Universities risk becoming tinned food with an expiry date

The Polish Nobel Prize Laureate Wislawa Szymborska admired the onion for its unusual form: a resilient structure which lacks a centre. An innovative conceptualisation of intellectual and other forms of resilience was needed in communist Poland, under a regime which controlled all spheres of life, including universities.

Inspired by her conceptualisation, we believe that we live in a time where rethinking the university as an institution, as a place for situated knowledge production, dissemination and authority, could not be more urgent.

If there is anything like the perfect storm for academia, we are experiencing it right now. Fundamental academic principles are being challenged; scientific methods, educational practices and academic authority are being questioned; the value of higher education and research is being doubted, and trust in academia is being eroded.

At the same time universities worldwide are struggling to cope with the economic crisis, geopolitical tensions, neoliberal and illiberal policies and new application and evaluation procedures whereby hiring processes based on meritocratic principles are being swapped for personality tests and ‘competency assessment tests’.

Finally, results-oriented university policies challenge academic freedom and autonomy, forcing leaders to treat universities as a commodity on the global market and, more importantly, to lead universities as if they were corporations.

So how can the university be inspired by Szymborska and the onion, and reimagine itself?

Meaning and values

Like an onion, the university does not have a ‘true’ inner self. It is a community of human creativity and productivity delivering a specific experience at a particular time and place. It has a long history, but that history is not the same for every university around the world, and its past and present are also related to global geopolitics and economics.

So when we refer to the fundamental principles of the university, for example, those outlined in the Magna Charta Universitatum (MCU), it is crucial to remember that those principles are not only related to the university’s history but also to a specific moment in European history.

The MCU was initially drafted and signed by 388 European rectors in 1988 during the celebrations of the 900th anniversary of the University of Bologna. That was a period marked by euphoria, as the Cold War ended and communist regimes collapsed one after another.

European organisations such as the Council of Europe and the European Economic Community (EEC) advised the new liberal democracies about developing constitutions and new economic systems where human rights were the yardstick.

A few years later, the EEC developed into the European Union (EU) and several new states were added to the list of members. Hard work was done to establish the EU in Europe and as a significant player in the global geopolitical landscape, and the MCU was able to help present universities as a shared intellectual and European venture.

Therefore, it is essential to look at the MCU from the perspective of the EU, not only from the perspective of the university or the idea of Europe and European tradition. We need to ask ourselves why this charter is essential to the EU and in what way universities matter to the EU – not only why universities matter to humankind and societies in Europe and around the world.

Like an onion, the university does not have a ‘true’ inner self. We, the people, fill it with meaning and values.

Knowledge as a commodity

Why, then, are attacks on universities successful? We argue that we in academia have been involved in and, sometimes, also responsible for some of the transformations that have created the problems we are now facing.

A new version of the MCU was launched in 2020. Using the MCU as a litmus paper for the last decades, it shows a shift on three levels that affects higher education and research at universities in a significant way:

• From a European to a global academy, internationalisation became the new buzzword, creating mass student mobility and generating income for selected universities.

• From being institutions that are deeply rooted in local and international communities, firmly committed to solving scientific problems and promoting democratic values and higher education for all, universities became institutions that focus on being a part of global academia as business enterprises.

• From situated knowledge production, universities evolved to be more about competence and commodity, following the EU directives on micro-credentialisation.

Comparing the two charters, the European perspective, history and tradition underlined in 1988 is entirely gone from the 2020 charter. Not only is the fourth principle – “a university is the trustee of the European humanist tradition” – erased and replaced by a global perspective, it seems like not only European history but also European tradition and, more specifically, the history and traditions of European universities are no longer viewed as attractive and made visible. What was once situated in a specific time and place is now global and universal.

This change is positive in that it acknowledges that academic knowledge has always been international in one way or another and that students, scholars and knowledge travel and need to do so – also virtually nowadays. Of course, there are also fundamental values that we as universities stand for, but to defend and develop them, we need to situate them within our local communities.

Therefore, this shift is deeply problematic for two reasons.

Firstly, it does not recognise the need to situate the history and the traditions of universities and to recognise the cultural heritage related to and dependent on universities – all of them, not only the European ones.

Secondly, it does not recognise the fundamental connection universities have to their local communities and societies and not least the very many critical democratic functions and effects of higher education and research that are related to the so-called ‘university for all’ that developed after the Second World War.

When the university goes global and universal (instead of international), it is transformed into an institution without a home and a democratic role. This also means situated knowledge is exchanged for competence that anyone could produce anywhere. This onion lacks a true inner self and has been turned into tinned food with a specific expiry date that can be opened anywhere. Knowledge has become a commodity.

Each layer supports the other

So, how do we find a future for universities as places for situated knowledge production that are deeply involved in solving both scientific and societal problems for humankind, local communities and democratic societies? As Szymborska noted of onion layers: “The second holds a third one/the third contains a fourth.”

We will present three examples.

First, we see how universities in Türkiye resisted the authoritarian regime’s implementation of the new higher education law, which follows the same models we have seen from Russia to Hungary or Armenia, with academics risking imprisonment if they fall foul of it.

The academics at Bogazici University not only stood on the grass in their formal robes with their back to the Erdogan-appointed rector’s office day after day but also organised ‘democratic vigils’ to save colleagues, as management, as expected, looked to fire the protesters through a top-down reorganisation.

Second, the Central European University, first in Prague, then Budapest, Warsaw and now only in Vienna, was inspired by dissenting academics in Central Europe who only knew about what each other was doing via informal networks due to communist state-controlled communication and access to knowledge production.

Their insistence on a utopian vision, to start a university based on the legacy of the ‘flying universities’ which were the alternative spaces of knowledge production beyond the communist, state-controlled university system, was critical to the initial success of founding a vibrant and innovative institution.

Third, Malmö University was founded amid EU and growing global economic competition. The idea for the university was planted like an onion on a former shipyard site which almost turned the city into a rusty graveyard.

It is situated in the local community, closely collaborating with the city, private companies and civil society. It is shaped by its connection to the transformation of the post-industrial city, being a multicultural and demographically young migrant and future-oriented city. But it is also deeply connected with the international academic community and a member of the European University Alliance UNIC and several global university networks. A situated university does not mean an isolated university; on the contrary.

All three of our examples show that success and resilience are found in universities that care for their academic and democratic functions and their international and local communities. These onions grow because they are planted and rooted in the history of universities and their communities. They need soil.

The onion described by Szymborska is a resilient structure because each layer supports the other. Although they are different, their position in the onion creates and supports togetherness.

Universities caught in the perfect storm should return to the ambition of the 1988 text of the MCU. We need to discuss what made universities leading forces in local change because we will all pay a high price if we end up canned in a free-floating and vulnerable global academia.

Rebecka Lettevall is a professor of intellectual history at Malmö University, Sweden. Annika Olsson is an associate professor of comparative literature at Malmö University, Sweden. Andrea Petö is a historian and professor at Central European University and City of Malmö Guest Professor at Malmö University in 2024.

This article is a commentary. Commentary articles are the opinion of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of University World News.