by Victor Tiberius
Introduction
Back in the mid-nineteenth century already, the German economist Friedrich List (1931, pp. 842 et seqq.) had called for a scientific discipline which focuses on the future. At the start of the twentieth century, H. G. Wells (1901 & 1987) replied this claim and asked for university professors of foresight.1 Academic degree programmes in futures studies did not emerge though until the 1960s (Slaughter, 2002, p.350). Since then, their number has increased (Bell, 2002, p.242; Eldredge, 1975, p.27; McHale, 1978, p.11) and is currently quite stable (Hines, 2003, S.32). Aside from such “core” programmes, individual lectures and seminars have increasingly become part of other traditional degree programmes such as business administration or pedagogics. Eldredge (1975, p.24 et seq.) calls this the “futurising of regular courses”. Most futurists agree that more futures-oriented programmes should be established (Marien, 2002, p.275).(continue…)