The Danish Government is to be congratulated for having a high enough regard for higher education that the post is not filled every other year by a new Minister who really wants to become Minister of Finance, and who must perforce become educated to the issues in higher education. I dare say that our Danish colleagues undoubtedly found it troublesome at times to have a Minister who had become too familiar with their problems, but we at least have profited from his longevity in the role. Mr. Haarder has posited three issues which I would like to comment on briefly. The world is changing, and higher education policy with it. Universities are faced with the challenge of responding to the new higher education policies.
Universities are slow to respond, and in fact often resist change.
The increasingly accepted view is that in a post-industrial economy, universities will become more than creators of knowledge and educators of young minds. This view of the university as an engine of economic growth seems far removed from what has been regarded as the traditional role of universities in twentieth-century societies. That role was an amalgam of the American ideal of an educated democratic populace and the German Humboltian ideal of a university as both educator and generator of new knowledge. From these two developed the modern university with its ideals of teaching, research and service to community. The pace and degree of attachment to these two ideals has varied from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but the development has been characterized more by homogeneity than differences.