ABSTRACT

This book sets out to clarify, and contribute to, a particular worldwide debate about the nature and purpose of higher education. On one side, it is often argued or assumed that universities exist to provide future society with the skills base it will require. In another view, universities exist not (merely) to service the economy but to contribute to the intellectual and moral improvement of the human condition. An example of this second position, which is increasingly encountered in higher education policy-making forums around the world, is that which proposes that universities should promote sustainable development through their teaching, research and self-management. The book explores the relationship between higher education and sustainable development in the light of seven international case studies and the literatures of sustainability, learning, and higher education teaching and management. 7KH ERRN LV RUJDQLVHG LQ IRXU VHFWLRQV 7KH ¿UVW &KDSWHUV ± EHJLQV LQ

Chapter 1 with an examination of a fundamental question – that of what higher education is for. Here, we outline debates about the proper purpose of higher education in a free society, and set out both a real world view and an ivory tower view as two rough and ready ways of characterising and describing the purposes of universities. These two takes on the role of higher education are then used throughout the book as a means of commenting on issues that arise, as together they provide usefully opposed vantage points from which to consider the purpose of universities. Given our focal question, our concern is the proper place of sustainable development in what a university does, rather than the role of universities in implementing (any particular conception of) sustainable development. Our position in taking the argument forward is one of openness both to competing FRQFHSWLRQVRIWKHSXUSRVHRIKLJKHUHGXFDWLRQDQGWRPXOWLSOHGH¿QLWLRQVRIVXVtainable development.