Realizing the university in an age of supercomplexity

Philadelphia, PA: Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press (2000)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

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.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 97,297

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
28 (#647,375)

6 months
10 (#597,547)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Ronald Barnett
University College London

Citations of this work

Going Public: Good Scientific Conduct.Gitte Meyer & Peter Sandøe - 2012 - Science and Engineering Ethics 18 (2):173-197.
A Place From Where to Speak: The University and Academic Freedom.Graham Badley - 2009 - British Journal of Educational Studies 57 (2):146-163.
Recapturing the universal in the university.Ronald Barnett - 2005 - Educational Philosophy and Theory 37 (6):785–797.

View all 23 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references