Educational Research - the Ethics and Aesthetics of Statistics

3 Dazzling Statistics? 33
has probably led to reducing the distance between the university and the other institutions
in general. Second, since the introduction of the BaMa decree of 4 April
2003 the differentiations between higher education institutes of the ‘long’ and the
‘short’ type have been reformulated in terms of curricula which lead to a bachelor
degree with an ‘academic’ orientation on the one hand and to a bachelor degree with
a ‘professional’ orientation on the other. In concrete terms this means that some of
the courses offered in the institutes of higher education with an academic orientation
can lead to a master’s degree. It is self-evident that these courses were privileged
within the recent formation process of ‘associations’ with universities. In the near
future the academization of some of these institutes will definitely result in their
being integrated into the universities.
It is just as striking that, in this regard, the evolution of the data on the participation
in university and higher education is never related to the evolution of the
‘networks’. By ‘networks’ I mean the pillars or institutional axes around which
the school supply is grouped in Flanders, say the public versus the private sector,
which obviously has taken on other ideological connotations and denotations over
the years. Because of progressive secularization, the mobilizing function that it had
in the pre-Conciliar era can obviously no longer be attributed to the Catholic network.
Inversely, the ideological labels that were pasted on public education in the
course of the 19th century lay little claim to any reality value in a pluralistic society
like ours. Nevertheless, the continued institutional existence of these ‘networks’
seems to have been further secured by the formation of the ‘associations’.
Mutatis mutandis, one thing and another also apply to the relationship of the
study areas with each other, university or not. Thus, on the basis of my personal
experience in conversations with students and colleagues, I find it plausible to
assume that the prestige of the arts and humanities in general has diminished (this
certainly seems to be the case for young men). Greater prestige is now conferred on
the ‘hard’ sciences (which produce more ‘utility’ and the associated prospects of a
job, money, etc.). Such matters are bound up with the ‘economization’ of (higher)
education. Here, I am not simply referring to ‘training’ and the greater attunement of
job markets but also discourses relating to education and the ‘knowledge economy’.
This discourse is intrinsic to the notion that is sometimes put forward, namely, that
the university and higher education in general are in opposition. Studying industrial
engineering, to take just one field, promises to be more lucrative than the study of
philosophy or history.
In short, the statistics on which the study of the university expansion is necessarily
based are, in my opinion, insufficiently differentiated, and therefore seem
to exclude a finely meshed combination of possible variables (this is also the case
at a statistical level). For example, with regard to gender differences, it is said
that women have overcome their relative deficit with respect to men as regards
participation in university and higher education in general (see Tan, 1998, pp.
174–176, 200; Pelleriaux, 1999, pp. 3–4). But what does that ultimately mean
for these women? In raising this question, I am not simply referring to individual
careers but also to the ways women operate within their families and society. The
question, therefore, is whether or not a better understanding of things would require