Humanities in Crisis? The Marketisation of Higher Education and Its Consequences in Europe, ca. 1970 to 2000

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Andreas Wirsching
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 316001474

In the 1970ies to 1990ies, economic models such as the introduction of secondary markets and of New Public Management principles were implemented to higher education systems. Historians recently started to study the "marketisation", but they miss the interrelation between such a marketisation of higher education on the one side and the creation of a European science market and a globally aligned internationalisation of research on the other side. The consequences of marketisation and internationalisation processes for the humanities remain a blank spot in historical research even though contemporaries reflected this period as a fundamental crisis of the humanities. Therefore, this research proposal asks for the scope and the quality of this crisis. Moreover, it analyses the tension between the crisis and the resilience of the humanities due to new ways of research cooperation and changing conditions of competition. Which new dynamics of cooperation and competition resulted from a marketisation and internationalisation of the humanities in Europe? The project evaluates this key question on different levels by asking for the European dimension of these developments, by studying national characteristics through the examples of the British and the German higher education systems and by reflecting on local contexts when it examines the role of university bodies. The research proposal develops along three analytical steps: first, it improves a statistical evaluation of the public funding of the humanities; second, it identifies prominent features of marketisation and internationalisation processes along choices in higher education policy; third, it scrutinizes the crisis of the humanities by a critical discourse analysis.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 2553: Cooperation and Competition in the Sciences