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with them. In other words, because social deviance does not conform to the
criteria of efficiency, the disciplines dealing with social deviance may be
considered redundant. But there are opposition forces within German uni–
versities that do not follow this new neo-liberal credo. I belong to them,
because I feel that the university is much more than a company dealing with
profits and losses, and much more than a bureaucracy or a consumer-ori–
ented service organization. I believe that mass education and high
educational standards may be reconciled by fighting against the over–
whelming of universities by this neoliberalism. Instead of supplying a
catalog of names and definitions which form the conceptual basis of this
claim, I will give you my version of the university for the next century–
that does not betray its traditions and yet is ready for the future.
First: the university would be a place for education, reflection, and
expertise, open to men and women, nationals and foreigners alike, mem–
bers of different ethnic groups, cultures, and religions. Roughly 50 percent
of professors and assistant teachers would be female .
Second: the university would be a place for professional training both
for science and for certain state-regulated professions-for lawyers, judges,
teachers, physicians, etc. And it would be a place to instill self-confidence
in students who participate in the democratic process.
Third: teaching and research must not be separated, because interesting
teaching draws on research, and research is the best remedy for boredom.
Reciprocally, students' questions are necessary to feed researchers' curios–
ity and to bridge the gap between generations.
Fourth: universities must compete in terms of quality. Even in Germany
it ought to be self-evident that budgets must be distributed according to
performance. Scientific performance, however, may not be easily quantified.
Take the example of outside funding for women's studies in its early phase,
or ecological research. To get funding for such projects is difficult since
innovative thinking and research often happen off the track. But is it the
job of universities, no matter how difficult it is to measure their efficiency,
to get involved, to criticize, to develop alternatives or visions?
Fifth: universities are democratic institutions in a two-fold sense. They
are pillars of democracy as long as they guarantee equal access to educa–
tion, and they have turned out more and more people with an academic
education. Opening universities to more of the talented young people in
the seventies in Germany did not result in a loss of quality, despite
crammed classrooms. If you compare exam results in those years with
today's, you realize that even under conditions of mass education high
standards were maintained. Today, some 30 percent of our high school
graduates go on to higher education. We should not lower this ratio. We
don't need education for an elite but we need a lot of well-trained people,
