ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the future of the American research university in the text of The Uses of the University, in which Clark Kerr mentioned some wild cards, including wars and depressions. He studied the transformations the university was experiencing by reviewing its history and focusing on three aspects of its evolution. The three aspects of the university's evolution were namely, its new mission (knowledge production for a knowledge-based economy), its new funding pattern (the "federal grant university"), and its new structure (the fragmentation of the "multiversity"). Kerr's "multiversity" was very much "at the height of the times", but the times are changing, and market demands and human needs are changing too. In addition, some previously unarticulated "human needs" are being expressed and, thus, becoming "market demands". Accordingly, the three key aspects of the university that Kerr analyzed in 1963 were undergoing profound transformations. This transformation explored the fundamental change that was influencing society and affecting the mission of the university.
