ABSTRACT
The university has an eight-hundred-year history, and many of the problems with which we are grappling today crept in during that long period. Some of these problems have become so self-evident that we no longer even know where they came from. Sometimes they concern major questions: why should scholarship be independent? Is it actually independent? But even very basic differences in understanding can confuse the discussion: does the university exist, or is the same word used on different continents to express totally different ideas? Although we do not make any distinction in our use of language, and speak of ‘the university’ as though that is all there is to it, the word conceals a wide range of possible models. The university does not exist: higher education has a long history, one that is different on every continent and that has led to different systems on each continent, each of which now faces its own problems.
