Vilniaus universiteto diplomas: universalus pripažinimas, universalus išsilavinimas, o gal - universali galimybė rinktis ; Vilnius university diploma: universal acknowledgement, universal education or universal opportunity of choice?

Abstract

This text (which inspired the appearance of a new rubric in the journal Studies of Lithuania s History, named "University studies") is dedicated to the discussion "What are University studies?" or more precisely: what can consolidate different faculties and sciences? For this reason the concept of general University education was created and started to implement. This study aimed to analyze the documents and to reftect the whole process. The University seeks to find solutions what modules and how many credits can help to break through very specialized study programmes implemented by the thirteen faculties, which become separate institutions united only by the Senate. The imposed limits do not allow to fully use the University's potential. In this paper, the solution is searched basing on several theoretical principles. The most important are the insight of different paradigms of universities' development and the idea of modern university's purpose formulated by Yehuda Elkana who visited Vilnius University in 2004, which emphasize social responsibility, democracy and dialogue. The principle of the openness of universities is important for two reasons: university shares modern scientific ideas with society and gives arguments to society in the solution of socially important problems. This also allows keeping to the traditional university's values - the search of existential values and modem scientism. It enables to answer the question of the mentioned discussion at Vilnius University. Not only the existential meaning or scientific depth, universal education or universal acknowledgement is important. lt is also important to have a universal possibility to choose from the maximum variety of study programmes. This answers the previous question of what module, or modules, of general university education could be applied.