The university and the world

Handbook on Globalization and Higher Education, 2011

The university is generally regarded as an international, if not global, institution -in terms both of its historical development; and of its future trajectory. This supposedly fundamental characteristic is accepted as a 'given', too easily perhaps because it tends to emphasise one element in the formation of the modern university (the international, or global) at the expense of other, arguably more significant, elements (the local and the national); and also because it may also place too much emphasis on a single strand, however important, in its future direction, leading to the adoption of a single-path model of development. The purpose of this chapter is, not to debunk, but to problematise this idea, that the university is (or should be) first and foremost a global institution. The intention is to lead to a more rounded and more nuanced account of the university's global role.

Tuning Journal for Higher Education, 2018

The Oxford Handbook of Education and Globalization, 2023

2011

Interchange, 2009

Could anyone reasonably oppose the idea that quality and excellence are essential to the university? However unlikely it seems, that is exactly what we would like to do in this article: we would like to reject the demand for quality and excellence in the university. We would like to arrive at a point at where the need for quality is no longer necessary. In this article, such a refusal will direct us to a proposal for using the spaces offered by the university and its teaching and research in a different way; in a way that transforms the university into a world university. This paper will argue that a world university is concentrated around attentive pools of worldly study. It is a university that has to invent new languages in order to answer the question “How can we live together?” In order to answer this question, and to be “present in the present,” we will clarify our argument that both acceptance and attention are needed in the world university. This position implies a kind of curiosity that is not driven by the “will to know” but by a caring attitude to what is happening now.

Accessibility to higher education is limited to the majority of the world population. Many countries in the world lack the academic infrastructure that has the capability to provide students with an opportunity for higher education. Even in countries with an established infrastructure for higher education, accessibility may be limited from remote villages, which usually have poorer communities that may not allow potential students the means to travel to cities and attend universities. Due to the lack of opportunities for poverty-ravaged communities around the world to attend university, they usually retain their status quo, while richer communities advance by accessing better careers and jobs due to higher levels of education. This paper provides a framework for establishing a World University that may be established as an international organization under the auspices of the United Nations. The framework for establishing the World University as an online education system provides higher education to both the privileged and underprivileged individuals, while retaining a high quality of education. The plan proposed in this paper is for the structure of a non-profit virtual campus university that can be accessed via the internet from anywhere around the world. Full consideration is given in this paper to the academic integrity, technical, legal, financial, and practical basis for establishing the university. The paper provides the role of the international organizations, governments, and the global community to establish this university, which is based on a collaborative effort of higher education institutions around the world, as well as the structure of the university's administration and roles.

Evaluating Education: Normative Systems and Institutional Practices, 2020

No university of ambition officially claims to be local. Touting international reach and reputation is a nearly essential feature of university strategic planning worldwide. Yet being a global university is paradoxical. Academic institutions historically are servants of particular cities, regions, and nations, and one of their essential functions has been to connect particular places with world affairs. International rankings regimes, the search for tuition revenue among schools in a few large markets, and the remarkable consistency with which nations pursue status through higher education: all of these deepen the implication of universities in the fate and future of particular locales.

We are one planet. The global university is any and every where and when. We are all colearners – sometimes students, sometimes teachers, always listening. It is our greatest talent, joy and calling.

Higher Education Quarterly , 2021

History of education & children's literature, 2014

The current university in a globalised world is facing all kinds of new challenges: an increasing commodification of research, a growing number of cases of scientific fraud, pressure on teaching, and internationalisation within still predominantly national frameworks. Taken together, all these elements contribute to the impression among the general public of a certain crisis of the current university. The central question of this paper is to what extent the original ideal of the university as a universal institution, in the period of its foundation in the High Middle Ages, can function as a source of inspiration for the concerns of the contemporary university. It will be shown that many traditions connected to this ideal can still function as valid models to reflect upon the university today, offering as such a nice example of how history of (university) education can be of use in the ongoing public debate and policy making process. The exercise to think about the university in this...