Search

This book explores how the notion of the responsible university manifests itself at various levels within Nordic higher education. As the impetus of the knowledge society has catapulted the higher education sector to the forefront of policy agendas, universities and other types of higher education institutions face increasing scrutiny, assessment and accountability. This book examines this phenomenon using the Nordic countries as cases in point, given the strong public commitment towards widening participation and public research investments. The editors and contributors analyse the history and current transformations of the idea of the responsible university, investigate new innovations in the educational landscape and look into how universities have begun to organise themselves to become more responsible. Drawing together scholars from the humanities and the social sciences, this interdisciplinary collection will be of interest and value to students and scholars of the role and nature of the modern university, in addition to practitioners and policy makers tasked with finding solutions to address the competing and often contradictory demands posed by a responsibility agenda.

Nordic universities produce a significant and increasing number of research publications in English. This chapter takes a closer look at this development in the context of Denmark, where today around 86% of all research publications are published in English. First, the overall development of English language research publications within all main areas of research in Denmark is examined. Thereafter, the chapter focuses on one of the biggest and most important universities in Denmark, Aarhus University. The chapter shows that all scientific fields in Denmark and at Aarhus University have experienced a radical change in publication language over the last two decades, from Danish and other languages to English. It also shows that it is the Social Sciences and the Humanities that have seen the biggest changes over these years. Via bibliometric counts and interviews with researchers from the areas that have experienced the most significant changes, the chapter analyses the development in publication language from Danish to English along with the meaning and effects of this change. The chapter ends with a discussion of how universities can help battle the negative consequences of the transition to English while at the same time holding on to the benefits of this movement. Nordic universities produce a significant and increasing number of research publications in English. This chapter takes a closer look at this development in the context of Denmark, where today around 86% of all research publications are published in English. First, the overall development of English language research publications within all main areas of research in Denmark is examined. Thereafter, the chapter focuses on one of the biggest and most important universities in Denmark, Aarhus University. The chapter shows that all scientific fields in Denmark and at Aarhus University have experienced a radical change in publication language over the last two decades, from Danish and other languages to English. It also shows that it is the Social Sciences and the Humanities that have seen the biggest changes over these years. Via bibliometric counts and interviews with researchers from the areas that have experienced the most significant changes, the chapter analyses the development in publication language from Danish to English along with the meaning and effects of this change. The chapter ends with a discussion of how universities can help battle the negative consequences of the transition to English while at the same time holding on to the benefits of this movement.

The social responsibility of universities is to contribute to solving the ‘wicked problems’ facing humanity, including climate change, poverty, conflicts and the lack of energy resources. Interdisciplinarity is an approach that enables solving these problems and helps higher education institutions become more socially responsible while meeting the requirements of their stakeholders. In this chapter, we analyse a multidisciplinary and sector-breaking merger of three higher education institutions in Finland, where the merger is justified by its contribution to solving wicked problems through increased structural interdisciplinarity. We examine the suggested faculty structures and views of staff and students to understand how interdisciplinarity and addressing the needs of stakeholders are seen from the perspective of technical education. The interdisciplinary faculty structure is heavily criticised by the internal stakeholders, who claim that it does not meet the needs of the university’s external stakeholders. However, there is debate on whose interests and identities are at risk when the disciplinary boundaries of technical education are transgressed.

In this introductory chapter, the concept of the responsible university is introduced and put into context, first concerning other organisations and society at large, secondly in a historical perspective and thirdly related to policy initiatives across the globe. We also discuss how to implement this concept within the complex organisations that universities constitute. Lastly, we present some key features of the Nordic countries and introduce the empirical chapters of the book.

This concluding chapter takes stock of the major elements, both empirical and conceptual, that underpin the case chapters presented in the book. The chapter is organised in three distinct sections. First, addressing a largely scientific audience, the chapter attempts to make conceptual sense of the findings from an organisational theory perspective. Second, it shifts focus to the wider community of practitioners (policy makers, advisers, university managers and administrators, etc.) by shedding light on the practical implications of the volume’s core findings for both policy and practice. Third, the chapter once again addresses an academic audience by sketching out the road ahead regarding future studies in the area.

Key to the idea of a democratic public sphere has always been the ongoing conversations among citizens and between citizens and politicians (Koch, Mansbridge, Habermas, etc.). The conversations between politicians and citizens in the Danish political system have traditionally taken place at political party meetings and at public meetings and hearings. However, the rise of new social media like Facebook provides new, interesting platforms for these conversations—and many opinion makers and scholars have high expectations for their democratic potential. This chapter examines what happens when traditional democratic conversations between citizens and politicians are moved away from the old face-to-face meetings and into Facebook. Through interviews with Danish Members of Parliament (MPs), the paper examines the advantages and disadvantages of online democratic conversations on Facebook as experienced by the MPs. The paper builds on a former quantitative mapping of the political conversation activities between Danish MPs and their followers on Facebook (Sørensen 2016).

Theories that challenge the anthropocentric view of democracy and political participation in broader terms have in recent years attracted much attention. This has for instance been the case with Bruno Latour’s so-called ‘politics of things’ (Dingpolitik); and in direct extension of this, Noortje Marres’ notion of ‘material participation’ as well as Jane Bennett’s theories on ‘vibrant matter’. Picking up from the critiques of deliberative democracy, that the last decades have been raised against it for being a mostly western, white, male, bourgeois, and much too discourse-based construct, that on closer scrutiny turns out to be anything but democratic, this cluster of new theories, that often go under the name of ‘new materialism', seem to radicalize this critique in order to include non-human agency into the realms of politics and democracy. Rather than subscribing to this metaphor of a rupture within political theory, this paper will instead discuss if and how we might meaningfully align these theories — the anthropocentric, discourse-centered notion of deliberative democracy on the one hand, and the post-anthropocentric, materialist on the other — so that we can harvest the best from both in the service of a meaningful expansion of the democratic public sphere; both conceptually and in praxis.