Hi, Francois,
The answer to your question is that universities did not offer
vocational education in the 17th, 18th, or 19th centuries. It was only
within the past half century or so that vocational education entered the
university. Before then, other systems offered vocational education.
The first universities that still exist today under that name began in
the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. These universities offered the
professional schools of law and theology, training professionals in the
royal and ecclesiastical administrative disciplines. They also offered
medicine. In the early years, the studium generale – the lower faculty
– prepared students for promotion to the professional schools. The
stadium generale taught the trivium and the quadrivium, as well as
philosophy. As the preparatory faculty, the studium generale grerw to
embrace the liberal arts and sciences. It was known as the lower
faculty, where the professional schools were the higher faculties. As
adjunct arms of church and state, the higher faculties held the power
within the university.
A debate erupted in the 1790s when Immanuel Kant’s works were subject
to approval and censorship by the Faculty of Theology. Kant electrified
the university world with a book in which he argued that the lower
faculty was the foundation of the university. In The Conflict of the
Faculties (Kant 1992 [1798]), he argued that the soul of the university
resided in the humanities, the sciences, and philosophy, and he called
for the independence of the lower faculties from censorship. The modern
chrestomathic university emerged from this debate, taking shape in
Germany with the Humboldt reforms and the foundation of the University
of Berlin in 1809.
For the previous centuries, vocational education had been the province
of the guilds, not the universities. Physicians studied at university.
Barber-surgeons were members of a guild. Some professions were partially
vocational, such as engineers who might be trained at military academies
or technical high schools and colleges, as well as coming up from the
shop floor. In Napoleon’s France, the grandes ecoles took
responsibility for some fields, but these were special school distinct
from universities. The 19th century saw the foundation of some technical
institutions that have now grown to become chrestomathic universities.
In North America, industrial design was first established in such an
institution when the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh
became the first academic program in the field in the early 1930s.
Carnegie Tech is now Carnegie Mellon University. Most design programs
entered universities with art and design in the years after World War
II, with the vast majority taking root in the 1980s and 1990s. This took
place as universities expanded, and it also took place as polytechnics,
teachers’ colleges, agricultural colleges, technical colleges, and
other tertiary educational institutions merged into or grew to become
universities.
There was no rationale for including vocational training in
universities before this transformation took place.
If you wish to learn more about the history of universities and the
shift of design into universities, you can find a short but reasonably
detailed history in “Design Curriculum Challenges for Today’s
University” at URL:
http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/47336
If you wish to learn more about the guild system and the way that
vocational education began to become professional education, please read
“Design Science and Design Education” at URL:
http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/189707
Yours,
Ken
Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished
Professor | Dean, Faculty of Design | Swinburne University of Technology
| Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask] | Ph: +61
39214 6078 | Faculty
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Reference
Friedman, Ken. 1997. “Design Science and Design Education.” In The
Challenge of Complexity. Peter McGrory, ed. Helsinki: University of Art
and Design Helsinki UIAH. 54-72. URL:
http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/189707
Friedman, Ken. 2003. “Design Curriculum Challenges for Today’s
University.” [Keynote conference lecture.] Enhancing the Curricula:
Exploring Effective Curricula Practices in Art, Design and Communication
in Higher Education. Center for Learning and Teaching in Art and Design.
First International Conference at the Royal Institute of British
Architects (RIBA) London, UK, 10th - 12th April 2002. Co-sponsored by
ELIA (European League of Institutes of Arts) and ADC-LTSN (The Art,
Design and Communication - Learning and Teaching Support Network).
London: CLTAD, The London Institute, 29-63. URL:
http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/47336
Kant, Immanuel. 1992 [1798]. The Conflict of the Faculties. (Der Streit
der Falkultaeten). Translated with an introduction by Mary J. Gregor.
Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.
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Francois Nsenga wrote:
Could someone reminds us what - since the 17th - 18th centuries in
Europe, until 4-5 decades ago??? - was the rationale to host vocational
training within universities? Perhaps knowing such a rationale will help
debating more objectively whether or not 'PhDs are a threat to design
education'.
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