ABSTRACT
At least since the nineteenth century, the purpose, structure, nature, and aim of higher education have been contested. Niklas Luhmann once described the university as an "organised institution". The various signs that constitute higher education like 'student' or 'lecture' and the relations between them need to be reaffirmed through articulatory practices. However, as discourses fail to fully constitute themselves and to ultimately halt the flow of meaning, social structures like higher education become the site of conflict as different discourses struggle for hegemony and try to dominate and unify a particular social field through the creation of alternative nodal points and new relations of equivalence. Higher education is a complex and relatively stable discursive structure that regulates behaviour, provides identities, and constitutes relations of power. It is a 'system of differences' that has been institutionalised over time and consists of signifiers such as 'university', 'lecture', 'student', or 'academic'.
