The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH ranks among the world’s leading universities. Since the institute’s founding in Zurich in 1855, hundreds and thousands of professors, undergraduates, and graduate students in engineering and the sciences have crossed paths in its halls, filling them with life. The product of all this coming and going has been an astonishingly diverse academic, economic, and political culture – ETH became simultaneously an engine of the country’s modernization and a laboratory for its society. This book presents a meticulously researched historical account of this academic culture and offers a deep insight into the forces which, over a span of 150 years, have been transforming Switzerland’s future.

“A model for future studies on universities.”Klaus Hentschel in ISIS

Introduction 1. A fundamental debate: Anchoring the Swiss vision post-1848 Between infrastructural policy and customs regulations Statistical excursions into the educational landscape Hunting for market niches The public policy debate free-for-all The parliamentary debate From Bern to Zurich: nailing it down 2. Nation, profession, middle class: Educating nineteenth-century engineers Federal codes of behavior - Federal education policy - National visibility - On being a federal institution - A school for the nation Industrial standards - Technical training and industrial growth - Employment and educational credentials - Part university, part manufacturing plant - Toward an engineering curriculum - The laboratory as “idealized factory” - Launching into research - Collaborating with industry Cultural norms - Climbing the bourgeois career ladder - Toeing the line - Socialization - Gender and the polytechnic 3. Setting a new course: The polytechnic becomes a “real” university after 1908 The polytechnic in crisis Disentangling Reorganizing the polytechnic An unsuccessful debate over doctorates Acquiring the character of a real university The breakthrough of 1908 From the “Polytechnic” to the “Federal Institute of Technology” Societal crisis and institutional change “Noblesse oblige!” 4. Business, politics, and research: New alliances for a new century Technology boom and bust - Materialism and the decline of the West - A technocratic humanism The value of research - Meeting the promises - The world as a laboratory for agricultural policy - The “scientific transformation of the social” in the factory - The problem of basic research - Matching funds for applied research - The limits of the “national system of innovation” State intervention - Getting the economy going again: savings and stimulus - The ETH as an institute for “Geistige Landesverteidigung” - Investing in research for jobs - The science policy “arms race” post-1945 - Dealing with the military Swissness and science - Arthur Rohn’s “Jewish problem” - Promoting an all-Swiss faculty post-1933 - The United States as a new center of science - International research collaboration 5. The social laboratory: Testing the bounds of higher education and politics post-1968 “Educational requirements for the industrial world”? Systemic disruption The “student” element The campaign against the ETH law, 1969 The revolt of the knowledge workers The end of the experimental phase 6. A ll about flexibility: Managing science and technology in the post-industrial world Ready for anything - Flexibility as a prescription - The permanence of reform - The art of the project-centered approach - A new research commission - A project-based curriculum? - Databases and resources Betting on Internationalization - The universals of science - Appointments and university policy - Deindustrialization and relative backwardness - The globalization of science - European-American compatibilities Computerization strategies - Computers, centers, and interactivity - Differentiating services - Reintegration and networking - The WWW and customized IT Consultants, Restructuring, and Management - The Hayek report - The creative chaos of the matrix - Management everywhere - Autonomy as a management mandate The demise of disciplines