ABSTRACT
Thinking and working within a circular economy challenges the profligate use of our resources, material and energies. Higher education institutions (HEIs) are complex and ostensibly intelligent institutions. Rethinking the practices of HEIs through the lens and principles of the circular economy presents possibilities for a more contemporary dynamic through which curriculum content, its production, quality, application and governance are integrated in such a way as to unlock the creative and intellectual potential that resides within any university. Focusing more attention on the nature and potential learning in each human encounter provides a means to more fully exploit this richness, in a similar way to re-examining how we constitute and consider ‘waste’. Higher education will always remain positioned between the linear and circular economies, between the intrinsic power of what it is to learn and share knowledge and the global economic conditions in which we live.
