 Ladies and gentlemen you're all very exceptional of course, you know that you're exceptional because you believe in the power of free argument To approach the truth to weed out fallacies, and it's not at all obvious. It's a very Particular and narrow tradition which has only barely survived by a threat, and it's a tradition that Has been passed on refined and ultimately betrayed by an institution called the university And I will talk about This story in a way you haven't heard before Most accounts of the university see the university as a creation by the state Where far-sighted state authorities had the idea to invest in higher education bringing about the scientific revolution later on and the miracle of European wealth of course That's all upside down First you have wealth, then you have leisure Then you have education, and then you might even have education as we have today I Have to skip antiquity even though I'm very fond of the old academy time doesn't permit and Unfortunately, there is not that much continuity between the ancient academy and modern university The history of the university starts in the 12th century After the fall of the Roman Empire A culture of Latin literacy had survived, and that's the big accomplishment of the church credit where credit is to you But it's not that unusual because other cultures of literacy Have always been linked to theology and religion as in Sanskrit and Hebrew and Arabic and so on But it's really exceptional and peculiar about the European situation is that a culture of commercial cities emerged and for the first time and Probably the last time for a long time a market demand for Literary services For a kind of sophisticated culture of literacy and Argumentation emerged and this market demand came from the intricacies of commerce and contract law So where the success began to be linked To be good in the trivia We hence talk about trivial things, but they are not that trivial. It's logics. It's using language It's having clear thought and understanding reality and applying it to complex situations and analyzing them So some scholars emerged we have accounts from the 12th century that within those cities Educational entrepreneurs appeared those were scholars Educated in the church, but they had this Latin literacy and they passed it on to students So groups of students formed around those educational entrepreneurs and those groups were called Schole schools And what's surprising is that those call us they were highly mobile they were kind of wandering scholars who moved around The commercial cities of northern Italy northern France parts of Spain and throughout Europe But they had a hard time making money They were craftsmen they were considered craftsmen in a particular craft in a particular art the liberal art Which is called liberal because it's very universal. You're very free in what you can do with it You can cause a lot of harm. You can do some good with it and They had a very precarious situation some of those Entrepreneurs were highly successful and it's quite funny how they made a living they realized That they should start offering accommodation for the students, but it didn't make the money with the accommodation They made money by selling wine beer and liquor to the students So not that much has changed So actually the first universities were kinds of pops the first commercially viable universities were kinds of pops but soon some incentives for Residents is set in and at first coming from the side of the students the students being upper class a people Pronto to commerce being interested in law studying law and they Bend it together as a group of consumers of education forming kind of consumer associate to better negotiate with the teachers Of course it makes sense. It scales to a certain degree So they bend it together in Bologna But once you have a group of people who would still like to Keep their mobility you have a hard time in full society you somehow need a protection and Just being under the city protection would be too much Authority over them because they really needed their mobility In order to find the best teachers in order to negotiate good conditions with those entrepreneurs So they were playing the game of medieval Europe and that's playing out powers against each other And of course to be in the city but have autonomy within the city you needed a Letter by the Emperor so they look for a letter by the Emperor of course They were upper-class well connected very bright people Who got a letter from the Emperor and the letter basically say nothing but leave those people alone? That was the first letter instituting a University leave those people alone. They are scholars They mean no harm leave them alone, and if you can't leave them alone just let them go Right of secession Was the main part of this? Libertas Colastica the freedom to teach and to learn in the similar movement But upside down a little bit later happened in Paris and there it was the teachers that born it together the Magistri that formed a group and That's something very exceptional about the European tradition that we not only had the city autonomy We had groups of people having legal autonomy we had non-state communities Overlapping communities of people who gathered around a certain interest and were able to negotiate a very high degree of autonomy within the competing powers and That's very exceptional, and that's what universities means universities means community And it's in a very legal sense a community. It means that's a community with its own laws Leave it alone or give it right to secede That's the main meaning of a medieval community, and that's what universities means It's not the building. It's not the institution. It's the autonomy of a group of people So in Paris it was called universities Magistrorum, it's collarium study Parisiansis and the study is from studium Parisiansi That was the institution that was formed the kind of hub that was formed by this Association of people of autonomous people And The universities is the community of the teachers and the students or the scholars bond together In Paris to have Autonomy they went for the Pope and they got decreed by the Pope which stated the same leave those people alone Give them right to secede If you can't leave them alone that was the bullet the the patent decreed by the Pope and later on The Emperor and the Bologna students did the same later on they got another degree by the Pope to play out against the decree of The Emperor so that's how you played in medieval Europe and for a time There was quite a lot of autonomy for those groups of scholars and Educational entrepreneurs, but of course a group of producers spending together to better negotiate with the consumers You know what it's called. It's a cartel And once you have a cartel and it's a cartel Which has a privilege because you need the privilege for this autonomy You start to realize something that these those liberal arts are Good for a lot of things. There's a famous saying by Abel art the famous scholar Who said well, I tried working with my hands and I figured out I'm no good at that So I went back to what I'm best at using my tongue But of course using your tongue you can spread lies as well And if the lies are not revealed that pays out pretty well so we had quite bad incentives in this Collusion between privilege and being a cartel of producers Of course had an interest in restricting who else could compete with them So that's where all this thing of certification accreditation and so on starts Usually in the French tradition it was just a kind of high school in the liberal arts Most students were following the lower degrees and just a few professionals later on would go study law and then medicine and Would usually be employed in the beginning state bureaucracies so that has always been the main demand for academics Starting out from these universities. So something interesting changed in the 14th and 15th century If you look at popular sayings all around Europe, there's a particular pattern Before the 14th century scholarship was regarded in high esteem a lot of saying saying like if you study You'll have honor. You'll have success and so on starting in the 14th and 15th century almost all Popular sayings about educated people are negative are the rogatory As it was a very famous popular saying digillert and different curtain, which means the educated the other crooks aware and That of course marks all this experience based on bad incentives and Privilege that's been conferred and of course the increasing status that is going on So university wouldn't have survived if there wasn't a new source of energy coming in a new kind of culture of literacy emerged within the Protestant countries in particular in Scotland native-centric Scotland We have a particular kind of enlightenment, which is very different from the continental French and German enlightenment Where you have wealth to the commerce Where you have a high culture of literacy? It's it was the first universally literate society 18 cent risk Holland and you have leisure So entrepreneurs tobacco merchants once their ships had set sail. They had plenty of time They started reading they started discussing and around the university like University of Glasgow a culture of argumentation and scientific discourse Re-emerged and as in Scotland it has always been the case that university is a symptom of wealth and the high level of culture never the cause of it, okay, and The scientific revolution the industrial revolution And so on it all emerged outside the university it emerged in the workshops of Entrepreneurs who had the leisure to be exposed to a culture of literacy and reflection and argumentation So they sent their children the Scottish entrepreneurs They sent their children to university Because they wanted them to attend lectures by the brightest people at the time and they funded a lot of university activities and it was really an open exchange and most discussions went on in salons and in Smoking launches and so on that was the real Academic intellectual discourse that was going on and something very similar happened in 19th century Vienna Out of which the Austrian school emerged as a particular brand of Austrian Enlightenment In the 19th century Austria where most was outside of the university It was in the circles the Mises Christ the guys guys who met in the cafe house and in the salon Culture were entrepreneurs and people from a variety of disciplines came together and the University was a symptom of this culture Bring those people together Still university would have vanished was it not for another injection of energy And that's the miracle of the 19th century German University the Humboldt model and I've only recently figured out This success story Now Wilhelm Humboldt is very interesting was a homeschooled guy who never had any university degree But he tried to convince the authorities of the time that they should consider Academics as a form of cultural bureaucrat But bureaucrat in the best sense of the word and there's a certain Prussian German even Austro-Hungarian sense to it that means a figure of a very high ethos And he argued once you have the best people in those positions You can leave them absolute freedom because it's not so much about what they teach and research It's about how they do it and how they can be an example for the next generation So his idea was having the best people and the brightest people you can find Have them state-appointed but then give them absolute freedom to teach and to research His brother was Alexander from Humboldt the most important scientist of his time Interestingly also he was completely outside of university was a private scholar It was really considered the most important scientist of his time worldwide Humboldt's idea Caught on and it wasn't only this academic freedom because there wouldn't be enough within the context of the state and the Centralization and later on they would very soon see That the incentives were not best So it was not such a bright idea Humboldt Didn't even become Minister of Education He Resignated before because he figured out he couldn't really control the thing that he said in motion here But what happened is at the same time we have a climax of German culture the German people were considered the poets and the thinkers of the time and By considering the professor the academic as the highest example of moral and intellectual ethos You have a carrot in front of young people and it's telling them you can have it all You can have income Plus prestige the highest prestige possible plus freedom To do what you like research what you like. It's a dream job very bright person. That's a dream job Because usually you can have all these things at the same time So that was very attractive and a lot of bright young people flooded the German universities very soon You had an oversupply of academics Which led to quite a few problems later on and might explain a lot about the 20th century but what do you do with all these young people and Another genius of the German model was to institute the privato tent and it was saying okay The brightest young people they get the right to teach But they won't get any income So for a while all those postdocs and so on they'll slave away being attracted because they want to become a professor one day and Because there are so many people. There's a lot of pressure to specialize And to slave away doing research and you hope that one day you'll merit to be a professor And that worked out really well for a few disciplines. You have a collective specialized and systematic effort of research and in very short time Germany was leading in the natural sciences and Philology linguistics Wilhelm von Humboldt was a linguist himself and all that of course makes sense Germany had the best Sanskrit scholars of the whole world. Why because I mean, it's a very tedious task If you need lots of people spending a lot of time It wouldn't be economical if you did it on the market and hiring experts But now you have pride people slaving away ten years the best ten years of their life Doing research because they want to have to precede the income and the freedom of the full professor So they worked out very well and it was so impressive that All other countries around the world in France in the United States They adopted or tried to adopt this model Students in France in Italy started to learn German because they had in order to keep up with the scientific journals We which were mainly in German at the time. So that was really impressive at the time But one important thing is usually overseen You couldn't explain it economically without the particular German situation at the time which was a decentralized competitive system of tiny principalities who all now started to compete for these professors and Everyone wanted to have his Lily University and that of course Improved the incentives a lot for good people to rise to the top because otherwise it'd be clear if you have a centralized system Like that the worst would get on the top But by having this competition Of course, you really had a higher level of scholarship in the particular fields that are prone to systematic research Not philosophy not economics and that's very interesting that Germany that was renowned for its philosophy Lost out in philosophy it became an era of toll and tie and unphilosophy at the university even in economics you all know the big debate between the Historics or historical school and the Austrian school of economics. They claim there are no laws. It's all just research You'll just look at patterns and numbers and so on because that's very easy to delegate to young students And let them do the number crunching research Works very well in this model Now the competition, of course, it was just the principle of competition. It was not that those princes were so cultivated and Intellectual and so on they considered and we know we have accounts of that they considered a university as something like a wine cellar So if you're a good prince you have a good wine cellar and maybe you'll have a nice university as well just as conspicuous consumption one would say today in economics and there are even accounts that on Average they spend about six times as much on the wine cellar than on the university But of course it makes sense I mean wine without economics without academics is still enjoyable, but academics without wine or unbearable Most of the time so I think it's a rational decision how they did it But once of course this competition vanished all the incentives all the bed incentives were in place Got a free run and when other countries like the front like the French with a more centralized state early on adopted this model, of course, it Meant something like a Chinese Mandarin system. They had the concours idea, which means okay We have 50 jobs in the bureaucracy Let's make an exam not for any detactical Reasons not to find out something. Let's make an exam to find out who are the 50 best and they'll get a job and the rest Screw them So that's the concours system and I prefer it in a way because it's more honest Then what do you have today because it's a mix up of the systems? And of course you have like 50 jobs in the bureaucracies, but 5,000 people to get a diploma That's quite unfair and misleading And it creates a kind of ferment of an academic proletariat and that had an immense impact on politics Most of the tremendous And terrible ideological movements of the 20th century's you can trace them back to the universities. That's with socialism. That's with nationalism nationalism is very easily explained in its ferocious anti-semitic branch very easily explained by academics for fear for employment Because that explains why the Austrian Universities out of all universities the German national students were more anti-semitic And and pro-german nationalists and the German students because of course they were afraid that within the Austro-Hungarian monarchy There'll be a lot of jobs for intellectuals to be filled with Hungarian speaking Slavic speaking groups and so on So it was just making sure that you get a job as a German academic later on in public service and if you trace in world history Everywhere the western model of university without understanding it has been exported a Generation later you see socialism emerging. You see all this kind of revolutions emerging and so on It's a very obvious pattern emerging there So one has to ask the question what's What's on the balance sheet if we look at the university and it's a very paradoxical Story, it's a symptom of a very high culture literacy culture of argumentation but of course once employed by the dominant motives of the time of statism and Bureaucratism and so on it became a force of destruction the value of university today Still rests in scamming pride young people to come together at a location Meet each other exchange ideas But of course that stops working once the pride is realized that they are scammed and they don't go there anymore So you're gonna have a problem that there's still some value in going to locations where bright young people Get together and form together because the long for this prestige Which is unfairly linked to the institution of the university the along for this freedom and the long Partly also for this tradition of intellectual discourse the other value a more important value today it's a kind of signal for the market because it tells employees that everyone was graduated from university at least has an IQ about a hundred and a Little bit above average discipline. So that's already something because it's for free. It's a free signal. Of course you take it You're a little bit above average as long as that's fine. It's a lousy signal. It's very inefficient It's it's terrible if you look at the economic side how much money is spent there to get this kind of signal So the future of the university, of course will be Market-provided signals that are more efficient and better will be market-provided education as a leisure activity Which is usually you was in the liberal arts sense It's a leisure that you can allow yourself That helps yourself if you have a high level of wealth in order to maintain it to pass it on to the next generation You need to have an interest in a kind of intellectual and moral formation of the next generation So there's a market demand for that in every wealthy society. It will be a very diverse Arrangement and situation and of course the third thing Where we can see the future on of the university is something like the property and freedom society because if you Remember what you never what universities stood for? It's a group of scholars Who cherish and have autonomy and autonomy means not being afraid to say what you think That's all it means autonomy to have the freedom to speak as you think plus Plenty of good wine. So cheers. I think that's that's the future of the university. Thank you very much