Ronald Barnett

What is critical thinking, especially in the context of higher education? How have research and scholarship on the matter developed over recent past decades? What is the current state of the art here? How might the potential of critical thinking be enhanced? What kinds of teaching are necessary in order to realize that potential? And just why is this topic important now? These are the key questions motivating this volume. We hesitate to use terms such as “comprehensive” or “complete” or “definitive,” but we believe that, taken in the round, the chapters in this volume together offer a fair insight into the contemporary understandings of higher education worldwide. We also believe that this volume is much needed, and we shall try to justify that claim in this introduction.

The idea of ‘the university’ has stood for universal themes—of knowing, of truthfulness, of learning, of human development, and of critical reason. Through its affirming and sustaining of such themes, the university came itself to stand for universality in at least two senses: the university was neither partial nor local in its significance . Now, this universalism has been shot down: on the one hand, universal themes have been impugned as passé in a postmodern age; in the ‘knowledge society’, knowledge with a capital ‘K’ is giving way to multiple and even local knowledges . On the other hand, the very process of globalization has been accused of being a new process of colonization. Global universities, accordingly, may be seen as a vehicle for the imposition of Western modes of reason . Diversity is the new watchword, a term that—we may note—has come to be part of the framing of the contemporary policy agenda for higher education. Accordingly, in such a situation of multiple meanings, both within and across institutions, the university becomes an institutional means for developing the capacities—at both the personal and the societal levels—to live with ‘strangeness’: perhaps here lies a new universal for the university? But, then, if that is the case, if strangeness is the new universal for the university, some large challenges await those who would claim to lead and manage universities

ABSTRACT Academic administration is not to be construed simply as a technical practice, the development of efficient management systems, nor as reactive, as response to the collective views of the academic community, nor in terms of academic leadership, the establishment and implementation of institutional aims. A full account of academic administration will provide a sense of the integral relationship between the academic administrator and the academic community. For that, a prior notion of the academic community is required. Such a notion, giving a central place to structured discourse, can be derived from the German idea of the university and particularly from the writings of von Humboldt, Karl Jaspers and Jurgen Habermas.

Almost 40 years ago, a book appeared by J.S. Brubacher entitled On the Philosophy of Higher Education. Today, we have neither its successor nor a sense as to what such a book might contain. The argument here is that we currently lack a recognised subfield of study that might be termed ‘the philosophy of higher education’. The paper attempts to begin to remedy this situation by assembling the main planks of such a field, and identifying broadly the kinds of resources that might be brought together. A particular approach is argued for that builds from a recognition of the university both as institution and as idea. This approach would understand both that the university possesses a social ontology and that the university is accompanied by a widening conceptual hinterland. An undue pessimism is noted, such that the contemporary university is sometimes seen as being subject to overwhelming global forces, which underplays the university’s potential as an agent. It is suggested that an adequate philosophy of higher education would seek to widen the conceptual landscape by identifying universal and imaginative concepts that can assist not merely in understanding the university or in defending the university but in changing it.

In what senses can the academy be said to be a site of culture? Does that very idea bear much weight today? Perhaps the negative proposition has more substance, namely that the academy is no longer (if indeed it ever was) a place of culture. After all, we live in dark times-of unbridled power, tyranny, domination and manipulation. Some say that we have entered an age of the posthuman or even the inhuman. It just may be, however, that in such a world, the academic community is needed more than ever for it offers a culture of justified revelation. It is a culture that reveals the world to us in new ways, but in ways that are attested and contested; its judgements emerge out of a critical and unworldly pedantry. With some hesitancy, we can legitimately therefore speak of not just a culture of the academic community but, indeed, the culture of the academic community.

In this paper we philosophically explore the notion of darkness within higher education teaching and learning. Within the present-day discourse of how to make visible and to explicate teaching and learning strategies through alignment procedures and evidence-based intellectual leadership, we argue that dark spots and blind angles grow too. As we struggle to make visible and to evaluate, assess, manage and organise higher education, the darkness of the institution actually expands. We use the term ‘dark’ to comprehend challenges, situations, reactions, aims and goals, which cannot easily be understood and solved by agendas of quality assurance and professionalisation of higher education. We need to understand better why gender issues or ethnic conflicts emerge, and why students take up arms, within an institution which is thought to be inclusive, inviting and open to all kinds of people and cultures. And we need to study the educational potential of days of boredom or isolation, caught up in daily routines of teaching or studying which do not lead anywhere or give way to any productive work. These matters have not been sufficiently researched and conceptualised as meaningful in themselves. We aim here to open a space for insights through the concept of darkness presented in this paper. In order to make educational darkness palpable we draw on the philosophies of darkness found in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and Emmanuel Levinas. Through those philosophies we argue that the growing darkness within higher education is not a symptom we should fear and avoid. Having the ability and courage to face these darker educational aspects of everyday higher education practice will enable students and teachers to find renewed hope in the university as an institution for personal as well as professional imagination and growth.

In this paper we philosophically explore the notion of darkness within higher education teaching and learning. Within the present-day discourse of how to make visible and to explicate teaching and learning strategies through alignment procedures and evidence-based intellectual leadership, we argue that dark spots and blind angles grow too. As we struggle to make visible and to evaluate, assess, manage and organise higher education, the darkness of the institution actually expands. We use the term ‘dark’ to comprehend challenges, situations, reactions, aims and goals, which cannot easily be understood and solved by agendas of quality assurance and professionalisation of higher education. We need to understand better why gender issues or ethnic conflicts emerge, and why students take up arms, within an institution which is thought to be inclusive, inviting and open to all kinds of people and cultures. And we need to study the educational potential of days of boredom or isolation, caught up in daily routines of teaching or studying which do not lead anywhere or give way to any productive work. These matters have not been sufficiently researched and conceptualised as meaningful in themselves. We aim here to open a space for insights through the concept of darkness presented in this paper. In order to make educational darkness palpable we draw on the philosophies of darkness found in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and Emmanuel Levinas. Through those philosophies we argue that the growing darkness within higher education is not a symptom we should fear and avoid. Having the ability and courage to face these darker educational aspects of everyday higher education practice will enable students and teachers to find renewed hope in the university as an institution for personal as well as professional imagination and growth.

Academics are confronted with multiple and conflicting narratives as to what it is to be an academic. Their identities, however, are not entirely of their own making. Through a qualitative study, and deploying a social realist perspective, this paper analyses academic identities in Chile and attempts to locate the patterns of identity in the context of a marketised higher education system. The data were collected in both a state and a private university. The results suggest that distinct kinds of fragilities may be emerging among Chilean academics (ontological and contractual fragilities). These two fragilities can be traced to the attendant structures of the university system at an institutional level (reputational fragility in the public sector and a branding fragility in the private sector). The paper concludes by observing that, although the power of the structures is considerable, there are still spaces for agentic responses

Despite both positive and negative perceptions of the current state of higher education, the contemporary debate over what it is to be a university is limited. Most of all, it is limited imaginatively. The range of imagined options is narrow. The imagination has not been given anything even approaching a wide scope. As a result, our sense as to what a university could be and could become in the modern age is itself impoverished. If we are seriously to develop a wide range of ideas of the university that is adequate to the challenges of the modern world, the imagination itself needs to be freed. Imagining the University seeks to address each of these sets of issues and will do so by first, identifying a very wide range of ideas of the university as it is now unfolding and could become; secondly, by evaluating those conceptions of the university with a classification of ideas of the university; and thirdly, by reflecting on the imagination itself, its current impoverishment and its possibilities. Whether studying, researching or deciding policy, this book is vital reading to all those involved in the planning and delivery of higher education.

Competence is a term which is making its entrance in the university. How might it be understood at this level? The Limits of Competence takes an uncompromising line, providing a sustained critique of the notion of competence as wholly inadequate for higher education.Currently, we are seeing the displacement of one limited version of competence by another even more limited interpretation. In the older definition - one of academic competence - notions of disciplines, objectivity and truth have been central. In the new version, competence is given an operational twist and is marked out by know-how, competence and skills. In this operationalism, the key question is not 'What do students understand?' but 'What can students do?'The book develops an alternative view, suggesting that, for our universities, a third and heretical conception of human being is worth considering. Our curricula might, instead, offer an education for life.

The university has lost its way. The world needs the university more than ever but for new reasons. If we are to clarify its new role in the world, we need to find a new vocabulary and a new sense of purpose. The university is faced with supercomplexity, in which our very frames of understanding, action and self-identity are all continually challenged. In such a world, the university has explicitly to take on a dual role: firstly, of compounding supercomplexity, so making the world ever more challenging; and secondly, of enabling us to live effectively in this chaotic world. Internally, too, the university has to become a new kind of organization, adept at fulfilling this dual role. The university has to live by the uncertainty principle: it has to generate uncertainty, to help us live with uncertainty, and even to revel in our uncertainty. Ronald Barnett offers nothing less than a fundamental reworking of the way in which we understand the modern university. Realizing the University is essential reading for all those concerned about the future of higher education.

Academic administration is not to be construed simply as a technical practice, the development of efficient management systems, nor as reactive, as response to the collective views of the academic community, nor in terms of academic leadership, the establishment and implementation of institutional aims. A full account of academic administration will provide a sense of the integral relationship between the academic administrator and the academic community. For that, a prior notion of the academic community is required. Such a notion, giving a central place to structured discourse, can be derived from the German idea of the university and particularly from the writings of von Humboldt, Karl Jaspers and Jurgen Habermas.

In the World Library of Educationalists series, international scholars compile career-long selections of what they judge to be among their finest pieces so the world has access to them in a single manageable volume. Readers are able to follow the themes and strands and see how their work contributes to the development of the field. Over more than three decades, Professor Ronald Barnett has acquired a distinctive position as a leading philosopher of the university and higher education, and this volume brings together 15 of his key writings, particularly papers from leading journals. This volume also includes, as his introductory chapter, an intellectual autobiography, in which Professor Barnett recounts the history of his scholarship and writing, traces its development across five stages, and identifies the themes and sources of inspiration that lie within his corpus of work. Ronald Barnett has described his corpus of work as a social philosophy of the university that is at once conceptual, critical, practical and imaginative. His concepts of criticality, critical interdisciplinarity, supercomplexity and the ecological university have been taken up in the literature across the world. Through telling examples, and with an incisive clarity of writing, Ronald Barnett's scholarship has helped to illuminate in fresh ways and reorient practices in the university and in higher education. The chapters in this volume reveal all of these qualities so making this volume a compelling overview of a passionate and yet constructive critic of the university.