And yet, this picture masks deeper tensions below the surface. Repeated students’ protests across Europe show that the transformation of European higher education and research entails, as Guy Neave[1] once diplomatically put it, an “inspiring number of contradictions”. This text will proceed to outline some of these contradictions or, as I prefer to call them, paradoxes, and then point to the main challenges generated by these paradoxes – challenges that will not only have to be answered if the “Europe of knowledge” is ever to become anything but a catchy slogan, but will also continue to pop up in the long process of transforming it into a political reality for all Europeans.

Paradoxes: commercialisation, borders and the democratic deficit

Although a “Europe of knowledge” hints at a shared space where everyone has the same (or similar) access and right to participate in the creation and transmission of knowledge, this is hardly the case. To begin with, Europe is not without borders; some of them are towards the outside, but many are also inside. A number of education and research initiatives distinguish between people and institutions based on whether they are from the EU – despite the fact that 20 out of 47 countries that make up the European Higher Education Area are not EU member states. European integration in higher education and research has maybe simplified, but did not remove obstacles to free circulation of knowledge: for many students, researchers and scholars who are not citizens of the EU, mobility entails lengthy visa procedures, stringent criteria for obtaining residence permits, and reporting requirements that not only resemble surveillance, but also can directly interfere with their learning processes.

Another paradox of the Europe of knowledge is that the massification and globalisation of higher education have, in many cases, led to the growing construction of knowledge as a commodity – something that can be bought or sold. The privatisation of education and researched has not only changed the entire ethos related to knowledge production, it also brought very tangible consequences for financing of higher education (with tuition fees becoming at the same time higher and more prominent way of paying for education), access to knowledge (with scholarly publishers increasingly charging exorbitant prices both for access and publishing), and changing working conditions for those in the academia (with short-term and precarious modes of employment becoming more prominent). On a more paradigmatic level, it led to the instrumentalisation of knowledge – its valorisation only or primarily in terms of its contribution to economic growth, and the consequent devaluation of other, more “traditional” purposes, such as self-awareness, development and intellectual pursuit for its own sake, which some critics associate with the Humboldtian model of university.

Another paradox of the Europe of knowledge is that the massification and globalisation of higher education have, in many cases, led to the growing construction of knowledge as a commodity – something that can be bought or sold.

It is possible to see these paradoxes and contradictions as inevitable parts of global transformations, and thus accept their consequences as unavoidable. However, this text wants to argue that it is still possible to use knowledge in order to fight for a better world, but that this process entails a number of tough challenges. The ensuing section will outline some of them.

Challenges: equality and the conservatism of academia

Probably the biggest challenge is to ensure that knowledge contributes to the equality of opportunities and chances for everyone. This should not translate into political clichés, or remain limited to policies that try to raise the presence or visibility of underrepresented populations in education and research. Recognising inequalities is a first step, but changing them is a far more complex endeavour than it may at first appear. Sociologists of education have shown that one of the main purposes of education – and especially higher education – is to distinguishing between those who have it and those who don’t, bestowing the former with higher economic and social status. In other words, education reproduces social inequalities not only because it is unfair at the point of entry, but also because it is supposed to create social stratification. Subverting social inequalities in education, thus, can only work if becomes a part of a greater effort to eliminate or minimise inequalities based on class, status, income or power. Similarly, research that is aimed only at economic competitiveness – not to mention military supremacy – can hardly contribute to making a more equal or peaceful world. As long as knowledge remains a medium of power, it will continue to serve the purposes of maintaining the status quo.

This brings us to the key challenge in thinking about knowledge. In theory as well as in practice, knowledge always rests somewhere on the slippery ground between reproduction and innovation. On the one hand, one of the primary tasks of education as the main form of knowledge transmission is to integrate people into the society – e.g. teaching them to read, write and count, as well as to “fit” within the broader social structure. In this sense, all education is, essentially, conservative: it is focused on preserving human societies, rather than changing them. On the other hand, knowledge is also there to change the world: both in the conventional sense of the development of science and technology, but also in the more challenging sense of awareness of what it means to be human, and what are the implications and consequences – including, but not limited to, the consequences of technological development. The latter task, traditionally entrusted to the social sciences and humanities, is to always doubt, challenge, and “disrupt” the dominant or accepted modes of thinking.

Sociologists of education have shown that one of the main purposes of education – and especially higher education – is to distinguishing between those who have it and those who don’t, bestowing the former with higher economic and social status.

The balance between these two “faces” of knowledge is very delicate. In times of scarcity or crisis, the uses of knowledge too easily slip into the confines of reproduction – assuring that human societies preserve themselves, usually with the power relationships and inequalities intact, and not infrequently at the expense of others, including our own environment. On the other hand, one-sided emphasis on the uses of knowledge for development can obscure the conditions of sustainability, as insights from environmental research and activism have displayed numerous times. The challenge, thus, is in maintaining both of these aspects, while not allowing only one to assume a dominant role.

Conclusion

These paradoxes and challenges are just a fraction of the changes that are now facing higher education and research in Europe. Yet, without knowing what they and their consequences are, action will remain lost in the woods of technical jargon and petty “turf wars” between different movements, fractions, disciplines and institutions. The higher education and research policies developed in Europe today to a large extent try to smooth over these conflicts and tensions by coating them in a neutral language that promises equality, efficiency and prosperity. Checking and probing the meaning of these terms is a task for the future.

 

This article was originally published by the Federation of Young European Greens.