Read summary of project findings
(online 7 March 2005)

The Survival of the Democratic Intellect: Academic Values in Scotland and England paper available to read on the Institute of Governance site.

The second element of our examination of national identity as articulated by individuals through institutional frameworks focuses on institutions more self-evidently central to the cultural reproduction of national identity. The broad research questions for this study are listed below.

Universities have had a central place in many movements for self-government over the last two centuries. In Scotland and England, however, the historic relationship between national identity and university culture has not followed the standard pattern. In contemporary England, universities have been largely ignored by social and political movements, which are bringing English national identity into question, such as those concerning the position of black people, or those suspicious of the European Union. In Scotland, however, the universities have been at the heart of the debate about national identity since the 1960s - accused of having sold out to British or English elite values, and alleged to have become dominated by staff educated in England. The imposition of financial accountability, narrowly defined, has forced the institutions to pay attention to their national context, a pressure that will be intensified when the Scottish parliament takes responsibility for them.

Academics are probably the only sizeable profession in Scotland with a large proportion of members socialised outwith the country. This opportunity to study English or non-UK people in Scotland is therefore without parallel. Scots academics in England are proportionately a much smaller group, but they will provide a comparison with the English in Scotland. There will also be scope to compare the results of this study with a similar study of school teachers in Scotland.

The aim of this study is to understand the relationship between academics' own sense of nationality, their perception of the cultural role of academic institutions, and the changing relationship between academic institutions and the state.

The broad research questions are:

• To find out what views academics have about their own nationality, how that relates to their place of initial education (including initial postgraduate work), whether they view national identity as being relevant to the work of academic institutions, and whether they interpret issues of academic accountability as having anything to do with national identity (as opposed, for example, to simple financial efficiency).

• To find out how, if at all, academics are modifying their curricula and research interests in the light of current debates about national identity in the UK.

• To assess the extent to which academics see themselves as having a role in producing and reproducing a national culture, and if so which national culture.

• To examine the relationship between the issues above, and the academic context in which academics work - Scotland or England, the same or a different nation from their own initial education, the balance of national identities among staff in their own department and faculty, the subject area in which they mainly work, and their length of experience as academics.

The postal survey element of this project, conducted by Professor Lindsay Paterson, has now been completed. A highly satisfactory response rate of 64% was achieved. Data from the survey have been processed and analysed, with very interesting results. The paper "The Survival of the Democratic Intellect: Academic Values in Scotland and England" can now be read online at the Institute of Governance site.

The second phase of the project, involving intensive interviews with a sub-sample of survey respondents, is about to get underway. This phase will principally be conducted by Ross Bond. Interviewees have been selected and will be contacted once a small number of pilot interviews have been carried out. Interviewees will represent a variety of disciplinary, institutional and national backgrounds, enabling us to further explore our original questions and others generated by the survey findings.

Study 1 | Study 2a | Study 2b | Study 3 | Study 5 | Study 6

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Last modified: 7 March 2005
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