Amerikanisering van de Nederlandse universiteit? De chemicus H.R. Kruyt over hogeschool en maatschappij (1931)

Abstract

Americanization of the Dutch university? The chemist H.R. Kruyt on university and society (1931) In 1931, Hugo Rudolph Kruyt, professor of chemistry at the University of Utrecht and one of the founders of modern colloid science, published a paper Hooge School en Maatschappij (University and Society). Kruyt deplored the isolationism of the Dutch universities towards the needs of modern society and advocated a reorientation of the Dutch universities more or less on the model of the American universities, which he had had a chance to see during a visit to the United States in 1927. His plea for a more practically orientated university on the American model was not new in Holland, as is shown in a survey of travel reports of Dutch scientists who had been in the U.S.A. (Hugo de Vries, J.P. Lotsy, W. Storm van Leeuwen, Ernst Cohen). Nevertheless, it was only after the publication of Kruyt's paper that discussion on the 'americanization' of Dutch universities really started. Participants in this discussion were, among others, Cohen and the philosopher Vloemans, who both partly relied on Abraham Flexner's wellknown criticism of the American universities in his book Universities. American, English, German (1930). In the short run, Kruyt's plea for a reorientation of the Dutch universities had no effect; it was only after World War II, under different circumstances, that Dutch universities were restructured on the American model.