The Humboldtian model of higher education (German: Humboldtsches Bildungsideal, literally: Humboldtian education ideal) or just Humboldt's Ideal is a concept of academic education that emerged in the early 19th century and whose core idea is a holistic combination of research and studies. Sometimes called simply the Humboldtian model, it integrates the arts and sciences with research to achieve both comprehensive general learning and cultural knowledge. Several elements of the Humboldtian model heavily influenced and subsequently became part of the concept of the research university. The Humboldtian model goes back to Wilhelm von Humboldt, who in the time of the Prussian reforms relied on a growing, educated middle class to promote his claims about general education.

Humboldt's educational model went beyond vocational training in Germany. In a letter to the Prussian king, he wrote:

There are undeniably certain kinds of knowledge that must be of a general nature and, more importantly, a certain cultivation of the mind and character that nobody can afford to be without. People obviously cannot be good craftworkers, merchants, soldiers or businessmen unless, regardless of their occupation, they are good, upstanding and – according to their condition – well-informed human beings and citizens. If this basis is laid through schooling, vocational skills are easily acquired later on, and a person is always free to move from one occupation to another, as so often happens in life.^[1]

The philosopher and former State Minister for Culture of the Federal Republic of Germany, Julian Nida-Rümelin has criticized discrepancies between Humboldt's ideals and the contemporary European education policy, which narrowly understands education as preparation for the labor market, arguing instead that one needs to decide between McKinsey's and Humboldt's ideals.^[2]

The concept of holistic academic education was an idea of Wilhelm von Humboldt, a Prussian philosopher, government functionary and diplomat. As a privy councilor in the Interior Ministry, he reformed the Prussian education system according to humanist principles. He founded the University of Berlin, now the Humboldt University of Berlin, appointing distinguished scholars to both teach and conduct research there.^[3] Several scholars have labeled him the most influential education official in German history. Humboldt sought to create an educational system based on unbiased knowledge and analysis, combining research and teaching while allowing students to choose their own course of study. The University of Berlin was later named after him and his brother, the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt.

Humboldt's model was based on two ideas of the Enlightenment: the individual and the world citizen. Humboldt believed that the university (and education in general, as in the Prussian education system) should enable students to become autonomous individuals and world citizens by developing their own reasoning powers in an environment of academic freedom. Humboldt envisaged an ideal of Bildung, education in a broad sense, which aimed not merely to provide professional skills through schooling along a fixed path but rather to allow students to build individual character by choosing their own way.^[4]

Humboldt had studied the Greek classics since his youth, and was himself an epitome of Eliza Marian Butler's thesis about the important role of Ancient Greek literature and art in 19th-century German thinking.^[5] Humboldt believed that study of the Hellenic past would help the German national consciousness, reconciling it with modernity but distinguishing it from French culture, which he saw as rooted in the Roman tradition. The vehicle for this task was to be the university.^[5]

The cultural and historical background of the Humboldtian model answered the demands of the Bildungsbürgertum for enhanced general knowledge (Allgemeinbildung). The Bildungsbürgertum led the Prussian reforms of the early 19th century and managed to generate a knowledge society ante litteram.^{[6][7][8][9][10]}

Humboldt believed that teaching should be guided by current research, and that research should be unbiased and independent from ideological, economic, political or religious influences. The Humboldtian model strives for unconditional academic freedom in the intellectual investigation of the world, both for teachers and for students. Study should be guided by humanistic ideals and free thought, and knowledge should be formed on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism rather than authority, tradition, or dogma.^[11][12][13] In line with the basic concept of Wissenschaft, Humboldt regarded philosophy as the link between the different academic disciplines, which include both humanities and natural sciences.^[14]

Humboldt encouraged the University of Berlin to operate according to scientific, as opposed to market-driven, principles such as curiosity, freedom of research, and internal objectives. Nevertheless, Humboldt was a political conservative (in Prussian terms) and saw the state as the major player in educational matters. In 1920, George Peabody Gooch claimed that Humboldt's idea of the state could only be realized in a "community of Humboldts".^[15]

Humboldt's educational ideal developed around two central concepts of public education: The concept of the autonomous individual and the concept of world citizenship. The university should be a place where autonomous individuals and World Citizen are produced at or more specifically, produce themselves.

• An autonomous individual is to be an individual who attains self-determination and responsibility through his use of reason.
• "The Weltbürgertum is the collective bond, which connects autonomous individuals, irrespective of their social and cultural socialization: Humboldt says: 'To transform the world as much as possible into one's own person is, in the higher sense of the word, living'. The endeavor shall aim at working through the world comprehensively, and thereby unfold as a subject. To become a citizen of the world means, to deal with the big questions of humanity: to seek peace, justice, and care about the exchange of cultures, other gender relationships or another relationship to nature."^[16] University education should not be job-focused, but educational training that is independent of economic interests.

Academic freedom describes independence of the university from outside governmental and economic constraints. The university is to evade government influence. Humboldt demands that the scientific institution of higher education should lose itself "from all forms within the state". Therefore, his concept of university planned, for example, that the University of Berlin should have its own goods in order to finance itself and thereby secure its economic independence. Academic freedom also demands, next to independence of the university from outside governmental and economic constraints, the independence from within; i.e. free choice of study and free organization of studies. The University should therefore be a place of permanent public exchange between all involved in the scientific process. The integration of their knowledge shall be pursued with the help of philosophy. Philosophy is supposed to represent a kind of basic science, which allows members of different scientific disciplines to bring an exchange of their discovery and to link them together. Humboldt's educational ideal formed German University History decisively for a long period, albeit it was never realized practically in its entirety or cannot be realized. Great intellectual achievements of German science is linked to it.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Theodor W. Adorno and Albert Einstein confessed themselves to it.

The University of Berlin, founded in 1810 under the influence of Wilhelm von Humboldt and renamed the Humboldt University of Berlin after World War II, is traditionally seen as the model institution of the 19th century.^{[11][17][18][19] [20]} In fact, the German system emerged from innovations both before and after 1810. Among other scholars, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Friedrich Carl von Savigny, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Barthold Georg Niebuhr were appointed by Humboldt.^[3] Niemals wieder hatte ein deutscher Unterrichtsminister eine stolzere Berufungsliste vorzuweisen (Never again did any German Minister of Education have such a proud list of appointments to show).^[3][21]

The university's features included a unity in teaching and research, the pursuit of higher learning in the philosophy faculty, freedom of study for students (Lernfreiheit, contrasted with the prescriptive curricula of the French system) and corporate autonomy for universities despite state funding. In addition to Humboldt, the group of reformers in Prussia included philosophers such as Fichte and Schleiermacher, and Berlin University was a focus of national cultural revival.^[22] Humboldt was aware of other German philosophers' educational concepts, such as Kant, Hegel and Fichte. Schleiermacher was an important influence on the Berlin university.^[14]

These principles, in particular the idea of the research-based university, rapidly made an impact both in Germany and abroad. The Humboldtian university concept profoundly influenced higher education throughout central, eastern, and northern Europe.^[22] It was in competition with the post-Revolutionary French concept of the grandes écoles. The French system lacked the freedom of German universities and instead imposed severe discipline and control over curriculum, awarding of degrees, conformity of views, and personal habits, instituting, for example, a ban on beards in 1852.^[23] Universities built on the Humboldtian model have provided students with the ability to address recalcitrant problems, leading to major scientific breakthroughs with important economic effects.^[24][25]

American universities, starting with University of Virginia and then Johns Hopkins University, were early to adopt several of the German educational and scientific principles, which during the 20th century were globally recognized as valuable.^{[26][27][28][29]}

One flaw with the Humboldtian model is that unlike English universities, German universities traditionally did not provide housing for their students. Following in the footsteps of the great German universities, the University of California adhered to that rule for over 80 years after its 1868 founding.^[30] After Clark Kerr became the first chancellor of UC Berkeley in 1952, he shifted UC Berkeley from the German model to the English model in which universities assume responsibility for providing and operating student housing.^[30]

In 1921, German students first began to form local private self-help organizations called Studentenwerke, spanning multiple universities, to construct the residence halls and cafeterias which their universities had failed to provide them. From 1969 to 1975, these organizations were transitioned from private non-profits to state-run non-profits.

• Liberal arts education