This reply to Finn Collin’s critically sympathetic review of my Back to the University’s Future: The Second Coming of Humboldt, addresses some of the tensions involved in realizing “Humboldt 2.0” in today’s higher education environment. Its focus is largely on the academic’s sense of researcher as being one of learner. In other words, the Humboldtian sees research as the necessary complement to teaching, not something radically distinct from it.

(1998). The idea of the university in the global era: From knowledge as an end to the end of knowledge? Social Epistemology: Vol. 12, Sites of Knowledge Production: The University, pp. 3-25. doi: 10.1080/02691729808578856.

Universities can and have existed without academic freedom and academic tenure. But academic freedom is necessary for a university dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge in a democratic society. Both academic freedom and academic tenure are not only rights but also carry with them moral obligations. Furthermore academic tenure is the best defense of academic freedom that American universities have found. Academic tenure can be successfully defended from the many contemporary attacks to which it is being subjected only insofar as (...) it is necessary to defend academic freedom, and only if all involved in the system of tenure observe the ethical requirements that the system demands. (shrink)

For-profit universities are degree-granting institutions that are owned and operated by business corporations. This paper addresses two related public policy questions about for-profit universities. First, should governments and appropriate regulatory bodies permit for-profit universities to grant degrees in their jurisdiction? Second, should higher education policy be developed to create for-profit universities? In this paper, a property rights argument is presented to demonstrate that a corporation should have the right to offer degrees if certain regulatory tests can be met. In limited (...) circumstances, governments might consider establishing for-profit universities, but only if they promote public goods. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Ranking systems such as The Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings and Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Academic Rankings of World Universities simultaneously mark global status and stimulate global academic competition. As international ranking systems have become more prominent, researchers have begun to examine whether global rankings are creating increased inequality within and between universities. Using a panel Tobit regression analysis, this study assesses the extent to which markers of inter-institutional stratification and organizational segmentation predict global status among US research universities (...) as measured by position in ARWU. Findings indicate some support that both inter-institutional stratification and organizational segmentation predict global status. (shrink)

Universities have flourished in the modern era as central public institutions and bases for critical thought. They are currently challenged by a variety of social forces and undergoing a deep transformation in both their internal structure and their relationship to the rest of society. Critical theorists need to assess this both in order to grasp adequately the social conditions of their own work and because the transformation of universities is central to a more general intensification of social inequality, privatization of (...) public institutions, and reorganization of the relation of access to knowledge. This is also a pivotal instance for asking basic questions about the senses in which the university is or may be ‘public’: (1) where does its money come from? (2) who governs? (3) who benefits? and (4) how is knowledge produced and circulated? (shrink)

In this paper we suggest that the ethical duties of business schools can be understood as representing stewardship in the Aristotelian tradition. In Introduction section we briefly explain the nature of ethical stewardship as a moral guideline for organizations in examining their duties to society. Ethical Stewardship section presents six ethical duties of business schools that are owed to four distinct stakeholders, and includes examples of each of those duties. Utilizing this Framework section identifies how this framework of duties can (...) be used in the process of self-examination and transformation within business schools. Why It Matters section concludes by explaining why the process of examining ethical duties at business schools is vitally important for both business schools and the larger communities that they serve. (shrink)

Ronald Barnett; Does Higher Education have Aims?, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 22, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 239–250, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.

ABSTRACTWhat is a university? In the nineteenth century John Henry Newman famously spoke of “the idea of a university.” This phrase has dominated all discussions of the nature of the university sin...

Universities are knowledge institutions. Compared to several other knowledge institutions (e.g. schools, government research organisations, think tanks), research universities have unusual, anarchic organisational features. We argue that such anarchic features are not a weakness. Rather, they reflect the special standing of research universities among knowledge institutions. We contend that the distributed, self-organising mode of knowledge production maintains a diversity of approaches, topics and solutions needed in frontier research, which involves generating relevant knowledge under uncertainty. Organisational disunity and inconsistencies should sometimes (...) be protected by institutional structures and procedures in order for research universities to best serve their purpose as knowledge institutions. The quality control for the knowledge produced stems from knowledge fields, clusters of knowledge and research that exist beyond the confines of individual organisations. The diversity of epistemic contributions is therefore kept in check by the order imposed by the internal logic of science as a social practice. Our argument provides a new defence for the autonomy of research conducted at universities. (shrink)

As knowledge has become more closely tied to economic development, the interrelationship between academia and industry has become stronger. The result has been the emergence of what Slaughter and Leslie call academic capitalism. Inevitably, tensions between academia and industry arise; however, universities such as MIT and Stanford with long traditions of industry interaction have been able to achieve a balance between academic and market values. This paper describes the strategies adopted by MIT and Stanford to achieve this balance. The results (...) indicate that implicit culture is a stronger determinant of balance than are explicit rules. Finally, the author proposes a concept of balance to reconsider the relationship between academia and industry: today’s universities, particularly those with strengths in engineering and management, are both symbiotic and interdependent with industry. A reasonable attitude toward the university-industry relationship is that of balance rather than strict separation. Universities can thus establish effective mechanisms to reach a balance between conflicting values. (shrink)

The theory of institutional isomorphism has been criticized for overemphasizing organizational convergence and neglecting organizational divergence. Drawing on a range of empirical data, this paper shows that multi-dimensional accounts of isomorphic change are not necessarily incompatible with accounts emphasizing divergence as a typical form of organizational response to environmental uncertainties. The specific case investigated is the proliferation of academic organizational units teaching law at Australian universities over a ten-year period that saw far-reaching structural transformations of the Australian university system. The (...) key heuristic strategy employed in this paper is to scrutinize when isomorphic responses appear to occur, and which specific organizational form they take. In the empirical case examined, scrutiny of each of these dimensions strongly suggests that at least some isomorphic responses of universities were driven by a dual agenda of manifesting not only similarity but also distinction. (shrink)

The university is an archaic institution and can claim to have a more or less continuous history over more than two millennia and, at least in the forms that prevail today, could be regarded as a ‘Western’ institution. However, the combination of globalization and cybernation will set the parameters for the next round of the university's development. A trend will be the growth of global universities, both virtual and land-based. At the same time, the growth of professional life outside of (...) and between institutions has lessened dependency on them, and the academic intelligentsia has become interconnected as never before. (shrink)

The paper provides a philosophical insight into the contemporary critical trends in the university life, and an outline of possible solutions based on the historical overview of an idea of university. The particular section is devoted to the depiction of situation in Slovakia. The author suggests that the creative reconstruction of academic practices is the key to the future of university.

Universities worldwide are facing enormous strains as a result of increased external expectations where global visibility should be mixed with local and regional utility. In debates on the future of higher education, becoming an entrepreneurial university has been highlighted as a novel – although perhaps a more hybrid – way to deal with this challenge. However, while the label entrepreneurial points to an image of the university as a dynamic free agent shaped in the interplay between dynamic environments and internal (...) flexibility, the current article takes a more critical view on the factors conditioning universities with the ambitions of becoming more entrepreneurial – particularly those of more recent age and less academic standing. For these institutions it is suggested that the university ideal of being entrepreneurial may lead to a situation of strategic inertia characterized by an institutionalized ‘lock-in’ with few alternative development paths. (shrink)

Patrons and sponsors often have shaped and even altered the course of scientific and technological developments. The postwar history of Case Western Reserve University, formed from the federation of Case Institute of Technology and Western Reserve University, indicates that industrial, government, and foundation funders of science and technology also can alter the development of entire institutions.

Academics across widely ranging disciplines all pursue knowledge, but they do so using vastly different methods. Do these academics therefore also have different ideas about when someone possesses knowledge? Recent experimental findings suggest that intuitions about when individuals have knowledge may vary across groups; in particular, the concept of knowledge espoused by the discipline of philosophy may not align with the concept held by laypeople. Across two studies, we investigate the concept of knowledge held by academics across seven disciplines (N (...) = 1,581) and compare these judgments to those of philosophers (N = 204) and laypeople (N = 336). We find that academics and laypeople share a similar concept of knowledge, while philosophers have a substantially different concept. These experiments show that (a) in contrast to philosophers, other academics and laypeople attribute knowledge to others in some “Gettier” situations; (b) academics and laypeople are much less likely to attribute knowledge when reminded of the possibility of error, but philosophers are not affected by this reminder; and (c) non‐philosophy academics are overall more skeptical about knowledge than laypeople or philosophers. These findings suggest that academics across a wide range of disciplines share a similar concept of knowledge, and that this concept aligns closely with the intuitions held by laypeople, and differs considerably from the concept of knowledge described in the philosophical literature, as well as the epistemic intuitions of philosophers themselves. (shrink)

The philosophical principles guiding the pedagogy of Critical Rationalism emphasize the autonomy of individual students, the democratic organization of learning institutions, and a workshop setting where mutual respect is observed by so-called masters and apprentices. This article critically outlines what undergirds this approach to pedagogy and casts some doubt on the potential of operationalizing these ideas on a grand scale and the potential psychological toll that might be exacted from both teachers and students.

This article presents a qualitative case study that explores how faculty and administrators at one community college conceptualized and experienced academic community within their institution and how that conceptualization helped shape the part-time faculty work environment. Using a combined framework of academic community and care ethics, this study utilizes data from 55 interviews with full-time and part-time faculty and administrative leaders from a large community college. Findings from this study indicate that defining membership, a sense of belonging, and shared mission (...) and goals are key components to their understanding of academic community. From these three components, the study found that when participants included adjunct faculty as members of their academic community, they also reported a sense of responsibility or obligation to supporting them. (shrink)

The issue of corporate responsibility has long been discussed in relationship to universities, but generally only in an ad hoc fashion. While the role of universities in teaching business ethics is one theme that has received significant and rather constant attention, other issues tend to be raised only sporadically. Moreover, when issues of corporate responsibility are raised, it is often done on the presumption of some understanding of a liberal arts mandate of the university, a position that has come under (...) much attack in recent years. The purpose of this article is to investigate more systematically the nature of the obligations that the university has to promote more responsible corporate behaviour. It does so on the basis of a reinterpretation of the liberal arts tradition from a critical theory perspective. This entails: (1) an initial conceptualization of the roles and functions of the university; (2) an examination of these functions at two formative periods of the liberal arts tradition, the medieval university and the rise of the modern university in Germany in the early 19th century; (3) an investigation of ruptures in the understanding and practices of the liberal arts tradition, resulting in large part from the rise of the bureaucratic state and the industrial capitalist economy; (4) a reinterpretation of the liberal arts tradition from a critical theory perspective; and (5) a systematic elaboration of the obligations of the university vis-à-vis corporations based upon the university's key functions of teaching, research, formation and professional development. (shrink)

This piece presents the work of academics and architects in a collaborative venture. It provides an architectural design and a series of statements towards the hypothetical creation of an unconventional city centre in the Chinese city of Shenzhen. The idea is to create a linear university that would run the 20-kilometer length of the Shenzhen Strip: the 20K university. The contributors outline, in the diversity of their idioms, a complex spatial condition fundamental to life, and demonstrate new relationships between knowledge (...) and the city. The design of the proposed ‘open university space’ responds to two simultaneous and interrelated challenges: that posed to architecture, and that posed to science. The university would embody the meeting of these at the intersection of the urban infrastructure and the knowledge infrastructure. The purpose is thus also to develop the notion of knowledge, embodied in institutions, as urban infrastructure. (shrink)

The movements to teach the responsible conduct of research and engineering ethics at technological universities are often unacknowledged aspects of the ethics across the curriculum movement and could benefit from explicit alliances with it. Remarkably, however, not nearly as much scholarly attention has been devoted to EAC as to RCR or to engineering ethics, and RCR and engineering ethics educational efforts are not always presented as facets of EAC. The emergence of EAC efforts at two different institutions—the Illinois Institute of (...) Technology and Utah Valley University —provide counter examples. The remarkably successful UVU initiative gave birth to EAC as a scholarly movement and to the associated Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum. EAC initiatives at the Colorado School of Mines, however, point up continuing institutional resistances to EAC. Finally, comparative reflection on successes and failures can draw some lessons for the future. One suggestion is that increasing demands for accountability and pedagogical research into what works in teaching and learning offers special opportunities. (shrink)

Africa is undergoing considerable political, economic and labor market reforms. In this context, education and training stands literally at a crossroads. In the past, it has been oriented toward mass production emphasizing numbers and quantities rather than skills and quality. The primary clientele of the universities were the state organs, local governments, state-controlled cooperatives, commissions and mass organizations. The universities, though frequently in conflict with the state, were very much part of the predominant bureaucratic command economies. As part of the (...) command system the market had to go to them; they did not have to reach out to the market. The current economic crisis and its subsequent reforms have turned the wheel of fortune against the state and the universities. Financial and employment cuts cannot sustain the traditional levels and practices of employment in the public sector. As the roles of the state and the private sector change, the mission, orientation and future of the universities, university staff and their graduates cannot afford to remain what they used to be. This raises the question of the extent to which the university education system of any country in the region is ready for change? The present study undertakes to identify the mechanisms for reducing state regulation of the university curricula and increasing the acceptability, relevance, reliability and dynamism of university education to the market and nonmarket, thereby increasing the capability of university graduates to be more readily employable in various sectors and, where not directly employable, to be able to employ themselves in profitable and sustainable activities. (shrink)

It is commonplace to say that the modern economy is knowledge based but a moment’s reflection points to the vacuity of this notion. For all economies are knowledge based and could not be otherwise. The question is rather how is one kind of knowledge based economy to be distinguished from another? This essay proposes that the answer may lie in three directions: (1) in terms of the variety of knowledge that is engaged; (2) in terms of the processes by which (...) the production of knowledge is organised, and its corollary the resources devoted to knowledge production and dissemination; and, (3) in terms of the purposes to which knowledge is put. In respect of each of these dimensions, the rise of the modern university as a custodian of knowledge in Western economy and society has been of central importance; but universities are not alone in this role, a wide range of other agencies, private firms, public research laboratories for instance play an important role in defining a knowledge economy and have done so increasingly since the turn of the nineteenth century—a first indication of the systemic dimensions of a modern knowledge economy. (shrink)

Universities can sharpen their commitment to democracy through institutional change. This might be resisted by a traditional understanding of universities. The question arises whether universities have defining purposes that demarcate possible university policy, strategic planning, and priority setting. These are significant questions because while universities are among our most stable long-term institutions, there is little consensus on what they are, what they are for, and what makes them valuable. This paper argues that universities can in fact be organized around a (...) wide variety of purposes without thereby becoming any less real as universities. Normative discourse around universities should therefore be unafraid to consider novel ideas that test the limits of our current university concept and our entrenched practices. The argument applies fresh insights from feminist philosophy. Haslanger’s (Haslanger, S. 2000. Gender and race: (What) are they? (What) do we want them to be? Noûs 34(1), 31-55, Haslanger, S. 2005. What are we talking about? The semantics and politics of social kinds._ Hypatia _20(4): 10-26, Haslanger, S. 2012. _Resisting reality: Social construction and social critique_. Oxford University Press.) ameliorative account of gender and race provides a model for how to frame novel and critical ideas about universities. Ásta’s (Ásta. 2018._ Categories we live by: The construction of sex, gender, race, and other social categories. _New York: Oxford University Press.) conferralist framework explains how universities are socially constructed and where our university concept, social behavior, and normative discourse fits into that construction. Stakeholders have the power to create the social fact of whether an institution is a university and what being a university means in each context. However, stakeholders are a heterogenous group and contemporary universities are fragmented institutions in desperate need for an ameliorative account that would guide their construction toward democratic value. That account can build on a distinction between valuing universities as expressions of democracy, its symbols, components, and causal agents. (shrink)

The growing role of universities in the knowledge economy as well as technology transfer has increasingly been conceptualized in terms of the hybridization of public academic work and private business activity. In this article, we examine the difficulties and prospects of this kind of intermingling by studying the long-term trajectories of two research groups operating in the fields of plant biotechnology and language technology. In both cases, the attempts to simultaneously pursue academic and commercial activities led to complicated boundary maintenance, (...) which arose from the conflicting procedures and requirements of the two activities as well as from the double roles assumed by the actors involved. We, thus, argue that the construction of boundaries is not as contingent and strategic as has often been assumed but is built, instead, on the characteristic goals and tasks of the activities in question. Moreover, we suggest that the discussion on university—industry relationships and the entrepreneurial university has by and large neglected the fact that most universities are either public sector entities or tax-exempt organizations thereby being subject to strict rules and regulations that govern the ways in which they may become engaged in commercial activities. Furthermore, several other enduring cultural features, such as the university’s commitment to open scholarly communication, make the boundary between university and commerce relatively stable. As a consequence, the results of this study lend support to the thesis according to which boundaries in science are not always created at will but reflect the long history and multifaceted societal relevance of this particular institution. This in turn implies that the commodification of university research is bound to be more difficult than what the proponents of the entrepreneurial university seem to assume. (shrink)

The massive expansion of US higher education after World War II is a sociological puzzle: a spectacular feat of state capacity-building in a highly federated polity. Prior scholarship names academic leaders as key drivers of this expansion, yet the conditions for the possibility and fate of their activity remain under-specified. We fill this gap by theorizing what Randall Collins first callededucational entrepreneurshipas a special kind of strategic action in the US polity. We argue that the cultural authority and organizational centrality (...) of universities in the US national context combine with historical contingency to episodically produce conditions under which academic credentials can be made viable solutions to social problems. We put our theorization to the test by revisiting and extending a paradigmatic case: the expansion of engineering education at Stanford University between 1945 and 1969. Invoking several contemporaneous and subsequent cases, we demonstrate the promise of theorizing educational expansion as an outcome of strategic action by specifically located actors over time. (shrink)

The expansion of the higher education system and the rationalization of universities in South Korea, while broadly following the global patterns, reflect the characteristics of the national political system. We show the rapid growth of universities and document core organizational changes among universities: the elaboration of faculty performance evaluation rules, the expansion and differentiation of central administrations, and the emergence of engagement in vision statements. These changes, constructing universities as organizational actors, parallel the changes in higher education systems elsewhere. However, (...) the uniqueness of the Korean experience lies with the role of the state as a catalyst guiding the overall direction and the structure and strategy of universities. We discuss the implications of our research for the rationalization of universities in a highly centralized system. (shrink)

In recent years, the internationalization of music education has become an important topic. Scholars of various research traditions try to find the best solutions for problems in music education theory and practice by taking a look at what other countries do. English as common language seems to facilitate this recent development. However, in spite of this seemingly unproblematic way of communicating, there are various obstacles which make the mutual understanding and the internationalization of music education difficult. This particularly concerns different (...) scholarly cultures and traditions of presenting research, both in written papers and oral presentations. Most scholars realize that there are difficulties, but because they mostly only know one culture of research well, they are not aware of the reasons for these problems. Therefore, it is important to take a critical look at the scholarly traditions in Germany and the United States, examining reasons and suggesting solutions for an internationalization of music education that takes into account the strengths of various traditions, while at the same time fostering international understanding and the improvement of music education all over the world. (shrink)

Contemporary universities are engaged in multiple activities, which are often disconnected and subject to powerful external influences. Undergraduate research projects have been posited as a means of enhancing undergraduate education and improving the integration of research and teaching. However, engagement with the core research activity of the institution is not easily achieved. Greater integration between disparate activities within the university is hindered by the dynamics of the higher education field, pressures on academic staff and students, and funding policies. Expanded undergraduate (...) involvement in externally funded research projects could engender connectivity between disconnected parties and with learning contexts often considered external to the university. (shrink)

ABSTRACTUniversities remain the most important organisations involved in developing knowledge and providing means of social mobility. However, they are facing challenges from new providers facilita...

For centuries, the processes of social differentiation associated with Modernity have often been thought to intensify the need for site-specific forms of role training and knowledge production, threatening the university’s survival either through fragmentation or through failure to adapt. Other lines of argument emphasize the extent to which the Modern system creates and relies on an integrated knowledge system, but most of the literature stresses functional differentiation and putative threats to the university. And yet over this period the university has (...) flourished. In our view, this seeming paradox is explained by the fact that modern society rests as much on universalistic cosmological bases as it does on differentiation. The university expands over recent centuries because – as it has from its religious origins – it casts cultural and human materials in universalistic terms. Our view helps explain empirical phenomena that confound standard accounts: the university’s extraordinary expansion and global diffusion, its curricular and structural isomorphism, and its relatively unified structure. All of this holds increasingly true after World War II, as national state societies made up of citizens are increasingly embedded in a world society constituted of empowered individuals. The redefinition of society in global and individual terms reduces nationally bounded models of nature and culture, extends the pool of university beneficiaries and investigators, and empowers the human persons who are understood to root it all. The changes intensify universalization and the university’s rate of worldwide growth. For the university’s knowledge and “knowers,” and for the pedagogy that joins them together, the implications are many. The emerging societal context intensifies longstanding processes of cultural rationalization and ontological elaboration, yielding great expansions in what can and should be known, and in who can and should know. These changes in turn alter the menu of approved techniques for joining knowledge and knower as one. The “knowledge society” that results is distinguished by the extraordinary degree to which the university is linked to society. But it is also distinguished by the degree to which society is organized around the university’s abstracted and universalized understandings of the world and its degree-certified graduates. (shrink)

The New Fuzziness: Richard Rorty and Education is an examination of the works of Richard Rorty, focusing on his impact on education. Richard Rorty is "one of the most provocative and influential of contemporary thinkers writing in English." This unpublished manuscript is written by Dr. Philip E. Devine, Professor of Philosophy at Providence College.

This thesis argues that John Dewey’s theory of collective intelligence presents a unique critical social theory that escapes the dead-ends of Frankfurt School critical theory and speaks directly to the political situation faced today by academics and the public. In Part 1, Dewey’s critical social theory is argued to present a ‘method of democracy’ that proposes a form of ‘intelligent populism’ as the mode of collective action in contemporary ‘political democracies’. Part 2 applies the method of democracy to the contemporary (...) ‘problematic situation’ of neoliberalism in crisis. It is argued that ‘third-wave neoliberalism’ in the UK has turned to higher education as a solution to this crisis, seeking to redirect HE through the TEF, REF and KEF national performance management systems to the needs of a stagnating monopoly capitalist economy. Part 3 explores ways out of the current crisis based on Dewey’s theory of collective intelligence. Beginning with the institutional context of social theory today, Michael Burawoy’s theory of public sociology is reconstructed as ‘democratic sociology’ based on a practice of ‘co-inquiry’ with the public. While Burawoy argues that the ‘founding tension’ in sociology between professional and radical sociology can be resolved by establishing an ‘organic solidarity’ within the discipline, the analysis of marketisation presented in the thesis suggests that only by uniting with other academics and the public in the fight against neoliberalism can sociologists avoid co-optation. The method of democracy then provides the basis for a reconstruction of the academic profession on a model of ‘democratic collegiality’. Democratic collegiality in turn offers a solution to the contradictions in governance arising from marketisation, pointing to the ‘social co-operative’ as an ideal form for democratised universities. Finally, Corbynism is argued to be a ‘verification’ of Dewey’s hypothesis of intelligent populism, and the book concludes with an analysis of the Lucas Plan, which offers valuable lessons for activist-academics seeking to help realise this genuine alternative to neoliberalism today. (shrink)

The question of how the university can relate to the world is centuries old. The poles of the debate can be characterized by the plea for an increasing instrumentalization of the university as a producer and provider of useful knowledge on the one hand (cf. the knowledge factory), and the defense of the university as an autonomous space for free inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake on the other hand (cf. the ivory tower). Our current global predicament, (...) however, forces us to rethink the relation between university and world. Indeed, an easy nstrumentalization of the university for the purposes of society is no longer possible in troubled times when the future of society itself seems to be at stake. Nevertheless, urgent societal concerns do need to be addressed by the university. Hence, the disinterested position seems a highly irresponsible option. The aim of this dissertation is to reconsider the relation between the university and the world from an educational perspective by addressing the question “How to situate study in the relation between university and society?” The dissertation consists of three parts. In Part One, the existing literature on the relation between university and society will be discussed. The first chapter discerns two main approaches to this issue, namely the transcendental-philosophical approach (cf. the idea of the university) and the critical-sociological approach (cf. academic capitalism) that conceive of the university, respectively, as an idea and as an organization. By means of an excursus on the emergence of the university in the Middle Ages, the case is made for an ecological approach to the university. In the second chapter, the work of two authors who have recently adopted such an ecological approach is briefly presented. Whereas Ronald Barnett’s theory of the ecological university is situated more in the transcendental-philosophical tradition, Susan Wright’s investigations of the university in the knowledge ecology can be placed in the critical-sociological tradition. Both conceptions, however, are hinged on an institutional understanding of the university. In line with recent developments in social theory, namely the focus on practices, it is proposed to work towards an ecology of study practices. Part Two presents Isabelle Stengers’ idea of the ecology of practices. The third chapter elucidates Stengers’ work on scientific practices by first situating it within the so-called Science Wars, which provided the impetus to elaborate a theoretical framework for a civilized dialogue between scientists and the broader public. The basic tenets and concepts of her approach, such as the understanding of practice as a set of requirements and obligations, are presented, explained, and discussed. In the fourth chapter, the focus shifts from scientific practices to study practices. Assisted by Stengers’ writings on Whitehead’s speculative philosophy, this chapter aims to flesh out Whitehead’s description of the university as a ‘home of adventures’ in order to come to an educational understanding of the study practices of the university. A conceptual inquiry into how study practices activate certain worldly problems and turn them into matters of study is presented. Part Three develops the conceptual work on study practices further in relation to the activities of the Palestinian experimental university Campus in Camps. Chapter Five presents the work of Campus in Camps and explains how it relates to the theoretical discussion offered in the second part. On the basis of Stengers’ conception of practice, which discerns requirements and obligations as vital ingredients, this chapter argues that life in exile is what drives the study practices of Campus in Camps, and hence, that it is the issue of life in exile that participants are obligated to when they study. Whereas Chapter Five is focused on what is being studied in Campus in Camps, Chapter Six inquires in to the specific requirements its activities need to fulfill in order to be study practices; in other words, how the participants study. Four requirements are discerned that, taken together, seem indispensable to understand the study practices of Campus in Camps; namely, storytelling, comparing, mapmaking, and using. The concluding chapter returns to the research question and again takes up the main ideas developed in the dissertation, such as the adventure of study and the cohabitation of scientific and study practices in the university. The last two sections of the conclusion deal with two remaining issues of a more practical nature; namely, how to relate to institutionalization when working from a practice-theoretical point of view, and lastly the question of what can be done. In all, and returning to the initial problem, the dissertation asks what it means to conceive of the university as situated by and engaged with worldly questions. (shrink)