Knowledge And The University

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.

For many institutions, to ignore your university’s ranking is to become invisible, a risky proposition in a competitive search for funding. But rankings tell us little if anything about the education, scholarship, or engagement with communities offered by a university. Drawing on a range of research and inquiry-based methods, Global University Rankings and the Politics of Knowledge exposes how universities became servants to the education industry and its impact. Conceptually unique in its scope, Global University Rankings and the Politics of Knowledge addresses the lack of empirical research behind university and journal ranking systems. Chapters from internationally recognized scholars in decolonial studies provide readers with robust frameworks to understand the intersections of coloniality and Indigeneity and how they play out in higher education. Contributions from diverse geographical and disciplinary contexts explore the political economy of rankings within the contexts of the Global North and South, and examine alternatives to media-driven rankings. This book allows readers to consider the intersections of power and knowledge within the wider contexts of politics, culture, and the economy, to explore how assumptions about gender, social class, sexuality, and race underpin the meanings attached to rankings, and to imagine a future that confronts and challenges cognitive, environmental, and social injustice.

The future of the university as an open knowledge institution that institutionalizes diversity and contributes to a common resource of knowledge: a manifesto. In this book, a diverse group of authors—including open access pioneers, science communicators, scholars, researchers, and university administrators—offer a bold proposition: universities should become open knowledge institutions, acting with principles of openness at their center and working across boundaries and with broad communities to generate shared knowledge resources for the benefit of humanity. Calling on universities to adopt transparent protocols for the creation, use, and governance of these resources, the authors draw on cutting-edge theoretical work, offer real-world case studies, and outline ways to assess universities’ attempts to achieve openness. Digital technologies have already brought about dramatic changes in knowledge format and accessibility. The book describes further shifts that open knowledge institutions must make as they move away from closed processes for verifying expert knowledge and toward careful, mediated approaches to sharing it with wider publics. It examines these changes in terms of diversity, coordination, and communication; discusses policy principles that lay out paths for universities to become fully fledged open knowledge institutions; and suggests ways that openness can be introduced into existing rankings and metrics. Case studies—including Wikipedia, the Library Publishing Coalition, Creative Commons, and Open and Library Access—illustrate key processes.

Higher education can be a vital public good, providing opportunities for students, informed citizens for democracy, and knowledge to improve the human condition. Yet public investment in universities is widely being cut, often because public purposes are neglected while private benefits dominate. In this collection, international scholars confront the realities of higher education and the future of its public and private agenda. Their perspectives illuminate the trajectory of education in the twenty-first century and the continuing importance of the university's public mission. Reporting from Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and North America, these scholars look at the different ways universities struggle to serve public and private agendas. Contributors examine the implications of changes in funding sources as well as amounts, different administrative and policy decisions, and the significance of various approaches to assessment and evaluation. They ask whether wider student access has in fact resulted in social mobility, whether more scientific research can be treated as an open-access resource, how changes in academic publishing change access to knowledge, and whether universities get full value from research sold to private corporations. At the same time, these chapters capture the confusion in the university sector over explaining academic work to a broader public and prioritizing its multiple purposes. Authors examine these practical challenges and the implications of different approaches in different contexts.

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.

University-industry interaction combines several layers of actors, states and effects. People make choices, based on their individual characteristics, at different stages of a scientific career, in a highly internationalised profession. Tensions arise when university administrators and managers need to strike a balance among different promotion instruments, or when the university or public research organisation tries to solve the trade-offs between long- and short-term relationships, or among new management practices. Impacts are related to scientific agendas, the economic returns for firms or the societal benefits. This book adopts a people-tension-impact approach to identify key insights, by combining qualitative and quantitative research, established and novel methodologies, and different geographic settings. The chapters in this volume provide new perspectives on university-industry interactions related to gender biases, entrepreneurial involvement of PhD students and the role of international mobility. They also focus on how the positive impacts of university-industry interactions coexist with unresolved tensions linked to policy combinations, long-term contractual relationships, management practices and organisational strategies. Chapters 4 and 6 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

How the university went global and became the heart of the information age The university is experiencing an unprecedented level of success today, as more universities in more countries educate more students in more fields. At the same time, the university has become central to a knowledge society based on the belief that everyone can, through higher education, access universal truths and apply them in the name of progress. This book traces the university's rise over the past hundred years to become the cultural linchpin of contemporary society, revealing how the so-called ivory tower has become profoundly interlinked with almost every area of human endeavor. David John Frank and John Meyer describe how, as the university expanded, student and faculty bodies became larger, more diverse, and more empowered to turn knowledge into action. Their contributions to society underscored the public importance of scholarship, and as the cultural authority of universities grew they increased the scope of their research and teaching interests. As a result, the university has become the bedrock of today's information-based society, an institution that is now implicated in the solution to every conceivable problem. But, as Frank and Meyer also show, the conditions that helped spur the university's recent ascendance are not immutable: eruptions of nationalism, authoritarianism, and illiberalism undercut the university's universalistic and rationalistic premises, and may threaten the centrality of the university itself.

"For far too long, we have waited for a book that recorded the ideas of the modern university. Now, in Gerard Delanty's new book, we have it. Delanty has faithfully set out the views of the key thinkers and, in the process, has emerged with an idea of the university that is his. We are in his debt." Professor Ronald Barnett, University of London "Gerard Delanty is one of the most productive and thought-provoking social theorists currently writing in the UK. He brings to his work a sophisticated and impressively cosmopolitan vision. Here he turns his attention to higher education, bringing incisive analysis and a surprising optimism as regards the future of the university. This is a book which will stimulate all thinking people - especially those trying to come to terms with mass higher education and its tribulations." Professor Frank Webster, University of Birmingham "For too long social theory, the sociology of knowledge and studies in higher education have mutually ignored each other. Gerard Delanty, founding editor of the European Journal of Social Theory, was just the right person to bring them into dialogue. Indeed, 'dialogue' and 'communication' are his watchwords for revamping the institutional mission of the university." Professor Steve Fuller, University of Warwick Drawing from current debates in social theory about the changing nature of knowledge, this book offers the most comprehensive sociological theory of the university that has yet appeared. The famous philosophical conceptions of the university from the Enlightenment to postmodern thought are discussed along with the major writings in modern social theory on the university, such as those of Weber, Parsons, Habermas, Gadamer, Lyotard and Bourdieu. In this far reaching contribution to the sociology of knowledge, Delanty views the university as a key institution of modernity and as the site where knowledge, culture and society interconnect. He assesses the question of the crisis of the university with respect to issues such as globalization, the information age, the nation state, academic capitalism, cultural politics and changing relationships between research and teaching. Arguing against the notion of the demise of the university, his argument is that in the knowledge society of today a new identity for the university is emerging based on communication and new conceptions of citizenship. It will be essential reading for those interested in changing relationships between modernity, knowledge, higher education and the future of the university.