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The Idea of the University: Contemporary Perspectives consists of essays from the leading contemporary scholars of the university across the world.

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The Idea of the University: Contemporary Perspectives, Volume 2 is a companion to The Idea of the University: A Reader, Volume 1 , which presents readings from the major texts on the idea of the university over the last two hundred years. This volume consists of essays from the leading contemporary scholars of the university across the world. The essays examine ideas of the university that lie tacitly in its national and global framing, and offer creative ideas in taking the university forward, both on a regional and on a world-wide basis. Specific lines of inquiry include those of citizenship, cosmopolitanism, wisdom, ecology and freedom.

The thirty chapters in this volume have been invitingly grouped to offer intriguing ways into the material, which in turn opens the way to very large conceptual and theoretical issues. In an era of marketization, can universities attend to any global responsibilities? Might regionalism-in Europe, in South America, in Africa-prompt new ideas of the university? What understandings of knowledge are feasible in a digital age? Amid local, national, regional and worldly callings, how might citizenship be construed?

In a final section, a space opens for more speculative inquiries as to the conceptual possibilities ahead: Just what ideas of the university might feasibly be entertained for the twenty-first century? Might it be envisaged that the university has both responsibilities and possibilities in playing a part in bringing about a better world? Those concluding chapters in The Idea of the University: Contemporary Perspectives respond in original ways and all in an optimistic fashion.

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This two-volume work will provide a wonderful resource for all who have an interest in the idea of the university. Through their careful selection of both historical and contemporary texts, and their own insightful commentaries, Michael Peters and Ronald Barnett take readers on a fascinating, thought-provoking intellectual journey. From the canonical musings of Kant, Humboldt and Newman to recent scholarship on neoliberalism, globalization and digital developments in higher education, The Idea of the University offers much for teachers and students, managers and administrators, and politicians and policy-makers to reflect on as they play their parts in creating the university of the future. - Peter Roberts, Professor of Education, University of Canterbury, New Zealand

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Ronald Barnett is Emeritus Professor of Higher Education, University College London Institute of Education. He has spent a lifetime in establishing the philosophy of higher education as a field, advancing original concepts and practical principles. His latest book is The Ecological University: A Feasible Utopia (2018). Michael A. Peters is Professor in the Wilf Malcolm Institute for Educational Research at Waikato University, NZ, and Emeritus Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. He is also Distinguished Visiting Professor in the School of Sociology, BNU, China. He is Executive Editor of Educational Philosophy and Theory and founding editor of several other journals. His latest books are Wittgenstein and Education: Pedagogical Investigations (2017), with Jeff Stickney, and The Digital University: Manifesto and Dialogue (2017), with Petar Jandric.

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