UNIVERSITIES AFTER 1945: GLOBAL POWER OR UNENDING CRISIS?

In addition to its traditional task of generating and transmitting knowledge in all fields, the university has been called upon to shoulder the tasks, of economic and social development. Although these tasks have only recently been formally recognized and clearly stated, they have always been implicit. That this is so is proved by the fact that as European societies democratized and industrialized themselves in the nineteenth century, increasing numbers and varieties of non‐traditional higher education institutions came into being, directed at the aims of the self‐promotion of students from non‐élite backgrounds. Increasingly, all aspects of science and society are intertwined with an increasingly varied assortment of higher education institutions and programmes. A major question faced by all planners of higher education, particularly of under‐graduate curricula, is that of specialized training versus general education. Given the rapid pace of technological change, the latter seems better as a means of preparing graduates for a lifetime of coping with change. Still the traditional role of universities of creating and advancing knowledge has not been neglected, for universities or at least their graduates who are employed in specialized academies or research centres are still the intellectual and scientific pace‐setters of the world.