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Comparing Higher Education —Historically?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Konrad H. Jarausch*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Abstract

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Type
Essay Reviews
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 by History of Education Society 

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References

Notes

1. For instance Butler, N.M., Across the Busy Years: Recollections and Reflections (New York, 1939); and Burgess, J.W., Reminiscences of an American Scholar (New York, 1934). Cf. also Diehl, C., Americans and German Scholarship, 1770–1870 (New Haven, 1978).Google Scholar

2. Armstrong, A.C., “German Culture and the Universities,” Educational Review, 45 (1913):325338: “As we progress, however, in our intellectual life, we shall not proceed by slavish imitation. Loyalty to our German preceptors does not exclude devotion to the best elements of our own inheritance.” For a more systematic exploration see Jarausch, K.H., “The Universities: An American View,” in Remak, J. and Dukes, J., eds., Wilhelmian Germany: The Other Side (Chicago, 1986).Google Scholar

3. Zymek, B., Das Ausland als Argument in der pädagogischen Reformdiskussion (Ratingen, 1975); and Silver, Harold, “Comparative and cross-cultural history of education,” in Education as History (London, 1983), pp. 281–292.Google Scholar

4. Flexner, A., Universities: American, English, German (Oxford, 1930). For the early development of the subdiscipline “comparative education” see the Silver essay above.Google Scholar

5. Stone, L., ed., The University of Society (Princeton, 1974), pp. vviii, with vol. 1 focused on England and vol. 2 on Europe as well as America. Cf. the different evaluations by McClelland, C.E., “A Step Forward in the Study of Universities,” Minerva, 14 (1976):150–161; Rury, J.L., “Elements of a ‘new’ Comparative History of Education,” Comparative Education Review, 21 (1977):342–351; and Ringer, F.K., “Problems in the History of Higher Education,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 19 (1977):239–258 (with an exchange between Stone and Ringer).Google Scholar

6. Ringer, F.K., Education and Society in Modern Europe (Bloomington, 1979), pp. 131. Cf. also Ringer, , “Bildung, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft in Deutschland 1800–1960,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 6 (1980):35ff; Lundgreen, P., “Bildung und Besitz—Einheit oder Inkongrunez in der europäischen Sozialgeschichte? Kritische Auseinandersetzungen mit einer These von Ringer, F.,” ibid, 7 (1981):262–275 and Ringer's, F. rebuttal in the same journal.Google Scholar

7. See the contents of the issue onThe State of the Art: Twenty Years of Comparative Education,” Comparative Education Review, 21 (1977): 147419, and Ringer, , Education, p. 1.Google Scholar

8. Fletcher, J.M., The History of European Universities: Work in Progress and Publications (Birmingham, 1977ff); diverse PAREX (Paris-Essex) volumes; Special issue on “Université et passé: A la recherche du passé,” CRE-Information, No 62 (1983):3–164; Conze, W. and Kocha, J., eds. Bildungsbürgertum und Professionalisierung. Sozialhistorische Studien zum 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1984).Google Scholar

9. Grew, R., “The Case for Comparing Histories,” American Historical Review 85, (1980):765778; Fredrickson, G., “Comparative History,” in: Kammen, M., ed., The Past Before Us: Contemporary Historical Writing in the United States (Ithaca, 1980), pp. 457–473.Google Scholar

10. Jarausch, K.H., “The International Dimension of Quantitative History,” Social Science History, 8(1984): 123132.Google Scholar

11. Archer, M.S., Social Origins of Educational Systems (London, 1979) is one possible conceptual framework. Cf. Craig, J.E., “On the Development of Educational Systems,” American Journal of Education, 89 (1981):189–211.Google Scholar

12. For many of the specific titles of the Higher Education Research Group Working Papers see the listing in Clark's bibliography (293–307) under the name of the respective author such as Geiger, R., Giles, G., etc.Google Scholar

13. Typically enough, neither the Stone nor the Ringer volume appears in the bibliography which includes major social science works on the subject. For a less conceptually unified but more empirically descriptive alternative Cf. Eurich, N.P., Systems of Higher Education in Twelve Countries (New York, 1981).Google Scholar

14. Jarausch, Konrad H., ed., The Transformation of Higher Learning: Expansion, Diversification, Social Opening, and Professionalization in England, Germany, Russia, and the United States (Stuttgart and Chicago, 1983), pp. 131–206. The diversification authors draw on Clark, B., “Academic Differentiation in National Systems of Higher Education,” Comparative Education Review, 22 (1978):242258 and a similar Yale Higher Education Research Group Working Paper.Google Scholar

15. This was the central goal of Jarausch, , “Higher Education and Social Change: Some Comparative Perspectives,” in Transformation, pp. 936. If anyone suffers from “a thinly veiled presentism and modernism” it is Clark, who does not even recognize the existence of the intermediate transformation as background for the more dramatic recent changes. Cf. Herbst, J., “Reflections on The Transformation of Higher Learning 1860–1930” (Ms, Madison, 1983).Google Scholar

16. Müller, D.K., “The Process of Systematization,” and “Secondary Education in Germany in the late Nineteenth Century,” as well as Simon, Brian, “Structural Changes in English Education in the mid-late 19th Century,” all in The Rise of the Modern Educational System. Structural Change and Social Reproduction, 1820–1920 (Cambridge, 1985). For a critique of the notion of “systematization” cf. J. Albisetti's remarks at the conference on “Sozialgeschichtliche, historisch-vergleichende und quantitative Forschungsansätze zur Analyse des Bildungswesen in der Diskussion” at Bochum (West Germany), December 9–11, 1983. Obviously Müller's definition of “system” is much more stringent than Clark's looser notion.Google Scholar

17. Ringer, F.K., “On Segmentation in Modern European Educational System,” as well as “Structural Change in French Secondary Education, 1865–1920,” and “Conclusion Discussion,” in The Rise of the Modern Educational System. Cf. also Steedman, H., “The Concept of Defining Institutions in Cross-Cultural Analysis,” and Lowe, R., “Structural Change in English Higher Education, 1820–1920,” ibid. as well as the critical comments of Tenorth, E. at the Bochum conference. The term “segmentation” occasionally crops up in B. Clark's text, but is not listed in the index and plays no systematic role in his analysis.Google Scholar

18. For examples of such national preoccupation compare Moraw, P., “Aspekte und Dimensionen neuerer deutscher Universitätsgeschichte,” in: Moraw, P. and Press, V., eds., Academia Giessensis (Marberg, 1982), p. 1ff with the broader vom Bruch, R., “Die deutsche Hochschule in der historischen Forschung,” in: Goldschmidt, D. et al., ed., Forschungsgegenstand Hochschule (Frankfurt, 1984), pp. 1–27.Google Scholar

19. Schriewer, J., “‘Erziehung’ und ‘Kultur.’ Zur Theorie und Methodik vergleichender Erziehungswissenschaft,” in: Brinkmann, and Renner, , eds., Gebiete der Erziehung (Göttingen, 1982), pp. 185236 and his paper at the Bochum conference propose an ambitious set of theoretical requirements, increasing from historical through evolutionary to empirical-analytical paradigmata. Although the goal of a multi-level functional-relational approach is admirable, it may prove unattainable for comparisons of entire systems.Google Scholar

20. While the theoretical imperfections of various historical approaches are evident, the historical naiveté of purely theoretical work is an equally serious weakness. Hence it would be more constructive to cease polemicizing and to move towards some interaction on the level of historically grounded theories.Google Scholar

21. Titze, H., “Enrollment Expansion and Academic Overcrowding in Germany,” in: Transformation of Higher Learning, pp. 5788 and “Die zyklische Überproduktion von Akademikern im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 10 (1984):92–121.Google Scholar

22. For instance the research of Harrigan, P. on France, summarized in “Social Mobility and Schooling in History: Recent Methods and Conclusions,” Historical Reflections, 10 (1983), 127141; or Cohen's, B. findings on Austria, presented in: The Students of the Fienna University, 1860–1900: A Social and Geographical Profile,” forthcoming in a volume edited by Plaschka, R.G. and Mack, K. in Vienna (1985).Google Scholar

23. Lowe, R., paper at the Bochum conference, criticizing the “systematization” concept for the British context and exploring the professionalization notion. Cf. also Ramsey, M., “History of a Profession Annales Style: The Work of Jacques Leonard,” Journal of Social History, 16 (1983):318338; Geison, G.L., ed., Professions and Professional Ideologies in America (Chapel Hill, 1983), and Jarausch, K.H., “The Crisis of the German Professions, 1918–1933,” Journal of Contemporary History, 20 (1985): December issue.Google Scholar