Kunskapssyner och kunskapens vyer Om kunskapssamhällets effektiviseringar och universitetens själ, med exempel från Karlstads universitet

Sammanfattning: This dissertation deals with the multi-faceted phenomenon of knowledge conceptions. The aim is to describe the meaning of “academic knowledge” in today’s knowledge society from the perspective of “education” (a term used here in relation to the ‘liberal arts’ tradition as used in the English language or in German ‘bildung’) and “commodisation”. These two perspectives create a field of tensions in higher education. The study analyses the flow of knowledge in the process of commodisation - partly through a network of relations between societally-relevant actors, partly through career geography. The actors studied are: the state, the university, the university departments and the graduates/students. The research ‘design is a descriptive case study of Karlstad University during the years 1997-2007.The theoretical approach combines two perspectives; commodisation of academic knowledge and career geography. Commodisation is studied by the developments in higher education seen from a wider national and international perspective. Career geography entails both a geographical mobility and a social mobility of the students.The results show that there are different conceptions about academic knowledge from the different actors. Two different perspectives of commodisation of academic knowledge have been found, one from the “top down” perspective and one from the “bottom up” perspective. The top down perspective means that commodisation is driven mostly by the state and then is followed by the university and the university departments. In the bottom up perspective, commodisation is driven by the students.Furthermore, the results from the study of the Swedish state reveal an increasingly clear commodisation of academic knowledge with emphasis on economic growth, regional development and international competition.  However, Karlstad University’s and the university departments’ view of knowledge differs somewhat from that of the state’s, and aims instead to combine ‘commodisation of knowledge’ with ‘knowledge as education’ in its efforts to be a ‘learning university’. It is also shown that students appreciate this combined view.On a general level, the main argument from this dissertation is that it is necessary to place more attention on how to obtain a balance between the commodisation of academic knowledge and knowledge as “education” in today’s higher education system.