ABSTRACT
This chapter adopts a historical perspective on the economic theories, philosophy and social policies which have affected knowledge in higher education over three broad phases: the medieval, the modern and the postmodern. A section on the medieval university shows that many of their features exist in today’s HE system. Humboldt’s University of Berlin (1810) was the model for the modern European and American universities of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their underlying philosophy was based on Kant’s German idealism in the search for truth, together with the idea of the university being fully funded by the state and enjoying academic freedom in teaching and research. The current ‘postmodern’ university loses its independence and control of knowledge as it competes for student fees in the neoliberal HE market. Knowledge as the search for truth is replaced by ‘performativity’ in gaining graduate employment. Examining the underlying political context, the conclusion offers a critique of the postmodern context for higher education.
