This book reinvigorates the philosophical treatment of the nature, purpose, and meaning of thought in today's universities. The wider discussion about higher education has moved from a philosophical discourse to a discourse on social welfare and service, economics, and political agendas. This book reconnects philosophy with the central academic concepts of thought, reason, and critique and their associated academic practices of thinking and reasoning. Thought in this context should not be considered as a merely mental or cognitive construction, still less a cloistered college, but a fully developed individual and social engagement of critical reflection and discussion with the current pressing disciplinary, political, and philosophical issues. The editors hold that the element of thought, and the ability to think in a deep and groundbreaking way is, still, the essence of the university. But what does it mean to think in the university today? And in what ways is thought related not only to the epistemological and ontological issues of philosophical debate, but also to the social and political dimensions of our globalised age? In many countries, the state is imposing limitations on universities, dismissing or threatening academics who speak out critically. With this volume, the editors ask questions such as: What is the value of thought? What is the university's proper relationship to thought? To give the notion of thought a thorough philosophical treatment, the book is divided into in three parts. The focus moves from an epistemological perspective in Part I, to a focus on existence and values in higher education in Part II, and then to a societal-oriented focus on the university in Part III. All three parts, in their own ways, debate the notion of thought in higher education and the university as a thinking form of being.

With higher education around the world in a period of extreme flux, this volume explores its underlying philosophy, a core element of the ongoing debate. Offering a diverse range of perspectives from an international selection of renowned scholars of higher education, the book is full of imaginative insights that add up to a substantive contribution to the discussion.

As universities attempt to adapt to a new environment characterized by stiff international competition, networked remote learning, burgeoning student numbers and comparative performance assessment, how we conceptualize the purpose and ethos of our higher learning institutions is more important than ever. This publication features a multitude of distinctive approaches that illuminate potential solutions to the complex issues universities must grapple with in these uncertain times. Rather than espousing a singular philosophical approach, the editors have assembled views from across the spectrum and from differing national contexts, representing a multidisciplinary response to the situation. This collection of papers aims thus to inspire fresh developments in the way we think about the complexities of and options available to, higher education.

Every business and organization today needs to impress stakeholders with its ethics policy. Universities, Ethics and Professions examines how this emphasis on ethics by the professional world is impacting universities, institutions that have long been key contributors to ethical reflection and debate, and shapers of ethical discourse. Changing objectives, globalization, and public concerns continue to bring professionalism, and commercialization, into the dialogue about what ethics mean on campus.

Universities, Ethics and Professions offers an in-depth examination of the changing landscape of academic ethics, with case-study analysis from sociologists, educationalists, management specialists and philosophers. As professionalism becomes an integral part of university teaching, training, and research, this book considers the impact on the ethical practices of academics, and explores the importance of universities remaining sites of open discourse on ethics in the future.

This provocative and challenging book questions how people think about what universities should seek to do and how they should respond to the grave problems of our age. It addresses issues such as: What is wisdom? Ought universities to seek, promote and teach wisdom and what would this involve? Does it mean we need a revolution in the aims and methods of academic inquiry? What implications would the pursuit of wisdom have for science, for social inquiry and the humanities, for education? Is it reasonable to ask of universities that they take up the task of helping humanity learn how to create a wiser world? Is there a religious dimension to wisdom? What can non-academics do to encourage universities to take wisdom seriously? Would the pursuit of wisdom be possible given that universities are increasingly subjected to commercial pressures? With contributions from leading experts in various fields Wisdom in the University is essential reading for all those interested in the future of universities and philosophy of education. This book was previously published as a special issue of London Review of Education

This provocative and challenging book questions how people think about what universities should seek to do and how they should respond to the grave problems of our age. It addresses issues such as: What is wisdom? Ought universities to seek, promote and teach wisdom and what would this involve? Does it mean we need a revolution in the aims and methods of academic inquiry? What implications would the pursuit of wisdom have for science, for social inquiry and the humanities, for education? Is it reasonable to ask of universities that they take up the task of helping humanity learn how to create a wiser world? Is there a religious dimension to wisdom? What can non-academics do to encourage universities to take wisdom seriously? Would the pursuit of wisdom be possible given that universities are increasingly subjected to commercial pressures? With contributions from leading experts in various fields Wisdom in the University is essential reading for all those interested in the future of universities and philosophy of education. This book was previously published as a special issue of London Review of Education

Not long ago, it was understood that universities and culture were intimately related. However, to a large extent, that understanding has faded. Culture and the University confronts this situation. Written by three leading scholars of higher education and the philosophy of higher education, the book opens the debate about the cultural purpose of universities and higher education. The authors argue that the university should be and can be an institution of culture, of great cultural significance in the digital age, and exercise cultural leadership in society. This wide-ranging and polemic text addresses a range of subjects including environmentalism, citizenship, post-truth, the ethical implications of technology and feminist philosophy. The authors build on the work of key philosophers of the university from Aristotle, Nietzsche and Heidegger to Donna Haraway, Terry Eagleton and Martha C. Nussbaum to conceive of an entirely modern vision of the university. This is a must-read for anyone with an interest in the future of higher education and the university.

This book provides an introductory overview of the field of the philosophy of higher education. It illustrates ways in which the field has practical value and policy implications. Each chapter tackles an individual topic, such as knowledge, truth, culture, leadership, being a student, teaching, critical thinking, social justice and the university's engagement with the wider world.

Every business and organization today needs to impress stakeholders with its ethics policy. Universities, Ethics and Professions examines how this emphasis on ethics by the professional world is impacting universities, institutions that have long been key contributors to ethical reflection and debate, and shapers of ethical discourse. Changing objectives, globalization, and public concerns continue to bring professionalism, and commercialization, into the dialogue about what ethics mean on campus. Universities, Ethics and Professions offers an in-depth examination of the changing landscape of academic ethics, with case-study analysis from sociologists, educationalists, management specialists and philosophers. As professionalism becomes an integral part of university teaching, training, and research, this book considers the impact on the ethical practices of academics, and explores the importance of universities remaining sites of open discourse on ethics in the future.

Higher education and the institution of the university exist in time, their essential nature now continually subject to change: change in students, in knowledge, in structure and in their own communities and those they service. These changes are accompanied by a quickening of time, leading to a heightened intensity of academic life. Yet the nature of time in all the contemporary work on the university has been largely overlooked. This is an important omission and Universities in the Flux of Time has gathered leading academics whose contributions to the volume raise a debate as to the influence and use of time in the university. They do this in an exploration of how these changes are perceived in higher education and how these affect its temporality from local, national and global perspectives. By dealing with the time within the university, the book opens new spaces for the development of the university and civic society. The book develops an interdisciplinary understanding of the temporal issues of engaging with the past, present and future of higher education and its institutions, through consideration of the increased speed demanded for the production of able students and innovative research, to the accountability pressures from central governments and commerce. Reflecting on these issues in the higher education sector, Universities in the Flux of Time is split into three parts, with each one addressing time and its multiple relationships with the university: Past, present and future Knowledge and time Living with time This volume will provide essential reading for those on higher education studies courses as well as a wider audience of managers, practitioners, policy makers, academics and students and from many disciplinary perspectives including sociology, organisation studies, social psychology and the philosophy of education.

In the World Library of Educationalists series, international scholars compile career-long selections of what they judge to be among their finest pieces so the world has access to them in a single manageable volume. Readers are able to follow the themes and strands and see how their work contributes to the development of the field. Over more than three decades, Professor Ronald Barnett has acquired a distinctive position as a leading philosopher of the university and higher education, and this volume brings together 15 of his key writings, particularly papers from leading journals. This volume also includes, as his introductory chapter, an intellectual autobiography, in which Professor Barnett recounts the history of his scholarship and writing, traces its development across five stages, and identifies the themes and sources of inspiration that lie within his corpus of work. Ronald Barnett has described his corpus of work as a social philosophy of the university that is at once conceptual, critical, practical and imaginative. His concepts of criticality, critical interdisciplinarity, supercomplexity and the ecological university have been taken up in the literature across the world. Through telling examples, and with an incisive clarity of writing, Ronald Barnett's scholarship has helped to illuminate in fresh ways and reorient practices in the university and in higher education. The chapters in this volume reveal all of these qualities so making this volume a compelling overview of a passionate and yet constructive critic of the university.

Around the world, what it is to be a university is a matter of much debate. The range of ideas of the university in public circulation is, however, exceedingly narrow and is dominated by the idea of the entrepreneurial university. As a consequence, the debate is hopelessly impoverished. Lurking in the literature, there is a broad and even imaginative array of ideas of the university, but those ideas are seldom heard. We need, consequently, not just more ideas of the university but "better" ideas. "

Imagining the University" forensically examines this situation, critically interrogating many of the current ideas of the university. "Imagining the University" argues for imaginative ideas that are critical, sensitive to the deep structures underlying universities and are yet optimistic, in short "feasible utopias" of the university. The case is pressed for one such idea, that of the ecological university. The book concludes by offering a vision of the imagining university, a university that has the capacity continually to re-imagine itself.

Winner of the Comparative and International Education Society Higher Education Special Interest Group Best Book Award for 2014! As universities increasingly engage with the world beyond the classroom and the campus, those who work within higher education are left to examine how the university's mission has changed. Official reviews and debates often forget to inquire into the purposes and responsibilities of universities, and how they are changing. Where these matters are addressed, they are rarely pursued in depth, and rarely go beyond current circumstances. Those who care about the university's role in society are left looking for a renewed sense of purpose regarding its goals and aspirations. The Future University explores new avenues opening up to universities and tackles fundamental issues facing their development. Contributors with interdisciplinary and international perspectives imagine ways to frame the university's future. They consider the history of the university, its current status as an active player in local governments, cultures, and markets, and where these trajectories may lead. What does it mean to be a university in the twenty-first century? What could the university become? What limitations do they face, and what opportunities might lie ahead? This volume in the International Studies in Higher Education series offers bold and imaginative possibilities.

There is no single idea of the university. Ever since its medieval origin, the concept of the university has continued to change. The metaphysical university gave way successively to the scientific university, and then to the corporate and the entrepreneurial university. But what, then, might lie ahead? Being a University both charts this conceptual development and examines the future possibilities for the idea of the university. Ronald Barnett pursues this quest through an exploration of pairs of contending concepts that speak to the idea of the university - such as space and time; being and becoming; and culture and anarchy. On this foundation is developed an imaginative exposition of possible ideas of the university, including the liquid university and the authentic university. In the course of this inquiry, it is argued that: * Any thought that the idea of the entrepreneurial university represents the end-point of the evolution of the idea of the university has to be abandoned. The entrepreneurial university is excessively parochial and ill-matched to the challenges facing the university * A responsibility of the university is precisely that of working out an imaginative conception of its future possibilities. The boldest and largest thinking is urgently required * The fullest expression of the university's possibilities lies in a reclamation of the universal aspirations that lay in earlier ideas of the university. The ecological university represents just such a universal aspiration, suited to the unfolding demands of the future. Being a University will be of wide interest, to institutional leaders and managers, higher education planners, academics in all disciplines and students of higher education, in educational policy and politics, and the philosophy, sociology and theory of education, and indeed, anyone who believes in the future of the university.

This book provides an introductory overview of the field of the philosophy of higher education. It illustrates ways in which the field has practical value and policy implications. Each chapter tackles an individual topic, such as knowledge, truth, culture, leadership, being a student, teaching, critical thinking, social justice and the university's engagement with the wider world.

In this timely and innovative book scholars from Europe, the UK, North America and Australia, explore their own sense of identity, reflecting both on their research and scholarly interests, and their work experiences.

Taking the form of a debate, Changing Identities in Higher Education helps to widen the contemporary space for debates on the future of higher education itself. The book is split into three parts:

• part one presents a set of essays each on a set of identities within higher education (academic, student, administrative/managerial and educational developers).
• part two includes responses to Part one from authors speaking from their own professional and scholarly identity perspective
• part three illustrates perspectives on the identities of students, provided by students themselves.

With its original, dialogic form and varied content, this book is of interest to all those concerned in current debates about the state and nature of higher education today and those interested in questions of identity. It makes especially useful reading for students of higher education, lecturers in training, academics and managers alike.

Universities continue to expand, bringing considerable debate about their purposes and relationship to the world. In The Ecological University, Ronald Barnett argues that universities are short of their potential and responsibilities in an ever-changing and challenging environment. This book centres on the idea that the expansion of higher education has opened new spaces and possibilities. The university is interconnected with a number of ecosystems: knowledge, social institutions, persons, the economy, learning, culture and the natural environment. These seven ecosystems of the university are all fragile and in order to advance and develop them universities need to engage with each one. By looking at matters such as the challenges of learning, professional life and research and inquiry, this book outlines just what it could mean for higher education institutions to understand and realize themselves as exemplars of the ecological university. With bold and original insights and practical principles for development, this radical and transformative book is essential reading for university leaders and administrators, academics, students, and all interested in the future of the university.

This book shows the significance of the thinking of philosophers (and other key thinkers) in understanding the university and higher education. Through those explorations, it widens and substantially adds to the emerging philosophy of higher education. It builds on the historical literature on the idea of the university, and provides higher education scholars with highly accessible introductions to the thinking of key philosophers and thinkers, alerting them to a set of literature that otherwise might not be encountered. Until very recently, most of the debate on higher education - both in the public domain and in the scholarly literature - has been conducted with little regard to the philosophical literature. This is odd for two reasons. Firstly, much of the historical literature on the idea of the university - over the past two hundred years - has been written by philosophers and their thinking has largely gone unmined. Second, and perhaps even more importantly, many of the issues in the higher education debate are either philosophical in their nature, or require reflective thinking, and there lies to hand huge resources in the philosophical literature that can help in working through those issues. Issues such as what is to count as knowledge (in the university), wisdom, voice, democracy, culture, what it is to 'be' a student or academic, academic freedom, communication, work and disciplinarity cry out for the kind of insights that the philosophical literature - very broadly understood - can offer. This book attempts precisely to do this, to show how the work of key thinkers can help in deepening the higher education debate. Each chapter focuses on an individual thinker, giving both an insight into the thinker in question and accessibly drawing out something of their thinking and showing its significance in understanding the university and higher education. The editors provide a full-length introduction that marks out this large territory and prepares the ground for the reader. The book impressively builds a rich meshwork of careful and thorough thinking around the university and higher education by way of introducing 14 important philosophers on timely subjects such as culture and the university, higher education and democracy, and the role of the university. The volume is a great contribution to the important task of deepening the debate about higher education and the university, through introducing important philosophers in ways that might help the university and higher education work through some of the issues and challenges that it is currently facing. As such, this book is essential reading for anyone wanting to wander and wonder deeper into the core purposes and possibilities of higher education in the good companionship of outstanding thinkers and distinguished academics on these matters. A playground for philosophical thought and adventure.Rikke Toft Norgard, Associate Professor, Aarhus University, Denmark 'This book is an excellent introduction to a wide range of famous thinkers and what they have to say about the university and higher education today. It goes beyond the contemporary preoccupation with metrics, based on managerialism, and takes a much needed philosophical look at what higher education should be, or should aspire to be.'Assoc. Prof. Stephen Loftus, Foundational Medical Studies, Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine, USA

The Idea of the University: Contemporary Perspectives, Volume 2 is a companion to The Idea of the University: A Reader, Volume 1, which presents readings from the major texts on the idea of the university over the last two hundred years. This volume consists of essays from the leading contemporary scholars of the university across the world. The essays examine ideas of the university that lie tacitly in its national and global framing, and offer creative ideas in taking the university forward, both on a regional and on a world-wide basis. Specific lines of inquiry include those of citizenship, cosmopolitanism, wisdom, ecology and freedom. The thirty chapters in this volume have been invitingly grouped to offer intriguing ways into the material, which in turn opens the way to very large conceptual and theoretical issues. In an era of marketization, can universities attend to any global responsibilities? Might regionalism-in Europe, in South America, in Africa-prompt new ideas of the university? What understandings of knowledge are feasible in a digital age? Amid local, national, regional and worldly callings, how might citizenship be construed? In a final section, a space opens for more speculative inquiries as to the conceptual possibilities ahead: Just what ideas of the university might feasibly be entertained for the twenty-first century? Might it be envisaged that the university has both responsibilities and possibilities in playing a part in bringing about a better world? Those concluding chapters in The Idea of the University: Contemporary Perspectives respond in original ways and all in an optimistic fashion.

Winner of the Comparative and International Education Society Higher Education Special Interest Group Best Book Award for 2014! As universities increasingly engage with the world beyond the classroom and the campus, those who work within higher education are left to examine how the university's mission has changed. Official reviews and debates often forget to inquire into the purposes and responsibilities of universities, and how they are changing. Where these matters are addressed, they are rarely pursued in depth, and rarely go beyond current circumstances. Those who care about the university's role in society are left looking for a renewed sense of purpose regarding its goals and aspirations. The Future University explores new avenues opening up to universities and tackles fundamental issues facing their development. Contributors with interdisciplinary and international perspectives imagine ways to frame the university's future. They consider the history of the university, its current status as an active player in local governments, cultures, and markets, and where these trajectories may lead. What does it mean to be a university in the twenty-first century? What could the university become? What limitations do they face, and what opportunities might lie ahead? This volume in the International Studies in Higher Education series offers bold and imaginative possibilities.

This book shows the significance of the thinking of philosophers (and other key thinkers) in understanding the university and higher education. Through those explorations, it widens and substantially adds to the emerging philosophy of higher education. It builds on the historical literature on the idea of the university, and provides higher education scholars with highly accessible introductions to the thinking of key philosophers and thinkers, alerting them to a set of literature that otherwise might not be encountered. Until very recently, most of the debate on higher education - both in the public domain and in the scholarly literature - has been conducted with little regard to the philosophical literature. This is odd for two reasons. Firstly, much of the historical literature on the idea of the university - over the past two hundred years - has been written by philosophers and their thinking has largely gone unmined. Second, and perhaps even more importantly, many of the issues in the higher education debate are either philosophical in their nature, or require reflective thinking, and there lies to hand huge resources in the philosophical literature that can help in working through those issues. Issues such as what is to count as knowledge (in the university), wisdom, voice, democracy, culture, what it is to 'be' a student or academic, academic freedom, communication, work and disciplinarity cry out for the kind of insights that the philosophical literature - very broadly understood - can offer. This book attempts precisely to do this, to show how the work of key thinkers can help in deepening the higher education debate. Each chapter focuses on an individual thinker, giving both an insight into the thinker in question and accessibly drawing out something of their thinking and showing its significance in understanding the university and higher education. The editors provide a full-length introduction that marks out this large territory and prepares the ground for the reader. The book impressively builds a rich meshwork of careful and thorough thinking around the university and higher education by way of introducing 14 important philosophers on timely subjects such as culture and the university, higher education and democracy, and the role of the university. The volume is a great contribution to the important task of deepening the debate about higher education and the university, through introducing important philosophers in ways that might help the university and higher education work through some of the issues and challenges that it is currently facing. As such, this book is essential reading for anyone wanting to wander and wonder deeper into the core purposes and possibilities of higher education in the good companionship of outstanding thinkers and distinguished academics on these matters. A playground for philosophical thought and adventure.Rikke Toft Norgard, Associate Professor, Aarhus University, Denmark 'This book is an excellent introduction to a wide range of famous thinkers and what they have to say about the university and higher education today. It goes beyond the contemporary preoccupation with metrics, based on managerialism, and takes a much needed philosophical look at what higher education should be, or should aspire to be.'Assoc. Prof. Stephen Loftus, Foundational Medical Studies, Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine, USA

Ecologies for Learning and Practice provides the first systematic account of the ideas of learning ecologies and ecologies of practice and locates the two concepts within the context of our contemporary world. It focuses on how individuals and society are being presented with all manner of learning challenges arising from fluidities and disruptions, which extend across all domains of life. This book examines emerging ways of understanding and living purposively in these new fluidities and provides fresh perspectives on the way we learn and achieve in such dynamic contexts. Providing an insight into the research of a range of internationally renowned contributors, this book explores diverse topics from the higher education and adult learning worlds. These include: The challenges faced by education systems today The concept of ecologies for learning and practice The role and responsibility of higher education institutions in advancing ecological approaches to learning The different eco-social systems of the world-local and global, economic, cultural, practical, technological, and ethical How adult learners might create and manage their own ecologies for learning and practice in order to sustain themselves and flourish With its proposals for individual and institutional learning in the 21st century and concerns for our sustainability in a fragile world, Ecologies for Learning and Practice is an essential guide for all who seek to encourage and facilitate learning in a world that is fundamentally ecological in nature.

In this timely and innovative book scholars from Europe, the UK, North America and Australia, explore their own sense of identity, reflecting both on their research and scholarly interests, and their work experiences.

Taking the form of a debate, Changing Identities in Higher Education helps to widen the contemporary space for debates on the future of higher education itself. The book is split into three parts:

• part one presents a set of essays each on a set of identities within higher education (academic, student, administrative/managerial and educational developers).
• part two includes responses to Part one from authors speaking from their own professional and scholarly identity perspective
• part three illustrates perspectives on the identities of students, provided by students themselves.

With its original, dialogic form and varied content, this book is of interest to all those concerned in current debates about the state and nature of higher education today and those interested in questions of identity. It makes especially useful reading for students of higher education, lecturers in training, academics and managers alike.

For hundreds of years, knowledge has been central in understanding the university. Over recent decades, however, it is the economic value of knowledge that has come to the fore. Now, in a post-truth world, knowledge is also treated with suspicion and has become a vehicle for ideologies. Knowledge and the University combats all these ways of thinking. Its central claim is that knowledge is of value because of its connection with life. Knowledge is of life, from life, in life and for life. With an engaging philosophical discussion, and with a consideration of the evolution of higher education institutions, this book: Examines ways in which research, teaching and learning are bound up with life; Looks to breathe new life into the university itself; Widens the idea of the knowledge ecology to embrace the whole world; Suggests new roles for the university towards culture and the public sphere. Knowledge and the University is a radical text that looks to engender nothing less than a new spirit of the university. It offers a fascinating read for policy makers, institutional leaders, academics and all interested in the future of universities.

This book reinvigorates the philosophical treatment of the nature, purpose, and meaning of thought in today's universities. The wider discussion about higher education has moved from a philosophical discourse to a discourse on social welfare and service, economics, and political agendas. This book reconnects philosophy with the central academic concepts of thought, reason, and critique and their associated academic practices of thinking and reasoning. Thought in this context should not be considered as a merely mental or cognitive construction, still less a cloistered college, but a fully developed individual and social engagement of critical reflection and discussion with the current pressing disciplinary, political, and philosophical issues. The editors hold that the element of thought, and the ability to think in a deep and groundbreaking way is, still, the essence of the university. But what does it mean to think in the university today? And in what ways is thought related not only to the epistemological and ontological issues of philosophical debate, but also to the social and political dimensions of our globalised age? In many countries, the state is imposing limitations on universities, dismissing or threatening academics who speak out critically. With this volume, the editors ask questions such as: What is the value of thought? What is the university's proper relationship to thought? To give the notion of thought a thorough philosophical treatment, the book is divided into in three parts. The focus moves from an epistemological perspective in Part I, to a focus on existence and values in higher education in Part II, and then to a societal-oriented focus on the university in Part III. All three parts, in their own ways, debate the notion of thought in higher education and the university as a thinking form of being.

The Idea of the University: A Reader, Volume 1 is a unique compilation of selected works of the major thinkers who have contributed to the discourse on the idea of the university in the German, English, American and French traditions, dating from the establishment of the University of Berlin in 1810. Readings include excerpts from Kant and Humboldt in the German tradition of Bildung through to Jaspers, Habermas and Gadamer; Newman, Arnold, Leavis and others in the British tradition; Kerr, Bok and Noble, among others, in the American tradition; and Bourdieu, Lyotard and Derrida in the French tradition. Each reading is prefaced with a brief editor's explanatory note. The Idea of the University: A Reader, Volume 1 provides a comprehensive account of the university, and is matched by a second volume of original essays on contemporary perspectives.