Między wspólnotą a technokracją
Between Community and Technocracy

ABOUT TWO CONCEPTS ACADEMIC GOVERNMENT AND THEIR PROBLEMS

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to present and confront two models of academic governance. The first one is the humboldtian model that is popular with the academic community. The second one is based on the economised account of human behaviour and is often used by the reformers of higher education and science systems. The author points to the problems that both models generate when applied to modern universities. The humboldtian idea is ideological, it generates legitimisation crises in relations between university and its social environment (and within the university itself), and it seems to be unable to create organisational structures that are up to its own (high) standards. The second, technocratic model wastes resources on bureaucratic audit mechanisms that tend to generate perverse incentives, crowds out incentives of the ethical and communal kind, and fails to account for the uncertainty that is present whenever we engage in innovative activities such as science or teaching. The author suggests that both ideas are complementary – each of them acts as an antidote to the problems generated by the other. This makes their reconciliation impossible, while at the same time lets them dominate the field of discussion, excluding other – potentially more productive – ways of thinking about academic governance.

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