ABSTRACT
The insularities that have traditionally informed university cultures in Britain are no longer useful. This chapter argues that multicultural societies require multicultural universities. A more fundamental task of higher education in a new compact with society is to help students perform the identity work needed to envisage 'taking the next step' in constructing their own aspirational pathways. The ancient or pre-modern university was essentially a finishing school for largely hereditary political and social elite. The hidden curriculum of the 'old' university is still underwritten by the notion that the student is being initiated into an inherited body of knowledge, strongly identified in an academic discipline which in turn translates itself into professional credentials and career. The shift from an aristocracy of learning to a meritocratic culture of achievement is supposed to ensure that the criteria which regulate access to and advancement within the good academic life are substantively, and not just formally, universalistic.
