Table Of ContentHigher Education Dynamics 56
Lars Geschwind
Anders Broström
Katarina Larsen Editors
Technical
Universities
Past, present and future
Higher Education Dynamics
Volume 56
Series Editors
Peter Maassen, Department of Education, Faculty of Educational Science,
University of Oslo, Blindern, Oslo, Norway
Johan Müller, School of Education, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch,
South Africa
Editorial Board
Alberto Amaral, CIPES and Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal
Akira Arimoto, Research Institute for Higher Education, Hyogo University
Kakogawa, Japan
Nico Cloete, CHET, Pretoria, South Africa
David Dill, Public Policy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel
Hill, NC, USA
Jürgen Enders, University of Bath, Bath, UK
Patricia Gumport, Research, CERAS, Stanford Institute for Higher Education
Stanford, CA, USA
Mary Henkel, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK
Glen Jones, Ontario Inst for Studies in Education, University of Toronto
Toronto, ON, Canada
This series is intended to study adaptation processes and their outcomes in higher
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professionally involved in higher education, be it as ministers, policy-makers,
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series are peer reviewed.
Please contact Astrid Noordermeer at [email protected] if you
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More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/6037
Lars Geschwind • Anders Broström
Katarina Larsen
Editors
Technical Universities
Past, present and future
Editors
Lars Geschwind Anders Broström
Department of Learning Department of Industrial Economics
in Engineering Sciences KTH Royal Institute of Technology
KTH Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm, Sweden
Stockholm, Sweden
Katarina Larsen
Department of Philosophy and History
KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Stockholm, Sweden
ISSN 1571-0378 ISSN 2215-1923 (electronic)
Higher Education Dynamics
ISBN 978-3-030-50554-7 ISBN 978-3-030-50555-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50555-4
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Acknowledgements
The book editors would like to thank the following institutions and individuals that
have played an instrumental role in the process of writing this volume.
To Riksbankens Jubileumsfond for a generous grant (Grant No. SGO14-1247:1),
project Strategic Action and Response Strategies in a Changing Swedish Higher
Education Landscape 1993–2013. This support enabled the book editors to under-
take original research and to organise a workshop at KTH Royal Institute of
Technology in Stockholm together with all contributors.
To the editors of Springer’s Higher Education Dynamics series, as well as two
anonymous reviewers, for constructive comments and suggestions.
Finally, to the chapter authors for their time and outmost dedication to the book
project. Thank you for your patience.
Stockholm April 2020,
Lars Geschwind, Anders Broström and Katarina Larsen
v
Contents
1 Organisational Identities, Boundaries,
and Change Processes of Technical Universities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Katarina Larsen, Lars Geschwind, and Anders Broström
2 Technical Universities: A Historical Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Lars Geschwind and Anders Broström
3 Are Some Technical Universities Better Than Others? . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Mats Benner
4 The Position of Technical Universities Within Changing
Frameworks of Institutional Organisation and Steering:
The Case of the Norwegian University
of Science and Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Agnete Vabø and Liv Langfeldt
5 Understanding the Development of Technical
Universities in Poland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Dominik Antonowicz
6 Formalised Boundaries Between Polytechnics
and Technical Universities: Experiences from Portugal
and Finland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Teresa Carvalho and Sara Diogo
7 Technical Universities in Germany: On Justification
of the Higher Education and Research Markets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Christian Schneijderberg
8 Integrating the Academic and Professional Values
in Engineering Education – Ideals and Tensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Kristina Edström
vii
viii Contents
9 Technical Identity in a Merger Process—Between a Rock
and a Hard Place . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Tea Vellamo, Elias Pekkola, Taru Siekkinen, and Yuzhuo Cai
10 Engineering Academisation: The Transition of Lower Level
Engineering Education from Upper Secondary
School Level to Higher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Per Fagrell and Lars Geschwind
11 Double Degree Programmes in Engineering and Education:
Two Cases from Swedish Technical Universities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Mikael Cronhjort and Lars Geschwind
12 Concluding Discussion: The Past, Present, and Future
of Technical Universities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Anders Broström, Lars Geschwind, and Katarina Larsen
Chapter 1
Organisational Identities, Boundaries,
and Change Processes of Technical
Universities
Katarina Larsen, Lars Geschwind, and Anders Broström
1.1 Technical Universities in Context
Historically, polytechnic schools rose to prominence in many national settings dur-
ing the second half of the nineteenth century (Fox and Guagnini 2004). Over time,
new areas of technology have been developed and incorporated into their repertoire,
and waves of academisation have swept over the former polytechnics, transforming
some of them into technical universities (Christensen and Ernø-Kjølhede 2011).
Their proud traditions and brands tend to prevail. Several technical universities are
included among the most prestigious academic institutions of their nations and the
training of engineers and engineering research still enjoy a high level of prestige and
national priority, for example in the context of innovation and industrial policy (cf.
Clark 1998). Many institutions that might be referred to as technical universities are
also held in high regard by industry, and embraced as focal points for regional
renewal and development (Lehmann and Menter 2016).
Despite their often formidable success as higher education institutions (HEIs),
higher education research has not concerned itself with the study of technically
oriented universities as a (potential) organisational category. By no means do we
argue that universities within this category of higher education institutions have
been entirely absent in previous research. Technical universities feature in studies
K. Larsen (*)
Department of Philosophy and History, KTH Royal Institute of Technology,
Stockholm, Sweden
e-mail: [email protected]
L. Geschwind
Department of Learning in Engineering Sciences, KTH Royal Institute of Technology,
Stockholm, Sweden
A. Broström
Department of Industrial Economics, KTH Royal Institute of Technology,
Stockholm, Sweden
© The Author(s) 2020 1
L. Geschwind et al. (eds.), Technical Universities, Higher Education Dynamics 56,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50555-4_1
2 K. Larsen et al.
analysing university-industry interaction in engineering (Perkmann and Walsh
2009) and in historical studies of universities and individual technical universities
(Fox and Guagnini 2004). Institutions with a technical profile also play prominent
roles in studies discussing relations between scientific ideals and the engineering
profession (see, for example, Björck 2016; van der Vleuten et al. 2017; Williams
2002), in studies on the history of engineering education (Jørgensen 2007), as well
as in the broader literature on the sociology of higher education (Gumport 2007).
Whereas such previous studies have addressed technical universities in relation
to the education of engineers and the provision of engineering education, the start-
ing point for this volume is an interest in technical universities as organisations.
Scholarly interest in what HEIs known as ‘technical university’, ‘university of tech-
nology’, ‘institute of technology’, or similar have in common today is warranted to
better understand historical and contemporary ideals embedded in this type of
organisation. Empirically, the volume limits its scope to Europe whilst drawing on
experiences from various national contexts, but it also relates to other settings where
necessary to understand the respective European settings that the volume
engages with.
Since this volume is dedicated to the study of a specific acclaimed category of
HEIs, we need to address the issue of specifying how we intend to define this cate-
gory and its boundaries already at the outset. Is there such a thing as a distinguish-
able category of HEIs, which we may consider to constitute a field of technical
universities? As further explored in specific empirical settings in the empirical chap-
ters in this volume, demarcating such a group of organisations is not a trivial task.
For example, to consider the technical university as being ‘the place where they
educate engineers’ (cf Jørgensen 2007) would not seem to be precise enough for our
purposes.
A first delineation is based on the traditional academic educational hierarchy. At
the first—lowest—level of this hierarchy, we find vocational training for techni-
cians; at the second level there is a more advanced type of engineering education, as
typically provided in technical secondary schools and colleges (polytechnics); and
at the highest level, we find the highly educated engineers. This latter type of aca-
demic education is expected to prepare students for working with technology devel-
opment, and many such engineers are destined for a leading position in industry or
administration. In this the volume focuses on institutions awarding advanced engi-
neering degrees of the latter type, the technical universities and their equivalents (cf
Ahlström 2004, p. 116). We are particularly interested in technical universities with
both teaching and research as missions and less with teaching-only polytechnics.
However, when the role of polytechnics and lower levels of engineering education
is challenged and discussed at the higher education “landscape”, such as, in this
volume, in the binary sectors of Finland and Portugal, or in the unitary of Sweden,
this sheds light also on technical universities.
Another dimension that we need to consider is the breadth and scope of the insti-
tution. A first suggestion here is that an attempt to delineate what it might mean to
be a technical university should not be anchored in a strict disciplinary focus on the
field of engineering sciences. The engineering sciences have a long-standing
