Although universities are asked to play a role in the European knowledge society, the precise scope and meaning of this role is still under discussion. A major issue in this debate is the trend to adapt universities to economic needs and demands of society. In view of taking a critical stance against a one-sided economic interpretation of activities and functions of universities, their so-called “public” role is increasingly stressed in the debate as a crucial responsibility of universities that should not (...) be marginalized and therefore deserves our attention. In this paper, which is the introduction to a special issue on the public role of the university, we want to stress the importance of addressing the question of “the role of universities in the Europe of knowledge” in an open way and thus, without prejudices against or in favour of possible answers. It is our contention that a critical view of what is happening in universities today cannot simply rely on authoritative ideas or principles that are vaguely reminiscent of our university traditions. Consequently, this introductory paper pleas for a firmer argumentative and a richer empirical basis that takes account of the fact that our background has thoroughly changed in comparison to traditions that still implicitly inform our judgement of what universities can do, should do or should not do. Finally, we will discuss the way in which the articles collected in this issue are intended stimulating and supporting the debate on the public role of the university in Europe. (shrink)

Is it just to charge international students fees that are generally much higher than those paid by home and European Union students at UK universities? Exploring the ethical tension between universities? avowed commitment to social justice on the one hand and selling education to foreign students at a premium on the other, we argue that increased global association and the reduced salience of the sovereign state make the education of international students an issue of global justice. If we view education (...) as a global public good, the ethics of higher education provision call for reconsideration of both the current fee regime and of universities? role in a competitive global economy. (shrink)

The transformative university is a reflective and critical university that attempts to transform the world so as to live under democratic values of freedom, inclusion, equality and justice. It is a...

This participative inquiry critiques recent management trends in the Finnish higher education system. The six authors, presently working in three Finnish universities, focus on strategic internationalization policy to highlight the argument. Global trends in internationalization are introduced, followed by an experienced-based meta-analysis, drawing on several recent studies by the authors. This analysis points to significant challenges and blind spots that exist- well hidden- alongside the Finnish higher education system’s best features. The increasing use of ICT-based management routines are called into (...) question with respect to higher education practices, capacity and linked societal challenges. The analysis indicates these challenges remain unengaged- even obscured by- the rapidly proliferating number of ICT-based university management systems. Although none of the authors are specialists in Philosophy or ethics, the interpretive-level findings presented by this interdisciplinary group of scholars illuminates ways forward for the emerging field of specialists focused on ICT-based network-related ethics. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore the effects of the Istitutional Forum, a recent governance innovation legislated in South Africa in 1997, as a mechanism that contributes toward the democratisation of university governance. Forums were established to confront the legacy of structured disadvantage and to reorient the educational experience towards greater horizontal accountability. The article provides commentary on the Forum’s impact vis-a-vis participative ethos and deliberative democracy against the backdrop of the South African government’s post-apartheid commitments. Findings reveal (...) challenges in the Forum’s make-up and implementation that are linked to its degree of influence. Ultimately, the conclusions convey perspectives on role ambiguity and conflictual power dynamics. (shrink)

This essay reviews Helen Nissenbaum’s Privacy in Context (2010), focusing in particular on her dismissal of the public/private dichotomy. Taking issue with the problem she constructs of ‘privacy in public’, her unitary reading of the dichotomy and ‘socializing’ of the value of privacy, or what she calls ‘contextual integrity’, and her treatment of technology in the abstract, the essay then goes on to argue that the framework she proposes is incapable of addressing the contemporary incursion of market logic into every (...) other aspect of social and political life in the digital economy, and therefore of protecting privacy at all. The essay concludes with an insistence on the need to approach contextual privacy problems from a political economic perspective and with a political conception of privacy, and for that to be founded upon a protean appreciation of the public/private dichotomy. (shrink)

Drawing on struggles within academe between faculty that promote critical education and advocates of New Public Management (NPM) who endorse instrumental learning, I reimagine the university as a counter-space that positions it as a counter-power to informational capitalism. Initially, I outline its twin threats: ethical, as self-entrepreneurial academics are valorised by NPM; and political, with informationalisation conflating spaces of thinking. I then detail Scott Lash’s specific account of how the info-comm society negates critique. However, his monistic understanding of informationalisation means (...) Lash’s alternative of Informationskritik risks subsumption by it. I therefore defer to Jacques Derrida’s idea of the university. To ensure the autonomy of the principle of reason in a world of info-comm flows, the university is a supplementary body to society, yet intimately linked to it by its critical reflexivity, which is on behalf of society. Because Derrida does not elaborate the requisite institutional architecture, I conclude with Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia as a quasi-illicit site that is different and other. Such an institutional design enables the university as a counter-space that is a bank of reason and an archive of its manifestation in social practices. It also upholds a space for thinking, which in the form of nominalist critical history proffers a counter-power to society as an informational homotopia. (shrink)

In the global academic capitalist race, academics, institutions and countries’ symbolic power results from the accumulation of scientific capital. This paper relies on the perspectives of system actors located at the institutional, national and international levels to assess the perceived importance of eight systemic factors in contributing to the comparative advantage of social-democratic regimes, namely Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. A deductive thematic analysis performed on 56 transcripts and a one-way repeated-measure ANOVA performed on 324 questionnaires confirmed the hypotheses regarding (...) the positive influence of academic traditions and internationalization. This study contributes to the development of a varieties of academic capitalism approach to apprehend how political-economies condition higher education systems’ comparative advantage. (shrink)