ABSTRACT
The idea of the university is hopelessly impoverished. It is 'improverished' in the limited range of ideas associated with the university, which confine themselves to endorsing newly emerging forms of the university. The idea of the university has, of course, undergone many shifts and been subject to varying conceptions over time. For some hundreds of years, the idea of the university was as it might be said that of the metaphysical university, reflective of an inquiry that enhanced humanity's connections with God, or the Universe, or Truth or Spirit or even the State. That conception gave way to the research university which in turn is giving way to that of the entrepreneurial university, which is closely allied to the emergence of a tacit idea of the corporate university. What is striking about this conceptual journey that the idea of the university has undergone over nearly one thousand years is that it has gradually shrunk.
