Discourses of Crisis and Academia: Debating impacts on practices, values and identities (original) (raw)

Academics Responding to Discourses of Crisis in Higher Education and Research

in the present days? Do universities still have a public task? What are the appropriate functions of higher education? What are the purposes of teaching and research? What counts as relevant knowledge and what counts as an appropriate higher education? Is the age of Universities (late 11 th c.-early 21 st c.) in the West getting to a close? Whose discourses are achieving dominance? Meanings related to the identity, principles and practices of the university have been reworked in profound and contradictory ways, generating tensions and disputes within the university and in its relations with the state and society. It is true that the questioning of the university is probably as old as the idea of the university itself, but we have been living then about the triple crisis of the university: a crisis of hegemony, a crisis of legitimacy and an institutional crisis (Santos, 1989). In Canada, Bill Readings published an analysis of the University of Ruins (Readings, 1996) whereas in Brazil, Helgio Trindade edited a book where several scholars discussed the present and the future of the Brazilian university (Trindade, 1999). In Britain, Sheila Slaughter and Larry L. Leslie analyzed what they termed "Academic Capitalism" (Slaughter & Leslie, 1997) and Jeffrey Williams, in the USA, wrote that we had awakened to a brave new world of the university (Williams, 1999). It is not only the idea of the university that has been a focus of debate, but also entire higher education systems at the national and international levels (

The Crisis of the Idea of the University and Its Origins

The Yearbook on History and Interpretation of Phenomenology 2017, 2018

The paper deals with some aspects which occur in contemporary discussions concerning the idea and crisis of the university from the phenomenological perspective. The author holds that this crisis originates in the alienating interpretation of the university, which leads to inappropriate discourse on the function or purpose of the university and, in the end, disrupts its original meaning. In the first part of the article, taking Hannah Arendt’s concept of labour as a basis of reflection, the latent background of the dominant alienating interpretation is discussed. Human activities in this context appear meaningful insofar as they are turned into labour or are evaluated and justified according to the norms prescribed by labour’s structure of meaning. The second part of the paper is devoted to the need to differentiate between mere function (purpose), the end of which is already given, and the idea that embodies the experience of non-givenness. The need to turn attention away from the purpose and towards the idea of the university consists in the fact that in education the experience of personal transformation, of opening towards the non-given, is inherent. Next, the encounter with the world, i.e. the experience of wonder (θαῦμα) as the grounding experience of personal transformation and education, which becomes institutionalized especially in the interpersonal relations of the university, is discussed.

Critical reflections on the place of the university in the 21st century

South African Journal of Science

This Structured Conversation on the relevance and role of the contemporary university took place between Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni – two of the world’s most prominent thinkers on decolonisation. The discussion was moderated by Crain Soudien.

Developing the University in Turbulent Times

Educational Developments, 2011

In this article, in the first place, therefore, I want to explore what it is to develop the university. In the process, I want also both to examine what it means to be a university and to identify some broad principles for the development of universities that flow from that analysis. Beginnings Universities had their inception some hundreds of years ago, in the medieval age. Since then, both the idea of the university and its form have continued to change, not least as new universities have successfully been established. In this historical process, there has been a dynamic relationship between idea and form: ideas of the university have changed and this has helped changes to occur in the form of the university; correspondingly, many of the changes that have occurred in the form of the university have prompted new thinking about the university. For example, the formation of the Open University in England in the 1960s was born out of some new thinking about the possibilities for the nature of the university and, in turn, the establishment of the Open University has helped to prompt further thinking about the university both around the world, as new kinds of open university have been started, and about the very idea of openness. This line of thinking about openness has connected with thinking about flexible learning: what kinds of openness might flexible learning make possible (over, for example, the pacing, the location, and the extent of choice in a student's programme of study)? It has also connected with new possibilities that have opened in the digital age, over new kinds of interaction and communication, not only between student and teacher but also between students themselves. And, in research, the new technologies are opening up new challenges and new possibilities for the sharing with the wider society of researchers' findings and thoughts, even prompting considerations as to the emergence of 'socialist knowledge'. Such developments in turn prompt yet further new thinking about the idea of the public university and the responsibilities of the university in the twentyfirst century.

The University : From State Bureaucracy to Scientific Communities

2019

This article is a response to the need to consider a profound reflection on the state of higher education and a proposal for contributions to a very important and current discussion at the time. The role of education in the formation of individuals and in the development of society is unquestionable, through it is transmitted, from generation to generation, knowledge, culture, prejudices, values, among others. Education is a shared responsibility and only with our joint efforts will progress be sustainable; The citizens of the future must be trained to adapt to a complex reality and this must be oriented to the formation of values, of an individual capable of facing the different difficulties and solving problems that are presented to us. The challenges facing education are many, propose solutions and carry them out should be a social effort, joint and coordinated. From there a literature review is proposed to reflect on the current state of the university compared to what has been ...

The Crisis of the Public University

Debaditya Bhattacharya, ed. The University Unthought: Notes for a Future (New York: Routledge) , 2018

In a brief essay -written in the form of a letter -prefaced to a book by his colleague John Higgins at the University of Cape Town, the novelist J. M. Coetzee offered a pessimistic coda to Higgins's powerful appeal for the autonomy of the university and the role of the humanities in fostering 'critical literacy'. As Coetzee noted, All over the world, as governments retreat from their traditional duty to foster the common good and reconceive of themselves as mere managers of national economies, universities have been coming under pressure to turn themselves into training schools equipping young people with the skills required by a modern economy.