ABSTRACT
Universities are extremely self-reflective institutions. At the same time, it is rather rare for a professor or a vice-chancellor to publish extensively on the future of the university itself. Yet Utrecht University has had a tradition of doing exactly that. And recently Bert van der Zwaan has followed the example of his predecessors by publishing his book Higher Education in 2040 — A Global Approach. Already in 1831, the professor of history and classical languages Philip Willem van Heusde (1778–1839) wrote his highly successful and influential Brieven over Hoger Onderwijs (Letters on Higher Education), which advocated the university as the place where neoclassical Bildung should be the core curriculum (no surprise there). Also Gerrit Jan Mulder (1802–1880), one of the founders of modern chemistry in the Netherlands, was active in the debate on general education on the one hand and scientific training on the other. For philosopher and jurist Cornelis Opzoomer (1821–1892) and zoologist Pieter Harting (1812–1885), it was self-evident that they would be involved in discussions on higher education. In the twentieth century, it was the brochure Hooge School en Maatschappij (Higher Education and Society) by Hugo Kruyt (1882–1959), a professor of physical chemistry, that resonated for a long time in Dutch academic circles. Bert van der Zwaan is for the time being the last one in this remarkable series.
