Let’s separate research and teaching

Designing universities for 21st century Africa:  Can we improve on the 19th century European model?

Seminar presented at the DST-NRF
Centre of Excellence in Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (CoE-MaSS)
Friday, 08 July 2016

Prelude

First, I want to tell you something about myself in order to give you some context about my thinking on higher education. I began life as a Mathematician, so it’s good to find myself back among mathematicians. But I strayed from the path, dropped out of my PhD in Mathematics and worked instead in the Information Technology sector for many years before returning to academia. I completed a PhD in a department here at Wits (the University of the Witwatersrand) that was called Higher Education Policy and Leadership. In a nice little self-referential twist, I studied PhD programs. It was during that time that I read a lot about the history of higher education and some of what I am going to present here is informed by work I did for my PhD. I later spent two years at the Council on Higher Education as the Director for Advice and Monitoring, where I gained a national perspective on the higher education system. Most recently I spent two years heading the School of Economic and Business Sciences, or SEBS, here at Wits.

Now one of the things that I really enjoyed about my work as a manager in the IT industry was organizational design. This is the process of taking a large task, such as implementing a large IT system, decomposing it into groups of related tasks, identifying what skills are needed, and constructing a set of job descriptions and an organizational structure that would make it all happen. No less interesting was the process of finding the right people, understanding individual’s skills and preferences, and matching people to jobs. Often, in the 90’s when IT skills were rare and costly, this entailed re-configuring the job descriptions in order to match the particular individuals that you could find. Done well, organizational design gets jobs done, well, and I was skilled at this.

So imagine my surprise when I took over as Head of School at SEBS, thinking that the university was keen to benefit from my management experience, and discovered that I had no say in the job descriptions or the reporting structures, of my most valuable staff, the academics. I had been hired to do a job, but been told to leave my tools at the door.

Setting aside, for the moment, the matter of the “tutor track”, which affects only a small number of people, academics at Wits are employed against standard job descriptions which include the tasks of teaching and conducting research. The more I worked with staff, the more I realized the stupidity of this design. Some of the skills needed for teaching well, particularly when one is teaching large classes, include subject knowledge, knowledge of pedagogy, the ability to articulate and explain complex concepts, the ability to design and produce good course materials, the ability to use technological teaching aids, the presence to direct the energy of a class of boisterous young people, a strong understanding of the need for bureaucratic procedures and meticulous record keeping, and the emotional strength to cope with student’s constant demands and insecurities. This is a very tall order for any job description, without beginning to consider the skills needed to be a good researcher.

In general what I have seen at Wits is job descriptions that are extremely long and diverse and take no account of the reality of an eight-hour workday or the fact that individuals have different strengths and preferences about what they do. In particular, academics are expected to divide their time between many very different tasks and that is not a good way to do work that requires intense concentration. I think it is a credit to the calibre of academic employees that so many of them are able to do what is expected of them, but I don’t think it’s reasonable and I do think that it is keeping a lot of people out of academia who have something to contribute.

As Head of School I saw really good teachers leave because they could not meet the research requirements for confirmation and I saw really good researchers worn down by job demands that they were not equipped for. Work does not have to be pain. Good organisational design matches people to jobs that they are good at and enjoy. Good teachers and good researchers are in short supply, so why do we continue to insist that all academic staff be both teachers and researchers?

The unity of teaching and research

Well, it all goes back to the idea of the unity of teaching and research, introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in the early 19^thCentury. Wilhelm von Humboldt was a philosopher, bureaucrat and diplomat responsible for reforming the German higher education system in the early nineteenth century. Humboldt carried out his reforms between 1808 and 1810 as the head of the section for ecclesiastic affairs and education in the ministry of the interior and his reforms extended across the entire education system, from elementary school to the university (Mueller-Vollmer et al. 2016). Reforms in the universities were prompted by concerns about “backward curriculum, lazy and corrupt professors, students only interested in quick degrees as passports to jobs, student dissoluteness, lack of money, [and] a multiplicity of self-duplicating institutions” (McClelland 1980:69).

The reforms, as might be expected, responded to particular social, political and economic circumstances at the time and it is difficult now to construct a nuanced understanding of these. I want to try and give you a sense of four different aspects of the reforms.

1. about knowledge…

The first aspect of the reforms that I want to deal with is that these reforms were intended to entrench an understanding of knowledge as something that changed over time as well as the value of what we would consider scientific knowledge and the methods of science.

Originally universities were structured into the higher faculties of Law, Medicine and Theology, and the lower faculties of Philosophy (Tanner et al. 1929) and Arts (Previté-Orton & Brooke 1936). The higher faculties enjoyed great prestige, with the Faculty of Arts often providing remedial studies for less able students (Previté-Orton & Brooke 1936). What Humboldt did was to elevate the status of the faculty of Philosophy, where what we now recognise as Science was housed, and establish the Doctor of Philosophy as a degree more valuable than the doctorates of the higher faculties.

But the far-reaching impact of the reforms was that they legitimised the idea that knowledge was not static, that accepted truths could and should be challenged, and that the student would grow over time to know more than the professor. It is difficult for us to appreciate that before these reforms, knowledge, particularly in the established professions represented by the higher faculties, was regarded as fixed. They taught a canon of well-established truths, condoned by respected masters, and any challenge to these truths was perilous. The idea that knowledge ought to be continuously challenged and the value of the scientific method in arriving at truth, were not universally accepted at the time, but Humboldt’s reforms sought to entrench these new attitudes to knowledge.

Along with the expectation that knowledge was something ever-changing and open to question, came the idea of academic freedom: that scholars were free to research and teach anything they wanted to. This was necessary to ensure that they were free to question long-held “truths”.

2. about professors…

The second important change that came with Humboldt’s reforms was that teaching had to be informed by current research and consequently, research became expected of all university professors (Krull 2005). It was no longer sufficient to be learned in a particular field, one had to be actively researching. This resulted in a flurry of hastily-written books, monographs and papers and the first hint of a future “publish or perish” culture.

The ideal professor envisaged by Humboldt was to both embody and inculcate “an almost infinite curiosity” as well as the skills for conducting research (McClelland 1980:122). The idea of active scholarship and teaching linked to research led to the seminar format of instruction. A professor selected a few of the best students for regular meetings to discuss texts and report on individual research. These seminars, often held in the professor’s home, led to the traditional master apprentice model of research education (McClelland 1980:181).

Humboldt did champion good working conditions for academics, recognising that solitude, tranquil surroundings, free time and security which ensured peace of mind were conducive to conducting research and necessary conditions for the university (Krull 2005).

3. neo-humanist education

Public debate at the time of the reforms presented three positions regarding university teaching. First, there was a utilitarian position that universities should train people for professions and jobs. Then there was the conservative view which held that “the object of education was to pass on a tradition of right belief through the use of traditional pedagogic techniques” and this reflected the view of many traditionalists in the higher faculties. Finally, there were the neo-humanists who believed that “the aim of education was to help unfold and realize the full potential of the personality” (McClelland 1980:106). Humboldt’s reforms were informed by this neo-humanist position.

For teaching, the reforms included freedom of study for students (Lernfreiheit, as opposed to the prescriptive curricula in France), as well as the educational ideal of Bildung, a word that is difficult to translate directly to English. Bildung is a process of self-cultivation towards personal and cultural maturity. It entails having one’s beliefs challenged, and resultant transformation, and requires the development of one’s humanity as well as intellectual abilities. Bildung was best accomplished in the intimate setting of the seminar. But nothing is said in the history books about what happened to the students who were not selected for seminar studies and what kind of teaching they experienced.

4. about money…

The reforms had lofty aims for learning and knowledge, but they also addressed some practical problems. In order to freely pursue research, and the Bildung of students, universities needed financial security. Students here will be pleased to know that Humboldt championed free and universal education, and as a result, university studies are still, to a large extent, free in Germany today.

But this led to some more dubious reforms. For example, at the University of Gottingen, a new curriculum in the “courtly arts” was introduced. The sons of wealthy aristocrats enjoyed lessons in dancing, drawing, fencing, riding, music and foreign languages. These courses proved popular and were successful in addressing the university’s funding problems (McClelland 1980). I imagine that the equivalent courses today are those directed at the business elite that include world tours, luxury hotel accommodation and hob-nobbing with global business leaders.

Money was Humboldt’s downfall. In his pursuit of financial independence for universities, one of the things he insisted on was property (that is land) for universities. Universities with land were able to support themselves through agriculture. Unfortunately this led to conflict with the aristocracy and he was asked to resign in 1810 (Mueller-Vollmer et al. 2016). He went on to a successful career as a diplomat.

Since Humboldt

So, yes, the idea that teaching and research should go hand in hand was core to the reforms made by Humboldt. This idea spread rapidly and is now embraced as a fundamental tenet of the Western style university. The Bologna declaration of 1988, which has been called the Magna Carta of European higher education, espoused four principles, the third of which is that teaching and research must be inseparable.

However, the Humboldtian ideals were wider than this one principle and specific to the context of early 19^th century Europe. So not unexpectedly the spread of Humboldt’s ideas to other countries has been highly selective, with elements being assimilated according to different needs. Historians of higher education point out that there is a gap between the idealised image of German universities of the 19^th century and their reality and that the popularity and ongoing recognition that Humboldt’s ideas enjoy lie more in a collective fantasy about academic life (McClelland 1980, Krull 2005).

So, I’d like to propose that, in the spirit of continuous questioning of received wisdom that Humboldt championed, it might not be heresy to question the unity of teaching and research. Indeed you might be interested to note that this principle does not appear in the South African National Plan for Higher Education (DoE 2001) which is the design blueprint for our system.

Some serious challenges in South African higher education

It’s worth reminding ourselves what the goals of the South African higher education system are:

• To meet, through well-planned and co-ordinated teaching, learning and research programmes, national development needs, including the high-skilled employment needs presented by a growing economy operating in a global environment;
• To contribute to the advancement of all forms of knowledge and scholarship, and in particular address the diverse problems and demands of the local, national, southern African and African contexts, and uphold rigorous standards of academic quality;
• To support a democratic ethos and a culture of human rights through educational programmes and practices conducive to critical discourse and creative thinking, cultural tolerance, and a common commitment to a humane, non-racist and non-sexist social order; and
• To promote equity of access and fair chances of success to all who are seeking to realise their potential through higher education, while eradicating all forms of unfair discrimination and advancing redress for past inequalities. (DoE 1997: 1.14)

In 2013, the public higher education sector enrolled close to one million students (983 698), a participation rate of 20% (CHE 2015). This compares with participation rates of 71% in Europe, 60% in North America, 12% for Africa and 34% globally (UNESCO 2014). Participation is limited by the poor achievements in our public school system, but also by the capacity of the higher education system. Universities admit to first time study about one third of the number that pass grade 12 each year.

South Africa has high unemployment and at the same time, a backlog of scarce skills and vacancies that cannot be filled. We need to teach more people and to teach them more effectively. Our current model of higher education is costly and is not delivering results. We need to investigate other models.

We are producing research in increasing volumes, and a fair amount of it is high-impact. The country has a small pool of really good researchers, who are able to produce quality research and do a good job of training research students. This small pool is too valuable to waste on doing anything other than research, so we need to investigate ways to use them most effectively. At the same time we produce an increasing stream of research of dubious quality that is not very useful, significant or impactful. I think this is equally wasteful.

Now, the thought experiment

So, I would like to conduct a thought experiment. What if we were to think about universities from the perspective of organisational design? The tasks that need to be accomplished are: research, research training, and teaching of undergraduate and professional programs, and the enculturation of students towards desirable national attitudes and values. How best to design the organisation to accomplish these tasks?

Research universities

The Humboldtian model of seminar-based learning and participation in research, as part of a professor’s research agenda, sounds very like an ideal form of graduate education for research students. These two tasks, conducting research and training researchers, require in common employees with research skills, so it makes sense that they should be done by the same people. So let’s imagine a research university as community of scholars, incorporating researchers from novices to professors.

Because this university would be entirely focused on the production of knowledge, we could take advantage of all the research that exists into creativity to design optimal conditions. Early research into creativity viewed it as an aspect of personality (Kirton 1987), however later research views creativity as a social phenomenon (Cropley 2006) and a function of inherent abilities, learned skills and environmental factors (Sternberg 2006). A review I carried out of this research shows that the best researchers have an intrinsic interest in research; have acquired cognitive abilities and a deep conceptual map of their field, while also having a broad understanding of other fields; are willing to take risks and are able to identify interesting problems to solve (Backhouse 2009). Creativity requires an environment where “survival needs are catered for; where opportunities are provided for interactions [among] experts in [each] field and with people in other fields that stimulate different conversations; where risk-taking is encouraged and in which the need for open-endedness, the space for problems to develop alongside their solutions is acknowledged and supported” (Backhouse 2009). Humboldt was right; conducting research requires solitude, tranquil surroundings, free time and security.

So I could imagine a number of research institutions, responsible for producing research and for the training of future researchers, at the masters’ and doctoral levels. I imagine such a university being fairly small, structured into a number of research groups, which may be discipline-based or interdisciplinary and run collegially. Each research group would be free to pursue whatever research they are interested in, constrained by their ability to attract research funds.

I envisage that such organisations will have quiet leafy campuses, well equipped laboratories and libraries. Each group would need office space and whatever facilities are needed to conduct their research configured in such a way that the members of the research group see each other daily, and also have opportunities to interact with other research groups. There would be a Principle Investigator for each research group, who would effectively manage it. I would expect research students to be employed as research assistants.

Learning that deep conceptual map of the field, to ask good questions, and pursue their answers with rigour, can be done effectively by working closely with a professor, who is an active researcher. However research into doctoral education shows that the quality of such learning depends on the individual professor, and that doctoral students are most successful when they have a network of people to turn to and are not dependent on a single individual. So I would expect that a research team would provide the optimal learning space. A research team can also draw on different skills from different people – one may be better at administrative tasks, another a more eloquent writer, while a third may be skilled in analysis – thus reducing the need for each member of staff to combine all these skills in some super-human ideal. Because of my experience in the Information Technology sector, I would suggest that research teams should change over time, being put together for specific projects and reconfigured at the end of each project.

In the South African context, research universities would probably report into, and to some level be funded by, the Department of Science and Technology. Ideally they would be able to use their knowledge assets to produce further income, as well as attracting research funding from those that value the research being produced.

The benefits of this model are that the small number of active researchers in the country would be focussed on the tasks of doing research and instructing novice researchers in the process. This small and valued pool of individuals would be fully occupied in what they are best suited to. Having a reasonable job description, each person would be able to concentrate, develop deep knowledge and skills, and ultimately they will produce better research for not having their attention scattered.

The institutions, not being concerned with undergraduate or professional teaching, would be smaller and easier to run. They could be less bureaucratic, more responsive to the changing needs of researchers and develop internal procedures more appropriate to a highly creative environment.

Teaching universities

When it comes to undergraduate teaching and training of professionals, I find it difficult to see much in the Humboldtian reforms that can be applied in the 21^st century. In 1810 the University of Berlin opened with 256 students. In 2016, Wits University has more than 30 000 students and we need to teach far more. Teaching thousands of students could be done using a seminar model, but it would be very costly. In any case, even back in the 1800s it appears that this model was reserved for a small elite. In addition, Humboldt did not have the advantages we have of electronically stored knowledge that is location-independent and the communication technologies we are familiar with.

So I can imagine a number of large teaching universities, that occupy less physical space, but whose students are dispersed over wide areas. I imagine that such institutions would offer a range of blended learning courses. I imagine many small learning centres to support students, teaching them how to use technologies and how to study. Such learning centres would be located near to where students live and work and would provide places for studying together, both formally and informally. University infrastructure would include accommodation and teaching spaces where students could come for intensive face-to-face learning in what we currently call “block release” format. Perhaps first year students will begin their studies with two or three months of intensive block release to orient them towards university learning.

Now I know very well that UNISA, our local distance university, fails dismally to graduate students and that this has led to criticism of distance learning. But, I think that we inevitably have to rely more and more on learning through technologies and less on the current model of face-to-face learning because the latter model is too costly to expand to the extent that it needs to. When I talk of cost here I refer to the cost of campuses, facilities and staff, and also to the cost to students of accommodations, transport and lost earnings.

I also believe that a blended learning approach, with face-to-face study groups for students and intensive week-long block release study over the year can achieve far better results if the proper effort goes into designing the curricula and engaging with students. Learning to learn online sets students up for a future of lifelong learning because it opens up to them the wide world of online resources where it is possible to find just about any information that the average citizen of the 21^st century will need to thrive. I am also aware that blended learning is costly, but my idea is that money should be going into designing teaching programs rather than into buildings.

Good teaching that is going to reach a wider range of students than just an exceptional elite, requires people who take teaching seriously and who are not distracted by the need to build research careers. Academic staff would be employed and follow a career path that went from assistant lecturer, lecturer, senior lecturer, associate professor to professor. Academic lecturers would not be expected to produce new knowledge through research, but they would be expected to read research outputs and thus keep up with the current state of knowledge. A good teacher will take pains to learn about and communicate the frontiers of research, where they are accessible to undergraduates, but that teacher need not be doing the research herself. In terms of qualifications, I would like to see lecturers complete masters’ and doctoral degrees that resemble more the old doctorates of the higher faculties, which were awarded for being familiar with the body of knowledge, or complete professional teaching qualifications.

I think it is important for all students to learn to critique knowledge and to understanding the methods of science and scholarship so I would expect them to be exposed to these in their undergraduate programs. Student should be reading research papers as part of their learning. A great teaching university could partner with a research university to expose senior students to research. Researchers would be invited to give guest lectures and to meet top students who are likely to go on to research studies. Such an institution would prepare students for further study at research universities.

Teaching universities would report into the Department of Higher Education and Training, and would be funded through that department. I am with the students who call for free education, because I think the national benefits are great, but there does need to be some balancing of the books. So I would suggest that teaching universities are funded from the public purse, and also from some fees, particularly for the professional master’s courses that are undertaken by people well established and earning. I also think that employers should be charged a fee for graduates, as they are the ultimate consumers of what a teaching university produces. How much they would be willing to pay will reflect on the value of the graduate, so it will be an incentive for universities to up their game in terms of the quality of graduates. I think that first degrees should be free, but that professional master’s degrees should be paid for.

Strong teaching universities would be able to focus on teaching and the student experience without having to provide the infrastructure and support for research. They would be able to attract qualified staff who are dedicated teachers and who prefer not to be doing research. They would be able to experiment with teaching methods and technologies because staff would have time to devote to innovations in teaching and will get recognition and rewards for doing so.

Cultural conduits

I want to come back, briefly, to the matter of the universities task to: “support a democratic ethos, a culture of human rights, … critical discourse and creative thinking, cultural tolerance, and a common commitment to a humane, non-racist and non-sexist social order”. I think this is an important and neglected task. It may even turn out to be the most important task of universities in South Africa at this point in history.

I know that there have been efforts, notably by Prof Jansen at the University of the Free State to explicitly develop interventions along these lines. He introduced a first year program that saw students exposed to a range of senior academics, and debates about culture, knowledge and of course race. However I think very little attention has been paid to this task outside of that program. I would envisage such a program for all university students with components at each year of university study.

Those who study curricula recognise that students learn knowledge, skills and attitudes in the process of their studies. I think that all our teaching needs to be examined to understand the attitudes, and the values that are being communicated, often unintentionally. The task of re-thinking curricula is huge and it will only be undertaken if there are dedicated teachers to do this work. For me this is the equivalent of Humboldt’s humanist agenda. We have to teach the whole human being and not just transfer knowledge and develop skills.

From here to there

What I have imagined here is simply a thought experiment. It needs to be more fully fleshed out than is possible in an hour. I am seeking your input on the feasibility, the obstacles you see, and what you would like to see in such institutions.

What I am not proposing is a radical restructuring of the South African higher education system. I think that we are too fast to embrace educational reforms. What I want is for us to think long and hard about these ideas, and to act only when we are convinced that they represent an improvement. Furthermore, any action, when it comes, needs to be incremental.

Thus far, none of our universities has chosen as their mission: “to be the institution of choice for undergraduate students seeking a well-rounded education with exceptional levels of support for their learning”, but I think it would be a great mission. The reason of course is that there are painful concerns about the status of institutions in the South African system. What I am proposing is not that research institutions be considered high status and teaching institutions low status. I think that, at the present point in our history, teaching is more important than research and that both institutions ought to enjoy high status for doing complex and important work. But the old hierarchies die hard and it will be a challenge to establish the status of teaching universities.

I suggest that it is important that both institutions continue to use the name university and to appoint professors, although the promotion criteria for a research professor and a teaching professor ought to be different.

Another idea to deal with the matter of status is for the country to have fewer, larger, teaching universities. This would concentrate the expert teachers who could develop programs and good learning materials and improve the quality of education. Effectively the examination and award of degrees could be done by a handful of teaching universities, while the teaching could be distributed to more institutions to prepare students for examinations.  I envisage a system that has, say, five small research universities and five large teaching universities. The teaching universities would each have multiple campuses used for some level of face-to-face teaching and extensive learning conducted using technology.

Some have pointed out to me that there are already moves in this direction with the formation of research institutes where researchers are concentrated. I think this is a step in the right direction, but I think this approach does create two classes of academics and that is not going to work in the long term.

One hour is not really enough to do justice to this topic. There are many aspects to this proposal that need to be fleshed out. I invite your thoughts on how to do this and, indeed, whether it is worth thinking about at all.

References

Backhouse, J (2009). Creativity within limits: Does the South African PhD facilitate creativity in research? Journal for Higher Education in Africa, 7(1&2) 265–288.

CHE (2015). VitalStats Public Higher Education 2013. Council on Higher Education (CHE), Pretoria.

Cropley, A (2006). Dimensions of creativity. Roeper Review, 28(3), 125-130.

DOE (1997). Education white paper 3 – A programme for higher education transformation. South African Government Gazette, No 18207, Pretoria.

DOE (2001). National plan for higher education, South African Government Gazette No 22138, Notice Number 230, Pretoria.

Kirton, MJ (1987). Adapters and innovators: Styles of creativity and problem solving. In Isaksen, SG (Ed.), Frontiers of creativity research: Beyond the basics (pp. 282-308). Buffalo, New York: Beady Limited.

Krull, W (2005). Exporting the Humboldtian university. Minerva, 43(1), 99-102.

McClelland, CE (1980). State, society and university in Germany 1700-1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mueller-Vollmer, Kurt and Messling, Markus, (2016). Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (Ed.), Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2016/entries/wilhelm-humboldt/ on 4^th July 2016.

Previté-Orton, CW and Brooke, ZN (Eds.) (1936). The Cambridge medieval history vol. VIII The close of the middle ages, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sternberg, RJ (2006). The nature of creativity. Creativity Research Journal, 18(1), 87–98.

Tanner, TR, Previté-Orton, CW and Brooke, ZN (Eds.) (1929). The Cambridge medieval history vol. VI The victory of the papacy. London: Cambridge University Press.

UNESCO, (2104) Education: Gross enrolment ratio by level of education. Retrieved from http://data.uis.unesco.org/index.aspx?queryid=142&lang=en 4^th July 2016.