goals of higher education curricula

The less general education and the more specific professional trainingin a curriculum, the more it is shaped by changes in the world of work.Teaching of key qualifications is being increasingly integrated intohigher education curricula.

Goals of Higher Education Curricula

Wolff-Dietrich Webler, Germany

Ever since higher education and academic teaching came into being, they haveserved to prepare individuals for coping with the demands of life and, as a rule,to provide a foundation for further occupational training. At German highereducation institutions, the goals and content of curricula are career-specificand oriented toward scientific disciplines, and there are hardly any generaleducation curricula. Given that colleges and universities in many countries arejust beginning to move in the direction of meeting the needs of society, theexperiences of the German higher education system provide an interesting per-spective.

Numerous issues confront the institutions of higher education due to thedemands on their curricula. They have to fulfill the goals and expectations ofstudents, society in general, employers, and the academic community. Studentsexpect their degrees to qualify them for jobs and be attractive to employers. Inmore humanistically oriented subjects, but also in technical courses, theyexpect their studies to contribute to their personal education and personalitydevelopment. Society in general (with the state frequently acting on its behalf)expects higher education institutions and curricula to produce graduates whowill contribute to the continuation of society, that is, to its social order, norms,and values. It is also expected that higher education will help society advanceand will demonstrate alternative paths of action. Finally, there is the concreteexpectation that graduates will have the qualifications required to protect theirpotential clients, patients, and customers. Employers are interested in highlyflexible and practice-oriented training that will qualify graduates to performwell under changing work conditions. The academic community anticipates

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING, no. 72, Winter 1997 © Jossey-Bass Publishers 81

Translated from German into English by Jonathan Harrow, Bielefeld University.

82 UNIVERSAL CHALLENGES IN FACULTY WORK

that its discipline will be taught as authentically as possible, and that studentswill acquire an appropriate academic socialization.

Current Public Expectations

Modern societies have expanded and transformed the historical functions ofhigher education institutions. At one time, a university education was expectedto qualify the administrative elite, prepare the ruling class for life in society,impart loyalty to the state to future public officials, and foster personalitydevelopment. Today, higher education institutions have taken over the increas-ingly complex functions of the state and industry, and they are expected to ful-fill them through their curricula. Four such functions are emphasized inWestern-style industrial nations (Becker, 1983, p. 53).

The Function of Integration. Higher education is expected to integrateindividuals into society through development of institutional loyalties, atti-tudes, and general work ethics of the industrial and bureaucratic world ofwork. Hierarchical authority structures, time budgeting, formal institutionaldiscipline, individual competitiveness, and individual assessment are rein-forced. It also includes imparting the basic principles of each national culture.In developing countries, or in regions of industrial nations striving towardautonomy, higher education institutions can be even more involved in pro-moting national identity, maintaining and strengthening corresponding tradi-tions, and developing cultural autonomy. Such expectations frequently clashwith faculty’s beliefs in the need to orient themselves toward international stan-dards modeled by the institutions of the former colonial powers at, for exam-ple, Oxford, Cambridge, or Paris.

The Function of Qualification and Absorption. Higher education insti-tutions fulfill the economic functions of qualifying employees for the labormarket or absorbing labor in times of unemployment. Because of the rapidchanges in job demands, employees must become increasingly flexible. It isexpected that students obtain basic or key qualifications in learning how tolearn independently and in continuous, lifelong learning. This should ensurethat adequately qualified employees are always available in profile and quan-tity (educational economics argument), and also that employees can keep theirjobs with as little conflict as possible (sociopolitical argument). When bothresearch and teaching are considered to be tasks for higher education, the dualgoals of handing on knowledge and gaining new knowledge ensure that newknowledge is integrated into teaching curricula. This particularly promotes theability to keep advances in occupational work processes and products in linewith the state of the art in research.

The Function of Legitimation. Almost every society that does notachieve equal opportunity for its members has a strong need to legitimize itself.Therefore, the public nature of education and the determination of social sta-tus through education are necessary features of a just society. Collective andorganized political debate is replaced by the idea of individual learning effort

83GOALS OF HIGHER EDUCATION CURRICULA

as a means of changing society. Major conflict-absorbing functions are linkedto the idea that individual participation in formal education processes is anadequate strategy for changing personal social status.

The Function of Selection, Allocation, and Status Distribution. Onetask of higher education institutions is to provide society with a continuous sup-ply of sufficient numbers of suitably highly qualified employees. Job levels andfunctions, which should be reflected in different wage levels, are frequently hardto justify on the basis of job profiles alone. Companies and bureaucracies avoidconflicts by using training, its duration, or its profile as criteria for pay scales.Therefore, employers have a vested interest in having highly differentiated train-ing courses and graded qualifications. This puts the education system under alot of pressure to produce graduates with highly differing status claims.

Only some of these functions—that of qualification and absorption, andthat of selection, allocation, and status distribution—are pursued overtly andformulated explicitly in curricular goals. The others, particularly the functionsof integration and legitimation, represent a “hidden curriculum” that is passedon indirectly. However, they cannot be ignored in any discussion of the goalsof higher education.

Society’s Mandate for Higher Education

Formulating a mandate for institutions of higher education is very politicalsince all sides expect it to have a formative impact on society. In Germany, dis-cussions started at the beginning of the 1970s aiming for a consensus acrossall social groups. Goals for higher education and its further development wereformulated and became federal law in 1975. The text of this Basic UniversityStatus Act (Hochschulrahmengesetz) contains Paragraph 7, “The Goal of HigherEducation,” which states: “Teaching and studying should prepare the studentfor a professional field of activity and impart the necessary special knowledge,abilities, and methods for the curriculum in question in a way that qualifiesthe student to carry out scientific or artistic work and to act as a responsiblecitizen in a liberal, democratic, and social constitutional state” (“Hochschul-rahmengesetz,” 1994, p. 247, translated). The demand that all curricula shouldprepare for a field of occupational activity draws on the structure of the Ger-man school system, in that, after thirteen years of schooling, higher educationno longer has to provide a general education.

Higher education institutions have some difficulties in meeting this goalof providing occupational qualifications. There is a conflict of goals betweenthe academic disciplines, which traditionally divide knowledge into special-ized disciplines, and society’s mandate to provide the student with an occupa-tional qualification, which calls for a completely different approach (see alsoChapter Eight). Another problem is that implementing this legislation impliesa change in how society views higher education: a transition from elite to masseducation. This is a change of perspective that institutions have yet to incor-porate into their self-image.


Higher education institutions find it even harder to qualify students in alldisciplines to act as responsible citizens in a liberal, democratic, and constitu-tional state. This does not mean a general education toward citizenship, butthe ability to view one’s profession in terms of how it affects the environmentand society. The reticence among German institutions of higher education infulfilling this goal reveals a change in values between the generation of teach-ers and today’s students. Our research team surveyed twenty-five faculties, ask-ing all teachers and all students about the relevance of certain abilities andknowledge in their curricula (Webler, 1995, pp. 309–313). Whereas the twogroups showed an astonishingly high level of agreement on most items, rat-ings regularly differed by as much as two points on a five-point scale for oneaspect: “knowledge about the impact of science and technology on the envi-ronment and society.” Students found this knowledge to be more importantthan their teachers did, even in disciplines closely related to environmentalprotection. It can hardly be assumed that teachers actually consider this goalto be unimportant. It is more likely that their specialization in only one disci-pline leads them to consider this topic to be outside their area of expertise.Therefore they may not consider themselves qualified to teach it.

This is but one example of the lack of problem-relatedness in curricula.This lack can be overcome through interdisciplinary work, but the monodis-ciplinary organization of German curricula acts as an obstacle. The core prob-lem in the curricula of current higher education is the conflict between thegoals of graduating students with an occupational qualification and the tradi-tional orientations dating back to the research universities.

Institutions of higher education are given a further mandate regarding“Curricular Reform”:

The higher education institutions have the continuous task, in cooperation withthe responsible state authorities, of testing and further developing the contentsand forms of curricula in line with developments in science and the arts, theneeds of occupational practice, and the changes that have become necessary inthe occupational world. Curricula should be reformed so that:

1. Their contents take account of changes in the world of work, opening upbroad options for occupational growth to students.

2. Teaching and learning follow methodological and educational guidelines.3. Students are enabled to scientifically process the contents of curricula them-

selves and recognize their practical relevance.4. The equivalence of comparable higher education qualifications is main-

tained, and the option of transferring from one institution to another is keptopen. [“Hochschulrahmengesetz,” 1994, pp. 247–248, translated]

The most important thing here is not only to meet the needs of occupationalpractice unconditionally, but also to use scientific methods to assess where the“changes that have become necessary” in the occupational world have


occurred. This introduces a normative element into the contract correspond-ing to society’s expectations that higher education should critically examinethe status quo, develop alternative possibilities, and present these to society.

Qualification Demands. As long as most graduates entered public ser-vice and were trained for these public careers in state-regulated courses cul-minating in a state-regulated examination, the state developed curricular goalsand qualification profiles according to its own insights and values. For curric-ula leading to self-employed academic professions, it was the professional asso-ciations, chambers, and the like that took care of the necessary adjustments.For industrial and commercial professions, it is now trade unions and businessassociations that monitor the relevance of training profiles and propose mod-ifications. In recent years, it is professional curriculum and qualificationsresearch that systematically ascertains the demands employers place on grad-uates and analyzes graduates’ job experiences in terms of the relevance of theirstudies to their jobs.

The result has been demands for concrete qualifications. I have compileda list of the most widely accepted “key qualifications” in Germany:

Individual competencies. Logical thinking, interdisciplinary and holisticthinking (ability to see relations), personal responsibility, curiosity, willingnessand ability to learn, concentration, motivation and initiative, creativity, plan-ning and organization, patience and persistence, striving for personal growth,and mobility.

Social competencies. Social responsibility, sociability, verbal competence andpresentation skills, cooperation (team spirit), and critical ability (in both giv-ing and taking criticism).

This list has been confirmed in principle by the higher education institu-tions, although one often hears criticism of its narrowness. It reveals a clearimbalance in favor of social skills and neglects personal values and any refer-ence to society and the environment. Although its incompleteness in terms oflack of depth and balance may shock some observers, the approach is certainlyworth continuing.

Curricular Goals of Teachers and Students. Another important dimen-sion of curricular goals concerns the expectations of teachers and students. Isurveyed faculty and students as to their perceptions of the relevance of spe-cific qualifications for each curriculum (Webler, 1995). The survey was basedon a list of abilities that has been introduced and tested in occupationalresearch. In part, it represents an operationalization of key qualifications(Webler, 1995, p. 310):

Legal and economic knowledge; applying theoretical knowledge to practicalproblems; recognizing connections and thinking analytically; technical workskills, working systematically; administrating, applying laws and regulations;working in a team, cooperation; judging, deciding; working independently;work discipline, concentration; designing, developing; conveying, presentinginformation; working with the assistance of computers; social skills; organizing,


planning, delegating; arguing, negotiating; documenting, researching; interdis-ciplinary thinking; reflecting on one’s own activities; writing specialist texts;asserting oneself; general education, wide knowledge; and knowledge about theimpact of science and technology on the environment and society.

For some disciplines, a few additional items were added to the list: abil-ity to present things in writing, ability to present things in speech, mastery ofthe language studied, understanding of other cultures and lifestyles, and mas-tery of specialist terminology.

Each item was accompanied by the following questions given to bothteachers and students:

• How important is the individual ability for the specific curriculum?• In your opinion, how strongly are these abilities actually promoted in the

curriculum, that is, in reality?

The answers to the first question produced a relevance profile for the cur-riculum. In view of the differences in disciplinary cultures, typical workingmethods, and occupational demands, the results naturally revealed completelydifferent profiles across the various curricula. In general, however, higher rat-ings were assigned to the importance of abilities than to their actual promo-tion in reality. This is a frequently found difference between theory andpractice, and should not be a cause of concern by itself. However, the studentswere much more skeptical with regard to the realization of these abilitieswithin the curriculum than their more optimistic teachers. Nonetheless, thedecisive finding was that students and teachers were almost unanimous aboutthe relevance of the individual qualifications. The differences between claimsand reality naturally provide a basis for starting discussions and for practicalreforms.

Practical Options for Strengthening Key Qualifications. Key qualifi-cations cannot be acquired from lectures, but only through active learning.This requires more time, so that if the total length of courses is to be kept con-stant, a stricter allocation of priorities and a reduction in curricular contentbecome unavoidable. Repeated attempts have been made to shift the teachingof key qualifications to separate teaching seminars, since they do not seem tofit in with the traditional subject-matter orientation (Gibbs, Rust, Jenkins, andJaques, 1994). In addition, many faculty have never learned how to work withsuch content, so they shy away from any large-scale reforms.

Key qualifications cannot be learned effectively when there is a separationbetween subject content and practical competencies. Given the many differentand increasingly unpredictable career paths of graduates, students need theflexibility to switch from the study context to job contexts and from one jobsituation to another. What is constant or shared across the different situationsis not so much the subject content, but instead behaviors, problem-solvingtechniques, and the like. Content and new work methods, such as problem-


solving techniques, have to be integrated. The ability to transfer what has beenlearned to the occupational context needs to be strengthened. Students can dothis only when the competence is acquired though the subject content andthen practiced as a transfer. The lack of practice in transfer is also why “learn-ing through examples” fails so frequently as a way of coping with the wealthof subject matter.

The ability to transfer learning from the school to the work settingrequires a relative similarity between tasks in the two contexts. Flexibility in awider range of situations is achieved only through experience in an increas-ingly large number of contexts. Further, teaching must be directly relevant topractice in a variety of contexts. Clearly, it is not sufficient to add special “sem-inars for teaching key qualifications” to an otherwise traditionally styled cur-riculum. The curricula must be transformed.

Strengthening key qualifications in higher education courses can be doneinitially through general strategies such as introducing practical relevance earlyin the course, encouraging longer student exchanges in other countries for theacquisition of foreign languages and the gaining of new perspectives on cul-tural differences, using autonomous team-oriented methods, and fosteringinterdisciplinary learning.

Individual Competencies. Taking the list of competencies given in thesection “Qualification Demands” as a reference, specific strategies for promot-ing each can be given.

Logical thinking. Logical thinking can be promoted by constructing andanalyzing causal relations, designing argument situations (for example, pro andcontra discussions), and planning and organizational activities.

Interdisciplinary and holistic thinking. This competency can be promoted byusing case analyses and relating them to problems, creating simulations (par-ticularly planning games), establishing relationships to practical work in sem-inars, gathering information on practical work, and developing practicaltraining courses and work experience seminars.

Personal responsibility. Personal responsibility can be promoted by provid-ing options for students in curricula, increasing students’ decision-makingscope, and encouraging students to practice active information-seeking behav-ior.

Curiosity. Curiosity is stimulated through generating excitement, permit-ting discovery learning, building in surprises, and promoting learning relatedto students’ aptitudes.

Willingness and ability to learn. This competency is promoted throughteaching and practicing learning techniques and work techniques.

Concentration. Concentration can be increased through exercises in grasp-ing things and listening, relaxation aids, autogenic training, meditation, andchess, puzzles, and memory games.

Motivation and initiative. Motivation and initiative might be fosteredthrough clarifying or establishing goals, explaining career opportunities, andproviding information on real options for growth and potential applications.


Creativity. Creativity is encouraged through establishing a sanction-freeclimate, brainstorming, positive reinforcement of suggestions, encouraging thedevelopment of alternatives, impulse methods, fantasy methods, relaxation(laughter), and forming association chains (charade games, giving talks on asequence of pictures).

Planning and organization. Planning and organizational skills are promotedthrough coordinating student work groups, organizing parties, preparingexcursions, editing college journals, preparing conferences, and planning andcooking meals for student work groups.

Social Competencies. Returning to the list given in the section “Quali-fication Demands,” it is also possible to develop specific strategies for pro-moting social competencies.

Social responsibility. Social responsibility can be fostered through havingstudents organize contributions to seminars at set times (presenting papers),run tutorials, counsel new students, engage in group work, take practicalcourses, and participate in seminars on the social consequences of professionalactivities.

Sociability. Sociability is encouraged by getting to know people (for exam-ple, partner interviews), group work, and exercises in the job field.

Verbal competence. Verbal skills can be improved through dialogue exer-cises, rhetoric courses, writing practice and essay training, debating practice,word games (for example, Scrabble, guessing games), jokes based on plays onwords, foreign language exercises, and residencies in foreign countries.

Cooperation (team spirit). Cooperation is fostered through group games,group work, planning games, projects, and team sports during leisure time.

Critical ability (in both giving and taking criticism). This competency is pro-moted through feedback exercises (for example, discussing a paper one haspresented), practicing text criticism (for example, two controversial texts onthe same subject), recall exercises (for example, recalling two very good or twovery bad seminars and judging why they were good or bad), and discussingstudent course evaluations.

Examination Options for Key-Qualification Study Goals

Examinations are generally restricted to assessing knowledge that is in cogni-tive domains. However, because they should cover the entire spectrum of cur-ricular goals and measure the extent to which those goals have been achievedif they are to actually predict a qualified professional training, traditional exam-ination methods will have to be changed and expanded in most curricula. Eventoday, some examination elements such as written examination work, essays,or lab report writing already provide an indirect assessment of key-qualificationabilities. Basically, it is necessary to discriminate between the evaluation ofproducts and of processes. The latter has been rather unusual up to now, andit needs to be developed in order to observe key qualifications.

The traditional product evaluations include written examination workbased on literature searches or on other activities that require key qualifica-


tions in their preparation. To evaluate the process, these traditional strategiescan be extended so as to include an assessment of the process. Evaluation cantake place through interaction analysis in documented work processes (forexample, through video recordings). In other words, the work processes couldbe observed in the examination procedures. Examination situations couldinclude group discussions, with and without moderators, and with and with-out role assignments. The situations could require either competition or coop-eration. Role plays such as cooperation games or decision-making games takenfrom group dynamics could be used. Counseling situations, negotiations, orother performances can be assessed. Planning games, using group work orteamwork (complex interactive task assignments requiring division of laborand cooperation) would provide another form of process evaluation.

New forms of presentation can also be designed to facilitate the evalua-tion of key qualifications. Project markets, in which the outcomes of variousprojects are presented in a small exhibition, would be one format. Anothermight be capstone seminars—department functions in which, in the presenceof all teachers, complex products displaying key qualifications that are the out-come of joint teaching and learning efforts are presented. Examples may be acomplete application for funding of a research project extending from a reviewof the state of research to the design, work schedule, time budget, and costplan, or a one-year program for a community-oriented youth center extend-ing from a population analysis across interviews to conclusions on appropri-ate leisure-time provisions.

Conclusion

Curricula are shaped much more strongly by tradition than many teachers real-ize. This even applies to new courses. Their design and their goals express—overtly or covertly—numerous and even thoroughly contradictory social andindividual expectations about the processes of qualification and socialization.In each national and disciplinary context, these processes occur in more or lessstrongly regimented combinations of compulsory, compulsory choice, oroptional seminars on the one hand and a different distribution between pri-vate study and seminars on the other. This is also reflected in different curric-ular goals directed toward mastery of the subject matter, individual cognitiveability, or individual initiative. Few national higher education systems revealone single clear formulation of curricular goals based on prior negotiationprocesses, even though this has to be viewed as a democratic task for societyas a whole. It is, finally, a political task requiring a parliamentary decision. Abalance between individual rights and community interests (for example,regarding the basic democratic decision to produce politically mature citizenswho are capable of making decisions) requires curricula that guarantee a suf-ficient breadth of provisions and choices for students.

The less general education and the more specific professional training ina curriculum, the more it will be shaped by changes in the world of work. Thisis why the acquisition of key qualifications has been integrated increasingly


into curricula over the last twenty years in all industrial countries. However,few national higher education systems have faced up to this task because theway they or the academic community view themselves is shaped very stronglyby the academic division of labor into disciplines. Each discipline has its ownspecialist language. These circumstances need to be overcome in favor of aproblem-related and interdisciplinary approach. In addition, although teach-ers have learned how to carry out research and they base their teaching on this,the majority (with the exception of English polytechnics, Dutch HBOs (tech-nical schools), and German Fachhochschulen) have no “normal” job experienceenabling them to introduce the world of work into the academic world. As theresults of empirical studies in Germany have shown (Webler, 1995), teachersand students exhibit a high level of agreement when rating the importance ofapproximately twenty key qualifications. It is only when asked to rate their realintegration into curricula that teachers prove to be much more optimistic thanstudents. The suggestions in this paper should help to strengthen the integra-tion of these goals into curricula. This is the direction that higher educationhas to follow in the future.

References

Becker, E. “Hochschule und Gesellschafts Funktion der Hochschule und Reproduktions-probleme der Gesellschaft” [Universities and Societal Functions of Universities and Soci-etal Problems of Reproduction]. In L. Huber (ed.), Enzyklopädie Erziehungswissenschaft,Vol. 10: Ausbildung und Sozialisation in der Hochschule. Stuttgart, Germany: Klett-Cotta,1983.

Gibbs, G., Rust, C., Jenkins, A., and Jaques, D. Developing Students’ Transferable Skills.Oxford, England: Oxford Centre for Staff Development, 1994.

“Hochschulrahmengesetz” [Legal Framework of Universities]. In Ministerium für Wis-senschaft und Forschung des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen (ed.), Handbuch Hochschulenin Nordrhein-Westfalen. Düsseldorf, 1994.

Webler, W.-D. “Evaluation im Kontext der Organisationsentwicklung. Erfahrungen miteinem Model für Lehrberichte” [Evaluation Within the Context of Organizational Devel-opment: Experience with a Model for Teaching Dossiers]. Beiträge zur Hochschulforschung,1995, 3, 296–326.

WOLFF-DIETRICH WEBLER is director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Research andDevelopment in Higher Education at the University of Bielefeld in Germany.

goals of higher education curricula

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