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CALL FOR PAPERS Workshop on "Lifelong Learning, Flexibility and the University" Workshop is under section V of the 7th International Society for the Study of European Ideas (ISSEI) Conference, titled "Approaching a New Millennium: Lessons from the Past - Prospects for the Future". Conference will take place in Bergen, Norway, 14-18 August 2000 The deadline for abstracts has now been extended until April 15, 2000. If you wish to participate, submit a two paragraph long (150 words) abstract. Send abstracts to workshop chair: E-mail to: [log in to unmask] Or Surface mail to: Sokratis M. Koniordos 12-14 H. Polytechneiou Street, Aghia Paraskevi Attikis, Greece 15342 Tel/Fax: + 30 1 6011522 Information on other deadlines, fees, accommodation, grants, paper length, publication of proceedings, etc., is posted on the 7th ISSEI Conference Web address: http://www.uib.no/issei2000/ This workshop's call may also be read in the following electronic address: http://www.uib.no/issei2000/Workshop/papers5.htm ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Lifelong Learning, Flexibility and the University". The discourse and practice of Lifelong Learning (LLL) has touched the gates of the University in Europe. It has triggered a variety of responses ranging from unlimited acceptance and incorporation to outright rejection. LLL is a broad, Jainus faced, notion. It has been hailed as a sensitive way to respond to the widening demand for education and citizenship - a demand not restricted anymore to post-adolescents but due to socio-economic and technological changes and developments in health care has now come to include a major and growing part of the adult population in advanced countries. It has also been seen as an important way to upgrade knowledge-based skills, thus rendering them more responsive to shifting market and technology-related changes. Furthermore, it may contribute in the enhancement of the flexibility of European enterprises and industries, which increasingly face cut-throat competition from third countries. The acquisition and development of market driven flexibility (ies) has been an ever present concern during the past 20 or so years, both among the academia and among governmental and intergovernmental organisations such as the European Commission that perceives it as a major way to pursue European advancement and integration. The advent, however temporary it may prove to be, of the dominance of the market paradigm, but also the quest for a new role for the citizenry, necessitates the question about the new role of the university. Increasingly dependent upon non-government funding, pressurised to perform and evaluated for its ability to do so, university research and teaching become geared to demands about flexibility as these are filtered through the LLL practices. What then is the appropriate role for the university in the European context? Should it "open up" and if "yes", how, in what direction? Is it possible to retain its more traditional role and functions? Does it make sense to discuss the feasibility or the appropriateness of a new role when schemes such as the various "Open Universities" and more so the "University for Industry" have risen or are about to be launched? And is it possible in the European context to retain isolated pockets of resistance to the galloping sweeping changes that cannot but have an impact on the university too? What should the best response be to the demand of economic agents and (inter) governmental organisations to upgrade the knowledge base in the direction of added value human capital, but also of citizens who wish to empower themselves by expanding their knowledge - at a time when European societies increasingly assume the features associated with the Learning Society? Is the celebration and adoption of flexibility, through LLL, cancelling the critical function of universities? Who benefits and who lose out? In the end, is LLL-related "opening" up of the University sufficient to endow it with a new role and, what more, if anything needs to be done? The above set the context in which proposals for papers are solicited. Proposals with an empirical focus, case studies of European areas, regions, countries or trans-european explorations are welcome and so are those with a more theoretical orientation. S. M. Koniordos %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%