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Knowledge society discourse and higher education

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Abstract

The growing importance of knowledge, research and innovation are changing the social role of universities in the globalized world. One of the most popular concepts used to approach these changes in post-industrial and post-modern societies is the concept of ‘Knowledge Society’. In this paper, we will analyse the roles higher education is expected to play with regard to various knowledge society discourses. We will begin with analyzing the uses of knowledge society as an intellectual device and continue by reflecting on how changes in higher education are related to knowledge society discourses in national, regional and global levels. In the final section we will reflect on current challenges and expectations generated within these discourses for higher education and the implications these expectations have for higher education research.

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Notes

  1. According to Bell (1973) knowledge is “a set of organized statements of facts or ideas, presenting a reasoned judgement or an experimental result, which is transmitted to others through some communication medium in some systematic form”.

  2. See Stehr (1994) for the comprehensive discussion on the origins of the concept Knowledge Society.

  3. Mansell refers to Machlup (1962) and Porat (1984) when he writes that “for three decades or more, people have been discussing the major transformations that are possible through harnessing electronic information processing technologies to the social and economic priorities of industrial societies. These new technologies are vitally important for ‘information economies’ or information societies” (Mansell and When 1998, p. 12).

  4. Internet search through Google (in October 2006) gave about 81 700,000 entries for the concept Knowledge Society. In social sciences of ERIC database there could be found around 600 academic books and articles on the topic of the Knowledge Society in 2006.

  5. The discourse about the Information Society began in the 1960s. However, according to a number of writers this concept gives a more limited and technically-oriented description of the challenges in a modern society, because Information Society focuses attention to the ‘production, processing, and transmission of a very large amount of data about all sorts of matter—individual and national, social and commercial, economic and military (Schiller 1981, p. 25 in Stehr 1994, p. 12). The main sociological critique against this (limited) economic perspective to changes in societies acknowledges the fact that knowledge always has a social function which is rooted in the production, distribution and reproduction of knowledge. The nature of these issues is political, not technical, because the quality of information and knowledge are related to social structures and the use of power in society.

  6. Classically, economists define public goods as goods whose consumption by one consumer does not diminish its’ value or potential use by another. Literally, no one, even non-users can not be excluded from the benefits of production (Samuelsson 1954 in Marginson 2006).

  7. The idea of Knowledge Society has been taken seriously in Finland. The Finnish Ministry of Education set up an expert committee to prepare a national strategy for education, training and research in the Information Society (or rather Knowledge Society, because the words information and knowledge are synonymous in Finnish) in 1994. It set the objectives for the national development plan which was implemented in January 1995 (see: National Strategy 1995).

  8. TEKES, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation is the main public financing organisation for research and technological development in Finland. Tekes finances industrial R&D projects as well as projects in universities and research institutes (see: http://www.tekes.fi/eng/tekes/).

  9. SITRA is the Finnish National Fund for Research and Development under the supervision of the Finnish Parliament. Sitra’s aim is to be a partner in building a knowledgeable and innovative society (see: http://www.sitra.fi/en/).

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  1. Institute for Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä, Jyvaskyla, Finland

    Jussi Välimaa & David Hoffman

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  1. Jussi Välimaa
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Välimaa, J., Hoffman, D. Knowledge society discourse and higher education. High Educ 56, 265–285 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-008-9123-7

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