Humboldtian model of higher education
Sometimes called simply the Humboldtian model, it integrates the arts and sciences with research to achieve both comprehensive general learning and cultural knowledge.
[2] The concept of holistic academic education was an idea of Wilhelm von Humboldt, a Prussian philosopher, government functionary and diplomat.
Humboldt sought to create an educational system based on unbiased knowledge and analysis, combining research and teaching, while allowing students to choose their own course of study.
Humboldt envisaged an ideal of Bildung, education in a broad sense, which aimed not merely to provide professional skills through schooling along a fixed path but rather to allow students to build individual character by choosing their own way.
[5] Humboldt believed that study of the Hellenic past would help the German national consciousness, reconciling it with modernity but distinguishing it from French culture, which he saw as rooted in the Roman tradition.
[5] The cultural and historical background of the Humboldtian model answered the demands of the Bildungsbürgertum or educated middle class for greater general knowledge (Allgemeinbildung).
[11][12][13] In line with the basic concept of Wissenschaft, Humboldt regarded philosophy as the link between the different academic disciplines, which include both humanities and natural sciences.
[14] Humboldt encouraged the University of Berlin to operate according to scientific, as opposed to market-driven, principles such as curiosity, freedom of research, and internal objectives.
Philosophy is supposed to represent a kind of basic science, which allows members of different scientific disciplines to bring an exchange of their discovery and to link them together.
In addition to Humboldt, the group of reformers in Prussia included philosophers such as Fichte and Schleiermacher, and Berlin University was a focus of national cultural revival.
The French system lacked the freedom of German universities and instead imposed severe discipline and control over curriculum, awarding of degrees, conformity of views, and personal habits, instituting, for example, a ban on beards in 1852.
[23] Universities built on the Humboldtian model have provided students with the ability to address recalcitrant problems, leading to major scientific breakthroughs with important economic effects.
In a 2012 study, Ståhle and Hautamäki doubted the long-term sustainability of what they termed a "contradictory science policy", and argued for a return to a neo-Humboldtian approach to the university that would aim less for "innovation than for civilization" and reinstate the basic Humboldtian principles of academic freedom and autonomy for educational institutions, the pursuit of knowledge as a basis for both civilization and education (German Bildung), and unity in teaching and research.
Current problems and policy decisions regarding German education are addressed by a joint initiative called Konzertierte Aktion Internationales Marketing für den Bildungs- und Forschungsstandort Deutschland (KAIM).
KAIM coordinates efforts of the partners, which include the state and federal government, universities, trade unions and industry associations.
[39] Peter Krüger, the Munich-based real estate and food retail entrepreneur who endowed the foundation, was born in Freiberg and started an apprenticeship there in 1946, but was driven away by the East German communists because of his bourgeois background.
[40] Critics see in many current reforms, such as the Bologna process, a departure from Humboldt's ideal towards greater occupational studies with economic interests.
Humboldt and those who cite him claim to understand science and scholarship as processes of inquiry — 'not a finished thing to be found, but something unfinished and perpetually sought after', as he put it — not the mere discovery and repetition of things to be learned from textbooks, but rather an approach to learning, an attitude of mind, a skill and a capacity to think rather than specialized knowledge".
