Nyttan av den akademiska friheten

Abstract

The university is like a corporation insofar as it aims to meet the needs of the society in which it operates. In this respect, the widespread notion that academic research and teaching can and ought to be audited and assessed in a manner comparable to the criteria used by corporations, such as quality assurance, reaching new markets and so forth, makes good sense, and attempts at making it more efficient and productive understandable. But in emphasizing the similarities in order to achieve these ends, there is a temptation to belittle or ignore fundamental differences in the aims and ideals of university teaching and research, on the one hand, and the purposes and function of businesses, on the other. The ideal toward which all academic research and training aims, whether or not it always succeeds in living up to this ideal, is to seek truth and solutions to theoretical and practical problems regaardless of whether or not the results of that endeavor are considered interesting or desirable by society or various interest groups. Corporation, on the other hand, must always take into account whether or not their products and services meet the needs, preferences and demands of their business partners, clients and customers. Scientific excellence is by definition an internal affair, something that can not be predicted, defined or measured using non-scientific criteria. The use of such criteria to determine and steer what constitutes valuable research has a destructive influence on the autonomy of science and therefore ultimately on the uses to which it could be put.