Can Universities Survive? The Thousand-Year Story Part 2

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David Runciman (1:09)

Hello, my name is David Runciman, and this is Past Present Future, the History of Ideas podcast. Today, it's the second episode in our new series about the long history of and the current predicament of universities. It's the second part of my conversation with historian William Whyte about the history of universities from the 18th century until today, through the age of enlightenment and revolution, into the age of modern technology. We talk about the different ways that universities have been politicized and some of the consequences, but we also ask the question, is the resemblance between universities today and what they were nearly a thousand years ago real or is it an illusion? Can one institution really have survived so long in tact, or are we today talking about a different institution entirely?

William, we ended the first part of this conversation with the great crisis of the 17th century, that the universities survived. By the 18th century, it was clear it had not been the end of the university. Is there a point in the 18th century where we can start to say that for people working in universities, for people looking at universities, it was clear not only had they survived, but in a way great things lay ahead of them. So I particularly think, when I think of the university in the 18th century, I may be sentimentalizing it. In the long history of universities, I think of the Scottish universities in the 18th century as something close to a model of something which was glorious.

Is that just me with a bit of hindsight, or did people sense that at the time?

William Whyte (2:46)

The sense, particularly by the end of the 18th century, that the Scottish universities were distinctive and different, and also particularly different from what was happening in England, where the two ancient English universities were widely regarded by the 1790s, is not really fulfilling their function, is very true. There is clearly an Enlightenment university, and you can see deliberate attempts made to found Enlightenment universities. I guess the classic one is Göttingen or somewhere like that, where you get a very deliberate process of establishing these institutions, and the rebuilding of the University of Edinburgh from the 1790s on, which is another one in which they're attempting to establish these places as clear beacons of thought and research, as well as of teaching in that way. How is it that we know that the university has survived? I mean, the striking thing in the 17th century is that even when wars are happening, people are still founding universities. I mean, lots of them don't last very long, but they do exist. And in the aftermath of war, there is a tremendous focus on establishing universities or establishing new elements to universities. I suppose the great monument that shows that the university really is back in France is probably the establishment of the College de Catarnassion, the College of the Four Nations in Paris, or indeed Rishla's rebuilding of the Sorbonne amidst all this, is a sort of sign that there the university has survived in England. As soon as the restoration of the monarchy is affected in 1660, plans begin to be made for the rebuilding of chapels in Cambridge, the building of the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, which is a monument to the return of these universities. There's something very interesting, as we were talking about before, the ways in which the rebuilding of universities or the foundation of universities is seen as a sign of order and of renewal and of stability.

And that is something that's going to continue to be true throughout the 18th century. And I suppose in a way, the distinction of universities in the 18th century best understood as being one between those universities that are chiefly symbols of stability, of the Ancien Régime in some respect, and those universities that are actually best understood as Enlightenment universities. And the Scottish universities are a very good example of that, Edinburgh and Glasgow in particular.