup Ekrheim, Olav Ekrheim, and Håkon Norås (eds.), Norske filologer og realister (Stavanger: Otto Floors arvinger,

434 │ The transformation of humanities education

career in public administration in the lower rungs of the civil service, e.g. in a ministry or a governmental agency. But Lindbekk shows that for the most part the road to public administration led through an initial period of school teaching, and in some cases through academic positions. Especially the school directors in the municipalities and counties, which made up a large share of this category, were recruited among humanities teachers with years of experience from secondary school.776 The upper echelons in relevant ministries, particularly the ministries of education and culture, were often recruited from the ranks of university people. As many historians have pointed out, the new openings that came with the expansion of the Norwegian civil service after WWII were to a large extent filled by graduates from the social sciences, who increasingly challenged the hegemony of the legally trained bureaucrats.777 For those trained in the humanities, however, public administration remained not so much an initial career option as a window that opened rather infrequently, and usually fairly late in careers spent in secondary school or academia.

18.4 THE PRESS AND PUBLISHING Journalism, however, had always been an option for young people starting out – insofar as they had writing skills, which many graduates from the humanities undoubtedly had. Especially during the great expansion of the Norwegian press between 1870 and 1920, an increasing share of humanities graduates found work as journalists and (later in their careers) editors, although the share of humanities graduates who worked in the press (including publishing) never surpassed 10 percent, as Lindbekk demonstrates.778 In the interwar period the share of humanities graduates who worked in the press declined, and after the war there was only a slight increase. This non-expansion of the humanists into the press should be interpreted against the background of two characteristics of the Norwegian press in this period. Firstly, the economic conditions were unfavorable for the Norwegian

1950). Unfortunately, it has not been possible within the scope of the current project to research this large catalogue (3500 entries) in order to identify career patterns in public administration. This would be an interesting avenue for further research in this area. 776 Tore Lindbekk, Mobilitets- og stillingsstrukturer innenfor tre akademiske profesjoner 1910-63, 229. 777 See for instance Rune Slagstad, De nasjonale strateger, 277ff. 778 Tore Lindbekk, Mobilitets- og stillingsstrukturer innenfor tre akademiske profesjoner 1910-63, 21, 260.

The period 1960–1975: Humanities education as teacher education │ 435

media for a long time. The Depression caused the whole media system in Norway to stagnate, and during WWII a large share of Norwegian newspapers were terminated, never to be reestablished. Even after the war the economic difficulties continued (although for different reasons), with numerous layoffs in newspapers in the late 1950s. 779 A second factor was that Norwegian newspapers, like those in other Nordic countries, were tightly coupled with political parties, a system that lasted until the 1970s. In combination with the financial problems, this arguably delayed the professionalization of journalism in Norway. Thus, in the postwar period most journalists did not have any education beyond secondary school, and many had even less. Only about 10 percent had university degrees (in addition there were another 10 percent who had interrupted their university studies).780 Which share of these had been trained in the humanities is not known. Presumably, there was some concentration of humanities candidates in the culture sections of larger, national newspapers and in the national broadcasting company (the NRK). Publishing was another niche where humanists had traditionally had a foothold – and a fairly firm one at that. Especially editors and top management in the two largest Norwegian publishing houses – Gyldendal and Aschehoug – were often trained in the humanities.781 But before the 1960s, publishing was a very small industry in Norway, with few permanent positions to fill even in the postwar period. As with top positions in public administration, the contribution of humanities graduates to the Norwegian publishing industry before the 1960s is probably better studied by prosopography than by the simple statistical measures used by Lindbekk – and by the present study.782 Even so – or perhaps particularly for that reason – these positions and the people who occupied them seem to have had a strong symbolic value, giving to humanities education and the group of Norwegian humanities scholars an important sense of being represented in the upper reaches of

779 Guri Hjeltnes (ed.) Norsk presses historie 3: Imperiet vakler 1945-2010 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2010). 780 Rune Ottosen, Fra fjærpenn til internett. Journalister i organisasjon og samfunn (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1996) 319. 781 Nils Johan Ringdal and Terje Holtet Larsen, Kardinaler og kremmere. Norske forleggere gjennom hundre år. Den norske forleggerforening 1895-1995 (Oslo: Den norske forleggerforening, 1995) 207. 782 Lindbekk says that the information he has access to is not complete for the categories of public administration and journalism/publishing, but the share he gives of 6,4 percent of the humanists graduated in 1963-65 going to these occupations, seems about right. Tore Lindbekk, Mobilitets- og stillingsstrukturer innenfor tre akademiske profesjoner 191063,173.

436 │ The transformation of humanities education

society, and holding out a hope for young graduates that a more glamorous career was at least possible. Looking at the more well-known names (domestically) of humanists in the press and publishing, one might get the impression that it was often graduates from the research-oriented disciplines (in particular general literature studies) who entered these careers. Insofar as this impression is correct, it probably had more to do with the scarcity of other sufficiently interesting options for these particular individuals at the time of their graduation than with any strong preference among employers in the press or in the publishing houses for candidates from those particular disciplines. While both school teaching and academic positions were very discipline specific in their recruitment, the other categories of employment discussed here – public administration, the press, publishing – do not seem to have been so.

18.5 NEW DEVELOPMENTS 1960–1975 Summarizing the developments of the career patterns and the career mobility of Norwegian humanities graduates from 1910 to his time of writing in 1967, Tore Lindbekk concludes: “The numbers […] do not indicate that the humanists in this century have taken on new tasks in society to any great extent beyond what they had as teachers in secondary school.”783 This judgment should be seen against the background of Lindbekk’s comparison of humanities graduates with the candidates from the natural sciences, for whom the changes had been much greater, especially as regards the relative growth of research. But even so, Lindbekk’s statement, which summarizes one of the most important findings in his book as a whole, is notable for its emphasis on continuity between the pre- and postwar periods. Now, this seems to us in retrospect a very strange conclusion, especially when we consider the general sense of upheaval that permeated the Norwegian humanities in the 1960s and which shortly after the publication of Lindbekk’s study transformed the whole enterprise. One major change we know took place, and which has been discussed repeatedly and from various angles in this study, is the expansion of the staff at the two universities and the emerging university colleges, especially after 1960. One would have expected this expansion to register in the career mobility patterns studied by Lindbekk, but as we have seen above, it did not. Another aspect of the sense of imminent transformation that did not show in the statistics Lindbekk used was the expectation, voiced by the Kleppe committee of

783 Tore Lindbekk, Mobilitets- og stillingsstrukturer innenfor tre akademiske profesjoner 1910-63, 16.

The period 1960–1975: Humanities education as teacher education │ 437

1960 and the reports it built upon, that humanities candidates were about to expand into entirely new areas. The NAVF report of 1960, seven years before Lindbekk’s study appeared, had ventured the following prognosis: “It is reasonable to expect that there will be a growing demand for people with humanities education in publishing, newspapers, and various kinds of information and popularization work (folkeopplysningsarbeid), as a result of a rising educational level in society and increased economic capacity to meet cultural needs. Growing foreign trade and international contacts will further the same development, and will, among other things, boost the demand for language training. In companies and organizations, humanities candidates will probably be increasingly used in personnel work and public relations work. There will be written more company and organization history, more city and other local history. The new degree system for humanities programs allows for humanities disciplines to be combined with the social and natural sciences. This increases the usability of the workforce 784

with humanities education, and thereby opens new positions for the humanities graduates.”

Still, there is nothing to suggest that Lindbekk’s analysis of what had actually happened on the ground by 1966 (which was the last year he had numbers for) was faulty. And as it turned out, it would take even more time for actual and major change to manifest itself in the career trajectories of the humanities graduates. Despite a decade of extreme expansion in the number of graduates and major changes in the curricula in the direction of research-orientation, and notwithstanding much talk about new career options opening up, the numbers show that humanities education remained in effect a teacher education for the overwhelming majority of graduates throughout the 1960s (and as we shall see in the next section, well into the 1970s). How do we explain this? Let us first look at the expansion of the labor market for humanist graduates in the field of higher education and research. Why was not academia a more noticeable career option – as it was in the natural sciences? First of all, we need to recognize, as does Lindbekk, that there actually were changes in the recruitment to some of the academic positions. Lindbekk shows that prior to WWII the majority of the employees in all academic humanities positions had worked as secondary schools teachers at one point in their careers. But after the war an increasing share of the upper two categories of academics (readers and professors) were recruited to an academic career without any such experience at all. According to Lindbekk, “the most exclusive category of researchers has increasingly been recruited solely from

784 NAVF, Utredninger om akademisk arbeidskraft. Melding nr. 5. Prognose over tilgangen på og behovet for filologer i årene 1960-1975 (Oslo: NAVF, 1960) 23.

438 │ The transformation of humanities education

the immediate circle of research positions, – and has become isolated, as regards career mobility – from the school system.”785 One might speculate that one reason for this was a development Lindbekk also notes (but which he does not connect with this finding), namely the growth in the postwar period of the research-oriented disciplines like philosophy, general literature studies, art history, etc. – disciplines where there were few eligible candidates who had previous employment in schools. However this may have been, a part of the picture in the postwar period was that the humanities professoriate – the uppermost tier of the academic humanities, and the positions responsible for the future development of these disciplines through membership in the humanities faculties at Oslo and Bergen – was drifting apart from the school system. Still, to many people, including most applicants and students, the humanities continued to be regarded as closely coupled with the school system for well over a decade after the legal decoupling in the late 1950s, despite the increased academic isolation of the professoriate and the ensuing curricular research drift in many disciplines during the 1960s. There were two major reasons for this, as far as I can understand. One was the increasing demand for school teachers in a period of general educational growth, a development that was politically intended and welladvertised. A guide for secondary school graduates from 1960 made no disclaimers when promising humanities graduates jobs: “[T]hose who choose the humanities in order to enter a career in school, will no doubt have favorable prospects.”786 And true enough, throughout the 1960s and well into the 1970s, school teaching was an easily available career option for humanities graduates, still a well-respected one, and moreover one that seemed compatible with many of the new cultural ideas floating around at the time. The other reason, closely associated with the first one, was the much increased use of university lecturers in the humanities programs at the universities during the 1960s to cope with the growth in student numbers – lecturers who, as Lindbekk demonstrates, were still to a large extent recruited from secondary schools – as opposed to the professors and readers. These lecturers kept the teaching of humanities disciplines at the university informed by experiences and concerns of secondary school, at least until the early 1970s, when lecturers (as well as a rising number of

785 Tore Lindbekk, Mobilitets- og stillingsstrukturer innenfor tre akademiske profesjoner 1910-63, 185. 786 NAVF, Akademiske studier. En guide for gymnasiaster (Oslo: NAVF, 1960) 55. Like the Kleppe committe from the same year, the guidebook also points to other areas of work for humanities graduates (mainly the press and publishing) but the statistics it uses leaves no doubt about the major occupation being school teaching.

The period 1960–1975: Humanities education as teacher education │ 439

research fellows, many of whom were pursuing a PhD) was increasingly recruited directly from the group of newly graduated students.787 In summary, despite an increasing gap between the university as primarily the site for research and the school system as primarily a site for teaching, a tie between the two was upheld because of the demand made upon the universities by the massive educational expansion of the 1960s. In the midst of this expansion there was simply no way the universities could withdraw into research, as yet – even though there was now, as Lindbekk showed, an upper tier of academic positions of a certain size, and moreover, as I have demonstrated in part three of this study, of sufficient strength to reorient the humanities curricula in the direction of research. As discussed in part two, this education-driven massification had even been an integral part of strategy on the part of the research community to expand the university and thereby, in turn, its research capacity. But even if the humanities graduates did not, as the graduates in the natural sciences, flow into research in great numbers in the period before 1970, what about the other exciting career options that had been in the air since around 1960? Judging from the available statistics, these did not materialize – or, if they did, they were not able to attract many humanities graduates. A study published by the NAVF in 1976 shows that in 1973, only 860 out of a total of 6900 employed persons with humanities degrees in Norway, or 12,5 percent, worked in occupations other than school teaching or academic positions.788 Of the persons in “other occupations,” 44 percent

787 See also Fredrik W. Thue “Universitetslærerne.” 788 As we remember, Lindbekk’s study had 6,9 percent in “other occupations,” but Lindbekk only had information about graduates with the higher degree. More detailed information which could clarify the picture and make figures directly comparable has not been available, but to me it seems likely that the discrepancy between 6, 9 and 12,5 percent is due more to the inclusion of graduates with the lower degree (who were not qualified for academic positions, and have always been more prone to take work outside secondary school) in the latter figure, than to a general increase in the importance of other occupations for humanities graduates in the period between the mid-1960s and 1973. It should also be taken into account that there was an increase around 1970 in the share of humanities graduates who terminated their studies with the lower degree, as we have seen previously. Until fairly late in the period studied here, Norwegian universities and university colleges had only very rudimentary statistical information about the students flowing through the various stages of their degree system. One problem is that records for the various degrees were kept separately; another is that many students, especially in the humanities, spent a long time finishing the higher degree. Adding to the complexity is the fact that, of those who pursued a higher degree, many did not bother

440 │ The transformation of humanities education

were employed in public administration, over half of these in ministries (and half of those in ministries in the Ministry of education).789 The press and the publishing industry employed another 30 percent, of which roughly half were employed in the National broadcasting company (NRK). The remaining 26 percent, however, show an interesting distribution across sectors and industries – even if only consisting of 185 persons of a total of 6900 humanists in the workforce. There seems to have been a few pockets where humanists would gather, some possibly with relevance to the humanities education, others not so much. For instance, 44 persons were employed in “film, theatre, and other entertainment,” possibly in positions of some affinity with the humanities as they have traditionally been perceived, but there were also 40 persons employed in banking – almost all of them in the State educational loan fund, where they had most probably started to work during their studies. Apart from these congealments, the general trend was dispersion – the extremely aggregated categories of “technical and business related services and organizations” and “industry, trade, construction, traffic, and agriculture” employed 50 and 40 humanities graduates, respectively, and there were also a few in health care. Writing in 1976, with statistics from 1973 (and in some cases 1975) the authors of the NAVF report seem to confirm what Lindbekk had said about the humanities’ lack of expansion into new areas in the labor market:

to go through the procedure of collecting their credits and applying for a lower degree – unless they eventually gave up on the higher degree, which many of them did. As a result of all this, it is hard to know for a particular period of time how many candidates had finished their studies with the lower degree, and how many were in pursuit of a higher degree. Increasingly throughout the period the issue is further complicated by the fact that many worked part time alongside their studies – some of them in temporary teaching positions, but more of them probably in various “other occupations.” Thus, some of the people included in the 12,5 percent humanities graduates in “other occupations” in the 1973 study by the NAVF might in fact have been graduate students working part or even full time beside their studies. In addition, the category “other occupations” in the 1973 report includes 145 persons in positions in museums, libraries, archives, and research institutes that in Lindbekk’s study seems to have been included in the category “academic” positions. 789 Excluding the 145 mentioned in the previous footnote.

The period 1960–1975: Humanities education as teacher education │ 441

“Aa far as we can see today, there is no area where significant changes can be expected in the demand for humanities candidates beyond the educational sector [which in this report 790

includes academic positions at HEIs].”

In view of the sanguine expectations from the early 1960s, this was a chilling conclusion. But the NAVF report went even further than that. Taking into consideration the recent educational explosion, most of which had taken place since Lindbekk’s time of writing, the NAVF researchers were able to view the career options of the humanities graduates in the various areas of the labor market as compared to other, emerging competitors’ standing.791 What they found was that the humanities graduates were now being challenged by emerging educational groups in each of the areas that had been thought of as either established or new “alternative” careers. In public administration, bureaucrats trained in law had traditionally had a strong foothold, although as we have seen with some niches for humanists, notably those related to education and culture. But by the 1970s, economists and political scientists were taking over. Today this seems almost a matter of course, but in the mid-1970s in Norway the social sciences was still a new and relatively small category compared to the humanities – as measured by candidate output. But perhaps precisely for that reason, the social science programs – in particular social economics and political science – had found it necessary, even though they retained a research focus, to orient themselves specifically towards this area of the labor market, which was of course made easier because it overlapped with the object of study in these research disciplines.792 Even though there were many issues within the purview of the humanities that had relevance for public administration, directly or indirectly, these disciplines were now geared towards entirely different topics and problems by a research dynamic that even emphasized and guarded a critical distance to the body politic – except as may occur by the particular choices of thesis topics by individual humanists. As a

790 NAVF, Arbeidsmuligheter for filologer. Noen regneeksempler over fremtidig behov og tilgang (Oslo: NAVF, 1976) 82 791 That is, they were able to view the humanities’ labor market in much the same way as the tradition of systems theory views a market – not primarily as a place where a given supply meets a given demand and thereby establishes a price, but as a site for competitors’ mutual observation – a view with several important similarities to Andrew Abbott’s theory of how professions compete for jurisdiction. See Andrew Abbott, System of Professions. 792 See Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen, 305ff., and Fredrik W. Thue, “Universitetslærerne,” 692.

442 │ The transformation of humanities education

result, the strong competition from the social sciences severely limited the potential for the humanities to expand into this area. Moreover, since the social science candidates came from a few selected disciplines, their awareness of belonging to what can perhaps be called quasi-professional groups was probably stronger than among the humanities graduates, who were dispersed across a much greater number of disciplines. It seems likely that the esprit de corps among e.g. social economists and political scientists also had self-reproducing effects in public administration, with those rising in the hierarchy gradually refilling positions below them from the same programs. Much the same development could be observed in other part of the labor market. In many libraries, librarians from the State library school (from 1981, the State library university college) were preferred to persons with more general credentials in the form of a university degree, even though there continued to be a few positions for humanities graduates in research libraries.793 In the press, which from the 1970s gradually decoupled itself from party politics, journalists trained in new and specialized programs in journalism would increasingly constitute a profession of their own.794 Even tourism, which had also been mentioned by the Kleppe committee as a possible avenue for humanities graduates, was now increasingly being catered to by educational programs on the tertiary level in travel, hotel management, etc. The point is not that these niches were now closed to humanities graduates, but rather that, given the specialized competition, they would only have room for a few humanities graduates each, and it was not self-evident that humanists would be given leading positions. Although far from conclusive, the negative prognosis in the NAVF report cited above, indicating that there would be little room for expansion for humanities graduates beyond the educational sector, therefore seemed highly credible – all things else being equal. But there were more problems on the horizon. For in the field where the overwhelming majority of the humanities graduates had traditionally found work, in secondary school, they were increasingly being challenged by the general teachers, trained, from 1973, in university colleges. However, it remained uncertain throughout the 1970s what mixture of teacher categories the schools would actually prefer and/or succeed in hiring. In the mid-1970s, the cited NAVF study therefore had to make two alternative forecasts regarding this question, based on two sets of policy statements. One forecast, based on pronouncements made in governmental documents, indicating a preference for the general teachers, assumed that academically trained teachers would be hired in lower secondary school only when general

793 Hans Erik Aarek (ed.) Mer enn bøker. SBIH 50 år (Oslo: SBIH, 1990). 794 Rune Ottosen, Fra fjærpenn til internett. Journalister i organisasjon og samfunn.

The period 1960–1975: Humanities education as teacher education │ 443

teachers were unavailable. The other forecast, taking its cue from the recent statements from the universities about wanting to regain their position as teacher training institutions, assumed that the calculated relative share of academically trained teachers in lower secondary school in 1980 could be maintained thereafter. Both forecasts, it turned out, indicated a major oversupply of teachers from 1980 onwards, and the difference between them was only the extent to which the two categories of teachers would have to find employment elsewhere. If general teachers were preferred, as governmental policy documents indicated that they would, and as we now know that they were, the NAVF’s calculations showed that there would be room for a slight increase of teachers from the humanities in lower secondary school until 1980, but thereafter the demand would stagnate. We shall return to how this actually played out in the next chapter. Summarizing its calculations, the NAVF report stipulated that the share of humanities candidates who would find work in the educational sector (primary, secondary and tertiary levels combined, and including the independent research sector) would be reduced from 85 percent in 1973 to somewhere between 30 and 60 percent in the year 2000. In the mid-1970s, such a forecast was shocking, even though talk of “overproduction” had of course been heard before.795 The exponential growth in the supply of humanities candidates, which for over a decade had been feasible because of increasing demand, fed by demographic growth and hence educational expansion, was now approaching its peak, which was due around 1980. In addition, it was becoming increasingly obvious that the general teachers would take the largest part of the labor market expansion for teachers that was still to come. What made the NAVF prognoses especially depressing for everyone affiliated with the humanities was that they added to a series of interrelated bad news: the general economic downturn in the mid-1970s, the resulting cuts in public spending (including higher education), and increased academic unemployment across the board. As shown in part two, a result of this general downturn was a decline in applications and admissions to the humanities, but since time-to-degree in the humanities was exceptionally long, the output of candidates continued apace. What would all these graduates from the humanities do if the demand for secondary school teachers dwindled?

795 The Robberstad committee had been commissioned to investigate such suspicions right after WWII, and many observers had voiced concern over the expansion in the humanities in the late 1960s. But precisely the expansion of the educational sector itself had put all such worries to rest.

444 │ The transformation of humanities education

The sense of alarm this question raised can be gleaned from a debate over the NAVF prognoses in a Norwegian journal of economics the following year, in 1977. Under the title “The Academic Society” the economist Steinar Strøm was particularly concerned with the humanities candidates, whom he believed had been the victims of a mindless admissions policy: “In the year 1975 there were 1000 persons trained in the humanities who had to find employment outside the educational sector, in 1985 there might be 5000 who have to do so, and in 1990, 10 000. By way of comparison it should be mentioned that the total number of people with humanities education outside the educational sector in 1973 was 860! 180 were employed in public administration, 110 in publishing, 105 in the national broadcasting company, 90 in libraries, museums and archives, etc. If the supply of candidates is maintained at the current level, we are approaching not only an academic society, but above all a society of the humanities. Our “1984” may become a society where the taxi driver speaks French, the tram driver Croatian, the shopkeeper German and the book salesperson has a master’s degree 796

in Nordic languages and literatures.”

What Strøm was mainly concerned about was not massive academic unemployment, which he understood to be politically untenable in a welfare society like Norway, but rather what Randall Collins a few years later would call “the credential society” – a society in which access to jobs in general, almost regardless of the tasks involved, would require higher education, simply because the oversupply of educated candidates would make it cheap and convenient to hire academics even for routine work.797 The NAVF report, which Strøm references extensively, offers a clear assessment of how this was likely to affect Norwegian humanities graduates: “We have calculated with a relatively small number of positions outside the school sector where humanities graduates will be preferred. The remaining humanists must go to occupations and positions where, as of today, there are few humanities graduates, or none, and where there is no reason to believe, on the basis of the information available today, that humanities 798

graduates on the strength of their education will be better qualified than others.”

796 Steinar Strøm, “Akademikersamfunnet.” In Sosialøkonomen 3 (1977) 6. 797 Randall Collins, The Credential Society: A Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification (NY: Academic Press, 1979). It seems likely that Strøm was also influenced by the publication the previous year of the much-debated Richard B. Freeman, The Overeducated American (NY: Academic Press, 1976). 798 NAVF, Arbeidsmuligheter for filologer. Noen regneeksempler over fremtidig behov og tilgang, 87.

The period 1960–1975: Humanities education as teacher education │ 445

The report ends by forecasting that the humanities graduates will have such a weak competitive position in the future labor market that a large share of them will have to take an additional education (presumably a more professionally oriented one), in which case “humanities education will for many have become a generalist education [allmennutdanning] – the longest and most expensive in the country.”799 The conclusion to the English summary in the report says it even more mercilessly: “It seems probable that philologists in the future will have to accept employment on a lower level than is considered normal today – as to type of work, status, and wages.”800 This kind of forecast did not go uncontested, however. Representatives from the Ministry of education were quick to respond to Strøm’s article, and utterly rejected his argument. Director General Kjell Eide, whom we have described in part two as one of the of the massification of higher education in Norway, argued forcefully that Strøm’s worries were completely unwarranted, since experience showed that labor market signals actually did reach applicants to higher education.801 The problem, according to Eide, was rather that applicants tended to overreact to such signals, and that this on many occasions had created a shortage of professional manpower such as teachers, thus protecting a monopoly situation that could only benefit the privileged insiders of the professions.802 The political leadership in the ministry does not seem to have been completely convinced by these counterarguments, however, for as we have seen in part two, admission to the humanities faculties was regulated from 1975, and in 1976 admission to the teacher education programs of the pedagogical university colleges was also reduced (both measures were introduced against the advice from Eide and other bureaucrats in the Ministry).803 Upholding his criticism of the ministry for what he called a laissez-faire

799 Ibid., 90. 800 Ibid., 92. 801 Kjell Eide, “Akademikersamfunnet,” Sosialøkonomen 9 (1977). 802 Interestingly, another line of argument that turned up in the debate was the use of higher education as labor market service, which is discussed in part two of the present study. Thor Einar Hanisch used the following argument against Strøm’s accusations of laissezfaire admissions policy in 1977: “In a difficult labor market situation it may be meaningful to let some people continue their studies, rather than competing for the jobs” Sosialøkonomen 5 (1977) 34. 803 In the mid-1980s, when an unexpected teacher shortage was becoming evident, the ministry strongly suggested that these restrictions had not been warranted, as we saw in part two. But this shortage had exogenous causes. It was largely due to the teacher unions’ success in reducing the weekly teaching hours, which crated an increased demand

446 │ The transformation of humanities education

admissions policy, Strøm asked, in 1977: “How many years too late were those measures introduced?”804 The humanities institutions themselves were, like the bureaucrats in the ministry, not worried. In a report on the future recruitment of humanities researchers from 1978, the authors (a committee of humanist researchers from various institutions and disciplines) referenced the pessimistic NAVF report, but rather than seeing it as a wake-up call they chose to recommend continued expansion, based mostly on an unflinching optimism regarding possible alternative uses of advanced humanities education. Envisioning a score of these – ranging from specialized roles for humanities graduates in upper secondary school to demands in the press and publishing for experts in the humanities – the report was confident that there was “a rather large latent demand” for “people with a background from humanities research,” and concluded: “Therefore, if the research training demonstrates the ability to meet the shifting demands from society, there should not be any great danger of unemployment among the research recruits. On the contrary, in several disciplines there should be sufficient reason to increase the educational capacity.”

805

18.6 CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE PERIOD 1960–1975 What we have seen in the outline and discussion above is that the extreme expansion during the period from 1960 to 1975 prepared the ground for a transformation of the societal function of humanities education that would happen later. The

for teachers that the ministry did not prepare for. Gro Hagemann, Skolefolk. Lærernes historie i Norge (Oslo: Ad Notam Gyldendal, 1992) 318. 804 Steinar Strøm, “Akademikersamfunnet,” Sosisaløkonomen 8 (1977). 805 NAVF, Rekruttering til humanistiske fag. Innstilling frå eit utvalg under rådet for humanistisk forsking i NAVF (Oslo: NAVF, 1978) 15. The committee was chaired by Åse Hiorth Lervik. The list of alternative career options in this report is no more fanciful than in many similar reports before and since. Some of it actually makes quite good sense, considered as the outcome of a brainstorming exercise. But in view of the recent and well-documented down-turn in the labor market and in the face of the strong competition from other educational groups, as discussed in the NAVFs own 1976 report, it is striking that leading representatives from the humanities in 1978 recommends a recruitment policy based upon these rather vague ideas.

The period 1960–1975: Humanities education as teacher education │ 447

growth dynamic allowed for a research drift, at the same as the consequences of this development remained invisible as long as the educational expansion in secondary school continued and thereby created a channel for the increased output of humanities graduates. Moreover, the same expansion of the educational system, and the seemingly unquenchable thirst for teachers, hid the rise and eventual takeover of the general teachers, especially in lower secondary school. Meanwhile, new educational groups, elevated by the same tide that lifted the humanities, had more or less methodically secured jurisdiction in many of the “alternative” fields that had seemed open for the humanities graduates some 15 years earlier. Some actors, such as the policymakers in the Kleppe and Ottosen committees, clearly welcomed a transformation of both humanities education and its use in the labor market. For them, the expansionist educational policy was a necessary part of an agenda for overall societal change. As for the humanities institutions themselves, it seems their chief concern from around 1970 was to maintain the expansionist policy, regardless of whether their educational programs thereby abandoned its traditional societal function and would have to acquire, somehow, a new one. This attitude was not unconnected to a tendency in the academic community to reconceptualize the Norwegian humanities in the light of the Humboldtian ideals (often with a twist of more recent Ideologiekritik). This understanding, in which a radicalized but still knowledge-centered form of Bildung emerged as the educational aim, was increasingly essentialized and projected backwards in Norwegian academic history, thus removing any sense that fundamental changes were taking place.806 And then there were those, especially towards the end of the 1970s, who nevertheless did sense a change coming, and who worried about the scenario of continued expansion in the face of diminishing labor market opportunities.807 As late as the mid-1970s, it was not possible to arrive at any form of consensus about the situation humanities education was in, as the debate referenced above indicates. The signs of an imminent major change were there, but since little had yet changed compared to the weight of the old recruitment patterns, the signs could be interpreted as either negligible, positive or strongly negative. It was during the next decade, from 1975 to 1985, that the transformation would actually occur.

806 See Fredrik W. Thue and Kim R. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen,336. 807 In addition to economists such as Strøm, there were also people in the humanities who were worried, see for instance Erik Rudeng, “Kulturen og arbeidslivet,” Norsklærereren 2 (1977), reprinted in Kulturliv. Essays. (Oslo: Fagbokforlaget, 1982).

19 The period 1975–1985: The transformation

Starting in 1972 and continuing to the present day, the NAVF (the research unit of which was later reorganized as an independent institute named NIFU) has at regular intervals conducted a first destination survey of candidates with graduate degrees from Norwegian higher education. Previous studies of the labor market situation for academically trained workers, such as those conducted by the Joint committee of research councils in the 1950s and Lindbekk’s 1967 study, had been ad hoc, and used available statistics in ways that seldom allowed for comparisons, at least not consistent comparisons over time. But from 1972 onwards we have fairly stable and reliable information about where the various groups of graduate degree candidates, including the humanities graduates, began their careers. The study also gives information about various forms of mismatch (unemployment, “non-relevant” work, involuntary part-time work), salaries, and a few other variables. The data from these surveys have been presented by the NAVF (later NIFU) in reports covering the whole spectrum of Norwegian higher education. Published first annually and later biannually, these reports have had limited space for discussion of individual academic fields like the humanities. As far as I know, the analysis presented below is the first that takes a long-time perspective on the humanities graduates and uses the data from the NAVF/NIFU studies to discuss their various career paths in some depth.808 As previously indicated, I shall in the following be mostly concerned with where – in which sector – the humanities candidates found work after graduation in the period 1975-1985. I take this to be the most important indicator when trying to understand the changing societal function and identity of humanities education. In other words, my assumption is that the expectations that applicants, institutions, employers, and policymakers have regarding the “outcomes” of humanities programs, are first and foremost generated by the general pattern of how the candidates

808 However, a recent report analyzes data on humanities graduates from 1995 to 2015, see Jannecke Wiers-Jenssen & al., Humanister i arbeidslivet (Oslo: HiOA skriftserie, 2016).

450 │ The transformation of humanities education

distribute themselves across sectors and positions in working life after graduation. Usually, this perceived pattern emerges from the available information (whether statistically robust or anecdotal) about the career paths of newly graduated candidates from the previous 5-10 years or so, but as we know even older (and often obsolete) patterns can also guide actors in the field of education. When precise and updated information is not readily available, many people tacitly use their own educational experience as a reference point. This is a well-known problem in debates on education. Moreover, in periods of rapid transformation, even 5-10 years old patterns can be outdated, with misinformed perceptions and actions as the results – as we shall see below. Of course, first destinations do not tell the whole story. Many people move on to other tasks, not unfrequently in other organizations. Hence, mid- and late careers of academically trained people is an important research topic. It is interesting in its own right, and in many fields the identity and function of the educational programs themselves are conditioned by long-term career goals to such an extent that they cannot be grasped without taking mid- and late career patterns into account. Law studies, for instance, would be hard to understand without reference to the (sometimes very rich) opportunities offered later on in the careers of graduates from law schools, and the same can be said of business and administration and many other programs. How does this point relate to the humanities in Norway? As we have seen, Lindbekk showed that until the mid-1960s the Norwegian humanities graduates had displayed interesting career lines over time. Secondary school had been the almost universal entrance point into working life, and remained the site of life-long careers for the overwhelming majority of the humanities graduates. Academic positions and leading positions in public administration had been opportunities for advancement later on in the careers for very select subgroups. In addition, the press and publishing seems to have offered earlier (and more irregular) career opportunities for another tiny minority – the press so early that university studies were not seldom interrupted to enter it. But already in the period studied by Lindbekk this pattern had begun to change, especially as academia increasingly began recruiting directly from the graduate programs. There are also other indications that after the mid-1970, the established career lines across sectors (mostly a one-way street from secondary school to academia or public administration) began to dissolve. In public administration, for instance, young graduates from the social sciences were gradually taking over the hegemony.809

809 Tom Christensen, Per Lægreid and Hans Robert Zuna, Profesjoner i regjeringsapparatet 1976-1996 Økende heterogenitet – effekter og implikasjoner (Oslo: Makt- og demokratiutredningens rapportserie, 2001).

The period 1975–1985: The transformation │ 451

As we shall see, what replaced the typical career trajectory that Lindbekk identified was a situation where humanities candidates upon graduation (or after a relatively short transitory phase) were faced with three major alternative career paths: a “professional” career in academia (fairly stable in relative size), a “professional” career in school teaching (decreasing in relative size) , and what we above have termed “the boundaryless career” (increasing in relative size). Unfortunately, however, the data on the later career trajectories for Norwegian graduates are not nearly as good as the data on first destinations. We do have one interesting set of three studies from the NAVF that follows a class of students from 1974 six months, three years, and ten years after graduation, but for reasons I shall return to below, we can only draw limited conclusions from these reports, and more research on this issue than it has been possible to do within the limits of this project is certainly needed to fully understand the long-time career lines of Norwegian humanists. With this disclaimer, the information we do have (and shall return to below) nevertheless indicates that the mobility in and out of the two mentioned “professional” groups seems to have been relatively low after they became rather sharply demarcated from each other and from other occupational groups from the 1970s onwards.810 The third group on the other hand displays such variety and mobility that any distinct pattern is hard to see – for us today, and likewise for the actors in the field of humanities education in the period 1975-2000. If this is a fair summary of the evidence we have, it means that from the 1970s, the distribution of graduates across first destination sectors in working life is a fairly good – or at least not misleading – indicator of the overall societal function of humanities education.

19.1 FIRST DESTINATIONS 1972–1985 In the following I will offer commentary to the data from the NAVF first destinations study for the period 1972-1985. I will discuss the development over time within each employment sector separately, and I will also analyze possible interrelationships between categories. The descriptive and analytical commentary will then lead to a discussion of how we can explain the patterns that emerge.

810 There are obviously some exceptions. For instance, we have indications that a share of the secondary school teachers left the teaching profession in the 1980s, many of them for new opportunities in the private sector (such as the expanding media industry). See Gro Hagemann, Skolefolk. Lærernes historie i Norge, 310ff.

452 │ The transformation of humanities education

Table 1. Humanities candidates with graduate degrees (cand.philol. and magister), 6 months after graduation, by employment sector. Percent of the employed graduates. Source: NAVF. 72a)

73

74

75

76

77

78

79

80

81

82

83

84

85

Schoolsb)

73

74

66

69

77

69

61

73

65

68

68

63

(-)

47

Academiac)

15

17

22

18

12

19

19

17

18

14

15

14

(-)

19

Public admin.d)

2

1

2

3

5

3

6

6

7

8

8

3

(-)

14

Public sector (other)e)

6

3

7

7

4

2

8

3

6

6

3

6

(-)

9

Private sector/NGOs

2

4

3

1

3

5

4

3

4

4

6

13

(-)

11

Other

2

-

-

-

-

1

2

-

-

-

-

-

(-)

-

100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 Total no. of graduates a)

100 100 100 100

(-) 100

212 190 204 210 222 219 222 203 210f) 167 195 165

(-) 142

Spring semester graduates, surveyed 6 months after graduation. Note that the total number of graduates is also given for spring semesters only. There are usually more graduates in the spring than in the fall. NAVF/NIFU considers that the spring semester graduate survey gives an adequate picture of the employment situation in general, and since the mid-1970s the fall semester graduates have not been surveyed.

b)

In principle, this category includes both primary and secondary education, as well as some (few and small) other types of schools. Due to competency regulations, however, we may safely assume that the overwhelming majority of the humanities graduates were employed in lower secondary and (especially) upper secondary school, and very rarely in primary school.

c)

Universities, university colleges, and independent institutes.

d)

State, county, and municipality administrative positions.

e)

Until around 1990, this category included museums, libraries, and the national broadcasting company (NRK)

f)

Exact number not stated in the report, hence calculated (fairly accurately, in my estimation) from the given number of humanities respondents and the average response rate for this category of candidates.

In table 1, the most striking thing is (once again) the decline between the 1970s and the mid-1980s in the relative share of the graduates who entered careers as secondary school teachers. From a level of around 70 percent in the early 1970s, it falls

The period 1975–1985: The transformation │ 453

under 50 percent for the first time in 1985. As we shall see below, the decline continues thereafter. With some irregularities, the numbers show a steady downward trend between 1972 and 1985. The real significance of this decline can only be understood when we take the absolute number of graduates into consideration, however. From an average of 210 graduates in the 1970s, the output is down by a third in 1985, to 142. As indicated above, these are figures from the spring semester only, but the downward trend is similar for both semesters. Based on the historically strong association of humanities education with secondary school teaching, a relatively strong decline in the output of graduates would lead us to expect – everything else equal – an increased share heading in that direction. To this should be added that, according to NAVF, spring semester graduates are more likely to find jobs in secondary schools, since the hiring of teachers usually takes place in the summer. The downward trend for humanists in the teaching “profession” is therefore even more in demand of an explanation than the figures for the relative shares suggest. Regarding academia, the second category of employment in table 1, it should first be underscored that it covers several types of institutions. The positions included are not only permanent teacher/researcher positions, but also temporary research fellowships (beginning to be used in this period as recruitment positions, often with a view to complete a doctorate). Administrative positions are also included. As discussed earlier, the Norwegian universities expanded their staffs significantly until the mid-1970s, after which there was more than a decade of stagnation. During the period of stagnation for the universities, the university colleges expanded. However, the university colleges were for a long time mostly oriented towards shorter, professional programs, and their expansion did not affect the humanities disciplines significantly before well into the 1980s. The share of humanities graduates entering academia seems to have been relatively stable, fluctuating between 12 and 21 percent, with an average of ca. 17 percent, without any discernable trend in the numbers themselves during the period covered here. When taking into account the absolute number of graduates who entered academic careers, however, it appears that there actually was a decline in hiring, but that the real impact of the cuts in funding (particularly at the universities) came only in the 1980s. But even if there was a decline in absolute numbers of humanist graduates that entered academia, the even greater relative decline in school teaching as a career path meant that the relative importance of academic careers for humanities education was significantly increased by the mid-1980s. The change in ratio illustrates this: In the 1970s there were over four humanities graduates each semester who became school teachers for every single graduate who entered academia; in 1985 there were only two and a half.

454 │ The transformation of humanities education

Another major change from the 1970s to the mid-1980s was the increased size of what I have referred to above as the third major career path, that of “boundaryless careers”. Amounting to around 10 percent of the graduates in the 1970s on average, this group is relatively speaking much larger in the mid-1980s – in 1985 as high as 34 percent. All three subcategories – public administration, public sector (other) and private sector/NGOs – increase in relative size, but particularly the last one. Almost negligible in the 1970s, fluctuating between 1 and 5 percent, the private/NGO sector is by the mid-1980s established at a level of above 10 percent. The privately owned press, which Lindbekk identified as one of the few “alternative” career options for humanities graduates ever since the 19th century, is included in this category. Traditional public administration – i.e. positions in ministries, directorates, counties and municipalities – also increases in relative size in the 1980s (with the exception of the year 1983), whereas the wide category of “other” public sector jobs – in which is included parts of the media (in the form of the national broadcasting company), and also several institutions that had traditionally been counted as research institutions, such as museums – had only had a slight relative increase.811 Combined, however, the “alternative” career path in 1985 channeled over a third of the humanities candidates with graduate degrees into the world of work, a lot more than ever before. If we now turn to the graduates who entered the labor market with the undergraduate degree (the cand.mag.), what should first be noticed is that the relationship between this group and the former is somewhat difficult to handle since, obviously, quite a few of the undergraduates would pursue a graduate degree later on. The NAVF estimated that in the 1970s, about 60% of the cand.mag. candidates embarked upon a graduate degree right away. This group is not included in the shares given in table 2, which is based on information from those in full-time employment in November 1974 (although the ones who continued directly to graduate programs are included in the total number of cand.mag.-degrees in the lowest row). But there were obviously also graduates who first entered working life with an undergraduate degree, and then, after a shorter or longer stint in full-time employment, returned to the humanities faculty to pursue a graduate degree. Conversely, we also know that quite a few who pursued graduate degrees eventually dropped out without completing the graduate degree – hence remaining cand.mag. degree holders. We have too

811 With the rise of the many new HEIs in Norway in the postwar era, and the new paradigm for what counted as “research” that came with it, museums, archives, libraries, and other similar institutions would gradually aquire a separate status as cultural institutions, primarily engaged in “preservation”, with relatively few positions dedicated to research in the modern sense.

The period 1975–1985: The transformation │ 455

little information about the trajectories involved here to be precise, but based on the NAVF’s estimate it seems a reasonable guess for the time period in question that about half of the graduates with a humanities degree ended up founding their careers in working life on an undergraduate degree, while the other half did so with a graduate degree.812 Table 2. Humanities candidates with undergraduate degrees (cand.mag.), 6 months after graduation, by employment sector. Percent of the employed graduates. Source: NAVF.a) 72

73

74

75

76

77

78

79

80

81

82

83 84

85 60

81

75

81

83

80

82

87

77

77

67

61

59 (-)

Academia

4

6

6

6

1

1

3

2

4

4

3

3 (-)

-

Public admin.

3

4

3

3

1

1

2

2

3

5

3

9 (-)

6

Public sector (other)

6b)

6

2

3

6

7

2

6

4

4

10

12 (-)

12

Private sector/NGOs

6c)

9

7

5

11

8

7

13

12

13

20

16 (-)

18

-

-

-

-

-

1

-

-

1

-

1

2 (-)

3

Schools

Other Cand.mag. graduates a) b)

346 383 459 486 370 401 431 405 350c 345 308 243 (-) 140

For information about categories and other aspects of these figures, see notes to table 1. In 1972 these two categories were divided somewhat differently, and the distribution between them given here is based on the present author’s best estimate of the available information.

c)

Exact number not stated in the report, hence calculated (fairly accurately) from the given number of humanities respondents and the average response rate for this category of candidates.

If we now turn to the distribution of undergraduate degree candidates across employment sectors shown in table 2, we can observe basically the same pattern as we saw for the graduate degree candidates, albeit with some interesting variations. The share employed in secondary school was even higher than for the graduate degree candidates in the 1970s, with an average of over 80 percent, and even though the decline was roughly the same as reported above, the level in 1985 was 10 percent higher than for the graduate degree holders. But for this group we should be even more aware of the extreme downsizing of the candidate production. In 1985 the

812 This may have changed later on, as a result of structural changes in the relationship between humanities education and the labor market, and possibly also in response to short term business cycles, but unfortunately we have little precise information about this. What we do know about it, I shall return to below.

456 │ The transformation of humanities education

number of cand.mag. degrees was under a third of what it was ten years before, and even if those particular years were at the extreme opposites of the spectrum, the major trend is very clear to see in the years between, too. The decline in humanities undergraduates who entered a teaching career was even steeper in absolute numbers than as a share of the total candidate output. I shall return to possible explanations for this below. For obvious reasons, academic careers were not a major option, or perhaps even an option at all, for undergraduate degree candidates in the 1970s. By then, a graduate degree was in effect the entry requirement for teaching tasks on the tertiary level (with some possible exceptions, such as elementary language training in small languages or other fields where competencies were scarce). For research tasks, a graduate degree was a definite prerequisite. We must assume, therefore, that the share of the undergraduate candidates who found employment in this sector mostly worked in administrative positions. As table 2 shows, this share was fairly low throughout the period (below 3 percent on average). It seems to have declined somewhat after 1975, possibly as a result of the funding cuts. As for the “third” career path, the same pattern can be observed as for the graduate degree candidates. In 1985, the categories public administration, public sector (other), and private sector/NGOs, constituted 36 percent of the careers for humanities candidates with undergraduate degrees. Especially the share in private sector/NGOs increased. From an average in the 1970s of around 8 percent, the share was more than doubled in the 1980s, to 18 percent in 1985 – almost twice as large as the share among graduate degree candidates. I shall return to possible explanations for the developments outlined above, for both groups of graduates, and I shall also address more directly the question raised in the previous chapter about whether the humanities graduates were spilling over into other career paths than secondary school teaching and academia in the 1980s out of necessity or because of changed preferences. But before I do, however, I need to supplement what I have said so far about first destinations with some information about the career trajectories of humanities graduates in a longer time perspective.

The period 1975–1985: The transformation │ 457

19.2 HUMANITIES CAREER TRAJECTORIES: SIX MONTHS, THREE YEARS, AND TEN YEARS AFTER GRADUATION (1974, 1977 AND 1984) Research on modern careers has found that, in general, it is during the first 10-15 years after graduation that the most considerable mobility takes place – that is, mobility between organizations, with regards to tasks and responsibilities, and sometimes also between employment sectors. Later on in the career, employees tend to have less mobility, although there are important exceptions from this.813 As mentioned above, there is a dearth of available data on the later careers of humanities graduates in Norway for the period covered in this study, but fortunately there exists a set of three studies conducted by the NAVF which surveys the careers of the graduates from one semester – the spring semester of 1974 – six months, three years, and ten years after graduation. Judging from the survey reports, the replies seem not to have been coded at the level of individual respondents. But even if analyses are only possible on the level of groups and subgroups for each survey considered separately, the information can still tell us important things about how and where these graduates fared. Indirectly it can also help us assess whether the first destination studies actually do provide a good indicator for the main functions humanities education has for the world of work. When discussing the follow-up studies from the NAVF below I shall take the opportunity offered by their richer information to comment in some more detail on career options and trajectories than what the brief outline above allowed for. The first of the three mentioned NAVF studies, conducted half a year after graduation, is identical with the first destination study of that year, and the distribution across first destinations can thus be seen in table 1 above, in the column for 1974. As we see there, the spring class of that year had a somewhat higher share of graduates entering academic positions and an almost corresponding lower share entering school teacher positions than in the years before and after. This probably reflects two things. First, the share of magister degree graduates, who were more prone to enter academia, was slightly higher than usual that semester. Second, during the mid-1970s a turning point was reached in the expansion of higher education; hence, the period up until the mid-1970s was also an all-time high for hiring of academic personnel. As discussed previously, the sharp increase in fund-

813 See e.g. Paula Mergenhagen, “Doing the career schuffle.” American Demographics 13.11 (1991).

458 │ The transformation of humanities education

ing of HEIs dropped off from 1973, but the effect of the cuts on hiring appears not to have been immediate, nor was it the same across disciplines.814 Conducted in November of 1974, the first survey indicates that the spring class of humanities graduate candidates had few difficulties finding employment that year, whereas those with the undergraduate degree were beginning to find the labor market difficult. Of the undergraduate candidates, 21,2 % reported such difficulties, which was considered high for a spring semester class (as mentioned, secondary schools were mostly hiring in the summer).815 Let us now take a closer look at where the graduates with the higher degree from spring 1974 found work after six months. Of the 115 graduate degree respondents who were employed by November, 23 worked in HEIs (11 of them magister candidates, of a total of 17 magister candidates), and 2 at research institutes. As we see in table 2, this gives a total share of 22 percent in academia. Moving on to the larger category of secondary school teaching, the report shows that 43 candidates went to upper secondary school, 24 to lower secondary school, and 10 to other kinds of schools (vocational schools, folk high schools [folkehøgskoler], etc.) – which, taken together, amounts to a total share of 66 percent of the employed graduate degree respondents. As was the case for most years during the 1970s, only a few graduate degree candidates (12 percent in total in 1974) entered other occupations: 4 went to libraries/museums, 3 to the public broadcasting company (NRK), 2 to public administration, 2 to trade unions/NGOs, and 2 to industry. Of the 108 graduates who entered employment in the summer or fall of 1974 with undergraduate degrees, only 4 were employed at HEIs, and 3 at research institutes – which makes up a total of 6 percent in academia. As previously noted, the academic category includes administration, and the majority of these seven undergraduates had presumably been hired in administrative positions. Interestingly, the distribution across the two levels of secondary school was the reverse of what it was for the graduate degree candidates: 71 candidates in lower secondary school, 11 in upper secondary school, and 6 in other types of schools – which makes a total of 81 percent of those in employment. The remaining 12 percent of the employed undergraduate candidates were scattered across the world of work: 3

814 The new University of Tromsø and the university colleges offered new opportunities for academic careers at this time. 815 NAVF, Arbeidsmarkedet for nye akademikere høsten 1974 (Oslo: NAVF, 1975) 7.

The period 1975–1985: The transformation │ 459

in public administration, 3 in retail, 2 in industry, 2 in trade unions/NGOs, and 3 in “other occupations.”816 The second NAVF survey, conducted three years after graduation, in 1977, demonstrates that for the candidates with the cand.philol.-degree, “the distribution across sectors and industries [næringssektorer] shows only small changes. The share who worked in schools was a little lower, and the share in HEIs and research institutes a little higher, but taken together the graduates who worked in education and research made up 90 % of the candidates in the workforce both half a year and three years 817

after graduation.”

For the magister candidates, the sector changes were also small. But for the graduates with the lower degree, an interesting development can be detected. During the first three years of employment, the share employed in schools had declined from 81 to 74 percent, and the shares in public administration and the private sector had increased by 5 percent units each (from 3 to 8 percent and from 7 to 12 percent, respectively). At the same time, a significantly larger share of the graduates with the undergraduate degree judged the labor market for humanities candidates to be difficult, especially in Oslo and the rest of the eastern (and most densely populated) parts of the country. Taken together, the surveys conducted six months and three years after graduation seem to indicate that for the candidates with the graduate degree, who for the most part were recruited into upper secondary school and academia, the entrance into the labor market had not posed major difficulties. However, the undergraduate degree graduates, many of whom traditionally sought employment in lower secondary school, were beginning to encounter problems. As I shall return to below, it was most likely the increased competition from the “general” teachers educated at the university colleges that created most of these problems, because the overall demand for school teachers at this time was still growing, although not as fast as previously. The general economic downturn may also have contributed to the problems experienced by the undergraduate candidates. Unfortunately, the follow-up study after ten years does not cover the candidates with the undergraduate degree, and so we have no more information about how they

816 These numbers indicate that self-proletarianization, a much-discussed phenomenon among Norwegian Neo-Marxist academics in the 1970s, was not very widespread among humanities graduates. 817 NAVF, Arbeidsmarkedet tre år etter eksamen for akademikere fra vårkullet 1974 (Oslo: NAVF, 1978) 31.

460 │ The transformation of humanities education

fared later on in their careers. However, the first destination studies of the classes from the last half of the 1970s seem to confirm the impression that this category of graduates encountered increasing employment problems, resulting in changed career patterns. The share of the candidates with undergraduate humanities degrees who took up school teaching was over 80 percent until 1978, and then the share dropped and was stabilized at around 60 percent during the first half of the 1980s. This would have been a significant change in itself, and when we consider that it happened at the same time that the number of graduates in this category declined very sharply, from over 450 in the record years in the mid-1970s to less than a third of that number ten years later, it seems to indicate a significantly changed position vis-à-vis the school teacher profession. As previously mentioned, we know from other sources that, in general, many teachers abandoned the teaching profession in the mid-1980s to seek out other employment areas, but we do not know whether humanities undergraduate candidates were strongly represented in this group.818 Despite its shortcomings, the follow-up study after ten years is important to our concerns in this study. First of all, it has some highly interesting general information about university graduates with a higher degree.819 It seems there was a falloff from traditional academic careers in this period for academically trained persons in general. Across all disciplines and program types, the share employed in universities declined from 15,3 percent in 1974, the year of graduation for those surveyed, to 10,1 percent three years after graduation (in 1977), and 4,7 percent ten years after graduation (in 1984). This is a much sharper decline than one might expect from the regular cycle of some PhD candidates/research fellows and other temporary staff eventually leaving the university. During the same period, the share of the graduates from higher education who were employed in other parts of the public sector stayed much the same, whereas the share in the private sector, especially “commercial/professional services” [forretningsmessig tjenesteyting], increased from 29 to 39 percent, which is significant. Roughly the same developments are discernable, albeit not nearly as marked, among the humanities graduates from the spring cohort of 1974. During the first ten years of employment, the share of humanists in academic positions (universities and research institutes) declined from 21 percent to 13 percent. The story of the magister candidates is especially interesting in this regard. In November 1974, 11 of the 17 magister candidates from the spring semester (65 percent) were employed at universities, while 2 of them (12 percent) worked in libraries/museums and the last

818 See note 85 above. 819 NAVF, Ti år etter eksamen. Yrkeskarriere og arbeidssituasjon. Kandidater fra universiteter og distriktshøyskoler våren 1974 (Oslo: NAVF, 1986),

The period 1975–1985: The transformation │ 461

3 were scattered. Ten years later, only 3 magister candidates (18 percent) were still employed at universities, 6 persons (35 percent) had moved on to research institutes, 4 persons (24 percent) were in schools (presumably upper secondary school) and the remaining person was in public administration. For the other category of graduate degree candidates, the cand.philol. graduates, there was a much less dramatic decline in academic careers. Of the 135 respondents with a cand.philol. degree, the share employed in universities had dropped from 12 percent in 1974 to 8 percent in 1984. The share in secondary schools had actually risen slightly from 76 to 79 percent in the same period, and the share in public administration had increased from 2 to 7 percent. The remaining 6 percent of the cand.philol. graduates were scattered across the other sectors of the labor market in 1984. For the most part, then, the cand.philol. graduates remained within the same employment sector after 10 years. An interesting thing about the 1984 study is that it contains a presentation of the distribution of humanities graduates from particular disciplines across employment sectors. The categorization of these data unfortunately groups secondary school teaching together with academia under the general heading of “education and research”, and so an important distinction in the present study is missed. However, what the data show is that it was graduates from the disciplines that were also school subjects (history, Nordic, English, French and German) that, not surprisingly, had the highest shares employed in education and research (ranging from 83 percent among historians to 100 percent among Germanists), whereas the graduates from other humanities disciplines, many of them more research oriented, had a somewhat lower share in this sector (73 percent), and a correspondingly larger share in other public (18 percent) or private (9 percent) enterprises. The number of observations in each category is low, however. The 1984 study also has information about another important aspect of career trajectories, namely the “vertical” dimension. The candidate groups are sorted into four categories of positions: leading positions, functionaries, teachers and selfemployed. After ten years the cand. philol. graduates had the largest share of all the university graduates (76 percent) in the “teacher” category (a category that presumably included teachers in HEIs, and possibly also other researchers who had teaching tasks, unless they had leading academic positions). Compared to other university graduates, the humanists in general had very few people in leading positions (7 percent) and in the category of “self-employed” (2 percent). The humanist magister candidates had a lower share of teachers (41 percent), and higher shares in leading positions (24 percent) than the humanists with cand.philol. degrees. A third interesting topic covered in the 1984 study was changes in the graduates’ own assessment of the relevance of their education for their current line of

462 │ The transformation of humanities education

work. The humanities graduates, it turned out, were among the university graduates who found the least correspondence between their education and their tasks in working life ten years after graduation (along with natural scientists, economists, pedagogues and civil engineers). This was a change from the first destination survey in 1974, when the same cohort of humanities graduates, particularly the magister candidates, reported a better correspondence. Interestingly, the study demonstrates the exact reverse development to have happened in the legal profession: the correspondence half a year after graduation for this profession was reported to have been low, but ten years later it was reported to be the best among all the educational groups. All in all, the author of the 1984 report paints a picture of a generally difficult labor market situation for the humanities graduates in the early 1980s. According to the report, the problem was at least in part that compared to other educational groups the humanities graduates were strongly attached to certain types of positions and tasks, with few other areas of the labor market where they had a strong competitive standing: “There are now more humanities candidates than can be employed in the traditional jobs. The salaries have declined compared to other educational groups, and it has become more difficult to find work suitable for the education.”820 Regrettably, the information presented above, distilled from the NAVF surveys, does not give us anything near a complete understanding of how humanities graduates adapted to the world of work in the decade from 1975 to 1985. Several important questions go unanswered, such as the later career trajectories of the candidates with undergraduate degrees. There were undoubtedly also important differences between disciplines that deserve more attention than it has been possible to devote to them here. Furthermore, I have barely touched upon such issues as the actual application of humanities competencies in the various career paths, and questions pertaining to the transitional phase from education to work (motives, career plans, methods used in job search, etc.) have not been discussed at all. Most importantly, however, the NAVF studies do not allow us to disentangle completely the question of how careers build themselves up over time from the changes in labor market conditions that took place in the same period. The fact that during the ten first years of employment there was a decline in the share of the spring class of 1974 that worked in academic positions seems to have been the result, at least in part, of the stagnation in the funding of the universities. But this development might also have been influenced, at least in part, by a new career trajectory for academics which gradually replaced the typical career line that

820 NAVF, Ti år etter eksamen. Yrkeskarriere og arbeidssituasjon. Kandidater fra universiteter og distriktshøyskoler våren 1974, 67.

The period 1975–1985: The transformation │ 463

Lindbekk observed in period prior to 1966. As previously mentioned, Lindbekk found that academic work usually was an option that opened up after some years spent in secondary school. From the 1980s onwards, however, the doctorate degree increasingly became a factor (if not yet a requirement) in academic careers for humanists, and even in the disciplines where doctoral candidates were scarce, the career pattern seems to have become more “professional” – i.e. based on direct recruitment of graduates into mostly temporary academic positions, of which some attained tenured positions, while the rest would eventually have to seek employment elsewhere. This resulted in a certain falloff from the academic category during the post-graduate phase, and hence a flow – in the opposite direction of what had previously been the norm – from academia to secondary school (or to the third path of “boundaryless careers”).821 The extent to which there was such a change of pattern in academic careers seems to have been obscured for observers at the time by the simultaneous deterioration in the academic labor market (especially at the older universities), and the available information in the NAVF surveys does not allow us to be very precise about this issue even now. However this issue might be resolved (I shall return to it below), and notwithstanding the other shortcomings mentioned here, the data from the NAVF surveys presented above are nevertheless important for assessing the validity of a set of three interlinked hypotheses that underlie this part of the study. Briefly put, I propose that between 1975 to 2000 tipping points were reached and passed in three lines of development with crucial importance for the relationship between Norwegian humanities education and the world of work: 1) the decline in the importance of secondary school teaching, 2) the corresponding increase in the importance of “boundaryless careers,” and 3) the continued but changed importance of what had by now become a relatively small and more strongly differentiated (if not exactly more exclusive) academic career path. I now turn to possible explanations for the changes regarding school teaching and academic careers. A discussion of boundaryless careers will be offered in conjunction with statistical data for the period 1985-2000, since the changes for this career type became most noticeable in the 1990s. Although I will argue that these three developments together make up what I have called a transformation in the relationship between humanities education and the world of work, I will discuss

821 Regarding the “professionalization” of humanities researchers, see Fredrik W. Thue, “Universitetslærerne,” 686ff. It should be noted that Norway have not had a tenure track system like the one in the United States, but in 1993 a system was established whereby academics in lower or middling positions were entitled to advancement to higher positions, including professorship, based on certain criteria (mostly publications).

464 │ The transformation of humanities education

them separately since they relate to three different function system shifts taking place in this period in Norwegian history: in education, in research, and at the intersection of the political and the economic systems.

19.3 SCHOOL TEACHING As we recall from the outline of the period 1960-1975 above, the NAVF published a forecast in 1977 which drew a rather bleak picture of the labor market for humanities graduates in the years to come. The major threat, as both the NAVF report and commentators like the economist Steinar Strøm saw it, stemmed not only from an “overproduction” of humanities graduates, but from a combination of high candidate outputs, a depressed economy, and strong competition from other emerging educational groups.822 I shall return in more detail below to how humanities graduates were challenged in what for them were “alternative” niches such as journalism and public administration, but first I want to discuss what turned out – as we have shown above – to be the major challenge, namely the developments in secondary school, particularly in lower secondary school. This challenge was underestimated at the time even by the NAVF and by Steinar Strøm, who was considered too alarmist by the ministry. What happened was, briefly put, that the humanists’ cultural hegemony as the leading group of school teachers, as well as their jurisdiction in secondary school, to use Andrew Abbott’s term, was gradually lost (especially lower secondary school) from the 1970s onwards to the general teachers educated at the specialized teacher training institutions or “seminars.”823 Viewed in retrospect, it seems clear that this was the consummation of a development that had been underway for a long time. I have already commented on the legal decoupling of secondary school (the gymnas) from the universities in 1959, when the academic degree system and the regulation of teacher certification were separated (cf. part two), paving the way for non-academic teachers later on. This was in turn part of an even larger upheaval in the function system of education, which through a series of expansions, mergers, and reforms, especially from the late 1950s onwards, resulted in a comprehensive,

822 One could add a factor that is not stated directly, but rather implied in the whole argument of for instance Steinar Strøm, namely that humanities graduates, because of their close affiliation with the public sector, were not assumed to be able to to solve their challenges through innovation and entrepreneurialism, variables that are usually taken into account in labor market analyses for other categories of employees. 823 From 1973 these were upgraded to pedagogical university colleges.

The period 1975–1985: The transformation │ 465

public Norwegian school system. In this new system, where most forms of differentiation were counteracted, it was no longer self-evident that the traditional division of labor between various categories of teachers could – or should – be maintained. Considering this larger backdrop, it seems clear that the changes in the jurisdiction of various teacher categories – among them the academically trained humanists – cannot be explained by looking at each category separately; their fates were interlinked, and contingent upon a wave of large-scale changes in the educational system. Most important of these, for teacher training and for the teacher profession, was the transformation in the early 1970s whereby lower secondary school ceased to be mainly a first step on the pathway to academic study, and became part of the mandatory school system catering to the whole breadth of the population. Even upper secondary school was universalized at this time, although not to the same degree, when the gymnas was put on a par with vocational education and training and integrated into a comprehensive system of secondary school (called videregående skole). It was now one track among others, albeit still the largest one. Attendance at the upper secondary level was not mandatory, and access was still selective at least in practice, but many efforts were made to curb the prestige of the former gymnas. As a part of this campaign, its academic profile was significantly downplayed.824 The future staffing of the two upper tiers of the comprehensive school system, lower and upper secondary school, had been raised as an issue already in the 1960s, when the new form of lower secondary school was piloted in several parts of the country. But it was not until the 1970s that an open struggle erupted for the jurisdiction in this labor market between the academically trained teachers (humanities and natural science candidates, mostly) and the general teachers.825 As the 1977 NAVF forecast report indicated, it was not evident at the time how this struggle would end,

824 See for instance Alfred O. Telhaug, Norsk skoleutvikling etter 1945. 4th ed. (Oslo: Didaktika, 1994) 203ff. 825 There were also other categories of teachers, such as the specialized subject teachers (whether it be music, mechanics, or carpentry) and the gym teachers, many of whom came from military schools. Moreover, there had traditionally been an important distinction between the male and the female teachers, who had been organized in different professional associations and had somewhat diverging interests and views, not the least because there was a correlation between the variables of gender, class, and geography – with female, urban, bourgeois teachers constituting one distinct group, and male teachers from rural areas making up another. Earlier these distinctions had caused the various categories to keep each other in check, but around 1970 most of the other cleavages had faded away, leaving only the divide between academic and “general” teachers.

466 │ The transformation of humanities education

but by the early 1980s it was evident that the academic teachers had lost the hegemony, at least in lower secondary school. How, then, can we explain what happened in this period? In order to approach an answer to this question, I will in the following avail myself of some theoretical insights discussed earlier about the function system logic of education in modern society. In line with systems theory I will ask whether the developments that have been sketched above regarding the preferential treatment of particular teacher categories can be seen as functional responses to emergent problems facing the educational system. Following Niklas Luhmann’s theory of functional differentiation, I would argue that the function system of education, established in Europe in its modern form during the last half of the nineteenth century, spent much of the twentieth century coming into its own in Norway along two lines of development. The first of these was the inclusion of increasing shares of the population into its operations.826 When it became evident, as it did in Norway in the interwar period, that traditional distinctions between various kinds of people (estates or classes) could no longer be legitimated in the emerging modern society, equal access to education became not only a goal to aspire to, but – at least from the end of WWII – a governmental responsibility.827 The replacement of the former realskole with the new and mandatory lower secondary school in Norway can be understood as an expression of this drive for expanded inclusion inherent in the modern system of education. Far from a domes-

826 As previously mentioned, Luhmann has analyzed this development in several of his publications, for instance in Niklas Luhmann and Karl-Eberhard Schorr, Problems of Reflection in the System of Education, 35ff. and in Niklas Luhmann, Samfundets uddannelsessystem. 827 From thence it was only a small step up to the next level of equity ideal, where the content of education should no longer reflect only the interests and life experiences of the traditional elites, but those of the whole breadth of the population. In Norway, some forms of “folk culture” had been included in curricula and elevated to the status of official culture as part of the 19th century “invention of tradition,” but in many other regards the cultural world of first postwar decades was sharply stratified. A third level was reached when education, especially since the 1960s, was beginning to be seen as an instrument for levelling out the social differences that were reproduced by the families. Of course, members of lower social strata, individually and as an organized movement, had viewed education as an instrument of social mobility for a long time; what was new in the postwar era was that equity became an integrated part of the welfare policies of most, if not all political parties.

The period 1975–1985: The transformation │ 467

tic invention, or even a Scandinavian one, the idea about the “democratization” of secondary education took hold all over the Western world in roughly the same period. As historians of education Aaron Benavot and Julia Resnik have pointed out: “Although the timing, scope, and implementation of these reforms varied from country to country, the following elements were integrated (in some form or another) into most educational initiatives: • •

A prolongation of compulsory education into secondary education; Attempts to blur the hierarchy between academic and non-academic studies (art, informatics, dance, etc.) by greater diversification of subject offerings;

• •

A tendency towards establishing comprehensive secondary schools; and An increase of science-oriented studies at all educational levels and in most programs of study.”

828

The second evolutionary development that shaped the modern system of education was the differentiation of its operational mode from the modes of other societal systems, primarily from the family, religion, science, and politics. The autonomy of education in the face of the two first of these systems, the family and religion, was mostly established in the 19th century in Norway, but the interfaces with science and politics have caused considerable tension throughout the 20th century. Many Norwegian historians and educational researchers have pointed out that the development of the system of education in Norway occurred in dialogue with pedagogy. Luhmann, too, has argued – mostly in the context of Germany – that without pedagogy, the function system of education would have had difficulties articulating its generalized medium of communication, summarized in the formula of Bildung (or, increasingly, “learning to learn”), that has come to define its self-conception.829

828 Aaron Benavot and Julia Resnik, “Lessons from the Past: A Comparative Socio-Historical Analysis of Primary and Secondary Education,” Global Educational Expansion Historical Legacies and Political Obstacles, eds. Julia Resnik, and Javier Corrales (Cambridge: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2006) 50. The last item does not apply to Norway for the period in question. 829 See the separate discussion of education as viewed by systems thory in part one, and in the introduction to this part. As for the “contingency formulas” of Bildung and “learing to learn,” as theoretical constructs, see Niklas Luhmann and Karl-Eberhard Schorr, Problems of Reflection in the System of Education. Speaking of Norwegian educational debates in the 1960s, Alfred O. Telhaug says: “In the eyes of many, ‘learning to learn’ became the schools’ most important task.” Alfred O. Telhaug, Norsk skoleutvikling et-

468 │ The transformation of humanities education

This analysis is valid for Norway as well, in my view. But there has been a tendency among some Norwegian historians and educational researchers to go beyond this claim, and argue that pedagogy has provided the educational system with a scientific foundation.830 As argued above I believe this is a misconception, simply because it was not research as such (in the strict, modern sense) that was the important thing about pedagogy for the system of education in Norway. Although I have touched upon a related issue in the section about professionalism above, a short excursus on Norwegian pedagogy is needed here to substantiate this claim. Without an understanding of the role played by pedagogy, it is not possible to understand the humanities’ decreased relevance for school teaching either. From early on, Norwegian pedagogy was split. There are many ways to describe the cleavage(s), but in my view the crucial distinction is between, on the one hand, a normative strand informed by various forms of idealist philosophy, focused on ideas like Bildung, equity, and other value-based concerns, such as the general program of teaching and learning as a form of critique of modernity; and, on the other hand, a strand informed largely by the emerging social sciences, taking a more “disinterested” view of education, based on empirical research methods. In brief, it was the former branch of pedagogy that attained hegemony in the crucial phase of the postwar era, from the mid-1960s to the late 1980s, and therefore was in a position to articulate a foundational self-description for the comprehensive Norwegian educational system. There were tendencies towards dogmatism in this “branch” of normative and value-oriented pedagogy, especially in the 1970s, but it never became truly monolithic. It evolved as a heterodox web of theoretical ideas and concepts derived from such diverse thinkers as John Dewey, Jürgen Habermas, and Paolo Freire, adapted (to the extent it was deemed necessary) to Norwegian educational contexts.831

ter 1945,199. More recently, the Ludvigsen committee has reiterated this conception of education, see Official Norwegian Report, NOU 2015:8 Fremtidens skole. 830 See e.g. Rune Slagstad, De nasjonale strateger, 318ff.; and, in a different vein, Herner Sæverot, “Den pedagogiske vendingen – Fra utdanningsvitenskap til allmenn pedagogikkvitenskap,” Nordic Studies in Education 4 (2014). 831 Kim G. Helsvig has identified five traditions of pedagogy at the oldest and arguably most influential department of pedagogy, at the University of Oslo. In my view the major distinction is between what he calls the “liberal-progressive” tradition, which was committed to empirical research methods, and three of the others, which were more value-based (the socialist, the Christian-conservative, and the anti-authoritarian). As Helsvig concludes, “the more explicitly value-oriented pedagogical traditions have to a much larger extent succeeded in impacting and interacting with the policymaking in the

The period 1975–1985: The transformation │ 469

What this pedagogical “reflection theory” (as Luhmann has termed it) offered the system of education was a vocabulary with which to legitimate the autonomy of its operations.832 It did not, however – at least not in the twentieth century in Norway – make education as a function system contingent upon the rapid developments in the function system of research, other than to legitimate practices that flowed from its own inherent dynamic. Granted, there have been times where advances in the more empirical research program within pedagogy (which has increasingly called itself “educational research”) has had some influence on e.g. curricula, and on teachers’ practices, and there has also been new ideas in the normative strand of pedagogy (such as the Foucauldian perspective) that have been at least partly integrated into teacher profession’ sense of its mission. But for the most part, I will argue – with Luhmann and Schorr –, the influence during the period under discussion here has in reality flowed the other way, from primary and secondary education to academic pedagogy, from the educational practices and dogmatics of the increasingly uniform teacher profession to the articulation of education’s self-description in pedagogy’s normative strand. Or perhaps more accurately, the two pedagogical enterprises have co-evolved, not as a coupling of education and research leading to research-based educational practices, but as an educational system with an upper, theoretical level – a normative-pedagogical loft installed at universities and university colleges. The pedagogical reflection theory provided by the academics in this loft was indispensable for the system of education as a form of “boundary work” designed to uphold the autonomy of education in the face of the entire breadth of its societal environment. At the level of everyday interaction, pedagogy was useful for school principals and teachers when warding off interventions from various other social systems, such as the family (inquisitive parents) or the economy (e.g. unwelcome advances from the local business community). With reference to pedagogical competencies and the educational ethos that flowed from this source, “school people” could claim autonomy for their classroom practices, even if their social standing and authority was diminished. But the major function of pedagogy in Norway has been to handle – i.e. sometimes to inform and sometimes to confront –

field, and also in defining the boundaries of the discipline of pedagogy.” Kim G. Helsvig, Pedagogikkens grenser (Oslo: Abstrakt, 2005) 351. The fifth tradition, which Helsvig calls the “practical-political” tradition, I will leave aside here, as I am not wholly convinced that it is a tradition in Norwegian pedagogy on the same level as the four others. 832 See Niklas Luhmann and Karl Eberhard Schorr, Problems of Reflection in the System of Education.

470 │ The transformation of humanities education

the steering ambitions of the political system. Being almost entirely public, the Norwegian educational system has been subject to political decisions regarding not only structural matters and funding, but also curricula and, not the least, teacher education. Particularly in policy debates on these issues, the educational system has, in the postwar era particularly, found pedagogy increasingly indispensable. In a crucial phase, during the 1960s and 1970s, there was in Norway an overlap, a fertile spot of common ground, where the evolutionary demands in the systems of education, as well as those of politics, could be aligned with a certain variant of the normative strand in pedagogy, a program that later educational historians in Norway have termed “neo-radicalism.”833 At this point in time – and in the social space that emerged at the intersection of these function systems – we can see the two developments we have traced above flow together, reinforcing each other. The first development, the gradual inclusion of the whole spectrum of the population into a comprehensive educational system which among other things motivated the new lower secondary school in the 1970s, also necessitated – it now became clear – the second development, namely the accentuation of education as a distinct societal praxis with its own goals. Only as an autonomous system in this sense could its previous subservience to vocationalism on the one hand and to academia on the other, and hence its affiliation with the old, stratified social structure of the prewar era, be left behind.834 For secondary school this meant that it had to decouple itself – with the aid, so to speak, of educational politics and normative pedagogy – from the academic tradition that had previously shaped it. It was this decoupling that necessitated the shift in teacher education and recruitment whereby the general teachers anchored in pedagogy were increasingly preferred, at the expense of the academically trained teachers such as those from the humanities. Had pedagogy been simply an empirical research discipline that supplied the system of education with evidence-based analyses and inferences, it could hardly have had this function, given the context.835 It was as a more or less holistic “reflection theory” of the educational system itself it could further its drive for autonomy.

833 Alfred. O. Telhaug, Norsk skoleutvikling etter 1945, 75ff. 834 I use the term “autonomy” here not is the sense of freedom from conditioning by other systems, for instance by the political system, but in the conceptualization used in Luhmann’s systems theory, as outlined in part one. 835 In Finland, pedagogy evolved more as an empirical research discipline, with didactics as a major component, and this brand of pedagogy proved to be compatible with other disciplinary components (including the humanities) in a teacher education that since the 1970s has been firmly anchored in the universities. The educational system this combination has produced in Finland is in many ways different from the one that the neo-

The period 1975–1985: The transformation │ 471

To summarize, the decline of the hegemony of teachers trained in the humanities should not, in my view, be explained primarily as the result of new findings or insights in “pedagogical research,” even though some of the most prominent advocates of the general teachers (and critics of the “old-fashioned” teachers from the universities) were indeed professors of pedagogy. Nor should it be conceived of as the inevitable outcome of a political master plan, even if decisions on the jurisdiction of the various professional groups and the criteria for certification to the various teacher positions were firmly in the hands of the Ministry of education. A more adequate explanation is that the inherent dynamics of inclusion and autonomization that propelled the evolution of the system of education at this particular time turned out to be compatible with certain developments in Norwegian politics, and also to be facilitated and legitimated by a particular strand of normative pedagogy. This is a functional explanation, and hence no simple causality is presumed. The fact that in other, comparable countries, like Finland, the educational system evolved in the direction of increased inclusion and autonomy with academically trained teachers shows that other political and pedagogical programs might have been functionally equivalent to the Norwegian solution of offering preferential treatment to the general teachers. But of course, had the Finnish route been taken, quite a few other things would have had to be handled differently in Norway also.836 A functional explanation, which pertains to the function system level, might seem a bit vacuous if not supplemented by attention to developments at the organizational and interactional level, which is where agency has its place, and where actual policy decisions are made. At this level, which is often conceptualized as a policy field, various actors were involved during the postwar period in what we might call, with a term Luhmann adopted from evolutionary theory, “pre-adaptive advances” – i.e. the making of proposals, counter-proposals, alliance-building, strategies, etc. that from the point of view of the actors themselves may have been intentional projects, but the realization of which were determined not by their intended consequences but by their contextual (i.e. societal) adaptability. As we have already mentioned, the actors in this policy field were politicaladministrative organizations (political parties, the Ministry of education, the municipalities), organizations affiliated with the educational system (schools, school boards, teacher unions), and several academic actors (deans, expert advisers –

radical pedagogues and their political allies sought to establish in Norway in the 1970s, however. 836 For instance, admissions to higher education – presumably to disciplinary humanities programs as well as academic professional teacher education – would have had to be more competitive, hence changing the trajectory of humanities education altogether.

472 │ The transformation of humanities education

especially from pedagogy). In the political-administrative sphere two perspectives on teacher education and professional jurisdiction were influential. First, the dominance of the Labor party in the government and public administration of postwar Norway had brought with it a skepticism towards the profession of academically trained teachers, which at least part of the Labor party had viewed as a conservative and sometimes arrogant guild, catering to and thus furthering the interests of the bourgeoisie.837 Second, faced with the chaotic variety of traditional teacher categories (with different competencies, duties, cultures, and salaries) public authorities on all levels had come to favor a policy of simplification regarding teacher training.838 A purely administrative logic thus led to a preference in the ministry and other parts of public administration for the general teacher who could teach many subjects – not the least out of concern for all the small rural schools. Also, with significantly shorter study programs, general teachers were much cheaper for the ministry to train than those from the university. Alongside the political actors were various organized interests and expert advisers that had been invited into the policy field through membership in governmental councils, such as the School piloting council (Forsøksrådet for skoleverket) and the Teacher education council (Lærerutdanningsrådet) or were consulted by these bodies. Examples of what I in part two have referred to as a structural coupling mechanism, this council channeled influence on policy and was in turn used to legitimate policy decisions during a thirty year period from the 1950s to the 1980s. The teacher organizations, especially the one representing the interests of the general teachers, certain handpicked school directors from the municipalities, as well as academics from the normative strand of pedagogy referred to above, were important contributors in these councils, even though formal decisions were of course made by the government, or by Parliament.839 Since the combined outcome of these influences was a policy that favored the general teachers in a field where the academically trained teachers had previously been monopolists, one should expect, following Abbott’s theory of professional struggle for jurisdiction, protests from the established teacher group and its associ-

837 There were exceptions to this line of thinking among people affiliated with the Labor party, such as Tønnes Sirevåg. 838 Kjell Eide, Departementets lille kanarifugl, 14. 839 See Alfred O. Telhaug, Norsk skoleutvikling etter 1945, 93ff.; Alfred O. Telhaug, Forsøksrådet for skoleverket: En studie i norsk skoleutvikling (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1990) 122ff.; Kim G. Helsvig, 1975-2011. Mot en ny samfunskontrakt? Vol. 6, Universitetet i Oslo 1814-2011, ed. John Peter Collett (Oslo: Unipub, 2011) 31ff.

The period 1975–1985: The transformation │ 473

ates, especially the faculties where they had received their training.840 And indeed, the new policy was seen as a hostile move by Lektorlaget, the academic teacher organization, and some gestures of protest were made during the 1960s and 1970s.841 However, to keep the old competency regulations as they had been was not an option for the reformed and much expanded lower secondary education. It was clear to everyone, including Lektorlaget, that the increased demand for teachers in lower secondary school in this period made some kind of compromise unavoidable. The general teachers would have to be admitted; the question was to what extent and on what conditions. The answer, it turned out when the new legislation came, was all the way in lower secondary school, and some of the way in upper secondary school (i.e. they were admitted on condition of additional training).842 But the legislation in itself only facilitated the development; it did not dictate it. The fact that the opportunity was seized, and that the takeover actually occurred, demands additional explanations. First of all, it should be asked how strong the motives were on the part of the humanists for actually opposing the rise of the general teachers. As demonstrated in part three, the humanities professors that earlier would have been keen to preserve the link to secondary school were by the 1970s preoccupied with their research ambitions (albeit still hampered by heavy teaching loads). When some of them eventually rose to the challenge and tried to reclaim their role as teacher educators in the late 1970s, it was too late. As for the humanities graduates themselves, it seems they, too, were reluctant to put up a fight for jurisdiction in lower secondary school. The general teachers were almost given a walkover victory, in part because university educated teachers (especially those with the graduate cand.philol. degree, as demonstrated above) had always regarded the gymnas (upper secondary school) as preferable employment to lower secondary school, and there their monopoly was seemingly unthreatened. For the general teachers, whose jurisdiction had traditionally been restricted to primary education, the prospect of teaching lower secondary school was on the contrary a step up. To make the story even more complex, it should be taken into consideration that the social status associated with the various tiers of the school system, and also with the teacher education programs that catered to (and to some extent competed for) jurisdiction in these tiers, was in a process of change. In the wider society a sense prevailed that the university educated teachers (of which the largest number were trained in the humanities) had a slightly higher social status than the general teach-

840 See Andrew Abbott, System of professions. 841 See Åsmund Arup Seip, Lektorene. 842 Ibid.

474 │ The transformation of humanities education

ers, (after all, their education was longer, and the children they taught older). But within the function system of education, the general teachers had achieved hegemony (with a possible exception for the program that replaced the former gymnas in upper secondary school). Here, it was the new radical values advocated by pedagogical university colleges, and hence instilled into the new generation of general teachers, that came to dominate the system’s self-descriptions, or what is often referred to as the “school culture.” On the structural level, this cultural shift was supported by the political authorities, and gradually the general teachers came to dominate the positions as school principals and school directors in the municipalities. In 1978, close to 80 percent of the principals in lower secondary schools had been trained as general teachers, while no fewer than 88 percent of the school directors in the municipalities had the same educational background.843 Together, these were the positions responsible for the recruitment of new teachers. In her historical account of the Norwegian general teachers, Gro Hageman has shown that this dominant standing in the school leadership was used in many places to advance the interests of the general teachers, and even to discourage university educated teachers from applying for positions in

843 The figures are taken from from Gunnar Grepperud, “Allmennlærerern – rolle og status” (Oslo: University of Oslo, unpublished thesis, 1980) 140-41, and Statistics Norway. Grepperud has 360 lower secondary school principals with general teacher education, Statistics Norway has 458 lower secondary schools that year. Grepperud’s study demonstrates the difficulty in assessing the status of the general teacher in Norwegian schools. Writing at the height of the general teachers’ influence, in the early 1980s, Grepperud still wants, in the concluding paragraphs, to cast the general teacher as the underdog, beset by dark forces: “…the general teacher is on his way out of the school system, and the teacher role is increasingly oriented towards a more specific and more cognitive direction. These are the qualities that are being rewarded. At the same time, there is a wider opening for specialization, with the consequences this will have for the holistic view of the pupil. In order to heighten the status of the general teacher, and thereby assign a higher value to the values that this group stands for [sic], one should attempt to “build up” a widened teacher role, where an autonomous teacher with a solid pedagogical background becomes the ideal. The main aim is to give the teachers an identity as pedagogues, not as disseminators of subject knowledge [kunnskapsformidlere]. For this to become possible, one should in the first place take the consequences of this in the field of teacher education.” Ibid., 173. In retrospect, it seems to me that Grepperud was wrong on almost all accounts in the descriptive part of this passage, and as regards the normative part, let me just say that it seems somewhat unbalanced.

The period 1975–1985: The transformation │ 475

lower secondary education.844 In part, this is the kind ingroup/outgroup dynamic that one would expect to arise from any academic or professional demarcation line, but there was also a more or less clearly articulated sense abroad in the 1970s and 1980s that the tables were being turned, and that academically trained teachers, while probably irreproachable in the factual knowledge department, were remnant of an old and obsolete social order. As we shall see in the next section, the success and self-confidence of the general teachers in the Norwegian school system did not last. But around 1980 this teacher category was able, for the reasons outlined above, to reap the full benefits of its expanded jurisdiction, reducing the humanities graduates’ career options in secondary school significantly. In 1985, almost half of the humanities graduates still began their careers there, but the share was steadily declining. A tipping point had undoubtedly been reached: Not only was the humanities’ hegemony in secondary school lost; secondary school had at the same time lost its hold over the humanities. Despite the efforts (often half-hearted) of many humanities departments to regain their position in school teaching by introducing didactics into their curricula during the 1980s (cf. part three), and despite the realization in the wider public in the late 1980s and 1990s that the general teacher programs left much to be desired, the transformation turned out, in the last decade of the century, to be irreversible. Shortly after the turn of the century, fewer than 25 percent of the teachers in lower secondary school were academically trained.845 Even if they still constituted the majority in upper secondary school, the increased candidate production in the meantime meant that secondary school teaching could now only offer careers to 30 percent of the humanities graduates. The profession that once had defined the humanities as such (by being the only predicable career path, and the one taken by the vast majority) had by this time become a clear minority position.

19.4 ACADEMIC WORK The survey data from NIFU analyzed above show that the share of humanities graduates who entered a career in academia fluctuated between 12 and 21 percent during the ten years from 1975 to 1985, with no clear upwards or downwards trend.

844 Gro Hageman, Skolefolk – Lærernes historie i Norge, 266. 845 St.meld. nr. 11 (2008-2009) Læreren – rollen og utdanningen, 51. These are, to my knowledge, the best figures available, but note that the share of teachers with academic training may be somewhat lower than suggested, since other educational categories were also eligible for the practical-pedagogical training, which is used as the indicator here.

476 │ The transformation of humanities education

The average share was 17 percent, which is not very different from any time before or since. However, the qualitative changes regarding the academic career path in this period ran much deeper than these figures suggest. In fact, numbers might lead us completely astray here, if not interpreted with care. Neither the relative share nor the absolute number of humanities graduates recruited to an academic career can tell us much unless we take into consideration the context, or what Abbott has called the occupational ecology.846 Even though the relative share who became academics stayed at around 17 percent for the whole period from 1975 to 1985, the absolute number of humanities graduates who entered on an academic path declined significantly in the latter half of this period because admissions to the humanities had been much reduced after 1975. But a significant decline in absolute numbers does not equal a decline in significance. Since there was a much greater decline in school teaching (relatively and in absolute numbers), which was the other major career path, and since the third path, which I have categorized as boundaryless careers, was too diverse to give rise to clear identity, the relative importance of academia – and of the role of researcher – for the profile of humanities education was actually much increased by 1985. It was a new kind of importance, though. The figure of the university professor had always been at the center of the humanities disciplines, as Lindbekk observed, but that was because he was, at last until the mid-1960s, in a unique position of authority (as discussed in part three, professors like Arne Næss and Jens Arup Seip personified their disciplines).847 By the mid-1980s, the humanities professors and other faculty members formed a much more plentiful and diverse group, and the professor’s centrality for the identity of the humanities resided not so much in the uniqueness of the position as in its having become the only surviving stereotypical figure – after the decline of its companion figure, the secondary school teacher. The importance and attraction of the academic career was also the result of the prioritization of the research mission at the universities, which, as we recall from part two, was the outcome of a development that had been long underway. The Norwegian research community in the postwar era had more or less openly advocated educational expansion as a way of cross-subsidizing a much-desired expan-

846 Andrew Abbott, System of professions. 847 “The Ranks of the Court and the Civil Service [Hof- og Embetsrang] was printed in the State Calendar [Statskalenderen] and placed the professions and offices in a hierarchy of 18 classes, later only 12. For the legal profession there were a number of practically oriented positions in the upper echelons, and the university positions began only at the sixth level from above. For the humanities, however, there were no positions above the university positions.” Ulf Torgersen, Profesjonssosiologi, 50. My emphasis.

The period 1975–1985: The transformation │ 477

sion of the research capacity. In addition, as Merton has shown, research has its own reward system, motivating continued expansion (see part three). These mechanisms seem to have worked, albeit slowly. Two whole decades passed before the wave of students retreated sufficiently for it to become possible, in practice, to make research the main priority. By that time, the “phase of apathy” in the 1950s was largely forgotten, and the successful expansion (as measured by humanities staff and the establishment of new institutions) was not really recognized as a success at all, but was rather eclipsed in the 1970s by what the former Swedish prime minister Tage Erlander has called “the discontent born from rising expectations.” As we have seen, the public funding of the universities levelled out from the mid-1970s, more or less in keeping with the declining student numbers. This caused considerable protest from professors and students alike, in a manner that has since become a mainstay.848 Nevertheless, resource-wise humanities research in Norway was better off in the late 1970s than it had ever been, especially since the teaching loads were now much lighter. While a few institutions (especially the University of Oslo) had justified financial complaints (due to a combination of high expenses and a weak capacity for strategic governance), the whole enterprise of the Norwegian humanities as well as individual humanities academics were actually well placed at this time to dedicate themselves to research.849 Seen from a systems theoretical perspective, this Norwegian development confirms to the general function system logic of modern research – although, as underscored in part three of this study, with a delay of more than half a century compared to larger Western countries like Germany, Britain and the United States. According to systems theory, research in the modern world can only sustain itself as a communications system if it is allowed to be autonomous (among other things: no longer subordinated to the demands of the educational system). To secure its autonomy, certain structural features needs to be in place. The importance of the differentiation of research disciplines, the establishment of competition between multiple research institutions, and the emergence of the department level for the autonomization of modern research has already been discussed.850 What needs to be addressed here is the specific demands that the emerging function system of research in Norway put

848 See Kim G. Helsvig, 1975-2011. Mot en ny samfunnskontrakt, 15ff. 849 This is not to say that the opportunity was actually seized and resulted in important humanities research. The only claim here is that research became the priority for institutions as well as for individuals – which also means that it became the chief meriting practice for career advancement,. 850 See parts two and three.

478 │ The transformation of humanities education

upon the recruitment of staff, and hence upon the career trajectories in the academic humanities. Three crucial steps had already been taken before 1975. The decoupling of the final humanities exam from teacher certification in 1959 freed the humanities from the “conservativism” of secondary school curricula. Furthermore, the direct recruitment of those destined for the professoriate from newly graduated humanities students, rather than from experienced teachers from secondary school, secured an academic leadership with a preference for research. Thirdly, a strong reorientation of the humanities programs (as regards materials, methods and theories) in the direction of research provided a solid recruitment base of young people socialized into the research ethos. What confirmed the Norwegian humanities’ status as primarily a research venture was that all academic staff members were given the right and the duty to engage in research in the mid-1970s, including the lecturers, whose positions had previously been teaching-only.851 Moreover, temporary research fellowships now came into more widespread use as a recruitment mechanism, as they had been for some time in the natural sciences. These temporary positions had the advantage for both for the funding ministry and for the institutions that they carried very limited responsibilities, and shifted the risk of future career planning onto the individual young prospective academic. This was a new situation inasmuch as neither the research fellows nor the lecturers were henceforth anchored in secondary school. In many cases, research fellowships were granted on the expectation (but with no clear obligation) that it should result in a research publication worthy of defense for the doctoral degree. However, the doctoral degree in the Norwegian humanities was by tradition a very ambitious, solitary undertaking, and did not become a regular educational program before the 1990s. Hence, only a very select group actually completed the doctorate, and it did not become a formal requirement for career advancement or even for entry into the professoriate until the 1990s.852 In some pockets of the humanities it was still possible to pursue a research career without it at the turn of the century.853

851 Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen, 290ff. 852 During the almost 200 years from 1817 to 1999, a total of 1071 doctoral degrees were awarded in the humanities in Norway, and almost half of these (448) were awarded in the 1990s. See Terje Bruen Olsen, Norske doktorgrader ved årtusenskiftet. En oversikt over utviklingen i det 19. og 20.århundre, med hovedvekt på 1990-årene (Oslo: NIFU STEP, 2000) 14 and 25. 853 As late as 2005, the share of humanists employed in permanent academic positions at Norwegian HEIs who possessed a doctoral degree was only 66 percent. However, by

The period 1975–1985: The transformation │ 479

Throughout the 1980s, therefore, it still happened that humanities professorships were given to applicants without a doctoral degree, but less frequently than before, one reason for this being applicants from abroad (mostly Scandinavian) who would have this credential. Still, mid-level positions (amanuensis and førsteamanuensis) were increasingly used as a career advancement steps for candidates who had been recruited into lectureships or research fellowships but who did not complete the doctoral degree. As these positions also came with considerable time allotted to research, the difference between them and professorships were not that great. The absence of a sharp hierarchical differentiation between the categories of academic staff members in the humanities must be seen against the background of the vogue for “democratization” that beset academia in the 1970s, and with particular force in Norway. There is no room for a full discussion of this interesting topic here, but its sway – resulting in campaigns among young academics in the 1970s to dismiss and even boycott the doctorate as a bourgeois contraption – goes some way to explain why the doctoral degree took so many years to become the formal requirement for research careers in Norway. The other half of the explanation is probably the extreme hesitancy om the part of the academic leadership in the humanities to reform the old doctor philosophiae degree into a manageable format. One should have thought that not making the highest academic degree the entrance requirement for an academic career, as it had been for quite a while in Continental and Anglo-American humanities departments, would hamper the research impetus of the Norwegian humanities. But there is good reason to believe that it had the opposite effect. Recruitment to humanities research from the whole population of graduate degree students, rather than from a preselected group of postgraduates, seems to have contributed to a strong research-orientation of the both graduate programs, and even the undergraduate grunnfag. The resistance to differentiation, vertically between the graduate and postgraduate levels, and horizontally between the two graduate degrees (cand.philol. and magister, which became increasingly similar in their orientation towards research), sent the whole enterprise along on the research drift. When a self-sustaining internal drive for research had been generated, and basic funding for this venture had been acquired through the cross-subsidizing mechanism that Thue and Helsvig has called a tacit “contract” between the government and the universities, one might think that a solid academic platform had been

this time the estimated share of PhD-holders among those newly employed in such positions was 78 percent, which was about average for Norwegian academia at large. See Hebe Gunness & al., Forskerrekruttering i Norge – status og komparative perspektiver (Oslo: NIFU STEP, 2007) 50.

480 │ The transformation of humanities education

established.854 But for various reasons a demand soon arose for an additional form of legitimation for humanities research. Especially after it became clear during the 1980s that secondary school was no longer as beholden to the humanities as they used to be, and student numbers were declining across the board, it became imperative to provide humanities research with a rationale independent of the educational mission altogether. This task was shouldered by the NAVF, which undertook two investigations into the status of and motivations for humanities research, one in 1973 and one in 1984.855 Then, in 1988, the Hernes commission took upon itself to formulate, in a long chapter of their report dedicated to the humanities, a rationale specifically designed for the purpose of research policy.856 As discussed briefly in part two, the Hernes report was not able, for all its good intentions, to do more than rehearse the most familiar arguments in favor of the humanities, and to conclude that it would be desirable, after the decline during the 1980s, to strengthen the recruitment to humanities research. The old role as preserver and disseminator of traditional culture is still highlighted (albeit with some caveats), at the same time as the humanities are called upon to provide a critical and reflexive account of contemporary society. In this regard, the field of ethics is underscored. There is also a call upon the humanities to get more involved with technology, the media, and the new information technology. However, considered as a specification of the societal rationale for humanities research, the lengthy text is vague and non-committal, and the policy recommendations at the end anticlimactic.857 Compared to the societal mandates of the natural and social sciences, which had for a long time been committed to productive technology and the administration of the welfare state, respectively, it is obvious that humanities research had lost its mission. The project of articulating a national culture – the “invention of tradition” – had clearly run its course, and the project of deconstructing it again, which had started in the 1960s, had turned out to be too paradoxical to serve as the rationale for the whole humanities venture. Nevertheless, even in the absence of a clear societal mandate, the autonomy of modern research secured its communicative self-dependency, which allowed it to continue to reproduce itself as long as the necessary material resources were

854 Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen, 391. 855 See e.g. NAVF, Humanistisk forsking i Norge. Humaniora-utredningen del 10 (Oslo: NAVF, 1975); and NAVF, Humanistisk forskning i Norge. Vol. 2. Eigenart, målsetjing og utviklingstendensar (Oslo: NAVF, 1984). Both of these are parts of multivolume report series. 856 Norwegian Official Report, NOU 1988:28 Med viten og vilje, 186ff. 857 Ibid., 191.

The period 1975–1985: The transformation │ 481

provided. As regards resources, the Norwegian humanities were saved by an exogenous chock, as the economists say. For the same year that the Hernes committee presented its analysis, a new influx of students started, and after a short delay, increased funding for academic staff followed. As demonstrated in part two, the snowball was again in motion. In the light of the discussion above, it could perhaps be justified to call the graduate humanities programs in Norway after ca 1980 “professional” programs for research training. But with 80 percent of the candidates entering other careers, this would be odd. Also, academic research is not usually counted as a regular profession, even though its monopolist certification procedures make it resemble one.858 This is why I have resorted to the compromise of calling academic work for humanities graduates a “professional career path,” while using a more general concept for humanities education (what I have termed “research-oriented generalist education”) and a more specific understanding of humanities research as a vocation, as outlined above. To summarize, although unchanged in relative size and declining in absolute numbers of recruits, the academic career – and the role of the researcher-teacher, as epitomized in the figure of the professor – acquired paradigmatic status for the humanities as such during the period 1975-85. Academic staff in the humanities were now researchers first, teachers secondarily – and they were recruited by disciplinary departments (with the use of employment committees from the extended disciplinary community) on the basis of research merit almost exclusively. Disciplinary research became increasingly introverted (as there was no real societal demand), albeit with some exceptions. I have not been able to find precise data on the recruitment situation of humanities research in the 1980s, but in view of the heightened attention paid to research in the curricula, and in view of the reward system of research as discussed in part three, there is reason to believe that the motivation for an academic career among the graduates was high. I shall return to what happened to this motivation in the 1990s below.

858 Partly because the knowledge base is so diverse that one would have to grant each discipline a separate academic profession, and partly because academic researchers do not cater to identifiable clients. True, academics have been called the “key profession” by Harold Perkin (popularized by Burton Clark), but that referred to their capacity as teachers. Burton Clark, The Higher Education System, 30. Others, such as Thue and Helsvig 2012, speak of the “professionalization” of humanities research, but this term is used more loosely than what is implied in the discussion of the concept of profession at the beginning of this part. Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen, 291ff.

20 The period 1985–2000: Humanities education and “boundaryless” careers

20.1 FIRST DESTINATIONS I have argued above that a major transformation regarding the career trajectories of Norwegian humanities graduates occurred in the decade from 1975 to 1985, particularly as regards the decline of the teaching profession and the new significance of the academic career. However, since the production of candidates declined significantly during the 1980s, with a less competitive labor market in the relevant niches as a result, the full effect of the transformation only became evident in the 1990s, when increased competition for positions revealed the limits of the career possibilities under the new circumstances. During the 1990s, the production of graduate candidates was tripled, bringing the output at the turn of the 21st century to a level that was well above the previous record numbers from around 1980. Table 3 shows how the graduates from the 1990s were distributed across the main sectors in working life. To facilitate comparison with the previous period, I have included numbers for the period 1981 to 1999.

484 │ The transformation of humanities education

Table 3. Humanities candidates with graduate degrees (cand.philol. and magister), 6 months after graduation, by employment sector. Percent of the employed graduates. Source: NAVF/NIFU.859 81

83

85

87

89

91

93

95

97

99

Schools*

68

63

47

47

49

49

35

41

37

30

Academia

14

14

19

28

23

27

26

27

20

15

8

3

14

8

3

9

12

8

8

11

10

20

20

17

25

15

27

24

35

44

210

165

142

103

105

145

190

160

241

251

Public admin. Other Total no. of graduates (spring) *

For definitions, see notes to table 2 above.

First, we may notice that the opportunities for an academic career increased significantly with the wave of new students, just as in the previous expansionist period in the 1960s (see part two). The shares of humanities graduates who entered this path increased from 19 percent in 1985 to around 27 percent in the early half of the 1990s, and because of the increased output of candidates, the absolute numbers increased much more. But then, after the influx of new students declined from 1997, recruitment to the HEIs seems to have dropped slightly, which caused the share to drop significantly, since the production of candidates continued to grow for several more years. The other eye-catching trend in table 3 is the continued decline in the share of graduates who entered school teaching careers. This is particularly noticeable when the final years of the 20th century are compared to the situation prior to 1985. It is important to recognize that the share of 30 percent in 1999 was not a temporary dip, but an indication of a new level. As the student and candidate numbers in the humanities flattened out in the new century (with a slightly decreasing tendency),

859 As for tables 1 and 2, the numbers here are for the most part taken from NAVF/NIFU’s published reports of the first destination survey (Kandidatundersøkelsen). However, since 1994 another categorization has been used for the humanities programs (theology and certain performing arts have gradually been included into a category called humanities and aesthetic programs). For the final years of the 1990s, NIFU has kindly provided me with numbers that are comparable to the earlier categorization. These numbers are therefore slightly different from those in the regular NIFU reports from these years.

The period 1985–2000: Humanities education and “boundaryless” careers │ 485

the share recruited to school teaching was stabilized at around 30 percent.860 The decline from around 50 percent in the last half of the 1980s was significant, and when compared to the level of above 70 percent prior to 1980, the long term change must be considered a fundamental transformation of the Norwegian humanities. Public administration, the third category of employment with some degree of consistency and stable identity, accommodated a relatively modest share of the new graduates during this period, with fluctuations between 3 and 14 percent. These fluctuations (which are rather wide when looking at absolute numbers) are difficult to interpret, but may have been influenced by administrative policies and cuts in public spending.861 As I shall return to below, there is little to suggest that the standing of humanities graduates in public administration (i.e. the attractiveness of their competencies as compared to their competitors) or the preference for this kind of work among the graduates themselves changed dramatically from 1985 to 2000. Unlike the tables in the previous chapters, I have not distinguished between private and public sector positions for the rest of the observations presented in table 3, but grouped them together under the generic category “other.” The reason is partly that I want to highlight the combined size of this category, which with 44 percent is the largest one in 1999. I shall return to the significance of this below. An additional reason for combining the two is that by the 1990s the distinction between private and public in the Norwegian labor market had become somewhat blurred. Many public services and large state companies had been privatized since the 1980s (which makes comparisons over time difficult), but on the other hand the public sector had also expanded into several new areas. Many NGOs, which in previous chapters are grouped together with private employers, were by the 1990s fully funded over the public purse, and were in effect quasi-public organizations. Moreover, as I shall return to below, the organizational structures as well as positions and tasks had become increasingly similar across the public/private divide. Lastly, the sharp division between public/private in the categorization of employers used by NIFU (based on the standard categorization by Statistics Norway) makes many of

860 See Jannecke Wiers-Jenssen & al., Humanister i arbeidslivet. Note that the categorization of humanities education may differ slightly from the period before 1994. Se the previous note. 861 Especially the low shares (and low absolute numbers) in the years 1983 and 1989 seem to demand separate explanations. Perhaps the de-bureaucratization policy of the new Conservative government can go some way towards explaining the low number in 1983, and the cuts in public expenditures in 1988-89 can perhaps explain the number in 1989, but these are speculations, and the variations can of course also have been spurious.

486 │ The transformation of humanities education

the categories largely useless for understanding the career options and choices of humanities graduates.862

20.2 HUMANITIES CAREERS AT OSLO IN THE 1990S In addition to the first destination survey from NIFU, there is an interesting study published in 2000 by Fekjær, Nielsen, and Aagnes on the specific topic of the labor market for humanities graduates in the 1990s.863 Although it deals exclusively with graduates from the University of Oslo, it uses comprehensive data from various public databases, and is thus a valuable additional source of information in this context. It should be emphasized, however, that the labor market in Oslo is not necessarily representative for the whole country. Unlike the NIFU first destination survey, the data used by Fekjær, Nielsen, and Aagnes are aggregates for graduates from 1981-1996. The report gives information about the employment situation of these during the 1990s. Among other things, this allows us to see the distribution across sectors in working life for a group of humanities graduates that includes fairly experienced employees as well as newly graduated ones. What is particularly interesting from the point of view of the present study, is that the cohorts included by Fekjær, Nielsen, and Aagnes had graduated (for the most part) after the transformation I have discussed above (and which I will return to below). In addition to giving us an opportunity to control our use of NIFUs first destination surveys, this study also has interesting information on the particular career options for specific disciplines. By and large the study by Fekjær, Nielsen, and Aagnes corroborates the patterns and developments we have seen in the first destination surveys. Because so many older graduates from the 1980s are included, the shifts across employment sectors during the 1990s that we saw in NIFU’s data on newly graduated candidates are obviously less dramatic in Fekjær, Nielsen, and Aagnes. Keeping this difference in mind, the decline reported by Fekjær, Nielsen, and Aagnes in the share of humanists who worked as school teachers, from 42 to 34 percent, 8 percentage points

862 Nevertheless, the distinction remained important in some respects, e.g. as regards job security (for permanent positions). It should therefore be pointed out that, according to the NIFU data, humanities graduates remained for the most part affiliated with the public sector throughout the period covered here. 863 Silje N. Fekjær, Roy A. Nielsen and Bjarte Aagnes, Utdannet og dannet – og så? Arbeidsmarkedet for hovedfagskandidater fra Det historisk-filosofiske fakultet ved Universitetet i Oslo (Oslo: Department of Sociology and Social Geography, UiO, 2000).

The period 1985–2000: Humanities education and “boundaryless” careers │ 487

during the period from 1989 to 1998, is significant.864 This means that by the turn of the century only one third of the humanists under 50 years of age from the largest university in Norway worked as school teachers. Even more striking, perhaps, is the development in academic work. From 1989 to 1998, the share employed at HEIs was almost doubled from 11 to 20 percent. In absolute numbers, this equals five times as many academic humanists in 1998 as in 1989. In we include research and development outside of HEIs, which decreased somewhat in this period, the total increase in the share of humanities graduates who worked with research tasks was from 15 to 21 percent. Regarding the other sectors, the overall changes for the whole group of humanities graduates reported on here are not that large during the 1990s. A share of around 45 percent of the humanities graduates from the period 1981 to 1996 were employed outside of schools and academia, and they were distributed across a variety of sectors which can only be meaningfully interpreted with reference to individual disciplines, to which I will return below. It should be noted, however, that because of the increased opportunities for academic work in the 1990s, the share of all graduates from the University of Oslo (from the years 1981-1996) who worked in “other” sectors, and which I have associated with the concept of “boundaryless careers,” actually declined a little during this decade. This trend differs from the first destination studies from the 1990s, where the category of “other” employment increased significantly, a discrepancy that is almost certainly explained by the inclusion in the study by Fekjær, Nielsen, and Aagnes of graduates that were both more experienced (up to 20 years of experience) and also educated at a time (the early 1980s) when humanities education was still more associated with the broadly defined “educational” sector. If we look at the data for individual disciplines, a rather familiar pattern emerges. In 1998, one group of disciplines still had relatively high shares in school teaching: English studies (56 percent), German studies (56 percent), Nordic studies (53 percent), and music (36 percent).865 Two disciplines that traditionally belonged to this group had by now dropped below the average share of school teaching for the humanities as whole: history and French studies (both 28 percent). For all these disciplines the share in school teaching declined during the 1990s, but the recorded changes from year to year were small, probably due to the inclusion of a large share of humanities teachers educated in the 1980s.

864 Silje N. Fekjær, Roy A. Nielsen and Bjarte Aagnes, Utdannet og dannet – og så? 29. The following information on the humanities in general is taken from table 4.5 on this page. 865 Ibid., 31ff. The information in the following is taken from tables 4.6 through 4.17.

488 │ The transformation of humanities education

As for academic careers, another group of disciplines had particularly high shares in 1998: philosophy (66 percent), French (30 percent), languages (28 percent) and general literature studies (27 percent). As discussed in part three, the exceptionally high share of philosophy graduates employed at HEIs was mostly due to the teaching tasks associated with the propaedeutic course examen philosophicum, which has traditionally employed many philosophers in Norway, especially during expansionist periods in higher education. As discussed in part two, general literature studies has also traditionally been considered research-oriented, although the teaching tasks have mostly been limited to that particular program. The category of “languages” consists of a large group of national language disciplines, and many of these have been so small that they have hired a large share of their own students simply in order to reproduce themselves. More surprising is the high share of academic careers among graduates from French studies. This should be interpreted in the light of the simultaneous decline in school teaching careers during the 1990s in this discipline. A similar trend (decline in school teaching, increase in academic careers) is discernible in the figures for Nordic, English, and German studies, but not nearly as marked as in French studies. Public administration, traditionally one of the larger subcategories of career options outside of schools and academia, recruited from all humanities disciplines, but as of 1998 this career path was particularly relevant for languages (27 percent of the graduates) media studies (24 percent), cultural studies (19 percent), and history (18 percent).866 Finding other distinct or quasi-professional career paths associated with individual disciplines in this material is difficult, and yields only two results that makes any sense. Of the art history graduates, 36 percent worked in museums/archives in 1998, and of the graduates from general literature studies, there were 19 percent in publishing/newspapers. Both of these figures are well above the shares of other disciplines in these sectors, but in absolute numbers the situation was different. In publishing/newspapers there were actually more graduates from Nordic studies than from general literature studies, for instance. It could also be mentioned that history and cultural studies in the same year had above 10 percent in museums/archives, which is significantly above average for the humanities. However, one of the most striking things about the material collected by Fekjær, Nielsen, and Aagnes is that roughly one third of the humanities graduates in 1998 (i.e. those not accounted for in the three paragraphs above) were widely distributed across sectors and industries such as production, trade, transport, hotels and restaurants, business services and consultancy, health care, NGOs, etc., without any clear

866 Ibid., 27, table 4.4. Note that most of the disciplines in this table are misplaced. Correct information has been given by Silje N. Fekjær (personal communication).

The period 1985–2000: Humanities education and “boundaryless” careers │ 489

pattern regarding disciplines. These, in addition to the 12 percent in public administration, make up the over 40 percent of the humanities graduates under about 50 years of age from the largest Norwegian university who in the 1990s were negotiating their way through working life on individualized career paths that I have associated with the concept of “boundaryless careers.” Hence, even if the school teaching career was still a significant and identity-forming prospect for a minority of 30 percent of the humanities students from a particular group of disciplines, and even if the academic career had increased in importance, it is this third category which is the most salient new feature of humanities education when we compare with the situation in the 1960s and 1970s. I will offer a separate discussion of the boundaryless careers of humanities graduates below. In this connection I will also outline some important changes in Norwegian working life during the last decades of the 20th century that may contribute towards an explanation of the increased share of this type of career. But before I finish the presentation of available empirical data on the humanities graduates in the 1990s, I would like discuss a topic that has been frequently associated with humanities graduates, namely various forms of mismatch in relation to the labor market.

20.3 MISMATCH: UNEMPLOYMENT, IRRELEVANT WORK, ETC. Excepting some reflections on the difficult labor market in the 1970s, I have so far not really addressed the question of whether Norwegian humanities graduates have arrived in positions where they could use their competencies in working life, or not. Unemployment and other forms of mismatch, such as employment in positions of little or no relevance for the graduates’ qualifications, or involuntary part-time employment, have undoubtedly presented problems to humanities graduates always, but these problems became particularly salient in the 1990s. There were two reasons for this. One was the massive increase in the output of graduates, which obviously heightened competition for each vacant position. The other was the “deprofessionalization” of the humanities, which in turn can be broken into two aspects: the increased research-orientation and generalizing of all forms of humanities education (as discussed in part three), and, secondly, the fact that so many of the humanities students in the 1990s chose the programs that were most researchoriented (such as philosophy, general literature studies, the history of ideas, etc.) rather than the group of disciplines that still retained a measure of professional orientation towards school teaching.

490 │ The transformation of humanities education

Although undoubtedly the most serious form of mismatch for the individual, unemployment has never been the most important problem for Norwegian humanities graduates as a group. NIFU’s first destination study documents that newly graduated humanists in the 1990s experienced higher levels of unemployment (between 5 and 9 percent) than the average person in the adult population, but this is hardly surprising since the search for suitable positions obviously takes some time after many years on campus.867 More surprising is probably the fact that unemployment among humanities graduates in several years in the 1990s actually was lower than the average for graduates from other programs. This was largely because a majority of the humanities graduates still entered the public sector, whereas several other large educational groups (engineering, law, business and administration, etc.) were more dependent upon the fluctuations of business cycles in the private sector. There were interesting variations within the group of humanities graduates as well. In the period 1995-2000, the disciplines associated with school teaching had below 5 percent unemployment six months after graduation, while art history, archeology, general literature studies, and languages fluctuated between 10 and 13 percent.868 As it turned out, however, unemployment was not merely a transitional phenomenon for humanities graduates in this period. Fekjær, Nielsen, and Aagnes, who reported in 2000 on humanities graduates from the years 1981-1996 (that is, with up to 20 years of experience), found that their level of unemployment was significantly higher in the 1990s (on average 8,3 percent) than for the workforce in general (4,5 percent), and also higher than for graduates from the social sciences (6,3 percent) and the natural sciences (5,4 percent).869 Interestingly, the distribution across humanities disciplines was roughly the same as we saw among the newly graduated candidates. Disciplines that qualify for school teaching tended to have fewer problems with unemployment than the others, even in the long run. A later study by Wiers-Jenssen & al. corroborates these findings, and also demonstrates the distributions to have been approximately the same in the first decade of the new century.870 But as already mentioned, unemployment has been a relatively marginal problem for the humanities, as for higher education graduates in general in Norway. The problem of “irrelevant work,” sometimes conceptualized as “over-education,” has arguably been more troublesome for the sense of self-esteem among humanities

867 NIFU, Kandidatundersøkelsen 2001 (Oslo: NIFU, 2002) 26. 868 Jannecke Wiers-Jenssen & al., Humanister i arbeidslivet, 37. 869 Silje N. Fekjær, Roy A. Nielsen and Bjarte Aagnes, Utdannet og dannet – og så? 13ff. 870 Jannecke Wiers-Jenssen & al., Humanister i arbeidslivet, 37.

The period 1985–2000: Humanities education and “boundaryless” careers │ 491

graduates as a group.871 This problem, too, has probably existed always, at least to some degree, and above I cited some findings on this issue for the 1970s. But it was in the 1990s that the figures began to be alarming. NIFU’s first destination surveys from this period show a significant increase in self-reported over-education among the newly graduated as the production of graduates grew. The abovementioned analysis of these figures by Wiers-Jenssen & al. demonstrates that the levels of over-education varied significantly across employment sectors. In the period 19952000 there were few of the newly graduated candidates employed as school teachers or entering an academic career who considered themselves to be over-educated (ca. 8 percent in both cases). But graduates outside these two “professional” paths reported much higher degrees of over-education: 38 percent in other public sector jobs, and as much as 62 percent in the private sector.872 A question debated at the time, however, was whether this problem would be alleviated as the careers of these graduates progressed, and perhaps as the labor market improved (even though the labor market was actually quite advantageous for humanities graduates from 1993 onwards, as I shall return to below). We do not have studies on this particular issue from the 1990s, but the cited study by WiersJenssen & al has data from the period 2010-13 (when self-reported over-education among the newly graduated had become even worse) which demonstrates that the problems do tend to decline with time. Three years into their careers, the share of graduates in employment who reported that they had “irrelevant work” had declined to 5,6 percent. However, the data also show that another form of mismatch, involuntary part-time work was still a problem for 6,7 percent of the graduates after three years. When we consider the sum total of these three forms of mismatch, the share of humanities graduates afflicted after three years is 18 percent, more than double the corresponding figure for social science graduates (7 per cent) and more than four times that of the natural sciences (4 percent). In addition, the data show that three years after graduation, only 84 percent of the humanities graduates were in employment at all, about 10 percentage points lower than for all the other comparable educational groups. There may be many reasons for this, continuing education among them. But regardless of reasons, the low level of employment in combina-

871 Wiers-Jenssen & al. uses the same definitions as NIFU, whose survey data they analyze: “Irrelevant work” includes “graduates in positions where higher education is completely irrelevant for the work, and where the content of the education fits the tasks badly.” “Over-education” is defined as “graduates with tasks for which higher education is completely without significance, or for which higher education is not required but counted as an advantage.” Ibid., 39. 872 Ibid., 51.

492 │ The transformation of humanities education

tion with the high share of graduates who experienced various forms of mismatch means that almost 30 percent of the candidates with a higher degree in the humanities had not entered relevant full-time careers in working life three years after graduation. This seems indicative of a problematic relationship between humanities education and the world of work at the turn of the 21st century. As we have seen above, the problems were first and foremost associated with the graduates who worked outside of the traditional career paths of school teaching and academia, and with the disciplines that did not qualify for school teaching. If we are to understand how the problems came about, we therefore need to address specifically the third category of careers, boundaryless careers, and to view the expansion of this category in the light of some major changes in working life during the last decades of the 20th century.

20.4 BOUNDARYLESS CAREERS AND THE NEW WORKING LIFE During the years from 1985 to 2000, Norwegian working life entered a distinctly new phase. The tertiary sector with its accentuation of human capital as a productive factor had long been on the rise, especially since WWII, and now it finally acquired paradigmatic status. Although the Norwegian oil and gas industry would remain hugely important for the revenues it brought, the primary and secondary sectors became less significant as measured by their share of the working force and also in their abilities to form the expectations and identities of younger generations. In addition to the long-awaited ascendancy of the tertiary sector, several developments of more recent date – such as the implementation of new technologies (particularly ICT) , deregulated markets, and the privatization of former state companies – flowed together in the 1990s, creating what I shall refer to here simply as the new working life. Many conceptualizations have been suggested for this new socio-economic situation, several of them with reference to macro-theoretical contributions such as Drucker’s ideas about “the knowledge society,” Lyotard’s notion of “the postmodern condition,” or Castells concept of “the network society.”873 But although each of

873 Peter Drucker, “The Rise of the Knowledge Society,” The Wilson Quarterly 17.2 (1993); Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1984); Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Volume 1: The Rise of the Network Society, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2010). Of course, these are only three of the more well-

The period 1985–2000: Humanities education and “boundaryless” careers │ 493

these perspectives offer interesting insights on the general issue of late modernity on the global level, I would like to outline the specific changes in Norwegian working life (and also the changed perceptions of this societal field) with reference to a slightly more empirically oriented publication, namely the sociological handbook on the Norwegian society, Det norske samfunn (”The Norwegian Society”), published at irregular intervals since 1968, with new editions in 1975, 1986, 2003 and 2010. In the 1968 edition of this handbook, the structure of the Norwegian labor market was analyzed with a set of pervasive conceptual distinctions, most importantly workers/functionaries, men/women, and urban/rural.874 Even though many changes from the prewar period were duly recorded, and the prospective for future changes was discussed, there was a clear sense that working life – and, indeed, the modern society – was an inherently layered and hierarchical structure, and that group characteristics pertaining to occupational groups had a measure of stability, even if mobility between the groups was indeed possible: “A highly developed economy, which today is primarily a capitalistic one, will have a certain occupational structure, where the various positions will require different qualifications, and the people occupying them will have unequal power and strategic possibilities for attaining 875

high compensations.”

Likewise, a fairly high degree of permanence was seen as characteristic of the organizational structure of working life in the 1960s, according to the authors of the 1968 edition.876 This feature was also highlighted in the short discussion at the beginning of this part of the professions and the Norwegian working life during the first decades after WWII.

known works; the literature on late modernity affords many more, among them works in the sociological tradition of systems theory. 874 Natalie Rogoff Ramsøy (ed.) Det norske samfunn (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1972 [1968]). See especially chapters 3-6. 875 Ståle Seierstad, “Norsk økonomi,” Det norske samfunn, ed. Natalie Rogoff Ramsøy, 122. 876 In Seierstad’s chapter on the economy, it is emphasized that “more than 70 percent of the expansion in Norwegian industry in the postwar era has occurred because of the growth of existing companies and their establishment of new branches in other districts.” Ibid., 112. Furthermore that “the private sector seems to consist mostly of a relatively stable set of firms which to a large extent try to avoid free and hard competition.” Ibid., 120.

494 │ The transformation of humanities education

In the 1986 edition of the handbook, working life in Norway is primarily analyzed as a class structure.877 The shift in conceptualization from layers to classes is indicative of the increased impact of Marxist perspectives in Norwegian sociology since the 1970s, but as far as I can tell it has very little to do with changes in the social structure itself. This structure is, at any rate, still perceived as relatively stable: “If we consider the decades after the second world war, the impression is first and foremost stability […], even if there are short term fluctuations.”878 According to the chapter on working life by Fredrik Engelstad, the stability was most noticeable in the public sector: “More than in any other part of working life, the public sector is characterized by formal distinctions between credentials. The formal education the employees acquire at the entrance to their careers determines completely the tasks it is possible to aspire to later on.”879 Considering the advent of the Norwegian petro-economy in the 1970s, this accentuation of continuity in the entire postwar period might seem surprising. But as the authors of the 1986 edition argue, the effects of the oil economy on structural aspects of society (the “Norwegian model”) had actually been stabilizing rather than disruptive, contrary to the developments in most other oil economies.880 When we come to the 2004 edition of Det norske samfunn, there is still a chapter on the continued relevance of the class concept for Norwegian working life, and the persistence of social reproduction across generations is underscored, with particular reference to education. But even so, the focal point of the volume is the fundamental shift that had happened since the 1970s and 1980s: “Another Norway emerged towards the millennium, a more prosperous Norway, with more heterogeneity and changed attitudes from those of the industrial society that previous editions of this handbook portrayed. Despite tendencies towards recession at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, the period was characterized by private and public growth in the economy and in the standards of living. The educational growth continued, a different role for women emerged, working life changed, and the welfare state expanded. The media revolution

877 Lars Alldén, Natalie Rogoff Ramsøy, and Mariken Vaa (eds.) Det norske samfunn (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1986). 878 Fredrik Engelstad, “Arbeidet,” Det norske samfunn, eds. Lars Alldén, Natalie Rogoff Ramsøy, and Mariken Vaa, 105. 879 Ibid., 86. 880 See Øyvind Østerud’s introduction, ibid., 29, and Lars Mjøset’s chapter on the economy, ibid., 352.

The period 1985–2000: Humanities education and “boundaryless” careers │ 495

and consumer society painted a new picture of the country, and terms like “globalization” and 881

“post-industrial” circulated in the media.”

Regarding the economy more specifically, Lars Mjøset’s updated chapter in the same edition argues that a shift occurred sometime after 1970 in what he calls the techno-economic paradigm, from “‘Fordism’: economic growth based on mass production and consumption” to “[e]conomic growth based on information and communication technology, flexible specialization, frequent reform and modernization processes, growth in the tertiary sector, increased importance of identityformation in consumption.”882 Combined, these new and rapid societal developments resulted in a working life where investors and managers would no longer find it rational to organize workflows in big corporations with increasingly large and permanent structures internally to match the complexity in their environments, but would rather attempt to increase adaptability to change through flexibility and loose coupling. Large, Weberian bureaucracies became less dominant, giving way to the use of holding companies and business group models with devolved responsibilities, outsourcing of tasks outside core business, frequent use of temporary projects, freelance contractors, etc.883 Many of these changes were also adopted by the public sector, especially as regards the field that was by now known as human resource management, which is the interface where organizations meet graduates from higher education.884 As regards the situation for employees, the new working life was diagnosed by some researchers at the time as their final liberation from the fetters of the industrial age, since “knowledge workers” could now be said – finally – to own the means of production. Other, more critically inclined researchers saw it on the contrary as the

881 The editors’ introduction, Ivar Frønes and Lise Kjølsrød, eds., Det norske samfunn (Oslo: Gyldendal, 2004) 13-14. 882 Lars Mjøset, “Den norske oljeøkonomiens integrasjon i verdensøkonomien,” ibid., 17. 883 Many of these organizational developments could be observed quite early in the US, see Rosabeth Moss Kanter, When Giants Learn to Dance (NY: Touchstone, 1990). In Scandinavia, one of the most influential analyses, especially in the private sector, was K.A. Nordström and J. Ridderstråle, Funky business: talent makes capital dance (Stockholm: BookHouse, 1999). 884 See Tor Bush, E Johnsen, Kurt Klaudi Klausen and Jan Ole Vanebo (eds), Modernisering av offentlig sektor. Trender, ideer og praksiser (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2011). See also the discussion of the “polycentric adminstration,” with reference to the work of Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen, in part two of this study.

496 │ The transformation of humanities education

culmination of a long march towards total alienation and the “corrosion of character,” since employees were now forced to sell not only eight hours of their time each day, but themselves.885 In later research it has become a commonplace to say that both of these extreme interpretations were off the mark, and that the truth lies somewhere in between. But as I shall return to below it may also be that in the new and more strongly individualized working life where the difference between success and failure increased, the utopian and dystopian intimations were both warranted, although they applied to the extreme poles of the spectrum. The heated discussions about what was new in the 1990s doubtlessly clouded a large measure of stability in Norwegian working life. Many organizations experienced only limited or superficial changes, particularly in the public sector. Nevertheless, the changes were fundamental enough for most employees to be affected by them, if not directly (for instance because they were employed in a sheltered part of the economy), then indirectly, because the new horizon of expectations would make staying put, also, seem a more active choice than hitherto. In the sociology of work and adjacent fields the new paradigm governing the relationship between workers and organizations under these conditions has been termed “boundaryless careers.” Defined simply as “sequences of job opportunities that go beyond the boundaries of single employment settings,” the concept primarily highlights a departure from “organizational,” or “bureaucratic” careers, which had been the focus of much research from WWII and well into the 1980s, as well as the actual career prospects for countless functionaries in that period.886 However, the notion of boundarylessness in the literature is applied not only to the organizational aspect; it also encompasses the educational dimension in the sense that careers are now seen as less predetermined by specific educational choices than previously. This aspect of careers in the new working life is sometimes also associated in the literature with another conceptualization, the “protean career,” which actually dates back to the

885 A particularly influential and almost ecstatic celebration of the new working life in Scandinavia was the already mentioned K. A. Nordström and J. Ridderstråle, Funky business: talent makes capital dance. At the other extreme is Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character. The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism (NY: Norton, 2000). 886 Robert J. Defillippi and Michael B. Arthur, “The Boundaryless Career: A CompetencyBased Perspective,” Journal of Organizational Behavior 15.4 (1994) 307. See also Michael B. Arthur, “The Boundaryless Career: A New Perspective for Organizational Inquiry,” ibid.

The period 1985–2000: Humanities education and “boundaryless” careers │ 497

1970s.887 As the mythical allusion indicates, career trajectories of this kind presuppose transformative powers on the part of the individual as s/he moves through different employment settings, rather than a fixed identity and a definite set of competencies formed by a specific educational program. Neither boundaryless-ness nor protean-ness meant that higher education became less significant for employees in the new working life, however. The importance of holding a university degree at all, as an entrance ticket to the labor marked for skilled workers, obviously increased in the new knowledge-driven economy – a development familiar since the 1970s.888 Also, technology shifts necessitated specialized functions in the new economy that would in turn require specific competencies, often supplied through highly specialized educational programs as well as certification procedures. As noted at the beginning of this part, developments of this kind are rarely uniform across the economy. Generalization of credentials in one part of working life can go together with increased specialization and professionalization in adjacent fields. Nevertheless, it was widely noticed in the 1990s that for a wide range of the competency-driven mid-level positions in the tertiary sector and the public sector (positions which previously would have been subsumed under the “functionary” category), the educational requirements were becoming less specific than they had traditionally been. One major reason for this more liberal attitude was, as mentioned in a previous section, that organizations in the new economy (including the public sector, which was obviously part of the competitive labor market) became increasingly appreciative of other qualities in employees than their formal credentials, partly because extracurricular competencies and qualities now became more directly useful, but also because the massive increase in graduates, many of them with good grades, necessitated additional criteria for selection.

887 See D.T. Hall, Careers in organizations (Glenview: Scott, Foresman, 1976) For a reassessment based on the situation in the 1990s, see D.T. Hall, “Protean Careers of the 21st Century.” The Academy of Management Executive 10.4 (1996). 888 According to the chapter on education in the 2004 edition of the handbook in the Norwegian society, “[e]mployers are interested in hiring persons who have the “right” attitudes and values, and who therefore are not in need of incentives to work or close supervision. In their perception, education is a sign of such positive attitudes and a strong work ethic, which is why they want to hire highly educated people.” Marianne Nordli Hansen and Arne Mastekaasa, “Utdanning, ulikhet og forandring,” Det norske samfunn, eds. Ivar Frønes and Lise Kjølsrød, 93. In addition, there is the mechanism of “credentialism” or “diploma disease,” discussed with reference to Randal Collins and others in the first part of this study.

498 │ The transformation of humanities education

A seminal paper in the literature on the new working life from 1994 broke the vocationally relevant competencies of employees into three neat catch-phrases: know-why, know-how, and know-whom.889 Education can typically provide the better part of the required know-how, but know-why – which covers motivation and capacity for sensemaking in an employment situation – is not necessarily connected to education at all. Know-whom – the networking skills (and established networks) of employees, upon which organizations in the new economy depend so strongly – can be predicated on educational background, especially when education gives access to alumni networks, professional associations or mentorship arrangements, but in many cases networking will be an extra-curricular competency altogether, hence to be evaluated at the level of the individual. And that brings us to what is perhaps, in the final analysis, the most salient aspect of careers in the new working life, namely individualization. Two persons with identical educational performances, who would have been considered more or less interchangeable under the industrial paradigm, must henceforth be prepared to be evaluated completely differently by an employer because of different personality traits, motivational profile, and other extracurricular features. What did all of this mean for the humanities graduates? I will argue that it meant a great deal, even if the programs as such mostly continued in the tracks laid down during the 1970s. As I shall elaborate below, I will even venture the claim that the developments outlined here led to career patterns that consummated the transformation of humanities education that began in the 1960s. But this is a reinterpretation, made possible by viewing these developments in hindsight from a distance of almost twenty years, about which more below. In the 1990s, the impact of the new working life was not so noticeable for those who entered the two traditional (“professional”) career paths in schools or academia, but all the more so for those who embarked upon boundaryless and protean careers, which as we saw above was almost half of the graduates in the period under discussion. A share of these headed for familiar humanities haunts where positions still retained certain professional traits, such as publishing, journalism, public administration, and work in museums. But even these niches were exposed to the new career paradigm, under which transfers across organizations and between sectors (e.g. from journalism to

889 Robert J. Defillippi and Michael B. Arthur, “The Boundaryless Career: A CompetencyBased Perspective,” Journal of Organizational Behavior 15.4 (1994) 308ff. See also L. T. Eby, M. Butts and A Lockwood, “Predicators of success in the era of the boundaryless career,” Journal of Organizational Behaviour. 24 (2003).

The period 1985–2000: Humanities education and “boundaryless” careers │ 499

PR work to publishing) was seen as unexceptional.890 The total effect of all this was a significant expansion of the career options – and risks – associated with humanities education, which arguably transformed the societal functions of the whole enterprise. Let us first take a closer look at the bright side of this development. Most importantly, the potential for success in working life became boundless. At least since the Kleppe committee in 1960, there had been hopes for certain new career avenues and niches for the humanities (e.g. in the media, or perhaps in tourism), but now it suddenly seemed that all doors had been thrown open at once. The most optimistic argued that graduates from academic programs such as the humanities would be particularly well equipped to succeed in the new working life, since organizations in the knowledge-driven economy increasingly resembled academia, and their employees would to a large extent perform research-like tasks.891 Under such circumstances, humanities graduates with their cultural literacy and more or less generic communication skills, would become highly attractive employees. And indeed, the statistics cited above show that quite a few Norwegian humanities graduates in the 1990s entered successful careers off the beaten track. We also know that at least some Norwegian employers in this period actively sought to recruit humanities graduates (and other academic candidates) into positions and industries they had not traditionally been associated with (in e.g. large consultancy firms, banking, transport, etc.). Research has shown that the demand for highly educated employees in this period actually surpassed the sharp increase in supply, which was one reason behind the “war for talent” in the 1990s.892 As part of the recruitment efforts this entailed, trainee programs after the Anglo-American fashion were established in the largest firms (and even in the civil service) in order to bridge the gulf between academia and the world of work. We do not have information about how numerous the successful high-fliers among the humanities graduates were in the 1990s, or how their careers progressed later, but in the light of what we know about the continued dominance of other educational groups in these sectors, we must assume that they were relatively

890 Lacking data on such transfers, I cannot be more specific, but there is no disagreement in the literature about boundary-crossing becoming more prevalent in this period. 891 Yehuda Baruch and Douglas T. Hall, “The academic career: A model for future careers in other sectors?” Journal of Vocational Behaviour 64, (2001). 892 Erling Barth, Marianne Røed, Pål Schøne, and Hege Torp, eds., Arbeidsmarkedet for akademikere (Oslo: ISF, 2004).

500 │ The transformation of humanities education

few.893 Symbolically, however, they were hugely important, since their career trajectories served to highlight the bright side of the boundaryless career options for humanities graduates, an image willingly promoted by the HEIs in their marketing directed at applicants. The “non-traditional” careers of for instance philosophers also became the topic of quite a few news stories. In addition, the optimistic interpretation of the new career paradigm received support from the sizeable share of the humanities graduates on the boundaryless career track whose successes were not spectacular, but who reported reasonable degrees of satisfaction with their work outside schools or academia. But there was also a darker side to this story. As we noted above, a significant share of humanities graduates in this category – a share much higher than in other educational groups or among humanities graduates on traditional career paths in schools or academia – reported that they had little or no use for their humanities competencies in their jobs. In the private sector, as many as 60 percent of the recently graduated candidates from humanities programs fell into the category “overeducated” in the period 1995-2000.894 Looking at specific industry categories, it was only in the more traditional sectors of humanities employment (academia, schools, public service, and the cultural sector) that “overeducation” was below 50 percent. Self-reported mismatch did decline as careers progressed, but even years later it remained at a significantly higher level than for other educational groups. As previously mentioned, this information is gathered from recent analyses. At the time, during the 1990s, information about the career trajectories of humanities graduates was not so readily available. NIFU’s first destination studies generated debates in the media as they were published, but as these reports mostly used aggregated data and the situation in the labor marked changed swiftly, it was difficult from year to year to assess the situation. As in the late 1970s the same statistics could be interpreted very differently, and various stakeholders would use dark or light coloration as they saw fit. What the humanities students and applicants themselves thought, we have no systematic knowledge about – which is in itself an interesting fact. Whether their preference for the humanities (and at this time particularly for the most research-oriented humanities disciplines) was at all affect-

893 Fekjær, Nielsen, and Aagnes show that it was a small number of philosophy graduates in the private sector who had the highest salaries among humanities graduates, and that these earned more than the highest earners among the social science graduates. These philosophers were probably examples of the successful boundaryless careers discussed here . Silje N. Fekjær, Roy A. Nielsen, and Bjarte Aagnes, Utdannet og dannet – og så? 49ff. 894 Jannecke Wiers-Jenssen & al., Humanister i arbeidslivet, 94.

The period 1985–2000: Humanities education and “boundaryless” careers │ 501

ed by career prospects, real or imagined, we simply do not know. But most likely a large share chose their study programs without a very clear notion about their prospects at all.895 As discussed above, the research-orientation of the humanities programs would naturally inspire many, at least towards the end of their programs, to aspire for an academic career. But we have also seen that the opportunities in academia decreased towards the millennium, and since a large share of the candidates in the 1990s had chosen programs that did not qualify for school teaching, many had no choice upon graduation but to enter boundaryless careers. Whether they did so with optimism, stoicism, or a sense of despair, and also whether they would eventually find jobs they considered relevant or not, probably depended to some extent upon characteristics of their educational experience – how exclusively research-focused it had been, if there had been internships or other forms of coupling to the world of work, etc. But as the humanities programs at Norwegian HEIs were not very different in these respects (research being paramount, and internships being very scarce – see part three of this study) it was probably personal characteristics that made the most significant difference within this group. In the literature on careers and graduate employability, two ideal types – the “player” and the “purist” – have been used to illustrate a striking difference in the attitudes graduates have towards working life.896 The player is the opportunist who is willing to adjust both preferences and self-presentation in encounters with employers, whereas the purist believes s/he has a fixed competency profile that just needs to 1) find an exact match with a job vacancy, and 2) have better formal

895 A study of the relationship between applications to higher education (including the humanities) and developments in the labor market from 1996-2004 concludes that over time there is correlation between the two variables and that, in general, applicants therefore seem to have been influenced by information they have picked up about levels of unemployment, mismatch and salaries. But the conclusions in this study are not very firm, and do not specify the level of impact on the applicants to humanities programs specifically. At any rate, it seems probable that the impact of such information on the applicants’ choice of programs was stronger in the second half of the 1990s, when debates about overproduction had sunk in, than in the first half– as the case was also in the 1970s. See Clara Åse Arnesen and Bjørn Strøm, “Arbeidsmarkedets betydning for søkningen til ulike typer høyere utdanning,” Søkelys på arbeidsmarkedet 3 (2008) 305319. 896 Phillip Brown, Anthony Hesketh, and Sara Williams, “Players and Purists,” The Mismanagement of Talent. Employability and Jobs in the Knowledge Economy, eds. Phillip Brown and Anthony Hesketh (Oxford. Oxford University Press, 2004).

502 │ The transformation of humanities education

credentials than the competitors. These types are heuristic devises, and no inherent preference is intended to adhere to one or the other by the authors, but the conclusion is, unsurprisingly, that in the new working life, especially with respect to boundaryless careers, the player will have many advantages. Regarding Norwegian humanities graduates, this perspective raises many questions which is beyond the scope of this study to answer, for instance whether self-reported success and failure in boundaryless careers among graduates in the 1990s can be explained by differences in attitudes along these lines, to what extent such attitudes reflect more or less permanent personality traits in individual candidates, whether the humanities attract and/or foster more players or purists, and so on. Whatever the answers to such questions may be, the fact remains that a large share of the Norwegian humanities graduates in boundaryless careers at the end of the 20th century experienced a mismatch between the competencies acquired in their years of study and the competency requirements of their jobs. In view of the discussion above, it seems likely that this resulted from a combination of 1) an oversupply of candidates relative to the number of positions where humanities competencies could be used, 2) a strictly research-oriented curriculum, mostly without any outreach to the world of work, 3) a measure of “purism” among graduates (presuming the “players” to have had more success). At the HEIs, the challenges that the large 1990s classes encountered in their transition to the new working life (challenges that were most acutely felt by humanities graduates) necessitated some form of reply. By this time, adjustments of the admissions policy or the curricula was largely out of the question, for the reasons discussed in part two and three of this study. One exception that should be mentioned is the establishment at some of the institutions in the 1990s of projectoriented courses at the undergraduate level where students wrote short reports in close cooperation with organizations in working life. The aim was explicitly to prepare the students for future careers of the kind we have referred to here as boundaryless. However, these courses we elective add-ons (not tied in with disciplinary studies, and organized outside of the departments) that only admitted a few dozen candidates each year, and hence had very little impact on the employability of the total population of humanities graduates. The overall policy at the institutions was thus to accept the admissions policy and curricula as they were, and to organize separate forms of assistance to help the graduates adapt as best they could to the situation. For this purpose, careers centers were established at most of the institutions, offering various job application courses, individual career counselling sessions, career fairs and information about the labor

The period 1985–2000: Humanities education and “boundaryless” careers │ 503

market.897 For the most part, these services were generic, and surveys indicate that humanities graduates, in spite of facing greater challenges, actually used them less than graduates from other fields did.898 The overwhelming majority of humanities graduates in the 1990s therefore made the transition to the labor market on their own, and with few guidelines to go by, the result was a myriad of individualized careers. Almost half of the humanities graduates were thus thinly dispersed across the new working life.

20.5 CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE PERIOD 1985–2000 What happened to the relationship between humanities education and the world of work during the last fifteen years of the 20th century was the culmination of developments that had begun decades before. As demonstrated in a previous section (and also in part three of this study), the Norwegian humanities’ turning away from the task of educating school teachers was a fait accompli by 1985. The continued decline in the share of graduates who became school teachers, from 50 percent in 1985 to 30 percent around the millennium, was largely caused by the influx of students into the research-oriented disciplines from 1987, which dwarfed the group of school-oriented candidates by comparison. It could be that the 1993 decision to expand the pedagogical seminar to a one-year program had a negative impact on recruitment to this career path in itself (a year of studies and student debts on top of an already long disciplinary degree program presenting a problem for at least some candidates), but it is hard to tell, since it would be impossible now to isolate the effect of this measure from the other events at about the same time and from the long trajectory dating back to the 1950s that pointed in the same direction. Nevertheless, since the expansion of the program in practical pedagogy also meant the final removal of didactics from most humanities program, it is not unreasonable to

897 The establishment of these centers was largely the result of student demand. Interestingly, they were for the most part organized outside of the academic organization proper – many places as a joint venture between the HEI and the student service organization called the studentsamskipnad (which corresponds roughly to the German model of Studentwerke). In many places, the services of the career centers were modeled on similar services on Anglo-American campuses, but with much weaker funding. See Ken Hugo Jørgensen (ed.) Karriereveiledning – En kort innføring i teori og praksis (Oslo: Unipub, 2004). 898 Clara Åse Arnesen, Bruk av karriereveilednings-tjenester i høyere utdanning, med vekt på Karrieresenteret ved Universitetet i Oslo. Arbeidsnotat 21 (Oslo: NIFU, 2006).

504 │ The transformation of humanities education

view it as the last nail in the coffin of the humanities considered first and foremost as a professional form of teacher education. Regarding the academic career path, a development similar to the one in the 1960s and early 1970s was discernable from 1987 to about 1997. Since the funding of faculty positions followed rising student numbers, the opportunities for academic careers seemed to increase year by year, holding out a promising prospect to the applicants for the graduate programs. But then there was sudden stagnation, just as in the late 1970s, and even a marked decline in academic career openings from 1997 onwards. Around the millennium this resulted in fierce competition for entry into academic careers among the graduates from very large humanities cohorts. Since less than half of the humanities graduates now actually possessed both the motivation and the necessary qualifications for the two traditional (and still fairly professional) career paths, the rest – about 55 percent – were headed for boundaryless careers, whether they liked it or not. We have very little systematic information about the motivations and career plans of the graduates from the 1990s, but there is some indication that the idea of humanities education as a generalist education which is in principle open-ended as regards careers was actually established before the 1990s, and that the graduates towards the end of the period discussed here in principle knew – or should have known – what they had signed up for. Fortunately there has been done some research that can shed light on when the deprofessionalization of the humanities occurred, and the corresponding generalist paradigm took hold. In a survey on occupational motivations conducted in 1978-79, 62 percent of the humanities students said they had plans for a teaching career, whereas only 5 percent had plans for a career as researchers. The rest were distributed across several categories, of which, interestingly, “artistic/literary work” was the largest with 9 percent. 7 percent answered “professional services,” and 6 percent fell into the category “other occupations”. Only 3 percent stated that they did not have particular plans beyond the degree, which was much lower than comparable programs (e.g. 21 percent of the social science and natural science students said the same).899 In a survey published in 1988 on some of the same issues, the findings are very different.900 Only 15 percent of the humanities students respond in ways that

899 NAVF, Motivasjon, studium, yrke (Oslo: NAVF, 1982) 36. As mentioned above, the survey the report is based on was conducted in 1978-79. 900 NAVF, Studiemotivasjon. Delrapport fra prosjektet Yrkesretting – retorikk eller realitet? (Oslo: NAVF, 1988). The survey the report was based on was conducted in 1984.

The period 1985–2000: Humanities education and “boundaryless” careers │ 505

demonstrate an “occupational orientation,” whereas 30 percent have a “disciplinary orientation”, and 55 percent are considered to be somewhere in between. The results are not directly comparable with the previous study, and should be interpreted with some care, but the shift in orientation from overwhelmingly vocational to a lot more “disciplinary” is so marked that it can hardly be coincidental. What is also interesting is that the authors of these two reports, not unlike the student respondents, seem to have taken very different views of the humanities. In the first report, no particular comment is made about the respondents from the humanities demonstrating such a clear vocational orientation – the teacher career was taken as the undisputed default setting. In the second report, the author finds it only natural that the humanities programs are considered by many of the students to be quite the opposite, namely “disciplinary oriented.” It seems as if the whole notion of the humanities’ “professional” orientation had, if not disappeared, then become much more subdued, sometime between the late 1970s and the mid-1980s, while the paradigm that should later be known as boundaryless careers was gradually emerging as a corollary to the curricular shift towards generalist research-orientated education. Of course, the memory of what the humanities’ primary function had once been would still linger on among some observers. Taking stock of the professions in Norway in 1994, the sociologist Ulf Torgersen concluded that things had changed in the humanities (as well as in the natural sciences): “Not all philologists and natural scientists [realister] were determined to pursue a teaching career, but for most of them the somewhat resigned adage “school teacher, I guess” applied. However, their monopoly [in schools] has been weakened. The share destined for the private 901

sector has also increased somewhat.”

As the number of graduates went through the roof in the mid-1990s, the institutions, the employers, and not least the graduates themselves would take it more or less for granted that the link from education to work in the new working life was no longer fixed, but had to be established (or not) by each graduate for him/herself. As the authors of the chapter on education in the 2004 handbook on the Norwegian society put it: “A lot of what is learnt in school or in higher education is not necessary to master the tasks in the positions occupied later in life. Many are also overqualified or mis-qualified in relation to their later work.”902 At the beginning of the new

901 Ulf Torgersen, Profesjoner og offentlig sektor (Oslo: TANO, 1994) 70. 902 Marianne Nordli Hansen and Arne Mastekaasa, “Utdanning, ulikhet og forandring,” Det norske samfunn, eds. Ivar Frønes and Lise Kjølsrød, 93.

506 │ The transformation of humanities education

millennium, humanities education had become the stereotype of this kind of generalist education. Its mismatch problems in relation to the world of work were now seen not as the result of an historical development, but as inherent vices.903

903 For instance, Wiers-Jenssen & al., whose focus is the period 1995-2015, can now label humanities programs “disciplinary” (and “generalist”). and contrast them with “professional” ones. Jannecke Wiers-Jenssen & al., Humanister i arbeidslivet, 21-22.

21 Conclusions to part four

I now want to recapitulate the developments traced in this last part of the study, and place them within a systems theoretical framework. The quite extraordinary changes in the career trajectories of humanities graduates from the 1960s to the 1990s seems to have been conditioned, ultimately, by the achievement of new levels of autonomy in the implicated function systems. It is worth reminding ourselves that the immense increase in student numbers during the period 1960-75, which impacted the careers of humanists in many ways and on many levels, could not have occurred if education in Norway had not been out-differentiated as an autonomous system with its own operative logic, first at the primary level in the 19th century, and then at the secondary level in the postwar era.904 The research drift among humanities professors and other staff members, which transformed humanities curricula and eventually left most obligations to school teaching behind, could not have become so strong if national disciplinary communities had not emerged as autonomous communication systems in the postwar era.905 Furthermore, the immense political project of organizing and funding a similar kind of education for the whole of the Norwegian population, and actively privileging the form of teacher education that presumably would advance this agenda, had not been possible without an autonomous and ambitious political system with a policymaking capacity that far surpassed the prewar administration of chiefly reactive capabilities.906 Lastly, the ascendancy of a knowledge-driven labor market, with openings for

904 See the discussion in part two. See also John Boli, Francisco O. Ramirez and John W. Meyer, “Explaining the Origins and Expansion of Mass Education,” Comparative Education Review, 29.2 (1985) 162f. 905 See discussion in part three. See also Fredrik W. Thue, “Universitetslærerne.” 906 See discussion in part two. See also Tore Grønlie, Yngve Flo and Tone Svinningen. Sentraladministrasjonens historie etter 1945. Vol. 1. Ekspansjonsbyråkratiets tid 19451980 (Bergen: Fagbokforlaget, 2009).

508 │ The transformation of humanities education

graduates with generalist credentials, clearly presupposed the dynamism of a “free” market economy.907 The societal differentiation along the demarcation lines of these increasingly specialized function systems occurred later in Norway than in many other European countries. A small, young, and ethnically homogenous country, Norway’s societal fabric had been tightly woven in the 19th century, partly redone and strengthened by the class compromise in the interwar period, and culturally integrated by the experiences of WWII. In many ways, the 19th century societal fabric, the sense of being a coherent and unified national community, seemed still intact in the 1950s. As outlined in part one, the foundations for the autonomous operation of the economy, politics, education, and research had already been laid in the first half of the 20th century, partly in order to handle emerging domestic challenges and partly through internationalization (isomorphism and structural adaptations). Even so, in the 1950s there were still so many tight couplings in place which burdened each system with obligations to the others that an image was created of a highly structured, stable, and unified society. One of the most important couplings of this kind, and certainly the most import as regards humanities careers, was the legal instrument of embete, which had coordinated the Norwegian “professional complex” by linking education, research, and the economy (the labor market) together under the auspices of politics since the 19th century epoch known in Norwegian historiography as embedsmannsstaten – “the civil servant state.”908 Another coupling mechanism tying humanities education to its societal environment was the faculty, an organizational form inherited from the medieval university which united neighboring fields of study in their common responsibility for the joint degree structure of the civil service degree and prevented them from taking off in separate directions by a collective decision procedures on curricula, recruitment, etc.909 When such arrangements were terminated or transformed in the first decades after WWII, the implicated function systems could increasingly operate according to their own codes, which also meant that they could ignore their environments to a larger extent. But as the analyses of the available labor market statistics above show, even many years after the academic humanities had begun to turn inwards to concentrate on research, the career patterns of the graduates remained largely unchanged because the expansion in secondary education continued to provide

907 See for instance Peter Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society (NY: Routledge, 1993) 908 Jens Arup Seip, Fra embedsmannsstat til ettpartistat og andre essays; Rune Slagstad, De nasjonale strateger. 909 Fredrik W. Thue, “Universitetslærerne,” 674ff.

Conclusions to part four │ 509

career opportunities as school teachers. Since education and careers are timeconsuming processes, and accumulated educational patterns in a profession take decades to replace, it was not until the 1980s that a new paradigm governing the relationship between humanities education and the world of work was stabilized. Humanities education had now come to be seen – from the perspective of academics, students, and employers alike – as a research-oriented generalist education with career options that were in principle open-ended. By this time, it seems academic careers had become increasingly important identity-wise, even though this career option was fairly restricted. In practice, there was still a significant share of the graduates who pursued school teaching careers, but this was no longer a prioritized performance on the part of the humanities. Dismantling the tight couplings that had embedded the academic humanities in the postwar social structure facilitated operational autonomy in each of the affiliated function systems, but it would be wrong to leave the impression that humanities education was thereby cut off from its environment entirely. New couplings were established; the difference was that these couplings now had to be conducive to, or at least compatible with, the operational dynamic of each system. As it turned out, the systems of research and higher education co-evolved to the extent that a particularly tight coupling became possible, namely the disciplinary department – conceptualized in part three of this study as a form of interpenetration (and also well-known through the expression “research-based higher education”). Obvious advantages flowing from this coupling included the cross-subsidizing mechanism and favorable recruitment to research. Relationships between this interpenetrated twin-system of the academic humanities and other systems were more uneasy, however. Loose coupling – or what in systems theory is called structural coupling – became the solution in many cases. One interesting example is the pedagogical seminar. At its inception in the early 20th century, the seminar was not even part of the university, but as humanities education decoupled itself from secondary school, the seminar seems to have become more salient as a structural coupling to secondary school, and it eventually moved on campus, albeit at a safe distance from disciplinary departments. For both secondary education and the humanities it was vital to retain a share of academically trained teachers; otherwise secondary education could not have maintained the function of preparing for academic study. The pedagogical seminar preserved this coupling with a minimum of mutual obligations. As discussed in part two, the efforts to establish a permanent structural coupling between higher education and politics for the purpose of policymaking failed in the 1970s, which probably contributed to the later uneasiness of this relationship. However, the political system was in reality well served by the “elasticity” that

510 │ The transformation of humanities education

humanities education afforded in the regulation of higher education capacity, and so the absence of a coupling mechanism caused only moderate problems as seen from this perspective. One worry was unemployment, but as we have seen above, the numbers never became truly alarming. Regarding the relation of the humanities to the economy, there were some superficial attempts to instigate “vocationalism” in humanities curricula in the 1980s, but it was only in the 1990s that the expansion of student numbers and the flooding of the labor market necessitated the establishment of coupling mechanisms anchored at HEIs, such as project courses, careers centers, and career fairs. As mentioned above, all of these were organized at a safe distance from the disciplinary departments, thus leaving their operational autonomy intact. On the part of the economy (i.e. organizations in the labor market), the protection of autonomy was likewise a non-negotiable condition for cooperation with HEIs. Involvements with higher education – whether in the form of trainee programs, internships, or student projects – were organized in HR departments that were clearly demarcated from “core business.” The major change this last part of the study has identified and discussed is the transition from a professional paradigm anchored in the coupling mechanism of embete to the careers paradigm wherein functional and organizational couplings are so weak that each graduate has to make the coupling for him- or herself. As we have seen, the latter paradigm has been more compatible with the operational codes and programs of each of the function systems, and conducive to their increased autonomy. Whether the development has been beneficial for society as such is a moot point, and for the economy, too, it is difficult if not impossible to calculate the alternative cost of a different arrangement. Most likely, the Norwegian economy has been only marginally impacted by changes in career trajectories of humanities graduates, but in secondary schools some would argue that the withdrawal of the humanities has been detrimental. In the long run, it also seems that the indeterminacy regarding careers became problematic for the humanities themselves. The so-called humanities debate, which in Norway emerged in the 1970s and continues today, shows that it has become difficult for the humanities to articulate its overall aims and legitimate its use of societal resources. However, the major problem identified by this part of the study concerns not so much the function systems or the organizations attached to them, as the individual humanities graduates. Granted, many of them have gone on to rewarding and fruitful careers. The de-professionalization of humanities education undoubtedly resulted in a higher rate of productive, non-traditional careers in the 1990s than would have been possible in the 1960s. But at the same time, the high degrees of mismatch referenced above indicates a waste of human potential that could not be tolerated in the long run. Even if each disappointment has been indi-

Conclusions to part four │ 511

vidualized (in many respects even privatized), and hence largely invisible from the point of view of organizations and function systems, the consistent pattern of mismatch in the 1990s, as registered first and foremost by NIFUs first destination surveys, eventually began to make an impression. This was also one of the reasons – among several others – why a major reform effort was instigated in Norwegian higher education at the end of the 1990s. Appointed in 1998, the Mjøs committee in 2000 suggested an ambitious reform program along the lines of the Bologna process, and most of it was indeed implemented in 2003, as discussed in part two. A new degree structure, quality-assurance systems, economic incentive schemes, and other policy instruments should, among other things, increase the employability of the graduates. Unfortunately, the results so far have not been very uplifting. More than ten years later the humanities graduates still experience the same problems in working life as in the 1990s, and the humanities debate continues.910

910 For humanities careers and mismatch, see Jannecke Wiers-Jenssen & al., Humanister i arbeidslivet. For one of the latest contributions to the humanities debate in Norway, see Helge Jordheim and Tore Rem, Hva skal vi med humaniora? (Oslo: Fritt Ord, 2014).

Part five: Conclusions

22 Conclusions to the study

By way of conclusion I would now like to restate briefly the findings of the study with explicit reference to the systems-theoretical framework established initially. Large stretches of the previous three parts have been engaged with various forms of empirical material. While systems theory has been important for selecting and analyzing these materials (committee reports, curricula documents, labor market statistics, etc.) the conceptual apparatus has sometimes receded into the background in the analyses to let historical particulars take center stage. A systems-theoretical recapitulation which also ties the three last parts together might therefore be useful. I will use three angles. First, the major lines of argument regarding admissions, curricula, and careers will be reformulated as a functional (or poly-functional) explanation for the transformation of Norwegian humanities education. Second, a brief account is given of the crucial role played by structural couplings between the implicated function systems in the process of transformation. Third and last, a word is offered on the importance of reflexivity in higher education research.

22.1 A FUNCTIONAL EXPLANATION FOR THE TRANSFORMATION OF HUMANITIES EDUCATION As discussed in some detail in part one of this study, sociological systems theory conceptualizes modern society as functionally differentiated, and views its subsystems (the economy, politics, education, etc.) as charged with particular societal functions.911 How these functions are fulfilled will of course vary, geographically and over time, but according to systems theory, certain patterns flowing from 911 The most comprehensive outline of Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory is: Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems. For references to the rest of the systems theoretical literature the following discussion is based on, I refer to the footnotes in part one.

516 │ The transformation of humanities education

system specific dynamics (conceptualized by Luhmann as “codes” and “programs”) can be observed. This study has argued that the four function systems most directly implicated in the development of Norwegian humanities education – education, research, politics, and the economy – were all faced with particular challenges in the second half of the 20th century. Around 1960, the academic humanities in Norway were in need of an expanded organizational platform in order to pursue the program of modern humanities research that had already been established in other countries. At about the same time, the political system had realized that its own welfare state program obliged it to provide higher education to a much larger share of young Norwegians than previously. In the system of education, one of the primary challenge from the late 1950s and well into the 1970s was the recruitment of enough teachers, many of them from the humanities, to operate an expanding secondary school. In part two of the study it was argued that the first period of massive expansion in Norwegian humanities education, from 1960 to the mid-1970s, happened in response to this combination of functional demands in the systems of research, politics and (secondary) education. In part three we saw that educational massification paved the way for the co-evolution of humanities education and research, in particular through the emergence of disciplinary communications networks for research anchored in university departments that also offered educational programs, and that this in turn led to a research drift in curricula which propelled humanities education away from its traditional association with secondary school. In part four it was shown that even though the recruitment of humanities graduates to school teacher positions continued on a large scale until the late 1970s, there emerged, especially from the mid-1960s onwards, a demand in the educational system for a different kind of teachers than the academic ones, in particular for lower secondary school. This led to a preference (aided by politics and pedagogy) for the general teachers [allmennlærerne] who should ideally be anchored in the pedagogical practices of the schools, rather than in the disciplinary bodies of knowledge from the humanities (and other academic fields).912 The combination of the expansion of humanities education and the new preference for another form of teacher education created a highly problematic situation for humanities education in the late 1970s, and contributed to a downsizing of the candidate production. But from the late 1980s, after a decade of stagnation, two developments caused new expansion. First, in the political system, an initial pro-

912 This development has been discussed by Åsmund Arup Seip, Rune Slagstad, Fredrik W. Thue, and Kim G. Helsvig. For references, see the section on school teaching in part four.

Conclusions to the study │ 517

gram of higher education conceived as a labor market service at a time of youth unemployment around 1990 gradually turned into a reconceptualization, from the mid-1990s onwards, of open access to higher education as a welfare right (excepting certain professional programs). Seen from a systems-theoretical perspective, this can be interpreted as the logical conclusion to the welfare state program in the political system, and, simultaneously, as the end station of the educational system’s drive towards the inclusion of the whole population into its operations, and its corresponding resistance to educational selectivity.913 Secondly, in the economy, the “new working life” that arose in the first half of the 1990s created a demand for “knowledge workers” with generalized credentials, and thus made possible an increase in “boundaryless careers” for humanities graduates. Together, the funding made available by the political system and the new kind of labor market demand in the economic system made it possible for humanities education to continue both its expansion and its research drift, thus consummating the transformation that had started in the 1960s. The arguments formulated by the four parts of the present study taken together is therefore that the transformation of Norwegian humanities education cannot be explained with reference to demands in a single system like the economy (as calculated, for instance, by human capital theory), or by pointing to political or technocratic ideas about a desired societal development in a particular political party or among a certain group of people. The transformation took place because it made it possible to solve, in several stages, the most important functional challenges in all of the implicated function systems, and, over time, to be at least tolerable to all of them. It is this ability to serve several functional requirements that has made an otherwise improbable development – the simultaneous massification and research-orientation of humanities education – a reality after all. Functional equivalents to this development have of course been available for some of the function systems, but it would have been very difficult to replace all of the functions played by the modern form of humanities education. What this kind of functional explanation, which pertains to the level of functions systems and organizations, does not address directly is how the emergence of modern humanities education looked from the viewpoint of each humanities student (and later, graduate). As we saw in part four, the majority of graduates fared fairly well, but there was also a high share of them (significantly higher than in other comparable programs, at least) who found no career openings where they could use

913 For Luhmann’s discussion of these specific points, see Niklas Luhmann, Political Theory in the Welfare State, 21ff.; and Niklas Luhmann and Karl-Eberhard Schorr, Problems of Reflection in the System of Education, 274ff.

518 │ The transformation of humanities education

their competencies. This fact seems to have made little impression on either of the implicated function systems and affiliated organizations, however. Systems theory can offer a fairly simple answer to why this was so. According to systems theory, one of the characteristics of the functionally differentiated modern society is that even if each function system (and the organizations affiliated with it) provides roles that potentially can include anyone, it is not concerned with the inclusion of particular individuals. As a consequence, function systems and organizations will prefer not to use their limited resources on maintaining a memory function regarding individuals, unless their continued autonomous operation depends upon it. The transfer of individuals to other systems will therefore not tend to be a major concern. For functions systems and organizations, out of sight means out of mind. This is a sharp contrast to former stratified societies, where individuals’ roles were defined more or less permanently, across the spectrum of social relations, by their families’ placement in the hierarchy of estates. In this difference we also see the reason why systems theory does not conceptualize modern function systems or even organizations as composed of individuals at all, but rather views individuals as separate entities in the systems’ environment. Now, it is true that in welfare states the government is usually obliged to provide some kind of social assistance to individuals who have trouble coupling themselves to education or the labor market, and universities will also tend to be concerned that their own students do well in the world of work, especially when there is competition with other universities. But in keeping with the logic of Norwegian parliamentary politics and the low level of competition among our universities, programs for such assistance will usually be directed at removing grounds for general criticism, rather than at achieving the best possible transfer in each case. Of course, to all of this one might reply: How could it possibly have been otherwise? And this is precisely the point. Very high degrees of involvement with particular individuals is highly unlikely on the part of function systems and organizations in modern society. As discussed in part one, it is precisely their independence of particular individuals that make them so effective. Systems theory as such has no solutions to the many problems this rises, but as we have seen it does at least suggest an explanation for why the relatively high degrees of mismatch in humanities graduates’ relations to the world of work were not heeded to a larger extent, neither in the 1970s nor in the 1990s – other than when they developed into sheer unemployment and became a political problem which had to be addressed by the political system.

Conclusions to the study │ 519

22.2 AUTONOMY AND STRUCTURAL COUPLING If one accepts the systems-theoretical premise that modern society is primarily defined by its functional differentiation, it follows that each function system can only operate under the condition of “autonomy.”914 In systems theory, it is emphasized that this autonomy applies to the operative level of each function system where the actual communicative praxis of e.g. politics, research, education, or the economy takes place, which is conceptualized as the systems’ “autopoiesis.” At this level, a function system does not easily tolerate interferences from other systems, and external interferences will generally also tend to be considered illegitimate in the societal environment. This does not mean that functions systems (or the organizations affiliated with them) necessarily are, or should be, decoupled from their societal environments. Inherently societal, neither function systems nor organizations can operate in complete isolation. As discussed in part one, operative autonomy as understood in systems theory (autopoiesis) is even compatible with very high degrees of interconnectedness, for instance on the organizational level. However, Niklas Luhmann has shown that in order to allow the continuation of a system’s operative autonomy, couplings to other systems need to restrict themselves to the structural level.915 Particular characteristics of individual systems, and of relations between systems, may also limit which kinds of structural coupling are possible in each case. As regards our case of Norwegian humanities education, this study has argued that the traditional “civil service degree program” (embedsstudiet) and its fixed relation to particular positions in the public sector (embeder) was a coupling mechanism that turned out to be incompatible with the levels of operative autonomy needed by the implicated systems in order to fulfill their functions in the modern society that emerged in postwar Norway. But as this coupling was dismantled for the educational system in 1959 and the implicated systems were set adrift, the need for new coupling mechanisms arose. The emerging humanities research disciplines and the corresponding educational programs became structurally coupled in university departments, and eventually in “research-based” curricula. The system of politics was structurally coupled to the academic twin systems (higher education and research) by use of governmentally appointed committees of inquiry whenever new policies on admissions and capacity building was needed. For a while, in the 1980s, there was an attempt to re-couple the academic humanities to secondary

914 Otherwise, one would have to assume the existence of a higher level system which could coordinate the others, an assumption which systems theory explicitly rejects. 915 A separate discussion of structural coupling is offered in part one.

520 │ The transformation of humanities education

schools via didactics courses in the humanities programs, but this was considered a problematic interference, and a different kind of structural coupling was established by use of the expanded one-year program of practical pedagogy in the early half of the 1990s. And this is by no means a full list of the various couplings that has been discussed. It seems, therefore, that higher levels of autonomy do not make structural arrangements more simple. Autonomous systems still need to relate to their environments, but the set of conditions for doing so in acceptable ways become more and more complex. In summary, the study has shown that the transformation of humanities education in Norway in the second half of the 20th century can be seen as a series of adjustments of the coupling mechanisms between the implicated function systems. These adjustments have been necessitated by the systems’ needs for operative autonomy in their efforts to fulfill what they have come to see as their societal functions.

22.3 REFLEXIVITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION RESEARCH I argued in part one that higher education research is in the peculiar situation of trying to analyze a venture of which it is itself a part, although most often this fact is left unexamined and even unmentioned. To some degree, the question of selfimplication is related to characteristics of the researcher in question – whether she is employed by the organization she studies, has other vested interests, etc. This is one reason why I have accounted briefly for my own affiliations in the preface to this study. However, the major issue I would like to reintroduce here at the end is not primarily self-implication at the level of individual researchers, but self-reference as a theoretical problem. The real problem, as I see it, is how higher education research (and adjacent fields, such as the history of science, the social studies of science, science and technology studies, university history, etc.) conceptualizes its object of study. Even in such specialized fields as these, reference is frequently made to the generalized object of “the university” or “academia.” What I hope this study has illustrated is the necessity of highlighting the demarcation line that splits this entity into two autonomous but coupled function systems, namely (higher) education and research. If this is not made sufficiently clear, or if attention is turned so much to what “unites” the two that the underlying tensions are forgotten, we will not get a realistic picture. If it is furthermore accepted that the relationship between the two systems is asymmetrical, as was argued in part three, it seems clear that negligence

Conclusions to the study │ 521

of the distinction between research and higher education will tacitly tend to privilege the perspective of the former at the expense of the latter. Moreover, systems theory reminds us that an academic organization which encompasses research and higher education also has other function systems in its environment which views it differently than it views itself (especially, one might add, when the dominant “academic” perspective is that of research). As far as I can tell, Niklas Luhmann’s sociological systems theory is one of the few theoretical strands that makes a major point of this, and that also seems genuinely interested in engaging several viewpoints on for instance “the university.” This more or less evenhanded interest in the various function systems not only allows but obliges research in this theoretical vein to apply what Luhmann calls “second-order observation,” i.e. to triangulate the perspectives of one system with the contrasting perspectives of other relevant systems.916 In the present study, for instance, I have aimed to examine policymaking regarding admissions and capacity building, as well as the question of careers for humanities graduates, from the viewpoints of all the four implicated systems. A result of this approach is, somewhat surprisingly perhaps, that the function system of research, when viewed against the extraacademic viewpoints of politics and the economy, has emerged as even more important than previously acknowledged. One might speculate on whether this indicates a tendency in the system of research (including higher education research) to underestimate its own impact on the course of events. Having said this, I would like to conclude by repeating what was underscored in part one, namely that since self-reference is inescapable, the practice of what Luhmann has called second-order observation can be no more than a somewhat self-restricting methodology. Whether a fair and balanced view of Norwegian humanities education has actually been achieved in the present study is of course up to the reader to decide.

916 See for instance Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society, Vol. 2, 102ff.

Afterword, 2000–2018

In 2010, when I began the project that evolved into this book, the year 2000 seemed a natural point to end a historical analysis of Norwegian humanities education. First of all, the evidence suggested that the transformation I was interested in (from teacher education to research-oriented generalist education) had reached its conclusion by then. Secondly, the distance in time between 2000 and 2010 allowed for a historical perspective. At the same time, the year 2000 was still recent enough for the study to be of relevance to the ongoing humanities debates. Upon publication of this book in 2018, I still think – and I believe the study bears this out – that the transformation that took place between 1960 and 2000 warrants a separate historical analysis. Excepting some minor improvements, the body of the text is therefore identical with the dissertation that was completed in 2016 (see preface), and which covers this 40-year period. However, in recent years it has increasingly become clear that the developments in Norwegian humanities education since 2000 are also highly interesting from the systems-theoretical perspective employed in this book. Furthermore, readers of this book will presumably be interested in humanities education in general, and may find it useful to have an updated account of its development in Norway. In the following I will therefore offer an outline of what has happened since 2000.917 For the sake of brevity, I will concentrate on the 2003 Quality Reform, which pertained to Norwegian higher education in general, and on a 2016 white paper dealing specifically with the humanities. The latter process will be outlined without much commentary or analysis. Since I was at that time employed by the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research and involved in the policymaking process in conjunction with the white paper, and also because of the short time that has

917 I would like to thank professor Fredrik W. Thue at Oslo Metropolitan University and two of my colleagues at the Norwegian Minstry of Education and Research, Sverre Rustad and Hanne Monclair, for valueable commentary to a draft of this afterword.

524 │ The transformation of humanities education

elapsed since 2016, I will restrict myself to a rather straightforward outline of the major trajectory. By way of conclusion I will return to the specific topics addressed in this book, presenting a short update on recent developments in admissions, curricula, and careers in Norwegian humanities education.

THE QUALITY REFORM Like previous reforms in Norwegian higher education, the Quality reform was based upon investigations and policy proposals made by a committee of inquiry. Appointed by a Christian Democratic minister of education and research in 1998, the committee in this case was chaired by the former rector of the University of Tromsø, Ole Danbolt Mjøs. It was dominated by academics but also included members from e.g. the world of work, not unlike the Hernes committee from the late 1980s.918 The committee’s main report was presented to the ministry in 2000.919 Most of the committee’s proposals then formed the basis for a governmental white paper presented to Parliament in 2001, this time by a minister from the Labor party.920 After Parliament had approved virtually the whole reform package, it was implemented by the HEIs from 2003 onwards under the auspices of a minister from the Conservative party.921 For humanities education the most important feature of the reform was arguably the replacement of the traditional 4-year undergraduate cand. mag. degree, which had typically consisted of three to four elective and fairly large disciplinary program-units taught sequentially (see part three and appendix 1), by a more structured 3-year bachelor’s degree made up of shorter courses most often taught in parallel. Although not subject to regulations in a strict sense, it was stated as a policy objective that the programs for this new bachelor’s degree should be designed to provide independent qualifications for a career in working life (i.e. without the need to pursue a graduate degree). The 2-year graduate degree, henceforth called a master’s degree, was not very different from the old hovedfag, at least not structurally.922 Changes at the postgraduate level were also relatively minor.

918 See Vidar Grøtta, “Higher Education Policymaking in Scandinavia.” 919 NOU 2000: 14 Frihet med ansvar 920 St.meld. nr. 27 (2000-2001) Gjør din plikt – Krev din rett 921 Innst. S. nr. 337 (2000-2001) 922 However, many of the HEIs took the opportunity (opened up by new legislation) to implement their own regulations curtailing the length of (and hence time spent on) the

Afterword, 2000–2018 │ 525

In addition to the introduction of a new degree structure, which was in keeping with the policies agreed upon in the Bologna process, the reform documents set out ambitious aims for improving the quality of the teaching, guidance, and examination procedures.923 More continuous course-work, feedback on essays, and other forms of supervised learning activities (often associated with the Anglo-American undergraduate tradition) were now strongly encouraged, whereas the accentuation of thorough and impartial final examinations (formerly so salient in Norway, and sometimes associated with the Humboldtian ideal of Lerhnfreiheit) was relaxed, most importantly by removing legislation that prescribed external examiners (except for the master’s thesis). Perhaps more fundamental than any of the changes at program level, however, was the reconceptualization, briefly discussed at the end of part one, of Norwegian HEIs as such. As a consequence of the reform, the institutions were no longer encouraged to conceive of themselves as belonging to a coherent educational system which in the last instance was run by the ministry. Economically incentivized to design and offer programs that could attract applicants and produce credit points, a HEI was now rather conceived as an autonomous agent in a higher education “market,” responsible for drawing up its own strategies and acting upon them. The ministry retained the political responsibility for the totality of Norwegian higher education, but the attainment of the overall political goals would now be sought through the continuous weighing of supply and demand within a carefully calibrated incentive structure that applied equally to the whole of higher education, rather than by the ministry’s application of a multitude of direct steering instruments to each of the HEIs.924

graduate thesis, which in some disciplines had approached that of a postgraduate thesis during the 1980s and 1990s. 923 The reform also had some more technical features, such as the introduction of ECTS credits and the use of educational plans. 924 While highly important in principle, and much discussed along ideological lines, the practical consequences of the reconceptualization of the HEIs as “free agents” should not be overestimated, however. The major part of the funding for HEIs was still to be large block grants; bankruptcy was not a real option for a variety of reasons; and since no tuition was to be charged from students (and subsidies for the students’ living costs were improved as part of the process), neither the HEIs nor the students were in reality exposed to anything like the strictures of a commercial market, as they were in many other countries. The “market” that emerged with the Norwegian Quality reform was in reality a fully state-funded quasi-market. Besides, in its capacity as owner, the ministry still had to engage directly with each HEI on a variety of issues.

526 │ The transformation of humanities education

Economically, the most important indicator in the new incentive structure was credit point production, which since 2003 has accounted for the allocation of around 25 percent of the HEIs’ public funding. Unlike standard budgeting procedures in Norway, funding based on this indicator has had no upper limit, which must be considered a very strong incentive for the HEIs to pursue their educational mission. But perhaps even more important in its transformative power (and in its symbolic value) has been the publication indicator. Even though it has allocated a much smaller share of the funding (less than 2 percent of the total public funding annually), and notwithstanding its closed budgetary frame (which means it is a zero-sum game among the institutions), the number of publications, especially in international journals, has climbed rapidly since the introduction of the so-called “publication points” in 2006.925 Whether the modest monetary incentive alone can explain this, or whether the system of publication points (which is designed to operate at the level of institutions, but in practice is also used at the level of the individual researcher) works just as much by reinforcing the prestige economy that Robert K. Merton called the “reward system of science,” is a question that has not been settled.926 But regardless of how the incentive mechanism actually works, the outcome has nevertheless – and somewhat surprisingly – been a strong research drift in many disciplines, including the humanities. This has caused several debates, among which the most relevant for this book has centered on a worry that the HEIs have sacrificed the missions of education and dissemination oriented towards a domestic demand in favor of specialized and internationalized research production.927 Others have argued that more ambitious publication practices was just what the Norwegian humanities needed. As indicated by the outline of the policymaking process above, there was a high degree of consensus across political party lines as well as function system boundaries regarding the aims and means of the Quality reform. Briefly put, the major goals were improvements in educational quality, throughput, and employability. 928 As we recall from part two of this book, these were the issues that had preoccupied

925 See Torbjørn Hægeland, Finansiering for kvalitet, mangfold og samspill. Nytt finansieringssystem for universiteter og høyskoler. Forslag fra ekspertgruppe oppnevnt av Kunnskapsdepartementet 8. april 2014 (Oslo: Kunnskapsdepertementet, 2015) p. 36. 926 Robert K. Merton, “The Matthew Effect in Science.” 927 But especially in the first years after the reform quite a few academics argued the opposite case – that time for research had suffered, as noticed in the first evaluation (see below). 928 Other goals were internationalization (as part of the Bologna process) and increased use of ICT for didactical as well as administrative purposes.

Afterword, 2000–2018 │ 527

the Ottosen committee, too, especially in their first reports. And just like in the last half of the 1960s, the backdrop for the Quality reform around the millennium was a recent and massive expansion of the student body. From a problematically low level in the late 1980s, student numbers had climbed rapidly and far beyond the planned capacity, until the curve flattened out around 1997 (but with no significant decline in the offing). The main concern in the late 1990s was thus similar to what it had been in the late 1960s: crowded auditoriums and low educational quality in many fields, particularly in the humanities. There was also a suspicion abroad that the relevance of the programs for future careers was less than optimal, even though the favorable labor market in the last half of the 1990s absorbed most of the graduates. In the late 1960s, the members of the Ottosen committee had been vilified as handmaidens of capitalism for raising such issues as throughput and employability at all. But around the millennium these concerns were shared not only by various actors in the political system, but also by many academics, including the students. Moreover, there was an awareness in the academic community that the problems could no longer be solved – as they had mostly been in the 1990s – by increased funding alone. If the current level of student numbers was to be sustained, as most argued that it should be (for a variety of political, cultural or socio-economic reasons), structural changes were necessary, and on more than one level. Two additional factors may help to explain why academia was more favorably inclined towards reform this time. First, although student activism was by no means dead, it was far from the dominant force it had been around 1970, and thus presented less of a political problem than the Ottosen committee had faced.929 Second, the Mjøs committee developed its major policies alongside the Bologna process, which clearly served to strengthen their legitimacy.930 As I shall return to below, there were some critical voices to be heard around the millennium.931 But a debate on the educational aspects of the reform, for in-

929 The students in the Mjøs committee were among the most eager reformists, which may have been somewhat surprising to those who remembered the students’ reaction to the Ottosen committee. 930 For an account of the relationship between the Norwegian Quality reform and the Bologna process, see Åse Gornitzka, “What is the Use of Bologna in National Reform? The Case of Norwegian Quality Reform in Higher Education,” Creating the European Area of Higher Education. Voices from the Periphery, ed. Voldemar Tomusk (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006). Another influence on the policies of the Mjøs committee was the following report: OECD, Redefining Tertiary Education (Paris: OECD, 1998). 931 Rune Slagstad in particular attempted to mount a fundamental critique of the Mjøs committee’s perspectives and policy proposals, especially in the historical report he was

528 │ The transformation of humanities education

stance on the traditional topic of Bildung, came several years later, when the reform had been implemented and evaluations were beginning to arrive. The only really heated debate at the time when the reform was launched concerned a report from an expert committee on some of the legal aspects of it. The Ryssdal committee, which was appointed by the Conservative minster Kristin Clemet after the white paper on the reform itself had passed Parliament, proposed, among other things, to transform the public HEIs into self-owned (but still publicly funded) institutions and to make appointed rather than elected leadership the rule. This resulted in a spontaneous campaign of protests led mostly by professors from the University of Oslo, many of them from the humanities. Support came from academics and students around the country, and at its peak the media attention approached, but never quite matched, the tumults in the late 1960s. The outcome of the whole affair was that the minister, who belonged to a minority government, had to shelve the committee’s proposal, even though she and her party were clearly in favor of it.932 The crux of the matter, which deserves some reflection here, was the concept that has preoccupied us at different points throughout this book, and which is perhaps also the most difficult issue in higher education research in general, namely autonomy. The Ryssdal committee (and the minister) argued that a decrease in the HEIs’ legal dependency on the state would increase their autonomy almost by definition. The protesters claimed that the proposal would not only fail to enhance autonomy; it would on the contrary take away from the HEIs the autonomy they had traditionally enjoyed. Even though Norwegian academics had usually experienced state interference as bothersome, the protesters argued that less close protection by the state would mean exposure to new dependencies that were even more worrisome. The most commonly voiced concern was exposure to “market forces,” in the sense of being responsible for earning funds through the governmental incentive structure, and perhaps increasingly also through other competitive funding mechanisms. In addition there was concern that decreased ministerial oversight would be more than compensated for by increased accountability towards a planned

commissioned to write (by the committee itself) on Norwegian higher education, and which was eventually published as an appendix to the committee’s report, cf. NOU 2000:14 Frihet med ansvar. While Slagstad’s critique did not really affect the political debate on the reform or its implementation in the early years of the 2000s, it has been frequently cited in later debates. 932 The minster was not entirely alone, at least not regarding the leadership issue: The majority of the Mjøs committee supported appointed rectors, as did the later Stjernø committee, cf. NOU 2008: 3 Sett under ett – Ny struktur i høyere utdanning.

Afterword, 2000–2018 │ 529

independent accreditation body (which was eventually named the Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education, shortened NOKUT). Space forbids a detailed analysis of this debate here, but in general it seems to have been less than fruitful, largely because the two fronts talked past each other, unawares or deliberately, using different definitions of “autonomy,” often without specifying the level of analysis. In the research literature on recent trends in governance, organization, and management in the field of higher education – often analyzed under such headings as New Public Management or Neoliberalism – the solution to the problem of definition has been to distinguish between legaleconomic autonomy and “real” autonomy. Johan P. Olsen, for instance, writes: “Reformers misinterpret the administrative/political/legal order they intervene in and defy a European heritage that has experienced the state not only as a threat to institutional and individual autonomy, but also as the guardian of autonomy. […] Many academics, for example in Norway, have mobilized against reforms prescribing a looser formal-legal affiliation to the state – a reform interpreted as reduced state commitment to universities. […] While there is more legal autonomy, other external pressures impinge on the university’s autonomy rather than those of the state, including external funding, accreditation and quality control.”933

In addition to this question of organizational autonomy, the autonomy of the individual researcher (or teacher) has also been a matter for concern. Critics have argued that increased legal-economic autonomy for each HEI would presuppose an increase in the steering capacity of its leadership, as evidenced by the proposal to favor appointed rather than elected rectors, which would in turn make the individual academic more dependent upon the leadership, and hence less autonomous. While none of these arguments about who is getting the upper hand should be dismissed, they tell only half the story. The problem, I think, is a conceptualization of autonomy that is exclusively preoccupied with a system’s freedom from external ties, and that underplays the system’s capacity for action. In that regard the critics

933 Johan P. Olsen, Governing through institution building. Institutional theory and recent European experiments in democratic organization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) 166 and 169. Ivar Bleiklie applies precisely this conceptualization of autonomy as a zero-sum power game in an interview with University Word News on university reforms in the Nordic countries on 6 April 2018: “‘[…] the increased degree of decisionmaking authority for the heads of institutions in the Nordic countries comes together with increased monitoring and control from the state through the reporting and funding systems that in fact gives the government increased control,’ said Bleiklie.”

530 │ The transformation of humanities education

actually resemble the Ryssdal committee (as well as minister Clemet), who also conceptualized autonomy mostly as freedom from – in their case, freedom from the ties to the state. But as Olsen’s comment indirectly reminds us, and as was also discussed in part two of this book in the light of Luhmann’s more complex concept of autonomy, connectivity (even in the form of legal or contractual responsibilities) can actually strengthen autonomy. Indeed, if autonomy is conceived as capacity for long-term self-governance in a societal environment (rather than splendid isolation) connectivity is clearly a precondition for operative autonomy. In this perspective, the question of autonomy is not whether HEIs should negotiate responsibilities, entitlements, contractual relations, etc. vis à vis their environment or not, but which parts of the environment they need to interact and negotiate with, and under which conditions, in order to further their long-term goals. The conceptualization of autonomy as a system’s capacity for self-governance applies not only to the HEIs as organizations (in which case it would, indeed, put very much at the hands of the leadership of those organizations), but also to the operative level of the systems of higher education and research (and hence to their participants, i.e. researchers, teachers, and students). The advantage of not conceptualizing autonomy as a zero-sum power game is that it opens up at least the possibility that autonomous research organizations (in the legal and economic sense) can also strengthen the autonomy of the research system as it operates in that institution, because a concerted research strategy can generate a lot more and better research opportunities for most of the researchers (if not all) than if they each insisted upon operating as very loosely affiliated individuals – as many Norwegian humanities researchers did far into the postwar period (cf. part three of this book). Whether organizational and function system autonomy actually reinforce each other in particular HEIs is of course an empirical question, and it is certainly possible that incompetent or corrupt leadership can preclude it, especially if the proper checks and balances are not in place. But it is difficult to see why it should be ruled out by a simplistic definition of autonomy that claims, in effect, that the autonomy of some necessarily comes at the expense of others. Of course, the question of autonomy does not only pertain to the field of higher education and research. In part two of this book I have argued that the general tendency in public administration since the 1980s to “set free” state owned organizations should be understood as belonging to a longer transition from “central planning” via “sectorial planning” to what the Danish political scientist Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen has termed “polycentric administration.”934 The driving force in this development, according to Andersen – and here he is in accord with a

934 See chapter 7 and Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen, Selvskabt forvaltning.

Afterword, 2000–2018 │ 531

general argument in systems theory –, is an ever increasing societal complexity that gradually exhausts the state’s capacity for planning, even in large welfare states such as Denmark and Norway. This development necessitates autonomization of function systems and devolvement of responsibilities to the operative level in the public sector. According to the logic of the political-administrative system, autonomy for public institutions has to be balanced by accountability in order to secure the legitimacy of public spending and to avoid nepotism. So far, however, the debate in Norway has framed the question of autonomy as a power struggle wherein the actors (as well as the researchers) have concentrated on what they have believed to be the ideological motives of their opponents. A broader socio-historical understanding of how organizational forms are conditioned by changing functional requirements, not only by spurious trends and ideologies, seems to be lacking. But regardless of what research can and should do to inform this policy debate, there will probably never be an obvious answer to the question of organization and autonomy in higher education; nor can it ever be conclusively determined whether the traditional organizational form of HEIs in Norway protect or hamper the various kinds of autonomy. It is a question of balancing many concerns. At the time of writing this afterword the Norwegian government has opened the issue of organization for discussion again, for the first time since the debates surrounding the Quality reform.935 Some early responses suggest a repetition along the same lines of argument as previously.

HUMANITIES DEBATES AFTER THE QUALITY REFORM In the years immediately following the implementation of the Quality Reform, it was difficult to assess the new situation in the humanities. So many changes had been made simultaneously that it was hard to know which way the arrows were pointing, and why. When the first evaluations of the reform were published in 2006 and 2007, the (preliminary) conclusions were not catastrophic, but not very uplifting either. The evaluators had not found conclusive evidence that educational quality had increased. The degree system had been successfully implemented, but it did not seem as if the 3-year bachelor’s degree had succeeded in becoming an independent qualification for a career in working life. An additional finding was

935 The current government’s political platform (the Jeløya Platform) includes the following action point: “conduct an inquiry [mulighetsstudie] of available organizational coupling mechanisms between the HEIs and the state, including the model of state-owned enterprises [foretaksmodellen].”

532 │ The transformation of humanities education

that increased responsibility for teaching and educational quality had resulted in less uninterrupted time for research.936 The ministry and the political parties, and seemingly also most of the managers at the institutions, conceded that these findings had to be attended to, but they were nevertheless reasonably content with the outcome of the reform, and continued to support the major reform ideas. Increasingly, however, critical voices were heard in the years after 2007, particularly regarding the effects of the incentive structure. At about the same time, the old humanities debate was revived again, partly due to domestic contributions, and partly inspired by the international debate.937 These two debates, on the reform and on the humanities, have tended to merge. One example of this was a group of academics (and a politician) called Dannelsesutvalget (“The Bildung committee”), which published a report in 2009 warning about threats to traditional academic values, pertaining in particular to the humanities. The report criticized many of the major features of the quality reform, and suggested among other things to expand the undergraduate degree from three to four years again.938 Not much came of this. A few years later, the Norwegian weekly Morgenbladet and the journal Nytt Norsk Tidsskrift became arenas for a prolonged humanities debate in which a “state of crisis” was declared for the humanities.939 Among the issues discussed were a decline in applications to several humanities programs, few incentives for traditional publication practices in the humanities, and a general feeling that the values and

936 Svein Michelsen and Per Olaf Aamodt, Evaluering av kvalitetsreformen. Sluttrapport (Oslo: NFR, 2007) and St. meld. nr. 7 (2007-2008) Statusrapport for Kvalitetsreformen i høgre utdanning. 937 In addition to the Norwegian debate, and in addition to the Anglo-American humanities/liberal arts literature that is referenced in the previous chapter, there was at about this time a wider Scandinavian interest in revigorating the humanities, as evidenced in e.g. Sverker Sörlin and Anders Ekström, Alltings mått. Humanistisk kunskap i framtidens samhälle (Stockholm: Nordtedts, 2012) and Anders Ekstrøm David Budtz Pedersen, Frederik Stjernfeldt and Simo Køppe (eds.) Kampen om disciplinerne. Viden og videnskabelighed i humanistisk forskning (Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels forlag, 2016). 938 Dannelsesutvalget, Dannelsesperspektiver i høyere utdanning (Bergen: UiB, 2009). 939 See for instance Kristin Asdal, Kjell Lars Berge, Karen Gammelgaard, Helge Jordheim, Trygve Riiser Gundersen, Tore Rem, and Johan L. Tønnesson, “Humanioras kraft,” Morgenbladet, 12 September 2008, and Toril Moi, “Hvordan skal vi forsvare humaniora? Perspektiver fra USA,” Nytt Norsk Tidsskrift 03 (2011).

Afterword, 2000–2018 │ 533

contributions of the humanities were not appreciated in wider society. 940 As a result of this debate, the NGO Fritt Ord commissioned a report from a group of younger humanities scholars in order to analyze some of the issues that had come to the fore – especially the underlying question of the humanities’ raison d’être. When the report (entitled “What do we need the humanities for?”) was published in 2014, it argued that the situation for the humanities was indeed challenging and in need of new initiatives, but that it was counter-productive to speak of a crisis.941 A major conclusion was that the humanities disciplines needed to reformulate their societal mission. One option the group discussed at some length was to think of the humanities not primarily as instrumentally useful for business or public services (although in the group’s estimation they frequently are) but more as a form of organized intellectual readiness in the face of societal and cultural contingency. The policy recommendations in the report included a proposal to tailor the research funding of the Research Council more to the inherent dynamic of humanities research, ideas about more competitive humanities programs (honors programs), and a suggestion that the humanities should reestablish the connection with secondary school, especially with respect to teacher education. Somewhat short on detail, these and other recommendations were presented as stepping stones that institutions and national authorities could use to produce more concrete policies.

A WHITE PAPER ON THE HUMANITIES It was against the backdrop of the prolonged debate from around 2007 onwards that the Norwegian minister of education and research, Torbjørn Røe Isaksen from the Conservative party, announced in 2015 that the ministry would begin work on a white paper dealing specifically with the humanities. The major aim, according to the minister, was to investigate how the humanities disciplines, on their own terms and without sacrificing their academic identity, could become more involved in

940 On a personal note I can mention that it was curiosity about the historical background for this debate that motivated my application for funding of the PhD project that has ended up as this book. 941 Helge Jordheim and Tore Rem (eds.) Hva skal vi med humaniora? Upon request the present author wrote the chapter on humanities education and a section on the Research Council’s funding of humanities research in this publication (written while employed as a research fellow at the University of Oslo).

534 │ The transformation of humanities education

meeting the challenges facing society. The minister declared from the beginning that the process would not result in a downscaling of the humanities.942 Probably the first of its kind (i.e. in dealing exclusively and comprehensively with the humanities), the white paper received considerable attention in the media, at least in the culture sections.943 As part of the policymaking process the HEIs and other stakeholders were invited to contribute their analyses and policy proposals. Three research reports were commissioned, one on the career patterns of humanities graduates, one on the humanities and teacher education, and one on the strain in humanities research between internationalization and national knowledge demands.944 When the white paper was presented, in March 2017, it was focused on four topics: research excellence, societal impact, career options, and the coupling of the academic humanities to Norwegian schools. Among the action points were measures to secure a real involvement of the humanities in the Research council’s large funding programs, new funding mechanisms for open access publishing in the Norwegian language and for preserving small humanities disciplines and programs that meet a societal demand but are not otherwise economically viable, and expansion of the bachelor’s degree to four years in highly demanding (for Norwegians) language programs, such as Chinese. In addition, the white paper articulated a number of objectives and expectations regarding the strengthening of language studies, the relevance of programs to future careers, and the connection to secondary school – expectations that it will be the responsibility of the publicly owned HEIs to respond to.

942 This in explicit contrast to Denmark and Japan, where downscaling measures had recently been implemented in response to a supposed decline in the societal demand for the humanities. 943 In a field usually ripe with heated polemics, surprisingly few critical voices were heard (at least in published form) while the white paper was being produced. However, a group of humanities researchers from the University of Bergen were skeptical, and warned that there was too little research done on the contemporary Norwegian humanities to build new policies on. Cf. Ingrid Birce Müftüoglu, Jan Reinert Karlsen, and Rasmus Slaattelid, “Hva vet vi om humaniora?” In Morgenbladet on 26 May 2016. 944 Jannecke Wiers-Jenssen & al, Humanister i arbeidslivet (Oslo: HiOA, 2017), Joakim Caspersen, Hanna Bugge, and Sigurd Martin Nordli Oppegaard, Humanister i lærerutdanningene (Oslo: HiOA, 2017), and Fredrik W. Thue and Håvard Brede Aven, Humanistiske vitenskaper mellom internasjonal excellence og nasjonalt samfunnsoppdrag (Oslo: HiOA, 2017).

Afterword, 2000–2018 │ 535

At the time of writing this afterword it is still too early to assess what impact the white paper will have on humanities education. As someone involved in the policymaking process I should at any rate refrain from normative comments in this regard. It is probably uncontroversial, however, to say that language studies has received special attention in the process,945 and that cially the the relationship of the humanities to schooling and the career options for humanities graduates have been put more firmly on the policy agenda than previously. But the outcomes of these and other policies (regarding humanities research, not the least) remain to be seen. It is noteworthy, however, that the expanded coalition government that took office after the election in 2017 stated in its political platform that the perspectives and policies in the white paper on the humanities will be pursued as planned.946

CONCLUDING REMARKS By way of conclusion I would now like to return from the policy level to the actual developments regarding the three major topics of this book. What has happened, empirically speaking, regarding admissions, curricula, and careers in humanities education after 2000? As for admission I have already mentioned that the student numbers in the humanities have decreased slightly, from close to 30 000 in 2000 to 26 500 in 2015, while the total numbers in higher education have increased significantly.947 Since the decrease for the humanities was from a historical high-point around the millennium, the decrease relative to other fields of study has been felt more urgently than the reduction in absolute numbers. Interestingly, the decrease came to a large extent in various national language and literature programs, with ensuing worries about the sustainability of these programs, at least at the smaller institutions. The main principles in governmental admissions policies and legislation have remained the same, namely that capacity and admission is regulated mostly by student demand. However, the introduction of incentives for credit point production in 2003 has clearly resulted in a more competitive higher education market with increased fluctuations at the program level. The overall size of humanities education in Norway has nevertheless remained fairly stable, and the production of candidates

945 Even though the ministry decided against a proposal to launch a national language strategy. 946 Cf. ch. 12 in the so-called Jeløya platform, issued by Erna Solberg’s cabinet on 14 January 2018. 947 Jannecke Wiers-Jenssen & al, Humanister i arbeidslivet, p. 28.

536 │ The transformation of humanities education

with master’s degrees has even increased from between 600 and 700 yearly around the millennium to between 800 and 900 after 2010.948 Curricular changes are more difficult to describe with any accuracy. For the period 1960-2000 I made a detailed document analysis of undergraduate and graduate curricula in four disciplines at two institutions. The scope of this afterword does not allow for the same kind of analysis for the period after 2000. Moreover, the reform of the degree system in 2003 would make a direct comparison difficult, especially at the undergraduate level. However, a cursory reading of master program curricula at the University of Oslo and some other institutions gives some indication of recent trends as measured against historical developments.949 Looking at the four disciplines covered in this book, the first thing one may notice is that general literature studies has been discontinued at Tromsø, as part of a downscaling of the humanities programs in 2016, which indicates some changes in student preferences. While on the graduate level much has remained the same after the Quality reform, it is interesting to see that some of the curricular trends I found prior to 2003 have actually been reversed in recent decades. For instance the master’s programs in history at both Oslo and Tromsø have reinstated courses in dissemination/didactics, which as we saw in part three had been abandoned in the mid-1990s as part of a trajectory where the discipline of history dissociated itself from teacher education. However, it is only at Tromsø that the course is specifically oriented towards teacher training; at Oslo it has more to do with popular science in new media. In philosophy programs one notices that the dominance of analytical philosophy, which had increased steadily in the graduate curriculum between the 1980s and 2000, has now been balanced somewhat at the University of Oslo by the reintroduction of aesthetics and the history of philosophy in addition to the four established sub-disciplines (epistemology, ethics, metaphysics and the philosophy of language). A similar departure from analytical philosophy can be seen at the University of Tromsø, where the master in philosophy now has a proclaimed “practical” orientation with about half of the courses on topics of general interest (e.g. “war, conflict and crises,” “multiculturalism”) and half focused on the more standard sub-disciplines. In the master’s programs in general literature studies and English studies the continued influence of globalization is quite noticeable in the weight assigned to world literature. The spread of feminist theory, postcolonial and race studies, queer studies, etc. is also striking. Peripheral specialisms until the late 1990s, such strands

948 Ibid., p. 30. 949 Downloaded from www.uio.no, www.uit.no, www.uib.no, and www.ntnu.no.

Afterword, 2000–2018 │ 537

seem to have become mainstays during the last decades, especially in literary and cultural studies. Feminism has also established itself in Norwegian philosophy programs. Precisely why this has occurred is hard to say, but it seems to mirror international (or at least Western) developments. In part three of the book I discussed whether the appearance of feminism, postcolonialism, etc. in humanities curricula in the 1980s (then mostly as electives in graduate programs) should be interpreted as an import from the political system, which would challenge the thesis of the research system’s increasing operative autonomy. I concluded that even if influence could be demonstrated it had only been possible for e.g. feminism to enter the curriculum when filtered through the research system and transformed into “theory” – it was not conceived as outright political activism. Looking at some of the more recent curricula documents makes me uncertain if this is still the case. Whether the continued ascendancy of these curricular trends should be characterized as a turn towards societal relevance or, more problematically, as politicized curricula is a matter of heated debate internationally, and it is not unlikely that this debate will arrive in Norway, too. As regards the careers of humanities graduates, the findings in the report commissioned as background for the white paper are in accord with the trends described in part four of this book. In the period from 2000 to 2015, humanities graduates have continued to experience more mismatch problems vis à vis working life than any other field of study. The situation is not very different from what it was in the 1990s. Interestingly, the report has figures broken down by discipline, showing that the programs that qualify for teaching careers in secondary school (Nordic studies, English studies, history, etc.) have had significantly fewer problems than more research-oriented disciplines (general literature studies, art history, etc.). 950 The fact that applications to the former have fallen while the latter have risen thus seems somewhat paradoxical. If I were to give a nutshell summary of the developments since 2000 against the backdrop of the longer history from the 1960s, I would say that the Quality reform in 2003 was an attempt by the political system to get a grip on a problematic situation where higher education in many fields, and especially in the humanities, had become a research-oriented venture of uncertain relevance for working life, at the same time as it had been transformed from a small and specialized elite system to a massified, costly and in principle universally available welfare service. While not an outright counter-reformation, there is no doubt that many of the policies sought to counterbalance some of the features of the transformation that has been analyzed in this book. Most importantly, unwanted quantitative expansion (espe-

950 Jannecke Wiers-Jenssen & al, Humanister i arbeidslivet, 35ff.

538 │ The transformation of humanities education

cially because of slow throughput) was to be curtailed by various efficiency measures, and generalized and research-oriented programs were given a turn towards employability. That these policies became somewhat unpopular and caused debates in the humanities is hardly surprising, especially when it turned out that the effects on educational quality were less than hoped for. The white paper on the humanities, presented more than a decade later, could be seen as an effort to finish the job of the Quality reform with more custom-made and fine-tuned policy instruments. By this time the political system also explicitly recognized that modern humanities disciplines will for the most part retain the identity they have acquired through the last fifty years of academic evolution, and will have to draw their strength from the most vital aspects of that identity.

Appendices

1

THE NORWEGIAN DEGREE STRUCTURE

Although Norwegian higher education since its inception in the early 19th century has been shaped by a distinct national trajectory – conditioned by Norwegian natural resources, demography, and societal and cultural developments – its structures and formats were always based upon the Danish system (i.e. modelled on the University of Copenhagen). The Danish system owed much to the German model, which in turn was based on the degree system inherited from the medieval universities, the baccalaureus, magister and doctor.951 A distinctive feature taken over from Denmark, which was different from the German tradition,952 was that the faculties of the humanities and natural sciences, in their capacity as teacher training institutions, primarily granted so-called “civil service degrees” (embetseksamen) – just like the professional faculties of theology, law, and medicine did in their fields.953 This “civil service degree,” which in Norway could be obtained at an undergraduate level (adjunkt) and graduate level (lektor) served simultaneously as academic 951 In the medieval and early modern period, the title of doctor was reserved for the higher faculties, and came into use at the philosophical faculty (as doctor of philosophy, the later PhD) in the German system in the 18th century when this faculty was raised to the level of the other three, and then came to surpass it in prestige. The German feature of the Habilitation has not been adopted in Norway or Denmark. 952 Although there was a link between education at the philosophical faculty and employment in the civil service and public schools in Germany too, there were separate entry examinations for such employment administered by the state, not by the universities. See Charles E. McClelland, State, Society and University in Germany 1700-1914. 953 As educational reforms were implemented at different times and speeds in the two countries, the Norwegian usage of Latinate terms and abbreviations (magister, cand.mag.) came to differ, sometimes quite significantly, from the Danish usage of the same terms. Unfortunately, I cannot go into the intricacies of these differences here.

540 │ The transformation of humanities education

qualification and as certification for the teacher profession. There were other degrees designed specifically for academic purposes, primarily the degree of magister and the doctoral degree. The magister degree, which has medieval roots, was reintroduced in Norway in 1921 as an alternative to the “civil service exam” for students who wanted to aim for an academic career. In addition to course work, it required substantial work on a scholarly dissertation, comparable in scope and size to a modern PhD, and was mostly offered in disciplines that were of little relevance to secondary school in Norway. Quantitatively, the magister degree remained marginal, but as we shall see later it was important for the Norwegian humanities as a recruitment channel for research. Over time the magister dissertation also came to influence the level of research ambition in the theses for the regular graduate degree. But still, in the humanities as well as in the natural sciences, the regular degree program, the embedsstudium, was overwhelmingly more important from a societal point of view. This, of course, is a reflection of the important but often forgotten fact emphasized earlier, namely that both these faculties, often thought of as “liberal,” were in the 19th and early 20th century professional ones (the conceptualization of professional education is discussed in part four). In their own eyes emerging scholarly communities, they remained primarily teacher education institutions for a long time when viewed from society at large. However, in the course of the 20th century, this would change. Already in the early half of the century it became a crucial issue for the humanities faculty at Oslo and for the Ministry of Education (which had the final word on degree structure since this was a legislative issue) how to reconcile two diverging agendas: on the one hand the demands of the emerging research university, with increasing disciplinary differentiation and increasingly autonomous knowledge production, and on the other hand, the demands of the rapidly expanding secondary school sector for more teachers whose competencies would match the major school subjects. Several minor reforms (and what I would call partially implemented reform efforts) with various intentions and effects concerning this dilemma were made in the degree structure in 1905, 1921, and 1939.954 But it was in the 1950s, in conjunction with

954 There has been some debate about whether the 1905 reform should be interpreted as a concession to the demands of secondary schools in ensuring coverage of three disciplines on the undergraduate level, or whether it was, on the contrary, a reform geared to foster professional research by providing for a thesis on the graduate level. Cf. Thue (1996), Bleiklie & al. (2000), and Mangset (2009). As with many reform initiatives, it should probably be interpreted as a compromise which catered to several, possibly diverging, interests at the same time.

Appendices │ 541

new, large-scale school reforms, that it was decided that a more thoroughgoing reform of the academic degree system was needed. The natural sciences opted for the modularized American course and credit system, which at least in the short term seemed to solve many problems. But reform in the humanities proved much more difficult. A prolonged and highly interesting process followed, too complex to cover in detail here. The outcome was a compromise, and a degree structure destined to last with only minor adjustments from 1959 to 2003 – i.e. the whole period covered in this study. Historians agree that in the university reform process leading up to the 1959 compromise, the agenda of the faculties of humanities at both universities (Oslo and Bergen) in was primarily to be rid of the responsibility for certifying teachers. In this, the universities prevailed.955 However, some concessions had to be made to the universities’ traditional function of teacher education, and so representatives from the humanities came up with various reform proposals designed to satisfice the minimum requirements of secondary school, at the same time making sure the proposals also would pave the way for more research-orientated educational units.956 The ministry, on the other hand, had as its top priority a more efficient production of teachers for the expanding secondary schools, a goal which could most easily be obtained by cutting down on time-to-degree. But when the process stalled during the 1950s, the ministry seems to have changed its priorities somewhat, probably under the influence of certain groups who wanted to strengthen other teacher education institutions, and even to actively weaken the academic impact on secondary schooling (see part four). The compromise which was reached

955 Åsmund Arup Seip, Lektorene : profesjon, organisasjon og politikk 1890-1980 (Oslo: Fafo, 1990); Astrid Forland (ed.), Universitetet i Bergens historie, Vol. 2, (Bergen: Universitetet i Bergen, 1996); Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen. 956 As Thue and Helsvig have shown, a major difficulty was how to reconcile lower secondary schools’ request for breadth (three subjects) with the academic drive towards specialization. It was the effort to solve this conundrum that produced the one-year basic course unit (grunnfag). At first, this new unit was intended to be a supplement, an alternative and somewhat less comprehensive version of the traditional unit bifag (which had a duration of one and a half year) to be offered in disciplines that were also school subjects. But it ended up replacing the bifag, not only in disciplines of relevance for secondary school, but in nearly all disciplines. This had important consequences for the recruitment to research-oriented disciplines such as general literature studies, ethnology, art history, etc. Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen, 148ff.

542 │ The transformation of humanities education

in 1959 satisfied the original agenda of the ministry in that the time to degree was shortened by half a year, and by introducing a new one-year program unit (the basic course – grunnfag) specially designed to provide candidates with sufficient competency to teach a discipline as a subject in secondary school. But it also satisfied the faculties at Oslo and Bergen by separating the undergraduate and graduate academic degrees from the corresponding two levels of teacher certification (adjunkt and lektor), leaving the latter to be handled by the Ministry of education and a separate pedagogical institution, the Pedagogical seminary (Pedagogisk seminar). The new degrees were still termed “civil service degrees” (embetseksamen), but as a sign of their academic standing they were also designated by Latin names: candidatus magisterii (cand. mag.) and candidatus philologiae (cand.philol.), respectively. This uncoupling of professional and academic usages would prove to be an important threshold in the transformation of humanities education from a teacher education to a research-based generalist education. A brief outline of the Norwegian degree structure as it was established in 1959, and as it remained (with minor adjustments) for almost half a century, might be convenient. For most of the period, the four-year undergraduate degree of cand. mag. (initially it was four and a half years) consisted of a half-year propaedeutic program in philosophy (examen philosophicum), and three of the abovementioned one-year introductory programs (grunnfag) elected among humanities disciplines (from 1973 also among the social sciences, and in rare cases from the natural sciences). One of the grunnfag programs (two of them in the early period) had to be expanded by a half-year intermediate program (mellomfag). All programs were intended as full-time studies to be completed consecutively, and only rarely were two or more programs taken at the same time. A possible and not untypical trajectory could thus be, after the compulsory propaedeutic program in philosophy, to choose a one-year grunnfag program in English, then another grunnfag program in general literature studies, and finally to complete the degree of cand.mag. with a grunnfag program plus a halfyear intermediate mellomfag program, in, say, history. The graduate degree (cand.philol.) had the standardized duration of two years (although many used more time), and consisted of a set of required and elective curricular units (sometimes coupled to lecture and seminar series) in addition to the writing of a thesis. A requirement for admission to this kind of graduate program was completion of the undergraduate program with a one and a half-year specialization (mellomfag) in the same discipline one wanted to pursue at the graduate level. In addition there was also the option of the already mentioned and more researchoriented degree of magister, which in the early years of the period was usually completed in one go, without taking the undergraduate degree first. Later it became more common to complete the undergraduate degree first, and then continue to the

Appendices │ 543

graduate level of the magister (which in some disciplines was offered as the only graduate degree, in other disciplines as an alternative to cand.philol.) The standardized time to degree for the magister was seven years if completed in one go, and three years if completed after the cand.mag. Humanities candidates with a cand.mag. or a cand.philol. degree who wanted to teach at the secondary school level, were required to complete a half-year program in pedagogy in addition to the academic programs. This program in “practical pedagogy,” which together with the academic degree certified candidates as adjunkt or lektor, was offered by an institution which in the beginning of the period was affiliated with the university but not part of it, the Pedagogical Seminar.957 As we shall see, the pedagogical program for teachers was expanded to a full year of studies in 1993. Finally, the postgraduate degree of dr. philos. (towards the end of the period gradually supplanted by the more structured degree of dr. art.) was a possible continuation after a graduate degree, but since it was not a mandatory requirement for employment even in academic positions until the 1980s, it was quite rarely undertaken. For the most part it was a mid- or even late career project for academics who aspired to the title of full professor, or for academically inclined school teachers or employees at museums who wanted to crown a life’s work on some specific topic. It is important to note this particularity of Norwegian academic life. Because doctoral studies were very rarely embarked on, and the degree was even more rarely granted, the regular graduate degree (and even more so the magister degree) was for a long time considered to testify to an advanced level of academic competency. If you had a graduate degree in history, you could confidently call yourself an historian, knowing that only a very few doctores would outrank you.

2

TEACHING METHODS

It should be emphasized that Norwegian higher education since the 19th century has been more focused on exams than on teaching.958 This has to do partly with a Norwegian interpretation of the Humboldtian ideals of Lehrfreiheit and Lernfreiheit

957 For an account of the Pedagogisk seminar, and of the changing relationship between the academic degree, the course in pedagogy, and certification as adjunkt/lector, see Geir Knudsen og Trude Evenshaug (eds.), Universitetet og lærerutdanningen. Historiske perspektiver (Oslo: Unipub: 2008) 958 See Ivar Bleiklie, Roar Høstaker, and Agnete Vabø, Policy and Practice in Higher Education: Reforming Norwegian Universities, 63.

544 │ The transformation of humanities education

according to which extensive teaching, close supervision, and compulsory essay writing (as in the Anglo-American tutorial tradition) has frequently been derided as “schooling.” But perhaps just as importantly, it has resulted from a lack of resources. Until the post WWII period, the scale of the University of Oslo was so small, and the teaching loads (including the assessment work) of the few professors and lecturers so heavy, that more extensive or intensive teaching was practically impossible. Since the 1960s, more resources have been available, but surplus resources not absorbed directly by increasing costs generated by the growing student population have for the most part been used to fund increased research ambitions rather than intensified teaching.959 Although many efforts have been launched, at various levels, to strengthen the teaching both quantitatively and qualitatively, it was only with the reform implemented in 2003 that a more sustained effort was made to institutionalize educational programs in which goaloriented and comprehensive teaching should be a priority rather than post hoc assessment in the form of exams. In most humanities disciplines, two teaching formats have been dominant: the traditional lecture, and seminars. In addition, language lab tuition has been used in foreign language programs. Over time, excursions, written assignments, case-studies, projects, etc. have gradually entered some programs, but these never really challenging the centrality of the lecture and the seminar as the key teaching formats in the period covered by this study.

3

EXAMINATIONS

Throughout the period covered in this study, humanities examinations at both the undergraduate and graduate levels were fairly elaborate and time and resource consuming exercises. The weight was almost entirely placed on final examinations. Except in disciplines where the training of skills was central (such as foreign languages) there was little interest in what educational researchers today call formative assessment.960 Partly as a consequence of this, much care and effort had to be taken to ensure fair and comprehensive summative assessment. Three major forms of examinations were used. The written exam was usually a full day’s sitting (in some courses, half-day exams were used). Most often it was a

959 The regulation put into effect in the early 70s that faculty at all levels should devote half their time (administration set aside) to research was perhaps the most important mechanism responsible for this channeling of funds. 960 See Agnete Vabø, Eksamens- og evalueringsformer i høyere utdanning. En sammenlignende studie. En rapport for Mjøs-utvalget og for KUF (Oslo: NIFU, 2000).

Appendices │ 545

mixture of factual and discursive questions, frequently with some degree of optionality built into the set of questions. In most disciplines, weight was put on evaluating the students’ reasoned argument on the basis of their factual knowledge, not only on testing their ability to reproduce factual knowledge. Multiple-choice formats were very rarely in use. Answers were written out in longhand, except in the very last years of the 1990s, when computers came into use in some programs. The written assignment would typically be a 10-15 page essay on a specific issue or question, sometimes with two or more alternative questions offered. The more or less clearly stated genre conventions for this kind of essay would be those of the scholarly paper, although in the earlier part of the period these were not enforced too strictly, especially not on the undergraduate level. Towards the end of the period, a few programs would allow group assignments, but this practice belongs more to the 21th century. The oral exam would usually be a 30-60 minute semi-structured interview with two teachers, one from the student’s own department and one visiting teacher from another institution, the external “censor” (sensor). The oral exam was mostly designed to adjust a grade already given on the basis of written exam(s) or written assignment(s). For the basic course (grunnfag), a typical full final examination would consist of two to four full-day written examinations and one oral exam. From the 1980s onwards, the option of replacing one full-day exam with a written assignment was increasingly offered. On the graduate level, the course work was usually covered by a set of written exams (for instance two or more full-day exams). The thesis itself would also be given a grade.961 The weighted grade of the written exams and the thesis would then be adjusted after a final oral exam.962 Exceptions and more experimental practices did occur in some programs, but on the whole, examination formats were fairly stable, not the least because of the use of external sensors. This feature was primarily intended to guarantee an impartial assessment, but a latent function was to contribute to a measure of standardization

961 For the magister exam there would also be a trial lecture on a topic taken from the reading list in conjunction with the thesis. 962 The Norwegian grading system was numeric, with 1 as the best grade, and 4 as the lowest passable grade. In the humanities, the rage from 1-1,5 was very rarely used. According to a translation used by the University of Oslo, the range from 1,5-2,5 was considered “very good,” 2,5-3,2 “good,” 3,2-4 “not recommendable but pass,” and 4“fail.”

546 │ The transformation of humanities education

of programs, at least within disciplines.963 Over time, probably as a result of international influences, written assignments replaced many written exams, and increased use of modules within the one-year basic program (grunnfag) resulted in more widespread use of shorter written exams towards the end of the period.

963 As in Denmark and Great Britain, the Norwegian system has traditionally been very principled about the necessity for “fair and equal” examinations, but when the regulations that made external sensors mandatory on the undergraduate level were removed in 2003, the relatively expensive practice was soon abandoned in most HEIs.

References

Aamodt, Per O. “Vekst i utdanningssystemet,” Utdanning 2003 (Oslo, NIFU, 2003). Aamodt, Per O. “Access to Higher Education Within a Welfare State System: Developments and Dilemmas,” Cost-Sharing and Accessibility in Higher Education, ed. Pedro N. Teixeira & al. (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008). Aamodt, Per O. “Bottlenecks and Backwaters: An Analysis of Expansion in Higher Education in Norway,” Higher Education 30.1 (1995), 63-80. Aamodt, Per O., & al. Læringsutbytte i høyere utdanning. En drøfting av definisjoner, utviklingstrekk og måleproblemer (Oslo: NIFU, 2007). Aamodt, Per O., and Svein Kyvik, “Access to Higher Education in the Nordic Countries,” Understanding Mass Higher Education, eds. Ted Tapper and David Palfreyman (London: Routledge, 2005) Aamodt, Sidsel. “Linjer i institutthistorien. Filosofisk institutt 1959-2009. Universitetet i Bergen,” (Bergen, UiB, 2009). Aarek, Hans Erik, ed. Mer enn bøker. SBIH 50 år (Oslo: SBIH, 1990). Abbott, Andrew. Chaos of Disciplines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). Abbott, Andrew. The System of Professions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). Alldén, Lars, Natalie Rogoff Ramsøy, and Mariken Vaa, eds. Det norske samfunn (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1986). Amundsen, Leif. Universitetet i Oslo 1911-1961. 2 vols. (Oslo: Universitetet i Oslo, 1960). Andersen, Niels Åkerstrøm. Selvskabt forvaltning – forvaltningspolitikkens og centralforvaltningens udvikling i Danmark fra 1900-1994 (Copenhagen: Nyt fra samfunnsvidenskaberne, 1995).

548 │ The transformation of humanities education

Andersen, Simon Calmar. “How to improve the outcome of state welfare services. Governance in a systems theoretical perspective,” Public Administration 84.4 (2005) 900. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (NY: Verso, 1991). Arnesen, Clara Åse, and Bjørn Strøm. “Arbeidsmarkedets betydning for søkningen til ulike typer høyere utdanning,” Søkelys på arbeidsmarkedet 3 (2008). Arnesen, Clara Åse. Bruk av karriereveilednings-tjenester i høyere utdanning, med vekt på Karrieresenteret ved Universitetet i Oslo. Arbeidsnotat 21. (Oslo: NIFU, 2006). Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy (Oxford: Oxford’s World Classics, 2009 [1869]) Aronsson, Peter, Narve Fulsås, Pertti Haapala, and Bernard Eric Jensen, “Nordic National Histories,” The Contested Nation: ethnicity, class, religion and gender in national histories, eds. Stefan Berger & Chris Lorenz (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008). Arthur, Michael B. “The Boundaryless Career: A New Perspective for Organizational Inquiry,” Journal of Organizational Behavior 15.4 (1994). Aubert, Vilhelm & al. The Professions in Norwegian social structure, 1720-1955, 2 vols., (Oslo: Institute for social research, 1961-62). Aubert, Vilhelm, & al. Akademikere i norsk samfunnsstruktur 1800-1950 (Oslo: ISF, 1960). Aukrust, Odd. “Investeringer og økonomisk vekst. Fra forhandlingeme ved Det nordiske nationaløkonomiske møde i København 1958,” Økonomisk forskning og debatt. Utvalgte artikler 1942-1989 (Oslo: Statistisk sentralbyrå, 1990) 113. Bachelard, Gaston. The Formation of the Scientific Mind (Manchester: Clinamen Press, 2002). Baecker, Dirk. “A Systems Primer on Universities,” Soziale Systeme: Zeitschrift für soziologische Theorie 16.2 (2010). Bakken, Jonas. Litteraturvitenskapens retorikk (Oslo: PhD dissertation at the University of Oslo, 2007). Barnett, Ronald, ed. Reshaping the University: New Relationships Between Research, Scholarship and Teaching (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2005). Barnett, Ronald, Gareth Perry, and Kelly Coate. “Conceptualizing Curriculum Change,” Teaching in Higher Education 6.4 (2001). Barth, Erling, Marianne Røed, Pål Schøne, and Hege Torp, eds. Arbeidsmarkedet for akademikere (Oslo: ISF, 2004).

References │ 549

Baruch, Yehuda, and Douglas T. Hall. “The academic career: A model for future careers in other sectors?” Journal of Vocational Behaviour 64, (2001). Becher, Tony, and Paul R. Trowler. Academic Tribes and Territories, 2nd. ed. (Berkshire: Open University Press, 2001). Becher, Tony. “Principles and Politics. An Interpretative Framework for University Management,” Culture and Power in Educational Organizations, ed. A. Westoby (Buckingham: Open University Press/SRHE, 1988). Becher, Tony. “The State and the University Curriculum in Britain,” European Journal of Education 29.3 (1994). Benavot, Aaron, and Julia Resnik. “Lessons from the Past: A Comparative SocioHistorical Analysis of Primary and Secondary Education,” Global Educational Expansion Historical Legacies and Political Obstacles, eds. Julia Resnik, and Javier Corrales (Cambridge: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2006). Ben-David, Joseph. Centers of Learning (NY: Transactions, 2002). Ben-David, Joseph. The Scientist’s Role in Society (Englewood Cliffs: PrenticeHall, 1971. Benum, Edgeir. “Et nytt forskningspolitisk regime,” Historisk tidsskrift 4 (2007). Berntsen, Harald. Det lange friminuttet. Et essay om ungdom i 1960-åra (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1998). Berntsen, Harald. Studenter og byråkrati. Ottosen-komiteen partert og anrettet på spidd (Oslo. Pax, 1969). Besio, Christina, and Uli Meyer, “Heterogeneity in world society. How organizations handle contradicting logics” In: Boris Holzer, Fatima Kastner and Tobias Werron, eds., From globalization to world society: Neo-institutional and systems theoretical perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2015). Birnbaum, Robert. How Colleges Work (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1988). Blaschke, Steffen, Jetta Frost, and FabianHattke. “Towards a Micro Foundation of Leadership, Governance, and Management in Universities.” Higher Education 68.5 (2014), Bleiklie, Ivar, Roar Høstaker, and Agnete Vabø, Policy and Practice in Higher Education: Reforming Norwegian Universities (London: Jessica Kingsley, 2000) Bleiklie, Ivar. “Reformpolitikk og endring,” Kunnskap og makt: Norsk høyere utdanning i endring (Oslo: Tano Aschehoug, 1996) Bloch, Marc, Les Caractères Originaux de l’Histoire Rurale Française (Oslo: Tid & Tanke, 1931). Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (NY: Riverhead, 1995).

550 │ The transformation of humanities education

Boldyrev, Ivan A. “Economy as a Social System: Niklas Luhmann’s Contribution and its Significance for Economics,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 72.2 (2013). Boli, John, Francisco O. Ramirez, and John W. Meyer. “Explaining the Origins and Expansion of Mass Education,” Comparative Education Review, 29.2 (1985). Bourdieu, Pierre, and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society, and Culture (NY: Sage, 1990). Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, 1984). Bourdieu, Pierre. Science of Science and Reflexivity (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2004). Brown, Phillip, Anthony Hesketh, and Sara Williams. “Players and Purists,” The Mismanagement of Talent. Employability and Jobs in the Knowledge Economy, eds. Phillip Brown and Anthony Hesketh (Oxford. Oxford University Press, 2004). Brunczel, Balzács. Disillusioning Modernity. Niklas Luhmann’s Social and Political Theory (Frankfurt, Peter Lang, 2010). Brunsson, Nils. The organization of hypocrisy: talk, decisions, and actions in organizations (Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School Press, 1989). Bush, Tor, Eirik Johnsen, Kurt Klaudi Klausen and Jan Ole Vanebo, eds. Modernisering av offentlig sektor. Trender, ideer og praksiser, (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2011). Castells, Manuel. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Volume 1: The Rise of the Network Society, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2010). Castells, Manuel. The Rise of the Network Society Vol. 1: The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture (NY: Wiley-Blackwell, 1996). Cawson, Alan. Corporatism and Political Theory (London: Blackwell, 1986). Christensen, Mette Torp. “Fra akademiske idealer til radikalisering og studentopprør – En studie av Det Norske Studentersamfund ved Universitetet i Oslo 1963-1972”, master thesis [hovedoppgave] (Oslo: University of Oslo, 2002). Christensen, Tom, Per Lægreid and Hans Robert Zuna. Profesjoner i regjeringsapparatet 1976-1996 Økende heterogenitet – effekter og implikasjoner (Oslo: Makt- og demokratiutredningens rapportserie, 2001). Clark, Burton R. “Comments on the review essays by Ragnvald Kalleberg and Guy Neave,” Comparative Perspectives on Universities ed. Ragnvald Kalleberg & al. (Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing, 2000). Clark, Burton R. Creating Entrepreneurial Universities: Organizational Pathways of Transformation (New York: Emerald, 1998.

References │ 551

Clark, Burton R. Places of Inquiry: Research and Advanced Education in Modern Universities (Berkley: University of California Press, 1995). Clark, Burton R. The Higher Education System. Academic Organization in CrossNational Perspective (Berkley: University of California Press, 1983). Clark, Burton R., ed. The Research Foundations of Graduate Education: Germany, Britain, France, United States, Japan (Berkley: University of California Press, 1993). Clark, William. Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). Collett, John Peter. 1811 – 1870. Universitetet i nasjonen, Vol. 1, Universitetet i Oslo 1811 – 2011, ed. John Petter Collett (Oslo: Unipub, 2011). Collett, John Petter. “Historiens kvalitetsreformer,” Morgenbladet, 4 April 2003. Collini, Stefan. What Are Universities For? (London: Penguin, 2012) Collins, Randall. The Credential Society: An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification. Cornel DaCosta and K. Moti Gokulsing, A Compact for Higher Education (London: Ashgate, 2000). Cozzens, Susan E. “What do Citations Count? The Rhetoric-First Model,” Scientometrics 15.5-6 (1989). Cuban, Larry. How Scholars Trumped Teachers: Change Without Reform in University Curriculum, Teaching, and Research, 1890-1990 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999) 48. Dahl, Ottar. Grunntrekk i historieforskningens metodelære (Oslo. Universitetsforlaget, 1967). Dannelsesutvalget, Kunnskap og dannelse foran et nytt århundre. Innstilling fra Dannelsesutvalget for høyere utdanning. Downloaded on 15.06.2010 from http://www.uib.no/filearchive/innstilling-dannelsesutvalget.pdf. Defillippi, Robert J., and Michael B. Arthur. “The Boundaryless Career: A Competency-Based Perspective,” Journal of Organizational Behavior 15.4 (1994). DiMaggio, Paul J., and Walter W. Powell, “Introduction,” The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, eds. Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). Droysen, Johann Gustav. Outline of the Principles of History (NY: Ginn, 1897). Drucker, Peter. “The Rise of the Knowledge Society,” The Wilson Quarterly 17.2 (1993). Drucker, Peter. Post-Capitalist Society (NY: Routledge, 1993). Drucker, Peter. The Age of Discontinuity (NY: Harper & Row, 1969).

552 │ The transformation of humanities education

Durkheim, Émile. The Division of Labor in Society (London: Free Press, 1964 [1893]). Eby, L. T., M. Butts and A Lockwood. “Predicators of success in the era of the boundaryless career,” Journal of Organizational Behaviour. 24 (2003). Eckhoff, Lorentz. Den nye litteraturforskning. Syntetisk metode (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1930). Eide, Kjell. “Akademikersamfunnet, svar” Sosialøkonomen 9 (1977). Eide, Kjell. “Norsk forskning – hvor står vi?” In VG for 3.7.1958. Eide, Kjell. “Fra norsk forskningspolitikks barndom: Forskningsrådenes fellesorgan som policyorgan,” Forskningspolitisk rådgivning – erfaringer og synspunkter, eds. Hans Skoie and Randi Søgnen (Oslo: NIFU, 1997). Eide, Kjell. “Norsk høyere utdanningspolitikk i internasjonalt perspektiv” Review of Ivar Bleiklie, Roar Høstaker og Agnete Vabø: Policy and Practice in Higher Education, Forskningspolitikk 4 (2000), 22. Eide, Kjell. Departementets lille kanarifugl, (Oslo: mimeo, 1985). Eide, Kjell. OECD og norsk utdanningspolitikk (Oslo: Utredningsinstituttet for forskning og høyere utdanning, 1995). Eide, Kjell. Vitenskapeliggjøring av politikk (Oslo, Utredningsinstituttet for forskning og høyere utdanning, 1995). Ekrheim, Helga Sverdrup, Olav Ekrheim, and Håkon Norås, eds. Norske filologer og realister (Stavanger: Otto Floors arvinger, 1950). Eliot, T.S. “The Perfect Critic,” The Sacred Wood (London: Faber & Faber, 1997). Enebakk, Vidar. Vitenskapsstudier (Oslo: Fagbokforlaget, 2008). Engelstad, Fredrik. “Arbeidet,” Det norske samfunn, eds. Lars Alldén, Natalie Rogoff Ramsøy, and Mariken Vaa (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1986). Eriksen, Tore Linné, ed. Det politiske universitet. En bok om studenter og makt (Oslo: Pax, 1969). Esmark, Anders. “Network governance between publics and elites” Working Paper 2003:2 (Roskilde: Roskilde Centre for Democratic Network Governance, 2003). Etzioni-Havaley, Eva. The Elite Connection: Problems and Potential of Western Democracy (London: Polity, 1993). Etzkowitz, Henry, and Loet Leydesdorff. Universities and the Global Knowledge Economy: A Triple Helix of University-Industry-Government Relations (London: Pinter, 1997). Fehr, Drude von der, Anna G. Jonasdottir and Bente Rosenbeck, eds., Is There a Nordic Feminism? Nordic feminist thought on Culture and Society (London: Routledge, 1998).

References │ 553

Fekjær, Silje N., Roy A. Nielsen and Bjarte Aagnes. Utdannet og dannet – og så? Arbeidsmarkedet for hovedfagskandidater fra Det historisk-filosofiske fakultet ved Universitetet i Oslo (Oslo: Department of Sociology and Social Geography, UiO, 2000). Fish, Stanley. Save the World on Your Own Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) Flexner, Abraham. “Is social work a profession?” Research on Social Work Practice 11 (2001 [1915]). Forland, Astrid, and Anders Haaland, eds. Universitetet i Bergens historie, 2 vols. (Bergen: Universitetet i Bergen, 1996). Forland, Astrid. “Studentvekst of politisk høgkonjunktur,” Universitetet i Bergens historie, Vol 1, eds. Astrid Forland and Anders Haaland (Bergen: University of Bergen, 1996). Forskningsrådenes fellesutvalg. Beretning for perioden 1954-57 (Oslo: FFO, 1957) 14. Forskningsrådenes fellesutvalg. Om tilgangen på og behovet for akademisk arbeidskraft (Oslo: Forskningsrådenes fellesutvalg, 1957) 9-10. Foucault, Michel. “What is an author?” Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology, ed. Jammed D. Faubion (NY, New York Press, 1998). Foucault, Michel. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977-1978 (NY: Picador, 2007). Foucault, Michel. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979 (NY: Picador, 2010). Freeman, Richard B. The Overeducated American (NY: Academic Press, 1976). Freidson, Eliot. Profession of Medicine: A Study of the Sociology of Applied Knowledge (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1970). Freidson, Eliot. Professionalism, the third logic: On the practice of knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). Friedland, Roger, and Robert R. Alford, “Bringing society back in: Symbols, practices, and institutional contradictions,” The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, eds. Walter W. Powell and Paul DiMaggio, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). Frønes, Ivar, and Lise Kjølsrød. “Introduksjon”, Det norske samfunn eds. Ivar Frønes and Lise Kjølsrød (Oslo: Gyldendal, 2004). Fulsås, Narve. “Norway: The Strength of National History,” Nordic Historiography in the 20th Century, eds. Frank Meyer and Jan Eivind Myhre (Oslo: UiO/Tid og Tanke Publication Series, 2000). Fulsås, Narve. Universitetet i Tromsø 25 år (Tromsø: Universitetet i Tromsø, 1993).

554 │ The transformation of humanities education

Fure, Jorun Sem. 1911-1940. Inn i forskningsalderen, Vol 3, Universitetet i Oslo 1811-2011, ed. John Petter Collett (Oslo: Unipub, 2011). Furre, Berge. Norsk historie 1905-1990. Vårt hundreår (Oslo: Samlaget, 1992). Führ, Christoph. “The German University – Basically Healthy or Rotten?” European Education 25.4 (1994). Føllesdal, Dagfinn. “Næss, examen philosophicum og Filosofisk institutt,” Norsk filosofisk tidsskrift 1-2 (2002) 54. Førland, Tor Egil, and Trine Rogg Korsvik, eds. 1968. Opprør og motkultur på norsk (Oslo: Pax Forlag, 2006). Gibbons, Michael, & al. The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies (London: Sage, 1994). Gornitzka, Åse. “What is the Use of Bologna in National Reform? The Case of Norwegian Quality Reform in Higher Education,” Creating the European Area of Higher Education. Voices from the Periphery, ed. Voldemar Tomusk (Berlin: Springer, 2007). Grepperud, Gunnar. Allmennlærerern – rolle og status (Oslo: University of Oslo, unpublished thesis, 1980). Griffiths, Ron. “Knowledge production and the research-teaching nexus: the case of the built environment disciplines,” Studies in Higher Education, 29.6 (2004). Grove, Knut, and Svein Michelsen. “Lektorene: Lærere, embetsmenn og funksjonærer,” Profesjonshistorier, eds. Rune Slagstad and Jan Messel (Oslo: Pax, 2014). Grønlie, Tore, Yngve Flo and Tone Svinningen. Sentraladministrasjonens historie etter 1945. Vol. 1. Ekspansjonsbyråkratiets tid 1945-1980 (Bergen: Fagbokforlaget, 2009). Grøtta, Vidar. “Higher Education Policymaking in Scandinavia: Committees of Inquiry and Permanent Councils as Structural Couplings between Politics and Academia.” HEIK Working Paper Series 2014/01 (Oslo: University of Oslo, 2014). Gullvåg, Ingemund. “Arne Næss og Oslo-skolen i norsk filosofi,” Filosofi på norsk I, ed. Inga Bostad (Oslo: Pax, 1995). Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich. The Powers of Philology (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003). Gumport, Patricia. “Academic Restructuring: Organizational Change and Institutional Imperatives, Higher Education” The International Journal of Higher Education and Educational Planning 39 (2000). Gundersen, Bjarne Riiser. Da postmodernismen kom til Norge (Oslo: Flamme, 2016).

References │ 555

Gunness, Hebe, & al., Forskerrekruttering i Norge – status og komparative perspektiver (Oslo: NIFU STEP, 2007) 50. Haarberg, Jon. “Da den allmenne litteraturvitenskapen kom til Norge og fant seg en plass mellom historien og teorien,” Norsk litteraturvitenskapelig tidsskrift 2 (2001). Haarberg, Jon. “Herakles på skilleveien – Litteraturvitenskapen mellom scientismen og humanismen,” Norsk litteraturvitenskapelig tidsskrift 15.1 (2012). Habermas, Jürgen. Towards a Rational Society. Student Protests, Science, and Politics (Cambridge: Polity, 1987). Hageberg, Otto. “Framfor nytt. Aktuell refleksjon og faghistorisk vandring,” Nordlit 16 (2004). Hagemann, Gro. Skolefolk. Lærernes historie i Norge (Oslo: Ad Notam Gyldendal, 1992). Hall, D.T. “Protean Careers of the 21st Century.” The Academy of Management Executive 10.4 (1996). Hall, D.T. Careers in organizations (Glenview: Scott, Foresman, 1976). Halvorsen, Arne . Et universitet i vekst (Bergen: Universitetsforlaget, 1967). Hanevik, Arne. Fra litteraturhistorie til litteraturvitenskap. Allmenn litteraturvitenskap ved universitetet i Oslo. Skisse av en faghistorie (Oslo: Unipub, 2001). Hanisch, Thor Einar. “Akademikersamfunnet, svar” Sosialøkonomen 5 (1977). Hansen, Marianne Nordli, and Arne Mastekaasa. “Utdanning, ulikhet og forandring,” Det norske samfunn, eds. Ivar Frønes and Lise Kjølsrød (Oslo: Gyldendal, 2004). Hansen, Marianne Nordli. “Utdanningspolitikk og ulikhet: Rekruttering til høyere utdanning 1985-1996,” Tidssskrift for samfunnsforskning 2 (1999). Hattie, John, and H. W. Marsh. “The Relationship between Research and Teaching: A Meta-Analysis,” Review of Educational Research 66.4 (1996). Haukaas, Kaare, and Jorunn Gule. Francis Bull. Bibliografi (Tromsø: Det norske språk- og litteraturselskap, 1998). Helland, Stein R., and Jarle Simonsen. “De nordiske fagkonferanser for historisk metode 1965-1983,” Norwegian translation of article published in Scandinavian Journal of History 9 (1984), downloaded on 3 October 2016 from http://www.stenrhelland.com/tag/nordiske-historikersamarbeid/ Helsvig, Kim G. “Universitetets lærerutdanning i spenningsfeltet mellom akademia og skolen,” Universitetet og lærerutdanningen: historiske perspektiver, eds. Geir Knudsen and Trude Evenshaug (Oslo: Unipub, 2008). Helsvig, Kim G. 1975-2011. Mot en ny samfunnskontrakt? Vol 6., Universitetet i Oslos historie, ed. John Peter Collett (Oslo: Unipub, 2011).

556 │ The transformation of humanities education

Helsvig, Kim G. Elitisme på norsk. Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi 1945-2007 (Oslo: Novus, 2007). Helsvig, Kim G. Pedagogikkens grenser (Oslo: Abstrakt, 2005). Hernes, Gudmund. “Kan man ha ambisjoner i Norge?” In Dagbladet on 31 December 1986. Hernes, Gudmund. Makt og avmakt (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1982 [1975]), Hernes, Gudmund. Makt og styring (Oslo: Gyldendal forlag, 1983). Hjeltnes, Guri, ed. Norsk presses historie 3: Imperiet vakler 1945-2010 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2010). Hobsbawn, Eric, and Terence O. Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Hoelseth, Bjørn, ed. Ideologien bak studentopprøret. Lærere og studenter drøfter ny-marxisme, universitet og samfunn (Oslo: Elinaard, 1969). Holzer, Boris, Fatima Kastner and Tobias Werron, eds., From globalization to world society: Neo-institutional and systems theoretical perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2015). Hughes, Everett C. “Institutional office and the person,” Men and Their Work (London: Collier-Macmillian, 1958). Hughes, Mark. “The myth of research and teaching relationships in universities,” Reshaping the University, ed. Ronald Barnett (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2005) Høstaker, Roar. University Life; A Study of the Relations between Political Processes and Institutional Conditions in Two University Faculties (Bergen: Unpublished PhD dissertation at the University of Bergen, 1997). Jakobsen, Kjetil. “Maktutredning: Kunnskapsregime eller motmakt?” Kunnskapsmakt, eds. Siri Meyer and Sissel Myklebust (Oslo: Gyldendal Akademisk, 2002). James, William. “The PhD Octopus.” The Harvard Monthly 36 (1903). Johansen, Jørgen Dines, Tarald Rasmussen, and Sigbrit Swahn. Evaluering av forskningsmiljøet ved Avdeling for allmenn litteraturvitenskap ved Universitetet i Oslo 1981-1990 (Oslo: UiO, 1992). Johansson committee, the. Rådsstruktur og rådsfunksjoner i høgre utdanning : innstilling fra utvalg oppnevnt av Kirkeutdanningsog forskningsdepartementet 29. september (Oslo: Dep, 1995). Johnson Jr., Mauritz. “Definitions and Models in Curriculum Theory,” Educational Theory, 17 (1967). Jordan, Grant. “The Pluralism of Pluralism: An Anti-theory?” Political Studies 38.2 (1990).

References │ 557

Jordheim, Helge and Tore Rem, eds. Hva skal vi med humaniora? (Oslo: Fritt Ord, 2014). Journal of Organizational Behavior 15.4 (1994). Special issue on “boundaryless” careers. Judt, Tony. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (London: Vintage, 2010) Jørgensen, Ken Hugo, ed. Karriereveiledning – En kort innføring i teori og praksis (Oslo: Unipub, 2004). Kaada, Birger. “Staten forsømmer norsk forskning” in VG for 3.20.1958, p. 3. Kalleberg, Ragnvald & al, eds. Comparative Perspectives on Universities (Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing, 2000). Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. When Giants Learn to Dance (NY: Touchstone, 1990). Kariwo, Michael, Tatiana Gounko, and Musembi Nungu, eds. A Comparative Analysis of Higher Education Systems. Issues, Challenges and Dilemmas (Boston: Sense, 2013). Karseth, Berit. “Curriculum Restructuring in Higher Education After the Bologna Process: A New Pedagogic Regime?” Revista Española de Educación Comparada 12 (2006). Kittang, Atle. “Allmenn litteraturvitskap – finst den framleis?” Nordlit 16 (2004). Kjeldstadli, Knut. “History as science,” Making a historical culture. Historiography in Norway, eds. William H. Hubbard & al. (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1995) Kjøde, Jacob. Organisasjonsdød. En studie av Forskningsrådenes fellesutvalg (Bergen: mimeo, 1976). Kleppe committee, the. Innstilling om den videre utbygging av våre universiteter og høgskoler fra Universitets og høgskolekomiteen av 1960 (Oslo: Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet, 1960). Knudsen, Geir, and Trude Evenshaug, eds. Universitetet og lærerutdanningen. Historiske perspektiver (Oslo: Unipub: 2008). Kramer, Jürgen. “Modern (national) philologies and European languages,” Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning, eds. Michael Byram and Adelheid Hu (NY: Routledge, 2013). Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). Kyllingstad, Jon R., and Thor Inge Rørvik, 1870-1911. Vitenskapens universitet. Vol 2, Universitetet i Oslo 1811-2011, ed. John Petter Collett (Oslo: Uniped, 2011). Kyllingstad, Jon Røyne ‘Menneskeåndens universalitet’: Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning 1917-1940; ideene, institusjonen og forskningen (Oslo: Unipub, 2008).

558 │ The transformation of humanities education

Kyvik, Svein, ed. Fra yrkesskole til universitet? Endringsprosesser i høgskolesektoren (Bergen: Fagbokforlaget, 2002). Labaree, David F. “Mutual Subversion: A Short History of the Liberal and the Professional in American Higher Education,” History of Education Quarterly 46.1 (2006). Lambert, Peter. “The professionalization and institutionalization of history,” Writing History. Theory and Practice. 2 ed. eds. Stefan Berger & al. (London: Bloomsbury, 2010). Langholm, Sivert. “Fagkonferanser om historisk metodelære,” [Swedish] Historisk tidskrift 39.2 (1970). Langholm, Sivert. “The Infrastructure of History,” Making a Historical Culture. Historiography in Norway, ed. William H. Hubbard (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1995). Langholm, Sivert. “Omkring et oligarkis opprinnelse og uforbederlighet. Fra historikernes organisasjonshistorie,” Revolusjon og resonnement. Festskrift til Kåre Tønnesson på 70-årsdagen den 1. januar 1996, eds. Øystein Rian & al. (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1995). Lattuca, Lisa R., and Joan S. Stark. Shaping the College Curriculum (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997). Lie, Einar. Norsk økonomisk politikk etter 1905 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2012). Lindbekk, Tore. Mobilitets- og stillingsstrukturer innenfor tre akademiske profesjoner 1910-63 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1967). Linn, Andrew A. Johan Storm: dhi grétest pràktikal liNgwist in thi werld (Oxford: Philological Society, 2004). Longum, Leif. “Norsk” som forsknings- og studiefag. Historiske perspektiver – aktuell utfordringer (Oslo: LNU/Cappelen, 1989). Lowi, Theodore. The End of Liberalism (New York: Norton, 1979). Luhmann, Niklas, and Karl-Eberhard Schorr, Problems of Reflection in the System of Education (NY: Waxman, 2000). Luhmann, Niklas. “Funksjon og kausalitet” [”Function and Causality”], Sosiologisk teori, eds. Tore Bakken and Eric Lawrence Wiik (Oslo: Akademika, 2013). Luhmann, Niklas. “Globalization or World Society? How to conceive of modern society,” International Review of Sociology 7.1 (1997). Luhmann, Niklas. “How Can the Mind Participate in Communication?” Theories of Distinction: Redescribing the Descriptions of Modernity, ed. William Rasch (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). Luhmann, Niklas. “The autopoiesis of social systems,” Sociocybernetic paradoxes, eds. F. Geyer and J. van der Zouwen (London: Sage, 1986) 172-192.

References │ 559

Luhmann, Niklas. “The Ecology of Ignorance,” Observations on Modernity, eds. Timothy Lenoir and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998). Luhmann, Niklas. “The Evolutionary Differentiation Between Society and Interaction,” The Micro-macro Link, ed. Jeffrey C. Alaxander (Berkley: University of Califoria Press, 1992). Luhmann, Niklas. “What is Communication?” Theories of Distinction, ed. William Rasch (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Luhmann, Niklas. “The Coding of the legal System,” State, Law, Economy as Autopoietic Systems. Regulation and Autonomy in a New Perspective, ed. G. Teubner and A. Febbrajo (Milano: Guiffrè, 1992). Luhmann, Niklas. Das Erziehungssystem der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2002). Luhmann, Niklas. Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft. Vol. 2 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1997). Luhmann, Niklas. Ecological Communication (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). Luhmann, Niklas. Introduction to Systems Theory, ed. Dirk Baecker (Cambridge: Polity, 2013). Luhmann, Niklas. Love: A Sketch (Cambridge: Polity, 2014) 4ff. Luhmann, Niklas. Political Theory in the Welfare State (New York: De Greuter, 1990). Luhmann, Niklas. Risk: A Sociological Theory (London: Transaction, 2005). Luhmann, Niklas. Samfundets uddannelsessystem (Copenhagen: Reitzels, 2006). Luhmann, Niklas. Social Systems, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995). Luhmann, Niklas. The Theory of Society, Vol 1 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012). Luhmann, Niklas. The Theory of Society, Vol 2 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013). Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition. A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). Maassen, Peter. “Higher Education Research: The Hourglass Structure and its Implications,” Higher Education Research: Its Relationship to Policy and Practice, eds. Ulrich Teichler and Jan Sadlak (Bingley: Emerald, 2000). Mangset, Marte. The discipline of historians. A comparative study of historians’ constructions of the discipline of history in English, French and Norwegian universities (Bergen: University of Bergen/Sciences Po, 2009). Maturana, Humberto R., and Francesco J. Varela, The Tree of Knowledge. The Biological Roots of Human Understanding (Boston: Shambhala, 1992).

560 │ The transformation of humanities education

McClelland, Charles. State, Society, and University in Germany 1700-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Mead, Margaret. Culture and Commitment: A Study of the Generation Gap (NY: Doubleday, 1970). Menand, Louis. The Marketplace of Ideas. Reform and Resistance in the American University (NY: Norton, 2010) Mergenhagen, Paula. “Doing the career schuffle.” American Demographics 13.11 (1991). Merton, Robert K. “Insiders and outsiders: A chapter in the sociology of knowledge” American Journal of Sociology 78 (1972). Merton, Robert K. “The Matthew Effect in Science,” Science, 159.3810 (1968). Merton, Robert K. “The Matthew Effect, in Science II. Cumulative Advantage and the Symbolism of Intellectual Property,” On Social Structure and Science, ed. Piotr Sztompka (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Merton, Robert K. The Sociology of Science, Theoretical and Empirical Investigations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979) Meyer, John W. “The University in Europe and the World: Twentieth Century Expansion,” World Society. The Writings of John W. Meyer, eds. Georg Krücken and Gili S. Drori (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Meyer, John W. World Society: The Writings of John W. Meyer, ed. by Georg Krücken and Gili S. Drori, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Meyer, John W., and Evan Schoefer, “The University in Europe and the World: Twentieth Century Expansion,” Towards a Multiversity? Universities Between Global Trends and National Traditions, ed. Georg Krücken & al. (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2006). Michelsen, Stein. Utdanningsekspansjon og utdanningspolitikk (Bergen: mimeo, 1992). Mjøset, Lars. “Den norske oljeøkonomiens integrasjon i verdensøkonomien,” Det norske samfunn eds. Ivar Frønes and Lise Kjølsrød (Oslo: Gyldendal, 2004). Modalsli committee, the. Innstilling om den sentrale forvaltnings organisasjon (Oslo: Engers, 1970). Moen, Kjetil. Ungdomsundersøkelsen 1990. 17-24 åringenes tilpassing til arbeidsliv og utdanning m.m. (Oslo: Arbeidsdirektoratet, 1991). Moen, Ole O. “American Studies in Norway: Past and Present,” European journal of American studies [Online], 1.1 (2006), downloaded on 6 June 2014 from: http://ejas.revues.org/1083 Moene, Karl Ove, and Michael Wallerstein. “Solidaristic Wage Bargaining,” Nordic Journal of Political Economy 22 (1995).

References │ 561

Moore, Celia, Hugh Gunz, and Douglas Hall. “Tracing the Historical Roots of Career Theory in Management and Organization Studies,” Handbook of Career Studies, eds. Hugh Gunz and Maury Peiperl (NY: Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 2007). Moren, Jorolf, ed. Den kollegiale forvaltning. Råd og utvalg i sentraladministrasjonen (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1974). Morgenstierne, Bredo von. Det kongelige Fredriks universitet 1811-1911 (Christiania: Aschehoug, 1911). Myhre, Jan Eivind. “‘A strong common professional identity.’ Professionalisation and the creation of a discipline in Norwegian historical scholarship in the 20th Century,” Nordic Historiography in the 20th Century, eds. F. Meyer and Jan Eivind Myhre (Oslo: Tid & tanke, 2000). Myhre, Jan Eivind. Mange veier til historien. Om historiefagets og historikernes historie (Oslo: Fagbokforlaget, 2009). Myhre, Reidar. Den norske skoles utvikling: Idé og virkelighet (Oslo: Ad Notam Gyldendal, 1998). NAVF, Akademiske studier. En guide for gymnasiaster (Oslo: NAVF, 1960). NAVF, Arbeidsmarkedet tre år etter eksamen for akademikere fra vårkullet 1974 (Oslo: NAVF, 1978). NAVF, Arbeidsmuligheter for filologer. Noen regneeksempler over fremtidig behov og tilgang (Oslo: NAVF, 1976). NAVF, Evaluation of English Studies in Norway (Oslo: NAVF, 1991) 15. NAVF, Humaniora-utredningen. Del 10: Rapport om status og perspektiver i humanistisk forskning i Norge i 1973 (Oslo: NAVF, 1975). NAVF, Humaniora-utredningen. Del 8. Filosofi og idéhistorie i Norge (Oslo: NAVF, 1975). NAVF, Humanistisk forskning i Norge. Vol. 2. Eigenart, målsetjing og utviklingstendensar (Oslo: NAVF, 1984). NAVF, Motivasjon, studium, yrke (Oslo: NAVF, 1982). NAVF, Profesjonalisering: Samfunnsbehov eller gruppeinteresse? (Oslo: NAVF, 1977). NAVF, Prognose over tilgangen på og behovet for filologer i årene 1960-1975 (Oslo: NAVF, 1960). NAVF, Rekruttering til humanistiske fag. Innstilling frå eit utvalg under rådet for humanistisk forsking i NAVF (Oslo: NAVF, 1978). NAVF, Studiemotivasjon. Delrapport fra prosjektet Yrkesretting – retorikk eller realitet? (Oslo: NAVF, 1988). NAVF, Ti år etter eksamen. Yrkeskarriere og arbeidssituasjon. Kandidater fra universiteter og distriktshøyskoler våren 1974 (Oslo: NAVF, 1986).

562 │ The transformation of humanities education

Neuman, Ruth, and Tony Becher, “Teaching and Learning in their Disciplinary Contexts: A Conceptual Analysis,” Studies in Higher Education 27.4 (2002). NFR, Evaluering av norsk historiefaglig forskning. Bortenfor nasjonen i tid og rom: fortidens makt og fremtidens muligheter i norsk historieforskning (Oslo: NFR, 2008). NFR, Philosophy and history of ideas in Norway. Evaluation of research 20042008 (Oslo: NFR, 2009). Nielsen, Jørgen Erik. “The History of English Studies in Denmark,” European English Studies: Contributions towards the History of a Discipline, eds. Balz Ebgler and Renate Haas (London: The English Association, 2000). NIFU, Kandidatundersøkelsen 2001 (Oslo: NIFU, 2002). Nordström, Kjell, and Jonas Ridderstråle. Funky business: talent makes capital dance (Stockholm: BookHouse, 1999). Norwegian Official Report, NOU 1984: 23 Om samenes rettstilling. Norwegian official report, NOU 1988: 28 Med viten og vilje. Norwegian official report, NOU 1989: 5 En bedre organisert stat. Norwegian official report, NOU 1992:26 En nasjonal strategi for økt sysselsetting i 1990-årene. Norwegian official report, NOU 1993: 24 Lov om universiteter og høgskoler. Norwegian official report, NOU 2015: 8 Fremtidens skole. Fag og fagfornyelse. Nussbaum, Martha. Not For Profit. Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). Nyborg, Per. Universitets- og høgskolesamarbeid i en brytningstid. Femti års utvikling (Oslo: Unipub, 2007). Næss, Arne. En del elementære logiske emner, 11th ed. (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1982 [1941]). Olsen, Johan P. Organized Democracy (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1983). Olsen, Terje Bruen. Norske doktorgrader ved årtusenskiftet. En oversikt over utviklingen i det 19. og 20.århundre, med hovedvekt på 1990-årene (Oslo: NIFU STEP, 2000). Ottosen committee, the. Innstilling om videreutdanning for artianere m.v., Vol. 1 (Oslo: Enger, 1966). Ottosen committee, the. Innstilling om videreutdanning for artianere m.v., Vol. 2 (Oslo, Enger, 1967). Ottosen committee,the. Innstilling om videreutdanning for artianere m.v., Vol. 5, (Bergen, Reklametrykk,1970). Ottosen, Rune. Fra fjærpenn til internett. Journalister i organisasjon og samfunn (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1996). Parliamentary record, Innst. S. nr. 107 (1962-63).

References │ 563

Parliamentary record, Innst. S. nr. 272 (1974-75). Parsons, Talcott, and George M. Platt. The American University (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973). Parsons, Talcott. “The Professional Complex,” Action Theory and the Human Conditions (NY: Free Press, 1979). Parsons, Talcott. The Social System, (London: Routledge, 1970). Pedersen, Olaf. The First Universities: Studium Generale and the Origins of University Education in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Powell, Walter W., and Paul J. DiMaggio, eds., The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). Pryser, Tore. “Noen konsekvenser av fagpolitikken i 1980-åra,” Historisk tidsskrift 68 (1989). Ramsøy, Natalie Rogoff, ed. Det norske samfunn (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1972 [1968]). Randall Collins, The Credential Society: An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification (NY: Academic Press, 1979). Rhodes, R. A. W. Understanding Governance (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997). Ridder-Symoens, Hilde de, ed. A History of the University in Europe. Vol. I: Universities in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Ridder-Symoens, Hilde de, ed. A History of the University in Europe. Vol. II: Universities in Early Modern Europe 1500-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Ringdal, Nils Johan, and Terje Holtet Larsen. Kardinaler og kremmere. Norske forleggere gjennom hundre år. Den norske forleggerforening 1895-1995 (Oslo: Den norske forleggerforening, 1995). Rokkan, Stein. “Numerisk demokrati og korpotativ pluralisme. To beslutningskanaler i norsk politikk,” Stat, nasjon, klasse: Essays i politisk sosiologi, ed. Bernt Hagtvedt (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1987). Rokkan, Stein. “Norway: Numerical Democracy and Corporate Pluralism,” Political Oppositions in Western Democracies, ed. R.A. Dahl (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966). Rokkan, Stein. Citizens, Elections, Parties (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1970). Rosa, Hartmut. Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity (NY: Columbia University Press, 2013). Rossvær, Viggo. “Fra Oslo-skole til studentrevolusjon,” Filosofi på norsk II, ed. Inga Bostad (Oslo: Pax, 1995).

564 │ The transformation of humanities education

Rothblatt, Sheldon. “Curiculum, students, education,” A History of the University in Europe: Volume 4, Universities since 1945, ed. Walter Rüegg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Rothblatt, Sheldon. “The Idea of the Idea of a University and Its Antithesis,” Conversazione (Bundoora: La Trobe University, 1989). Rothblatt, Sheldon. “ The Limbs of Osiris: Liberal Education in the Englishspeaking world,” The European and American University since 1800, eds. Björn Wittrock and Sheldon Rothblatt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Rovde, Olav. “Borgarleg samling,” Vekst og velstand. Norsk politisk historie 19451965. Regjering og opposisjon under Arbeiderpartistyre, ed. Trond Bergh & al. (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1977). Rudeng, Erik. “Kulturen og arbeidslivet,” Norsklærereren 2 (1977), reprinted in Kulturliv. Essays. (Oslo: Fagbokforlaget, 1982). Rule, Ian A.C. A Philosophical Inquiry into the Meaning(s) of “Curriculum (NY: Unpublished PhD Thesis New York University, 1973). Rørvik, Thor Inge. Historien om examen philosophicum 1675-1983 (Oslo: Forum for universitetshistorie, 1999). Sandved, Arthur O. Fra “kremmersprog” til verdensspråk. Engelskfaget ved Universitetet i Oslo 1945-1957, Vol 2, (Oslo: Unipub, 2002). Sars, Ernst. Udsigt over den norske Historie, 4 vols. (Oslo, Universitetsforlaget, 1967 [1873-1891]). Schmitter, Philippe C. “Still the century of corporatism?” Rev. Polit 36 (1974). Schultz, Theodore. Investment in Human Capital: The Role of Education and of Research (New York: Free Press, 1971). Searle, John. Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969). Seierstad, Ståle. “Norsk økonomi,” Det norske samfunn, ed. Natalie Rogoff Ramsøy, 122. Seip, Jens Arup. Fra embedsmannsstat til ettpartistat og andre essays (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1963). Seip, Åsmund Arup. Lektorene : profesjon, organisasjon og politikk 1890-1980 (Oslo: Fafo, 1990). Sejersted, Francis. “Norsk historisk forskning ved inngangen til 1990-årene – et oppgjør med den metodologiske individualisme,” Historisk tidsskrift 4 (1989). Sejersted, Francis. Norsk idyll? (Oslo: Pax, 2003). Sejersted, Francis. The Age of Social Democracy: Norway and Sweden in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011). Sennett, Richard. The Corrosion of Character. The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism (NY: Norton, 2000).

References │ 565

Shapin, Steven. The Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Simensen, Aud Marit. “Paradigmeskifter i engelskfaget. Men hvor kom ideene fra?” Universitetet og lærerutdanningen, eds. Geir Knutsen and Trude Evenshaug (Oslo: Unipub, 2008). Skirbekk, Gunnar. “Vi er mange – og aparte,” in Inga Bostad, Filosofi på norsk I, 27. Skirbekk, Gunnar. Nihilisme? Eit ungt menneskes forsøk på å orientere seg (Oslo: Grundt Tanum, 1958). Skjervheim, Hans. “Deltakar og tilskodar,” Deltakar og tilskodar og andre essays (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1996 [1957]). Skjervheim, Hans. Objectivism and the Study of Man (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1959). Skodvin, Ole Jacob. Den store utfordringen! Rekruttering til de humanistiske vitenskapene fram mot år 2010 (Oslo: NAVFs utredingsinstitutt. 1989). Skoie, Hans. “Norsk forskningspolitikk- en OECD-kopi?” Historisk tidsskrift 2 (2008). Skoie, Hans. “Offentlig politikk for universiteter og høyskoler 1945-1988 – hovedtrekk,” Norwegian Official Report, NOU 1988:28 Med viten og vilje. Skoie, Hans. En norsk forskningsorganisasjon tar form. En oversikt (Oslo: NIFU, 2013) Slagstad, Rune, ed. Positivisme, dialektikk, materialisme. Den norske debatten om samfunnsvitenskapens teori (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1976) Slagstad, Rune. “Kunnskapens hus i det norske system,” Norwegian Official Report, NOU 2000:18 Frihet med ansvar. Om høgre utdanning og forskning i Norge. Slagstad, Rune. “Profesjonene i norsk samfunnsforskning,” Profesjonshistorier, eds. Rune Slagstad and Jan Messel (Oslo: Pax, 2014). Slagstad, Rune. De nasjonale strateger (Oslo: Pax, 1998). Slaughter, Sheila. “Class, race and gender and the construction of post-secondary curricula in the United States: social movement, professionalization and political economic theories of curricular change”, Journal of Curriculum Studies 29.1 (1997). Small, Helen. The Value of the Humanities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Smeby, Jens-Christian. “Knowledge Production and Knowledge Transmission. The interaction between research and teaching at universities,” Teaching in Higher Education, 3:1 (1998). Spencer-Brown, George. Laws of form (London: Cognizer, 1994).

566 │ The transformation of humanities education

Statens rasjonaliseringsdirektorat. Fra idé til utredning – en håndbok for oppdragsgiver og utreder (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1985). Statens rasjonaliseringsdirektorat. Planlegging og utførelse av utredningsarbeid (Oslo: Statens rasjonaliseringsdirektorat, 1980). Statens rasjonaliseringsdirektorat. Søkelyset mot komiteen (Oslo: Grundt Tanum, 1959). Statistics Norway. Historisk statistikk 1994 (Oslo: SSB, 1995). Steen, Sverre. Det frie Norge (Oslo: Cappelen, 1951-62). Stehr, Nico. Knowledge Societies (London: Sage, 1994). Stichweh, Rudolf. “Comparing Systems Theory and Sociological NeoInstitutionalism: Explaining Functional Differentiation” From Globalization to World Society. Neo-Institutional and Systems-Theoretical Perspectives, eds., Boris Holzer, Fatima Kastner, and Tobias Werron (New York: Routledge, 2014). Stichweh, Rudolf. “Differentiation of Scientific Disciplines: Causes and Effects,” Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (Paris: UNESCO, 2003). Stichweh, Rudolf. “Niklas Luhman,” The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists: Classical Social Theorists, Volume I, eds. George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). Stichweh, Rudolf. “Profesjoner i systemteoretisk perspektiv,” Profesjonsstudier, eds. Anders Molander and Lars Inge Terum (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2008). Stichweh, Rudolf. “Professions in Modern Society,” International Review of Sociology 7.1 (1997). Stichweh, Rudolf. “The History of Scientific Disciplines,” International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences, ed. Neil J Smelser & al. (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2001). Stichweh, Rudolf. “Science in the System of World Society,” Social Science Information 35 (1996), Stichweh, Rudolf. “Self-Organization and Autopoiesis in the Development of Modern Science,” Selforganization: Portrait of a Scientific Revolution, eds. Wolfgang Krohn, Günter Küppers, and Helga Nowotny (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990). Stichweh, Rudolf. “The Form of the University,” Problems of Form, ed. Dirk Baecker (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999). Stichweh, Rudolf. “The History and Systematics of Functional Differentiation in Sociology,” Bringing Sociology to IR. World Politics as Differentiation Theory, eds. Mathias Albert, Barry Buzan, and Michael Zürn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

References │ 567

Stichweh, Rudolf. “The unity of teaching and research,” Romanticism in Science, eds. S. Poggi and M. Bossi (London: Kluwer, 1994). Stichweh, Rudolf. Wissenschaft, Universität, Professionen. Soziologische Analysen (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1994). Stichweh, Rudolf. Zur Entstehung des modernen Systems wissenschaftlicher Disziplinen – Physik in Deutschland 1740-1890 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984). Strøm, Steinar. “Akademikersamfunnet, svar,” Sosialøkonomen 8 (1977). Strøm, Steinar. “Akademikersamfunnet.” In Sosialøkonomen 3 (1977). Studenthåndboka 1949-1950 (Oslo: Universitetets studentkontor, 1949). Støren, Liv Anne, and Clara Åse Arnesen. “Et kjønnsdelt utdanningssystem,” Utdanning 2003, ed. Mona Raabe & al. (Oslo: SSB, 2003). Svensen, Lars Fr. H. Hva er filosofi? (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2003). Sæverot, Herner. “Den pedagogiske vendingen – Fra utdanningsvitenskap til allmenn pedagogikkvitenskap,” Nordic Studies in Education 4 (2014). Sørhaug, Tian. Managementalitet og autoritetens forvandling (Bergen: Fagbokforlaget, 2004). Teigen, Håvard. “ Distriktspolitikkens historie: Frå nasjonal strategi til regional fragmentering?” Plan 43.6 (2011). Teigen, Karl Halvor. “Den nye psykologien,” Klinikk og laboratorium. Psykologi i hundre år, eds. Siri Erika Gullestad, Bjørn Killingmo, and Svein Magnussen (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2009). Telhaug, Alfred O. Forsøksrådet for skoleverket: En studie i norsk skoleutvikling (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1990). Telhaug, Alfred O. Norsk skoleutvikling etter 1945. 4th ed. (Oslo: Didaktika, 1994). Telhaug, Alfred Oftedal. “Velferdsstat og utdanning i Norge – to sider av samme sak,” Utdannelseshistorie. Årbok. (Copenhagen: Selskapet for skole- og uddannelseshistorie, 2006). Teubner, Gunther, ed. Dilemmas of Law in the Welfare State (NY: de Greuter, 1988). Teubner, Gunther. “Industrial Democracy Through Law. Social Functions of Law in Institutional Innovations,” Contract and Organization. Legal Analysis in the Light of Economic and Social Theory, eds. Terrence Daintith and Gunther Teubner (Berlin: de Greuter, 1986). Teubner, Gunther. Law as an Autopoietic System (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993) 86-90. Thompson, J.D., and A. Tuden, “Strategies, Structures, and Processes of Organizational Decision,” Comparative Studies in Administration, ed. J.D. Thompson & al. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1959).

568 │ The transformation of humanities education

Thornton, Patricia and William Occasio, “Institutional logics and the historical contingency of power in organizations: Executive succession in the higher education publishing industry 1958-1990,” American Journal of Sociology 105.1 (1999). Thornton, Patricia, William Ocasio, and Michael Lounsbury, The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure and Process (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Thue, Fredrik W. “Empiricism, Pragmatism, Behaviorism: Arne Næss and the Growth of American-styled Social Research in Norway after World War II,” The Vienna Circle in the Nordic Countries, eds. Juha Manninen and Fredrich Stadler (Amsterdam: Springer, 2010). Thue, Fredrik W. “Humaniora: Fra ‘lærdomskultur’ til ‘forskersamfunn’,” Nytt norsk tidsskrift 29.2 (2012). Thue, Fredrik W. “Universitetslærerne,” Profesjonshistorier, eds. Rune Slagstad and Jan Messel (Oslo, Pax, 2014). Thue, Fredrik W. “Det historiske fagfeltets historie.” Universitetet i Bergens historie, Vol 2, eds. Astrid Forland and Anders Haaland (Bergen: Universitetet i Bergen, 1996). Thue, Fredrik W., and Kim G. Helsvig, 1945-1975. Den store transformasjonen, Vol 5, Universitetet i Oslo 1811-2011, ed. John Petter Collett (Oslo: Unipub, 2011). Tight, Malcolm. “The structure of academic research: What can citation studies tell us?” Academic Research and Researchers, eds. Angela Brew and Lisa lucas (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2009). Tight, Malcolm. Researching Higher Education, 2nd edition, (Berkshire: Open University Press, 2012). Tjønneland, Eivind. “Akademisk samfunnsansvar som universitær beredskap,” Arr 3-4 (2014). Torgersen, Ulf. Profesjoner og offentlig sektor (Oslo: TANO, 1994). Torgersen, Ulf. Profesjonssosiologi (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1972) Treschow, Niels. Menneskeværd og menneskevel (Oslo: Tanum, 1963). Trow, Martin. “The Public and Private Lives of Higher Education,” Daedalus 104.1 (1975). Trowler, Paul. Researching your own institution, British Educational Research Association, online resource (2014). Try, Sverre. Veksten i høyere utdanning: Et vellykket arbeidsmarkedspolitisk tiltak? (Oslo, NIFU, 2000). Tuighem, Paul van. “Le premier Congrès international d’Histoire littéraire et la crise des méthodes,” Modern Philology 29.2 (1931).

References │ 569

Turner, R. Steven. “The Growth of Professorial Research in Prussia, 1818 to 1848 – Causes and Context,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 3 (1971). Turner, R. Steven. “The Prussian Professoriate and the Research Imperative, 1790 – 1840,” Epistemological and Social Problems of the Sciences in the Early Nineteenth Century, eds. H. N. Jahnke and M. Otte (Dordrecht: Reider. 1981). Tvedt, Terje. “Om metodologisk nasjonalisme og den kommunikative situasjonen – en kritikk og et alternativ,” Historisk tidsskrift, 91.4 (2012). Tønnesson, Kåre D. Sentraladministrasjonens historie. Vol. 4. 1914-1940 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1979). Vabø, Agnete. Eksamens- og evalueringsformer i høyere utdanning. En sammenlignende studie. En rapport for Mjøs-utvalget og for KUF (Oslo: NIFU, 2000). Vanderstraeten, Raf. “The Social Differentiation of the Educational System,” Sociology 38.2 (2004). Vogt, Hans. “Konflikten mellom undervisning, forskning og administrasjon.” Universitetets formål, eds. Robert Hutchins & al (Oslo: Studieselskapet samfunn og næringsliv, 1968). Volckmar, Nina. Fra solidarisk samværskultur til kunnskapssolidaritet. Det sosialdemokratiske skoleprosjekt fra Sivertsen til Hernes, PhD dissertation (Trondheim: NTNU, 2004). Wallerstein, Immanuel. “Higher Education Under Attack” published on March 1st 2012 in the online publication Common Dreams, downloaded from http://www.commondreams.org/views/2012/03/01/higher-education-underattack on September 29th 2014. Wallerstein, Immanuel. The Modern World-System, vol. I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Academic Press, 1974). Weber, Max. “Bureaucracy,” From Max Weber, eds. H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (NY: Routledge, 2009 [1946]). Weber, Max. “Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions,” From Max Weber, eds. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, (NY: Oxford University Press, 1958), Weber, Max. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, ed. Talcott Parsons (NY: Free Press, 1964). Wellek, René. “The Name and Nature of Comparative Literature,” Discriminations. Further Concepts of Criticism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970). White paper, St. meld. Nr 36 (1998-1999) Om prinsipper for dimensjonering av høgre utdanning, ch. 1.

570 │ The transformation of humanities education

White paper, St. meld. nr. 19 (1986-87) Tillegg til St . meld. nr. 66 (1984-1985) Om høyere utdanning, 49. White paper, St. meld. nr. 66 (1984-1985) Om høyere utdanning. White paper, St. meld. nr. 91 (1961-62) Om den videre utbygging av universiteter og høgskoler. White Paper, St. meld. nr. 83 (1984-1985) Langstidsprogrammet 1986-1989. White paper, St. meld. nr. 11 (2008-2009) Læreren – rollen og utdanningen. White paper, St. meld. nr. 45 (1950-1951). White paper, St. meld. nr 16 (1974-75). White, Harrison C. “Where Do Markets Come From?” American Journal of Sociology 87.3 (1981). Wiers-Jenssen, Jannecke, & al. Humanister i arbeidslivet (Oslo: HiOA, 2016). Wilensky, Harold L. “The professionalization of everyone,” American Journal of Sociology 70.2 (1964). Willke, Helmut. “Societal Guidance Through Law?” State, Law and Economy as Autopoietic Systems, 370. Zhou, Xueguang. “The Institutional Logic of Occupational Prestige Ranking: Reconceptualization and Reanalyses”. American Journal of Sociology 111.1 (2005). Ziehe, Thomas. “Post-avtradisjonalisering”. Betraktninger rundt det endrede stemningsleiet som preger dagens ungdom,” Humaniorastudier i pedagogikk, ed. Tone Kvernbekk (Oslo: Abstrakt forlag, 2011).

Social Sciences Carlo Bordoni

Interregnum Beyond Liquid Modernity 2016, 136 p., pb. 19,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-3515-7 E-Book PDF: 17,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-3515-1 EPUB: 17,99 € (DE), SBN 978-3-7328-3515-7

Iain MacKenzie

Resistance and the Politics of Truth Foucault, Deleuze, Badiou March 2018, 148 p., pb. 29,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-3907-0 E-Book PDF: 26,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-3907-4 EPUB: 26,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-7328-3907-0

Franziska Meister

Racism and Resistance How the Black Panthers Challenged White Supremacy 2017, 242 p., pb. 19,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-3857-8 E-Book: 17,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-3857-2

All print, e-book and open access versions of the titles in our list are available in our online shop www.transcript-verlag.de/en!

Social Sciences Cameron Harrington, Clifford Shearing

Security in the Anthropocene Reflections on Safety and Care 2017, 196 p., hardcover 79,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-3337-5 E-Book: 79,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-3337-9

Benjamin Heim Shepard, Mark J. Noonan

Brooklyn Tides The Fall and Rise of a Global Borough February 2018, 284 p., pb. 29,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-3867-7 E-Book: 26,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-3867-1

Ilker Ataç, Gerda Heck, Sabine Hess, Zeynep Kasli, Philipp Ratfisch, Cavidan Soykan, Bediz Yilmaz (eds.)

movements. Journal for Critical Migration and Border Regime Studies Vol. 3, Issue 2/2017: Turkey’s Changing Migration Regime and its Global and Regional Dynamics 2017, 230 p., pb. 24,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-3719-9

All print, e-book and open access versions of the titles in our list are available in our online shop www.transcript-verlag.de/en!