Repurposing the university in the 21st century: toward a progressive global vision

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe purpose of the contemporary university has been redefined across the world in terms of success in global competition, usefulness for money-making, and efficiency, meaning application of New Public Management ideas. My aim is to sketch an alternative and future-oriented ethico-political conception of the university to serve counterhegemonic purposes. First I discuss briefly the Humboldtian myth and legacy. Second, I summarize Jürgen Habermas’s analysis of the historical and practical limits of the idea of the university. Third, in response to Habermas’s criticism, I outline a non-speculative, scientific realist way of understanding the unity of all sciences and humanities. Fourth, I locate the idea of the university in the twenty-first century global context, understood in part as world risk society. And finally, I argue that the autonomy of the university should be anchored in the rules, principles and institutional arrangements of multi-spatial metagovernance, rather than just those of territorial states. The future of the university calls for new cosmopolitan institutional solutions and world citizenship.