ABSTRACT
The university as a social and political institution has always been an arena of, and for, institutional and curricular change. As R. Barnett argues, even the very of the idea of the university has changed – or perhaps more precisely, various different ideas of the university have been added to the growing range of roles, purposes and expectations of the institution and higher education. Academic knowledge is truncated in ways that endanger the academy's ability to contribute to the most pressing problems of the planet today. If a more sustainable and responsible transformation of our universities is called for, we need also to work in the depths – and be able to offer sound and informed alternative higher education futures. Our emphasis in challenging neoliberalism's determinacy for higher education is to bring focus to the potential for transformation that is our contemporary condition. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
