S A JH E / SA T HO V O L 1 6 N O 2 2 0 02
Nation building and the role of the university:
a critical reflection
P Higgs
University of South Africa
ABSTRACT
The ongoing process of transformation in South
African universities testifies to the enduring
seriousness of the questions of meaning and
purpose that universities face. The response to
this situation often is in terms of transformation
programmes that focus on the social role of the
university, that is, on the meaning of the
university as a social institution whose purpose
is defined as meeting the needs of society. In
South Africa, political and economic discourse
has to a large extent perceived the social role of
the university in terms of nation building. In this
essay, I argue that such an understanding of the
social role of the university is misdirected, and if
allowed to guide educational transformation,
damaging. Rather, I would argue that the basis
for the university's service to society lies in its
character as a community of reason.
INTRODUCTION
I n the continuing debate in South Africa concern
ing the place that the universities should occupy in
a democratic, non racist and non sexist society, it has
become evident that the dominant issue governing
many proposals for university transformation is social
transformation. With regard to the question of social
transformation, the principle task of a university is
seen as contributing to the establishment of a
democratic society in serving the needs of the state
and the economy. In other words, the role of a
university is determined by the requirements implicit
in the provision of high level manpower, and the
objectives of its teaching and research programmes
are directed at vocational needs, the establishment of
a just South African society and the creation of
wealth.
These sentiments find expression in the published
Policy Framework for Education and Training, issued
by the Education Department of the African National
Congress in 1994. In this discussion document, it was
asserted that the higher education sector, which
included universities, reflected the distortions and
inequalities of the apartheid past, as well as the
tensions and uncertainties of the national transition to
a democratic order. In order to address this situation
in higher education, it was proposed that:
. the national government must have central re
sponsibility for the provision of higher education;
. the redressing of historical imbalances must be a
priority;
. the higher education system, and individual in
stitutions, must be required to be effective and
have clearly defined objectives linked to national
development, and
. democratic values of representivity, accountability,
transparency, freedom of association, and aca
demic freedom must underpin the higher educa
tion system.
Samuels (1992:8) underscored these proposals when
he argued that universities as public institutions
utilising national resources clearly have a central role
to play in the process of national development, and
that as a result: ``... the ethos of the university in terms
of content and curriculum, issues of governance,
accountability, autonomy and academic freedom will
have to be looked at in relation to the task of
contributing to national development.''
For Samuels (1992:7) this meant that universities
would:
. have to begin to accept responsibility for directing
their teaching and research towards the strength
ening of communities and the strengthening of
their capacities to empower themselves;
. need to play a critical role in identifying and
addressing significant social problems;
. have to generate new knowledge towards solving
educational, housing and economic problems;
. have to be seen to play a major role in ensuring the
development of a more just and equal South
Africa.
This vision which sees the role of universities as being
determined by national needs is encapsulated in the
notion of what Reddy (1992:19) calls, ``... the
11
I S S N 10 1 1 3 48 7
transformation of universities''. By ``transformation'' is
meant a fundamental and deep rooted restructuring
process ultimately directed at national development. It
means a substantial and meaningful degree of popular
participation in key initiatives. It means empowering
the disempowered, it means the reorganisation of
power relations and it focuses on common interest
rather than special interest. It addresses the issues of
gender and racial inequality. When applied to the role
of universities in society, Fehnel (1993:ii) claims that
it alludes to the bringing about of fundamental
changes in the system of higher education in South
Africa in order to adapt to the transformative national
and regional realities of the 21st century.
These transformative directives are further enunciated
in the National Plan for Higher Education published in
February 2001, which gives effect to the vision for the
transformation of the higher education system out
lined in the Education White Paper 3 A Programme
for the Transformation of Higher Education (Depart
ment of Education, July 1997). It provides an
implementation framework and identifies the strategic
interventions and levers necessary for the transforma
tion of the higher education system. According to the
National Plan, the key challenges facing the South
African higher education system remain outlined in
the White Paper, namely, ``... to redress past inequal
ities and to transform the higher education system to
serve a new social order, to press pressing national
needs, and to respond to new realities and opportu
nities'' (White Paper:1.1).
In response to these challenges, this essay sets out to
reflect critically on what the role of universities should
be within the landscape of higher education and in
the context of society.
UNIVERSITIES IN THE SERVICE OF THE
NATION
There is a crisis of confidence in the role that
universities should play in society. The ongoing
process of transforming universities testifies to the
enduring seriousness of the questions of meaning and
purpose that the academy faces. The response to this
situation often is in terms of transformation pro
grammes that focus on the social role of the
university, that is, on the meaning of the university
as a social institution whose purpose is to meet the
needs of society. In this framework, reformers see the
crisis of university education as part of a `'national''
crisis evident in the social needs of society and, the
weakening position of commerce and business in
global economic competition. The response that
follows from this is to call for universities to produce
graduates with the ability to address society's social
needs and also help a nation compete economically
with other nations in the global context. In other
words, whatever activities may seem appropriate to
12
the purely internal life of the academic community,
universities should be put to practical use externally
as instruments to correct social ills and make the
nation a better place to live and work.
Such a response, rejects Newman's (1941:124) idea
that a university should be founded on the principle
that knowledge is an end in itself and that a ``liberal''
education be given an Aristotelian interpretation as
tending towards ``enjoyment'' in which `'nothing
accrues of consequence beyond the using''. The
rejection of this particular view of the role of a
university in society, stems from the fact that it is
argued (Bok 1990:4 5), that much has changed in
education and society since Newman's day, changes
that include the development of university profes
sional schools, increased enrollment from a diverse
society, growth of public funding and the consequent
public accountability of universities, and, in the moral
realm, the complexity of the practical problems that
must be addressed in the contemporary world. As a
result of these rapid changes universities are now
perceived as instruments for careerism and social
change whose fundamental mandate is the pursuit of
practical issues rather than pure learning.
The point of this essay is that such an understanding
of the social role of the university in society is
misdirected, and, if allowed to guide transformation
processes, damaging. There is no denying the con
nection between the university and society; the
university serves the various societies that it helps
form. But there are several problems with defining this
social role of a university primarily in terms of national
needs and the production of graduates who can
shape a socially just and economically strong nation.
The first problem concerns society's image of itself
and the determination of its goals and functioning
which are far from luminously clear and self evident.
As a result, no matter what label or category is
attached to teaching and research, the content of
which is deemed necessary changes over time with
shifting political currents, alterations in the under
standing of science, and revisions in the urgency of
what are called national needs. The question to be
asked, therefore, is whether what is regarded as
necessary is a sufficient criterion for the determination
of a university's function. The point is that university
teaching and research whose sui generis can be
traced to so called national needs as currently
conceived is a guarantee of obsolescence. An
important role for universities is to pursue ideas that
render current practice out of date and in this pursuit
current estimations of national needs may be irrele
vant.
The demand for university transformation in addres
sing national needs is typical of developing societies
that have acquired political independence and now
determine who administers power on the basis of

mass electoral competitive politics. Such societies,
see a university as an instrument of national devel
opment and as a means of spreading social services
and other benefits equitably; and not least among
these benefits is higher education, which for most in
developing societies remains the surest gateway to
recognition and status, to lifelong occupational
challenges and a lucrative career. Within this per
spective, a university's role in society is exposed to
the conflict between populist democratic urges and
aristocratic elitist impulses. The role of a university in
society also becomes the target for questions of
autonomy versus service, of pure research versus
applied, of excellence versus equality, of ivory tower
exclusivity versus populist development relevance.
But all these questions are often mere euphemisms for
unstated political positions or serve the interests of
competing power centres which are jealous of their
own right to define the parameters of their own
concern and to be able to follow through with action
based on such definitions of purpose (Higgs
1991:164 169).
Consequently, one of the most important roles for a
university, in its service to the society that sustains it,
is to submit to constant critical scrutiny and review
that society's institutions, policies, goals, value
systems, and its self images real and imagined. In
this endeavour, the role of a university in society is not
to be an ideological handmaiden of the state. One of
the hallmarks of an open society is that universities
and their graduates are able and free to act as critics
and agents of social renewal and reconstruction. This
does not entail taking the state to task at every
opportunity and still less plotting its violent over
throw; such a view is an extreme and degenerate
conception of the social functions of a university.
However, it does mean that social, moral and political
issues of current concern are subjected by universities
to debate while alternative value systems are com
pared and critically examined. Transformation initia
tives arising out of pure necessity with respect to the
present state of a particular society at best simply pre
empts this debate and at worst leads to the creation of
a barren and soulless technocracy.
``Man does not live by bread alone'' expresses the
fundamental rationale of much university teaching
and research which, in a purely materialist and
technocratic conception of the nature of society,
seems to be irrelevant. If necessity in terms of national
needs is to be the defining criterion of what is
valuable and worth retaining in considering the role of
a university in society, it should be a concept of
necessity that pays heed to all aspects of the human
condition and not merely to a person's material needs.
The human imperative which is distinguished by
homo sapiens enquiring nature and quest for uni
versal culture should not be sacrificed for that
utilitarian motive which seeks to compel universities
S A JH E / SA T HO V O L 1 6 N O 2 2 0 02
to be subservient to the political and economic
demands of a rapidly changing technological world.
Secondly, definitions which set out to demarcate the
social role of a university in society, assume that a
university has a primary obligation to serve society,
and that this society is to be understood as the nation.
However, identifying the society the university is to
serve with the nation is too restrictive. ``Society'' does
not necessarily equal `'nation'', particularly when the
nation itself is defined in terms of political economy.
The danger here is a nationalism that sets up borders
to the kind of multicultural, global discourse that
should be going on in universities: collaboration
ultimately is ruled out by principles of economic
competition, namely, in a world view based on ally
versus foe. Further, the definition of ``society'' as this
kind of `'nation'' ignores the multiplicity of societies in
which we all live. ``Society'' should be kept as
multivalent a term as possible and attempts to
connect educational transformation to any form of
nationalism, clearly resisted.
Thirdly, a more fundamental danger lurking in the
programme to transform the university's role in the
nation's service, is misunderstanding what ``reason''
means and, therefore, of what it means for the
university to be a community of reason. The pre
dominant tendency has been to demarcate practical
from pure reason. The latter grounds liberal arts
education and university research programs, but the
former is taken as the hallmark of the social role of
universities in society. Transformation discourses tend
to centre on assessable goals and the ``cash value'' of
the academy in society. Talk about liberal arts and
basic research often has to be given a utilitarian
rhetorical ``spin'' in order to be persuasive. There is an
instrumental thinking here that externally identifies
the university in terms of its social ``uses'' and
internally turns academic communities into bureau
cratic systems. Pure theoretical talk of a university is
abandoned for a more practical analysis of university
communities in terms of their functional value to
society.
Dichotomizing pure reason and practical or instru
mental reason results in a poor programme for
transforming the university because, in its mistaken
characterization of reason in terms of this dichotomy,
it produces contradictions in transformation pro
grammes themselves. For example, universities are
being called on to produce graduates who will
contribute to the establishment of a better society.
But in this call there is a fundamental inconsistency
between this goal and the university conceived as a
community of instrumental reason: on the one hand,
universities are to be the places where graduates
develop skills and values to be applied in the real
world; but at the same time universities are organized
instrumentally on the model of value neutral systems
of interaction.
13
I S S N 10 1 1 3 48 7
For a response to this misunderstanding of reason and
the transformation programme that follows from it, I
will now turn to the work of Jurgen Habermas. For
Habermas, descriptions of reason as ``pure/theoreti
cal'' or ``practical/instrumental'' are useful but should
not subsume the character of reason as communica
tive praxis: reason is discursive, and we are rational as
we participate in communities characterized by free
and unconstrained discourse. The university is such a
community and as such, any transformation process
should be conducted with specific reference to the
university as practicing reason. In other words, to put
this in terms of the university in society, the social role
of the university and the basis for its service to society
lies in its character as a community of reason.
Further, analyzing social systems in instrumental
terms can be useful, but Habermas wants to offer an
alternative analytic concept of the community as
lifeworld, a concept borrowed from George Herbert
Mead and important for Habermas's own activity in
German university reform. For Habermas, the uni
versity is a lifeworld, a complex ``bundling of
functions'' oriented toward action wherein values
always are under discussion.
HABERMAS AND THE UNIVERSITY IN A
DEMOCRACY
Bernstein (1991:207) notes that, ``... pervading all of
Habermas's writings is his strong and unshakeable
commitment to democracy. No less than John
Dewey, Habermas is the philosopher of democracy.''
This democratic orientation influences Habermas
(1970:6) in what he writes about the role of the
university in society.
Habermas was very active in the German university
reform movement of the 1960s that centred on the
Free University in Berlin. Habermas's (1989:100
127) program for reform could be called the ``demo
cratization of the university'' and his goal ``to
demonstrate the affinity and inner relation of the
enterprise of knowledge on the university level to the
democratic form of decision making''. This ``inner
relation'' provides the ``organic'' relationship between
democracy inside and outside the university.
The ``idealism'' of the ``German mandarins'' that
grounded university identity and autonomy in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was no
longer, according to Habermas (1970:4), a viable
source for university reform activity. In part the size of
the university both in terms of number of students
involved and diversity of disciplines forced a change;
the increasing role of technology in society was
forcing a re evaluation of the connection between the
university and society; philosophical and sociological
understandings of institutions had moved beyond the
idealist notion of an institution as a form of objective
14
spirit; but even more important than these, the
nineteenth century university model had been dis
credited by its failure to produce real resistance to
fascism.
Habermas in the 1960s saw two options for uni
versities. One was to concentrate on the production of
knowledge and skilled graduates to serve an industrial
society, the university as a factory turning out,
producing, making knowledge and workers as its
product. This type of university would be less
concerned with grounding its activity in the kind of
self understanding that had characterized past uni
versity life and more concerned with integrating itself
into social systems of production. University auton
omy would be a matter of de politicizing university
education in order to concentrate on the business at
hand. Efficiency of production would be the uni
versity's goal.
This efficiency would not be politically innocent,
however, and would in fact be dangerous in its
covering over of its ideological effectiveness, in its
masking of its support for the status quo. Habermas
(1970:10) feared, ``It could pay for its unreflected
relation to practice by stabilizing implicit professional
standards, cultural traditions, and forms of political
consciousness, whose power expands in an uncon
trolled manner precisely when they are not chosen but
result instead from the ongoing character of existing
institutions''. Habermas (1970:11) points out here
that this conservativism is a danger to democracy
because it hides control systems and takes their
exercise out of the realm of deliberation.
The other option for university reform was to focus on
the process of reaching for self understanding (not
the foundational ``idea'') that characterizes university
practice. This entails looking at what Habermas
identifies as the three other functions of the university
besides producing knowledge and skilled graduates:
equipping graduates with the ``extrafunctional'' abil
ities (attitudes and attributes) necessary for success in
a profession but not strictly professional knowledge;
critically transmitting and developing the cultural
tradition of a society; and forming the political
consciousness of students.
Relating these functions, according to Habermas in
the 1960s, is a matter of the university community
finding its rational principle of self understanding. In
an earlier era this self understanding had been
secured through philosophy or, earlier still, theology
as the integrating discipline among university
departments. In the contemporary university, how
ever, the hegemony of philosophy has been cast aside
as too objectivist or foundationalist. Unity must be
provided instead by the practice of critical reflection
about assumptions and practices within the various
disciplines themselves. Self understanding here be
comes the product of the communicative activity of

practitioners of the various disciplines, and for this
discussion to proceed rationally, democracy is neces
sary. Self understanding is reached through discus
sion aimed at potential consensus. Habermas
(1970:24) labels this the ``democratic form'' of
decision making: ``rationalizing decisions in such a
way that they can be made dependent on consensus
arrived at through discussion free from domination''.
In a democracy, the better arguments succeed in
carrying the day. Further, this mode of discourse
enables the university community also to reflect
critically on its relation to the larger society in the
very process of fulfilling the functions Habermas
describes.
Habermas quickly became aware of a problem with
looking to critical reflection within disciplines and
rational, democratic discussion as grounding the self
understanding of the university as well as its relation
to society: while it may work in principle, ``It is
binding but not real''. He (1989:123 124) explains
why this is the case when he returns to this topic in an
address given on the six hundredth anniversary of the
University of Heidelberg entitled, ``The Idea of the
University''. Further reflection on the nature of change
in science (in light of Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend,
Yehuda Elkana, and others) led Habermas to realize
that there was less critical reflection going on in the
various sciences than he had hoped changing
scientific paradigms was not a reflective process.
Further, the democratic discussion Habermas looked
for as a result of university reform failed to take place
and was resisted by professors.
The question remains, then, ``on what could an
integrative self understanding of the corporative body
of the university be based?'' Such an integrating self
understanding is necessary not only internally in order
to guarantee ongoing communication, the basis of the
university's claim to be a community of reason for
Habermas; it also is necessary in order for the
university to engage critically the larger society of
which it is a part. For an answer to the question,
Habermas (1973:1 23) returns to Friedrich Schleier
macher's statement, ``The first law of all efforts
directed toward knowledge [is] communication''.
The self understanding of the university and the key
to its functioning both internally and in society lies
not in an unchanging idea; neither is it the product of
critical reflection within disciplines and rational
discussion of differences; it rests rather in commu
nicative action itself.
What is this communicative action? From a social
science perspective, Habermas (1992:146) differenti
ates between four types of action:
. teleological action aims at making valid claims
about the objective order;
. norm based action aims at actions whose validity
is evaluated in terms of social appropriateness;
S A JH E / SA T HO V O L 1 6 N O 2 2 0 02
. dramaturgical action which represents expressions
of the self whose validity is assessed in terms of
honesty or integrity; and, finally,
. communicative action, the aim of which is not
external to the activity itself but is rather mutual
understanding based on rational arguments. Such
understanding may be frustrated in many actual
discussion situations but remains possible in
principle in light of the structures of reason
common to all persons.
Philosophically, communicative action is more prop
erly called communicative praxis, where the under
standing of ``praxis'' is adapted from Aristotle's
Nicomachean Ethics. There Aristotle makes a tripartite
division of human activity, distinguishing between:
. theoretical knowing (theoria) aimed at (scientific)
truth, that which is most divine in us;
. technical/artistic production (techne/poesis),
aimed at the beautiful, a ``making'' whose aim is
some external product, the animal level;
. and in the middle in Aristotle's schema, political
activity (praxis] guided by the good of the polls,
the most human of our activities as we are
``political animals''.
Habermas, along with several other philosophers,
reorients Aristotle in the direction of the primacy of
praxis as a rational human activity. Communicative
praxis is by necessity historically and socially situated
and is always underway; that is, mutual understand
ing, to put its telos in Habermas's terms, is not a
product that remains unchanged and objectively at
hand once achieved, but is itself part of an ongoing
process. Rather than seeing knowledge as a useful
product of learning as communicating, Habermas
(1970:2 3; 1897:113 197; 1989:107, 119 122) says
about understanding, ``It has not been made it has
taken shape and it can be pursued further or
abandoned out of discouragement''.
Communicative action/praxis also plays a role in
understanding the university Returning to a social
scientific perspective, Habermas agrees with those
contemporary social scientists who describe the
university as a tremendously complex community
and conclude that it is impossible to subsume this
complexity under a unifying idea. Habermas rejects,
however, the turn to an analysis of this complexity in
terms of a functional reason that sees the university as
a congeries of autonomous systems each tailored to a
particular function and having no particular connec
tion to each other. There are social systems where
such an analysis of activity in terms of the value
neutral control mechanisms of functional reason is
appropriate, but there are other kinds of societies, too.
Habermas names this other kind of society a ``life
world,'' a concept he develops with a backward
15
I S S N 10 1 1 3 48 7
glance to George Herbert Mead and Emile Durkheim.
A lifeworld, for Habermas is characterized by com
municative reason rather than the functional reason
that characterizes social systems. Systems are value
neutral steering mechanisms oriented toward attain
ing particular social goals; systems analysis takes the
form of third party ``objective'' interpretation in terms
of the outcomes of action. A lifeworld on the other
hand, is a social means for the self reproduction of a
society through cultural reproduction, social integra
tion, and socialization; analysis of a lifeworld is
oriented toward action itself rather than products,
and is necessarily from the standpoint of a participant
in the lifeworld activity.
Habermas (1989:125) claims that the university is a
lifeworld, a complex ``bundling of functions in a
single society rather than a group of unrelated
functional social systems''. Habermas describes the
social functions ``bundled'' in the university in a
variety of ways (including Talcott Parsons's four
functions of research and training new scientists,
professional preparation, general education, and
cultural self understanding, as well as the categories
used in the earlier ``The University in a Democracy''
corresponding to his description of the general
functions of a lifeworld namely extrafunctional abil
ities/socialization, critical transmission of culture/
cultural reproduction, and developing political con
sciousness/social integration). Moreover it is essen
tial to realize that the university as lifeworld carries
out all of these activities simultaneously. The uni
versity is a rational society, then, where reason is
understood as communicative praxis and society is
understood as lifeworld.
What is the relation of all this to democracy? Why, in
light of the above, does Habermas feel justified in
claiming that there is a reflexive (internal/external)
relationship between the university and democratic
society? The university is a lifeworld, a complex
society whose rationality is grounded in communica
tive praxis. This praxis aims at mutual understanding
through the rational use of argument; or, put another
way, there is an egalitarian and universalistic commit
ment in academic discourse (generally speaking) to
free and open discussion and a confidence that better
reasons win arguments and lead to understanding
this, for Habermas, is the ``democratic form of
decision making''.
In this regard, Habermas (1992:117) asks whether it
is too much to claim that the university is exemplary
for society as a whole, because broader society is also
made up of functionally rational social systems and
systems cannot be sublated in a lifeworld. In
response, Habermas (1992:188) concludes that it
might not be too much to claim that universities are
essential in a democratic society. Universities and
democratic societies ``share emphatically in the com
municative rationality in whose form modem socie
16
ties, that is, societies which are not fixed once and for
all and which have no guiding images, must reach an
understanding about themselves''.
CONCLUSION
The crisis of confidence in university education can be
characterized as a loss of confidence in the integrative
and political power of modern reason. The response
on the part of university reformers is to turn to a
functionalism that accepts an understanding of the
university as a multiplicity of unrelated systems and
sets its sights on the minimal goals of producing
graduates who can help a nation compete in the
world marketplace and make for a better society.
Two generations ago John Dewey voiced a concern
about education in America. Dewey (1956:90)
claimed that the entire educational system left
students with `'no intellectual legs of their own to
stand upon, no sense of perspective by which to take
their bearings, no insight into the causes of the
economic and social breakdown, and no way for
orienting themselves''. This situation Dewey traced in
part to rapid changes in society and the economy
brought on by factors such as industrialization and
technology.
Today, at the outset of the 21st century, rapid change
in society seems to be the order of the day, and in this
context, the role of universities in society, including
those in South Africa, are coming under critical
scrutiny in terms of their identity in the landscape of
higher education. In South Africa, the development of
the new National Plan for Higher Education (2001)
has been informed by the Report of the Council on
Higher Education entitled, Towards a new higher
education landscape: meeting the equity, quality and
social development imperatives of South Africa in the
21st century which was released in June 2000. The
Council on Higher Education Report (25 26) which
builds on the Report of the National Commission on
Higher Education (1996) entitled, A framework for
transformation clearly states that with regard to the
role of higher education in social and economic
development: ``Higher education ... has immense
potential to contribute to the consolidation of
democracy and social justice, and the growth and
development of the economy ...'' and ``... the overall
well being of nations is vitally dependent on the
contribution of higher education ...''.
The framework for the transformation of the higher
education landscape in South Africa is therefore
unambiguously concerned with social and economic
reform in the interests of national development and
well being. These calls for the transformation of
higher education in the name of national develop
ment, however, also represent statements of political
intent whose utilitarian notions of a university's
 S A JH E / SA T HO V O L 1 6 N O 2 2 0 02

function have given rise to the movement away from
elitist to mass and universal higher education. Such
utilitarian perceptions of a university's role in society
need, however, to be treated with some reservation
because there is an explicit narrowness in these goals
which ignores the inherent value of democracy in
education. Habermas offers democracy as a rational
value which constitutes a new way to understand
reason and the character of the university as a rational
society. This does not represent a retreat to a rational
``idea'' as the basis for university life; and neither does
it despair at attempts at the formation of rational
communities. Rather, Habermas describes the uni
versity as a lifeworld practicing reason understood as
communicative praxis. Moreover, Habermas's notion
of communicative reason is also committed to
democracy in its respect for the plurality of voices
engaged in the quest for mutual understanding
through reasoned argument while maintaining con
fidence in the unity that makes the democratic respect
for plurality possible. On the one hand, ``the unity of
reason only remains perceptible in the plurality of its
voices'', while at the same time this unity `'not only
supports but furthers and accelerates the pluralization
of forms of life and the individualization of lifestyles.
More discourse means more contradiction and differ
ence. The more abstract the agreements become, the
more diverse the disagreements with which we can
nonviolently live.'' (Habermas 1992:140).
It would be tempting at this point to reject any notion
that the university has a role to play in society and
retreat to the notion that the goals of higher education
are entirely interior to the university, that the
university should be concerned strictly with knowl
edge for its own sake, that the university should
remain ``pure''. This would, however, be a mistake
too, and not only because it would result in a
misreading of the history of universities in society
the contemporary scene in higher education is not
merely the corruption of a golden era of ``purity'' in
the past.
Fortunately there are alternative readings for both the
character of the university as a social institution and
of the society it serves. Jurgen Habermas's work in
educational reform provides this kind of alternative,
an alternative that would claim that the university's
role in a democratic society is simply to be itself a
community of communicative reason.

REFERENCES

Bernstein, R 1991. The new constellation: the ethical political horizons of modernity/postmodemity. Cambridge:
MIT Press.
Bok, D 1990. Universities and the future of America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Council on Higher Education 2000. Toward a new higher education landscape: meeting the equity, quality and
social development imperatives of South Africa in the 21st century. Pretoria.
Department of Education 1997. Education White Paper 3: A programme for the transformation of higher
education. Pretoria.
Dewey, J 1956. Philosophy of education: problems of men. Littlefield: Adams and Company.
Education Department of the African National Congress 1994. Policy Framework for Education and Training.
Fehnel, R 1993. Preface, in Pavlich, G & Orkin, M (eds) Diversity and quality: academic development at South
African tertiary institutions. CASE: Johannesburg.
Habermas, J 1970. The university in a democracy: democratization of the university, in Toward a rational society,
translated by J J Shapiro. Boston: Beacon Press.
Habermas, J 1973. Theory and practice, translated by John Viertel. Boston: Beacon Press.
Habermas, J 1987. The theory of communicative action, translated by Thomas McCarthy. Vol 2. Boston: Beacon Press.
Habermas, J 1989. The idea of the university: learning processes, in Nicholsen, S W (ed and trans) The new
conservatism: cultural criticism and the historian's debate. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Habermas, J 1992. The unity of reason in the diversity of its voices, in Postmetaphysical thinking: philosophical
essays, translated by William Mark Hohengarten. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press.
Habermas, J 1992. The unity of reason in the diversity of its voices, in Postmetaphysical thinking: philosophical
essays, translated by W M Hohengarten. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Higgs, P 1991. The nature and mission of a university. South African Journal of Higher Education 5(2):164 169.
Ministry of Education 2001. National Plan for Higher Education.
National Education Policy Investigation: The Framework Report and Final Report Summaries. 1993. Oxford
University Press: Cape Town.
Newman, J H 1941. The idea of a university defined and illustrated, edited by Daniel M O'Connell. New York: The
American Press.
Reddy, J 1992. The transformation of South African universities: the perspective of a historically black university,
in Taylor, C A (ed) Tertiary education in a changing South Africa. University of Port Elizabeth.
Samuels, J 1992. The changing context of tertiary education in South Africa, in Taylor, C A (ed) Tertiary
education in a changing South Africa. University of Port Elizabeth.

17