This essay consists of an examination of the work of three thinkers who conceive of liberal education primarily in teleological terms, and, implicitly if not explicitly, attempt to offer some answer to the question: what does it mean to be fully human? John Henry Newman, T. S. Eliot, and Josef Pieper developed their understanding of liberal education from their own intellectual and religious experience, which was informed by a specifically Christian conception of the place of education in a fully developed (...) human life. I suggest that the strength of their understanding of liberal education derives from its connection to the various small cohesive religious communities to which they were connected. Nonetheless, this insularity was also the primary weakness because each writer ended universalising what was in fact a particular and unique cultural and religious experience instead of providing convincing proof of a single human nature with a single telos. I will contrast this teleological conception of liberal education with that of Michael Oakeshott and his student Kenneth Minogue, both of whom wrote about education in a post-religious era in which the earlier consensus had completely broken down. They both celebrated the variety of practices which human beings have invented for themselves over the past several centuries (and past several millennia), and did not appear to suffer from the lack of any unifying single human telos. I will suggest that their understanding of practice insulated them from the need for a single unifying telos. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Academic administration is not to be construed simply as a technical practice, the development of efficient management systems, nor as reactive, as response to the collective views of the academic community, nor in terms of academic leadership, the establishment and implementation of institutional aims. A full account of academic administration will provide a sense of the integral relationship between the academic administrator and the academic community. For that, a prior notion of the academic community is required. Such a notion, (...) giving a central place to structured discourse, can be derived from the German idea of the university and particularly from the writings of von Humboldt, Karl Jaspers and Jurgen Habermas. (shrink)

Ronald Barnett; Does Higher Education have Aims?, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 22, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 239–250, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.

Experimental design is one aspect of a scientific method. A well-designed, properly conducted experiment aims to control variables in order to isolate and manipulate causal effects and thereby maximize internal validity, support causal inferences, and guarantee reliable results. Traditionally employed in the natural sciences, experimental design has become an important part of research in the social and behavioral sciences. Experimental methods are also endorsed as the most reliable guides to policy effectiveness. Through a discussion of some of the central concepts (...) associated with experimental design, including controlled variation and randomization, this chapter will provide a summary of key ethical issues that tend to arise in experimental contexts. In addition, by exploring assumptions about the nature of causation and by analyzing features of causal relationships, systems, and inferences in social contexts, this chapter will summarize the ways in which experimental design can undermine the integrity of not only social and behavioral research but policies implemented on the basis of such research. (shrink)

Modern universities often become a subject of discussion in the public sphere, during which the relevance of university programs, the financing of science and higher education, and a number of other issues are discussed. These discussions again and again prompt political theorists to reflect on the “idea of a university”. These ideas are associated with values, expectations and beliefs, and are most often expressed in the form of normative representations based either on pragmatism that define the university as a functional (...) element of the state system, or on utilitarianism that required from the university to satisfy the economic demands of society, or on idealism that forces position the university as an “ivory tower”. The presented positions somewhat exaggerate the value of some of the university’s abilities to the detriment of others and distort not only the optics of research, but also the social beliefs that influences the development of state systems and universities. Based on the institutional approach, the authors of this article propose a theoretical position that allows to grasp the current pragmatics of the university community, the market and the state regarding the development of universities and their contribution to the organization of the societal order. According to this position, the university should be considered as an intermediary institution that has public subjectivity; acts as an organizational form of the university community and agent of societal relations; carries out a communicative exchange with the external environment ; creates conditions for the interaction of various agents of societal relations, including on their own space via a formalized rational public discussion; finally, it produces knowledge that influences the organization of the societal order. All of this taken together allows us to consider the university a mediator. This position of the university allows it to successfully fulfill its mediating role, both within the university corporation and outside it, balance between different social expectations and remain in one of the most stable and adaptive organizational forms that constitute the societal order. (shrink)