(Nakahara) Hello, everyone. For today's session, we would like to have a discussion with Prof. Shunya Yoshimi. Thank you very much for taking the time to join us. (Yoshimi) It's my pleasure. (Nakahara) This is the final session, so today, Prof. Kurita will also join us. Thank you. (Kurita) Thank you. (Nakahara) For our final session, we would like to take a holistic approach to our discussion of higher education from a macroscopic perspective. Prof. Yoshimi, you published a book called "Daigaku towa Nanika (What is University?)" "as part of the "Iwanami Shinsho " (Iwanami paperback series)?" (Yoshimi) Yes. (Nakahara) I'm one of your readers. (Yoshimi) Thank you. (Nakahara) So, let me start the discussion with the history of universities. This online program is focused on how to teach, but we would like to get back to the starting point of what university used to be, and how it has developed historically. Could you start with that? (Yoshimi) Sure. University originated in Europe during the period approximately between the 12th century and the 13th century. Its original purpose was a cooperative society between instructors and students. (Nakahara) Cooperative society? (Yoshimi) That is really an important point. You call it "university". University originally means and started from a cooperative society between instructors and students. (Nakahara) Wow. (Yoshimi) So why did the instructors and students need to form a cooperative society? In Europe during the period between the 12th and 13th centuries, or the Middle Ages, cities formed networks, and so instructors and students were always traveling from city to city in search of knowledge. Basically, that means that both instructors and students were travelers. (Nakahara) That's cool. Travelers seeking knowledge. (Yoshimi) But, aren't they similar to us a little? Today, we have academic conferences and summer programs. Undergraduates, graduates, and instructors all travel around the world in certain seasons. (Nakahara) When it comes to researching, we travel that way, indeed. (Yoshimi) It is as if we were dating back to the Middle Ages. (Nakahara) I see. (Yoshimi) To keep traveling around meant that travelers were in a bit of a weak position. For example, the towns you visited has various kinds of rulers, such as landowners and feudal lords. Once students and instructors tried to teach or learn there, pressure was put on them through the imposition of taxes or regulations. Under these circumstances, instructors and students formed cooperative societies. By asserting that they were licensed by overwhelming authorities such as the Pope or the Holy Roman Emperor, they were able to rid themselves of the intervention of lords and rulers. (Nakahara) It must have started from a community formed by people who wanted to learn and who wanted to teach, I suppose. (Yoshimi) Yes. It was a community. And people pursued a new type of truth, which was not confined to the teachings of Christianity. University was a place that was more open to the activity of seeking universal truth, and the reliability of its knowledge gradually increased the power of the university. (Nakahara) That's a little different from the image we have of university today. (Kurita) It is. (Yoshimi) It might be. However, universities which were born in the Middle Ages rapidly declined from the 16th century to the 18th century. There are several reasons for this, but one of was the religious wars. A religious war between Protestants and Catholics occurred in the 16th century, as any textbook of world history teach you. Universities were divided into the Protestant side and the Catholic side. (Nakahara) I see. (Yoshimi) In addition, with the gradual foundation of modern nation states such as France, Germany, and Britain, Europe was divided into states. There were many events, but one of the most remarkable was the invention of letterpress printing by Gutenberg in the latter half of the 15th century. That brought about the prevalence of new knowledge, as thousands or tens of thousands of copies could immediately be printed from type set or in type. (Nakahara) I see. (Yoshimi) Until then, you had to travel months to reach a certain town in order to read a book containing important knowledge or knowledge that was considered to be the truth. But once letterpress printing developed and the number of publications increased, Europe was filled with an enormous number of books, which could be called a kind of information explosion. With the increasing accessibility to information, you no longer had to become a traveler and travel great distances to gain knowledge. You could gain the knowledge you needed by collecting books without going to university. That situation is somewhat similar to today. (Nakahara) I see. (Yoshimi) Today, we have the internet and digital archives. Knowledge is now easily accessible on the internet. That was similar to the situation in the 16th century, where knowledge was published more and more through the development of printing techniques. It was a kind of information explosion. (Nakahara) To sum up, the period between the 16th century and the 17th century was when university gradually declined under the influence of religion and the nation state, and the decline was accelerated by the appearance of books as a medium. (Yoshimi) When referring to the famous thinkers and scientists in the modern age, only a few of them were professors at university. Descartes, Pascal… many more. Most of those who are well known by everyone today were not university professors. (Nakahara) How about Newton? (Yoshimi) Probably he wasn't a professor. (Nakahara) Wow. (Yoshimi) They are the ones who were not professors, but the authors of very important books. (Nakahara) They were authors. (Yoshimi) They were the authors, and they published their books. Once their books were recognized as very important, they established authority as the authors of those books. In addition, such authors became members of the academy and were patronized by royalty and nobility. These people were the intellectuals in the highest positions in society, and professors at university came a bit lower than them. (Nakahara) I'm sorry to hear that. (Yoshimi) They are ordinary people. (Nakahara) Ordinary. I see. (Yoshimi) Therefore, the real thinkers and scientists did not become university professors. (Nakahara) I see. (Yoshimi) That period continued until about the 18th century. (Nakahara) What happened after that? (Yoshimi) After that, university suddenly revived and turned into the central organization of knowledge throughout the 19th century. There was a complete reversal or a switch. The biggest driving force for that switch was the nation state. (Nakahara) I see. Nations. (Yoshimi) Modern nation states developed centered around Germany. Nation states needed elites who could support the state. University was revived as a central organization that could select and foster such elites, and put them in central positions. (Nakahara) In that sense, university was an organization to select human resources who could support the nation state. (Yoshimi) An organization to select human resources, and at the same time, to foster them. (Nakahara) I see. (Yoshimi) The first one to organize this system was Germany. It spread from Germany to Britain and Japan, and led to the establishment of the modern educational system, which meant an educational system under the nation state. You start from elementary school, proceed to junior high school and high school, and then enter university. University was eventually popularized, so that routes after graduation became diverse, with some students finding employment at corporations, but the select group became bureaucrats. Next, comes the stage of the pyramid structure which emerged in each country. (Nakahara) What came to my mind through listening to your talk is that university has always been exposed to changing times. (Yoshimi) Yes. (Nakahara) I wonder was there any period when university was stable? (Yoshimi) Well, modern nation states were established in the period between the 19th century and the middle of the 20th century, or maybe the end of the 20th century. I think it was the period when the framework of the nation state spread worldwide, and so did universities and their system. There are 780, nearly 800 universities in Japan today, right? (Nakahara) Yes. (Yoshimi) At the end of the war, I mean World War II, the number of universities in Japan didn't reach 50. But they have increased in number more and more since then. There are 2,600 to 2,700 universities in the United States, 1,600 to 1,700 in China. What a number. I assume there are more than 10,000 universities all over the world in total. If you assume that there are several thousand students at any one university that makes tens of millions of students at more than 10,000 universities. (Nakahara) Yes. (Yoshimi) That's a huge number. (Nakahara) I'm nearly 40, and when I was a university student may have been the very end of the stable period of university. I'm thinking such things from listening to your talk now. (Yoshimi) I see. (Nakahara) To change the subject slightly, how does the present situation look, from your perspective? What kind of organization is university today? What is the situation surrounding universities? (Yoshimi) As I mentioned, the period between the 19th century and the end of the 20th century was when modern universities developed and when the number of universities rapidly increased under the framework of nation states. However, from the end of the 20th century, or after entering the 21st century, I think universities has been facing a huge shift. One reason is because the framework of the nation state has weakened a little. Now that it is the age of globalization, with developments taking place beyond borders, global systems have come to exert stronger power than the framework of nations. The other reason is because of digitalization or informatization. The 16th century was an age of information explosion, but something more is happening today, where you can acquire the important and varied knowledge you need without going to a university library or even without learning from instructors at university. The position of the university has been shaken tremendously. (Nakahara) I see. That must be the reason why I have an uneasy feeling. (Yoshimi) And where should universities go in a situation such as this? (Nakahara) I see. (Yoshimi) There may be various ways to think about this, but what I consider one of the most important things is for the university to change its role as a ritual of passage and instead become a medium that enables those enrolled to examine the shift in their career and vision. (Nakahara) Rite of passage? Ritual of passage? (Yoshimi) Rite of passage. (Nakahara) University as rite of passage. (Yoshimi) I believe university should switch from being a rite of passage to a medium to examine and shift one's career and vision. We usually think that we go to high school, then university, then become working adults. So the image we have of university is something placed between high school and society. And we have to take an entrance examination for the transition from high school to university. (Nakahara) Yes. (Yoshimi) And we also have to go through the process of job hunting to make the transition from university to society. That means there is an entrance and an exit for the rite of passage. Once you enter university, you can spend your time quite freely. (Nakahara) As if you are allowed to spend four years on your own. (Yoshimi) After a four-year moratorium, you have to go through another tough period of job hunting. This is quite similar to a kind of rite of passage. However, this stands on the assumption that the societal structure is extremely stable, with stages of elementary school, junior high school, senior high school, university, and working adulthood. University has a first year, second year, and third year. You belong to a certain department of a certain faculty, and as long as you belong there, you can pave the way for the next stage through a step-by-step development. Such a pathway is promised only in a society where people can regard it as "that's the way it is." (Nakahara) But that might be difficult in the present situation. (Yoshimi) Things have changed. Society has become uncertain and complicated, so its shell has been collapsing. I mean, that shell related to age, organizations, and the nation state. The shells of nations are collapsing, and the shells of organizations are collapsing, so society as a whole has become very flexible and uncertain. Under circumstances such as these, I think university should be a place that people can enter three times in their lives instead of as a system for a rite of passage. (Nakahara) Three times? Do you mean the three times when you face a crucial stage in your life? (Yoshimi) Three crucial stages. (Nakahara) I see. (Yoshimi) The first one of the three is when you are 18 years old, when you graduate from senior high school. And… (Nakahara) That's the same as today. (Yoshimi) The next one is when you are around 30. This age, around 30, is when you have experienced your job at a corporation or at a certain workplace for 10 years and you have come to the realization of what it is like to do your job. Subsequently you will become a managerial-level member of staff, and will face a period sometime in your thirties when you will be wavering as to which way you should go; whether you will become managerial-level staff at the same organization, or make a drastic change and explore an alternative path. (Nakahara) You will certainly face such a period. (Yoshimi) The last one is when you are around 60. This is when you are approaching retirement, and when you are almost done with what you should do in your company or organization, or you realize that there are things you cannot do anymore. However, everyone is still energetic until around the age of 75. (Nakahara) Yes, that's true. (Yoshimi) When there are 15 to 16 years left in your life, you will face a period when you have to choose whether you spend the rest of your life in peace or eagerly engage in another job to seek another fortune. What university could do in such a situation, as I mentioned earlier, is serve in a role of medium for switching your vision or career in your life. Medium means an intermediate item, so the point is whether university can become an intermediate device. (Nakahara) So, when you have a chance to make a change in your career, university should enable you to take an overview of it from an unexpected point of view. (Yoshimi) It should play an intermediate role that enables you to realize what you were vaguely thinking of. (Nakahara) I see. (Yoshimi) I think university can fulfill this role. (Nakahara) I see. The same thing can be said with my students. There are students a little under the age of 60, and those aged between 30 and 40. I think there are many people who wish to enter university with the type of needs that you have mentioned. (Yoshimi) If only it can become easier for such people to enter university or graduate school. Due to the declining birth rate and the shrinking population of 18-year-olds, the number of people taking university entrance exams is decreasing, especially in Japan. It is said that 780 universities are now too many, but if everyone entered university three times in their lifetime, the university population triples and universities will, somehow, be able to get along. (Nakahara) But when it comes to that, university was originally an institute to supply human resources to support nation states, and faculty members used to teach students who were elites. If the university must transform into a medium that can provide those who enroll with new perspectives for their respective turning points, what will be required of the faculty members? What kind of qualities, roles, and ways of working do they need to acquire? (Yoshimi) This is connected to what I mentioned earlier, but to put it bluntly, faculty members, too, should become a kind of medium. (Nakahara) A medium. (Yoshimi) It might sound strange to hear the phrase "faculty members becoming a medium," but as I said, a medium means an intermediate item. The student population will become highly diverse. There are and will certainly be those who graduate from senior high school and enter university directly but, at the same time, there will be people around 30, who have experienced working adult life, and those around 60 who are approaching retirement and are trying to step forward to live another life, and are seeking new knowledge. When there is an atmosphere of collaboration and learning together at university, it becomes important to link those people to one another in a positive way. How could people of completely different ages and experiences be related to one another so that they become creative? It would become the role of faculty members to take care of that. They should become academic facilitators for those students. I think this role is a kind of medium. There is also one more role. When it comes to learning something, we are flooded with knowledge and information from all directions, including the internet and archives. The volume of accessible knowledge has become more enormous than ever. If you include media written in English and other languages, you can easily access a large amount of knowledge. This trend will continue to grow. Under these circumstances, I believe that methodology related to ways of combining knowledge, choosing reliable information, theorizing information, and analyzing information in order to structure novel knowledge, and meta-level epistemology will become extremely important. Faculty members, then, should become a kind of meta medium. Among the different forms of media flooding the world, faculty members must play a creative role as living media, which are more reliable than other media. This will lead to the creation of an intellectual community of instructors and student in the 21st century, as I mentioned earlier. (Nakahara) I see. In that sense, connecting diverse things would inevitably lead to creative conflict. Faculty members can facilitate its occasional emergence and create novel things. And as you said, the world at present is filled with knowledge from various sources, so faculty members should also function as judges. Am I getting it right? (Yoshimi) Yes. (Nakahara) It's time for you to offer some special comments, Prof. Kurita. When it comes to the roles of faculty members as a medium for creating knowledge out of different things and provoking creative conflict, from your point of view, how is that related to the aim of this course? (Kurita) Listening to your talk, I thought that it boils down to the conclusion that the attitudes of faculty members should go back to the starting point of when university was born, but that might not be true? (Yoshimi) No, that's not true. But I think the principle of university won't change, or there must be something that won't change. Let me cite just two examples here. One is the relationship of trust that exists between instructors and students, as a basis for the learning that takes place at university. As it started from community, university cannot persist without the relationship between instructors and students. This relationship is necessary for creating and pursuing knowledge. (Nakahara) Necessary. (Yoshimi) Yes. And the other is related to the two aspects of knowledge concerned here. One aspect is usefulness. When society surrounds university, it is important not to present knowledge as something apart from the interaction between the two, but to make it meaningful to society through such interaction. However, the other aspect, uselessness, is also important. Usefulness and uselessness are both important. Certain knowledge exists that is useless but valuable, which we call liberal arts or liberal knowledge. The word "liberal" has multiple meanings, such as freedom and tolerance, but it is not oriented to being useful. But unless there is a basis of liberal knowledge, useful knowledge will not emerge. Therefore, creating a dynamic relationship between liberal knowledge and useful knowledge has not changed since the Middle Ages. So these are the two things that have not changed. But what will they be like from now on? I mean, the information environment has completely changed. Scholars used to travel two or three months to reach a monastery of some far-off city in order to seek a certain piece of knowledge. As it was depicted in the film "The Name of the Rose," it was a time when gaining access to the knowledge written on old sheets of paper was of great significance. But now you can access the internet with just one press of a button and obtain any knowledge you want straight away via a search system. It is completely different. We need to maintain learning communities, which form the basis of academia, in spite of the drastic changes in the environment, and in order to accomplish that, I think the skills and roles required of instructors will change. The principle has not changed, but what the instructors actually need to do has drastically changed due to the transformation of the environment. (Nakahara) When it comes to the qualities required of faculty members, some that exist from a long time ago should not be changed, but others need to be adapted in accordance with the changes to the university along with the changes to the environment. That makes things complicated unless you appropriately distinguish between what should and should not change. (Yoshimi) It will get complicated. (Nakahara) I would like to talk to you more, but I'm afraid we're running out of time. Graduate students who would like to become faculty members in the near future are watching this "Interactive Teaching" online. Could you give them a message? (Yoshimi) Well, I think those who are aiming to become faculty members have a hard time these days. In the 1990s, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology adopted a policy that focused on prioritization of graduate schools. It resulted in a rapid increase of the number of graduate students and those who earned master's degrees and doctoral degrees. However, the number of universities where they could be employed at did not increase accordingly. Competition became fierce, which has led to a growing number of students who cannot become faculty members. You might be discouraged and inclined to give up, but, this is what I always say, being talented is equivalent to being persistent. I think it is really important in a society such as we have today to believe in yourself and to carry through on what you have decided to do. Since society has become increasingly uncertain and flexible, it has become ever more important that you remain stable and never give up on paving your own way. Society will never guarantee your path, so you have to make an effort on your own. This may sound pretentious, but I would like you to believe that being talented is equivalent to being persistent. Once you overcome the hardships, you can find the students who are waiting for you. As long as you never give up, you will be able to achieve this, and I have actually witnessed this in a number of cases. I have also seen cases that express the importance of not giving up, so let me tell you one more time, never give up. (Nakahara) To be talented is to be persistent. (Yoshimi) Believe in that concept and keep having your own persistence. That is my message. (Nakahara) I see. Thank you very much. That concludes the talk session, and the entire content of "Interactive Teaching". Could you give a final remark, Prof. Kurita? (Kurita) As Prof. Yoshimi said, it is important to build a relationship of trust between instructors and students, and I think that is exactly what we have dealt with throughout this program. (Nakahara) Such as how to create an atmosphere to maintain a relationship of trust. (Kurita) Yes. (Nakahara) OK. Thank you.
