Transforming the Future
ETH Zurich and the Construction of Modern Switzerland 1855–2005
Halbleinen
ISBN 978-3-0340-1052-8
CHF 68.00 / EUR 50.00
- Kurztext
- Autor/in
- Einblick
The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH ranks among the world’s leading universities. Since the institute’s founding in Zurich in 1855, hundreds and thousands of professors, undergraduates, and graduate students in engineering and the sciences have crossed paths in its halls, filling them with life. The product of all this coming and going has been an astonishingly diverse academic, economic, and political culture – ETH became simultaneously an engine of the country’s modernization and a laboratory for its society. This book presents a meticulously researched historical account of this academic culture and offers a deep insight into the forces which, over a span of 150 years, have been transforming Switzerland’s future.
“A model for future studies on universities.”
Klaus Hentschel in ISIS
Inhalt
Introduction
1. A fundamental debate: Anchoring the Swiss vision post-1848
Between infrastructural policy and customs regulations
Statistical excursions into the educational landscape
Hunting for market niches
The public policy debate free-for-all
The parliamentary debate
From Bern to Zurich: nailing it down
2. Nation, profession, middle class: Educating nineteenth-century engineers
Federal codes of behavior
- Federal education policy
- National visibility
- On being a federal institution
- A school for the nation
Industrial standards
- Technical training and industrial growth
- Employment and educational credentials
- Part university, part manufacturing plant
- Toward an engineering curriculum
- The laboratory as “idealized factory”
- Launching into research
- Collaborating with industry
Cultural norms
- Climbing the bourgeois career ladder
- Toeing the line
- Socialization
- Gender and the polytechnic
3. Setting a new course: The polytechnic becomes a “real” university after 1908
The polytechnic in crisis
Disentangling
Reorganizing the polytechnic
An unsuccessful debate over doctorates
Acquiring the character of a real university
The breakthrough of 1908
From the “Polytechnic” to the “Federal Institute of Technology”
Societal crisis and institutional change
“Noblesse oblige!”
4. Business, politics, and research: New alliances for a new century
Technology boom and bust
- Materialism and the decline of the West
- A technocratic humanism
The value of research
- Meeting the promises
- The world as a laboratory for agricultural policy
- The “scientific transformation of the social” in the factory
- The problem of basic research
- Matching funds for applied research
- The limits of the “national system of innovation”
State intervention
- Getting the economy going again: savings and stimulus
- The ETH as an institute for “Geistige Landesverteidigung”
- Investing in research for jobs
- The science policy “arms race” post-1945
- Dealing with the military
Swissness and science
- Arthur Rohn’s “Jewish problem”
- Promoting an all-Swiss faculty post-1933
- The United States as a new center of science
- International research collaboration
5. The social laboratory: Testing the bounds of higher education and politics post-1968
“Educational requirements for the industrial world”?
Systemic disruption
The “student” element
The campaign against the ETH law, 1969
The revolt of the knowledge workers
The end of the experimental phase
6. A ll about flexibility: Managing science and technology in the post-industrial world
Ready for anything
- Flexibility as a prescription
- The permanence of reform
- The art of the project-centered approach
- A new research commission
- A project-based curriculum?
- Databases and resources
Betting on Internationalization
- The universals of science
- Appointments and university policy
- Deindustrialization and relative backwardness
- The globalization of science
- European-American compatibilities
Computerization strategies
- Computers, centers, and interactivity
- Differentiating services
- Reintegration and networking
- The WWW and customized IT
Consultants, Restructuring, and Management
- The Hayek report
- The creative chaos of the matrix
- Management everywhere
- Autonomy as a management mandate
The demise of disciplines