This volume wholeheartedly engages with the current climate in higher education and provides not only a thorough analysis of the foundational elements constituting higher education but also a critical discussion of possible connections to societal and cultural domains and policy debates.
Today, higher education institutions and programs are beset with multiple, and often conflicting, pressures and demands. Higher education is regarded by societies in general, and at the political level in particular, as a pathway to securing continued economic growth and ensuring cultural growth in surrounding societal contexts. Future academics are expected to become experts within their disciplines and at the same time to acquire and develop generic competences and transferable skills directly translatable into job market and professional contexts. These conflicting and fragmented policy approaches to higher education leaves academic leaders, teacher, researchers, and students with an incoherent curriculum and a confused and eroded academic identity and societal outlook.
Much literature within higher education research that engages with similar topics are dominated by a backwards-looking and heavy critique of current political and educational conditions for the university and higher education. This volume suggests a new tack that is defined by openness and optimism towards possibilities for a transformative higher education curriculum – that at the same time stays firmly rooted within the foundational academic soil. By drawing on, and contributing to, the emerging research field the philosophy and theory of higher education, the book combines critique with a constructive and future-oriented approach and outlook on higher education. Further, it combines and links philosophical discussions on the idea of the future university with societal responsibility and a curricular and formational awareness.
Author Biography:
Søren S.E. Bengtsen is Associate Professor in higher education at the Department of Educational Philosophy and General Education, Danish School of Education (DPU), Aarhus University, Denmark. Also, at Aarhus University, he is the Co-Director of the research centre ‘Centre for Higher Education Futures’ (CHEF). Bengtsen is a founding member and Chair of the international academic association ‘Philosophy and Theory of Higher Education Society’ (PaTHES). His main research areas include the philosophy of higher education, educational philosophy, higher education policy and practice, and doctoral education and supervision. Bengtsen’s recent books include The Hidden Curriculum in Doctoral Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, co-authored with Dely L. Elliot, Kay Guccione, and Sofie Kobayashi), Knowledge and the University. Re-claiming Life (Routledge, 2019, co-authored with Ronald Barnett), The Thinking University. A Philosophical Examination of Thought and Higher Education (Springer, 2019, co-edited with Ronald Barnett), and Doctoral Supervision. Organization and Dialogue (Aarhus University Press, 2016).
Sarah Robinson is an Associate Professor in the Center for Educational Development at Aarhus University, Denmark. She is an Educational Anthropologist interested in the role of higher education and the purpose and future of the university. Her research spans curriculum reform, policy in practice, ethnographic methods, teacher agency and enterprise education. She has a strong international profile and has published in The Thinking University; A Philosophical Examination of Thought and Higher Education Springer (Bengtsen, S. & Barnett, R.; 2018) and The Idea of the University: Volume 2 – Contemporary Perspectives. Peter Lang (Peters, M. A., & Barnett, R. 2018), as well as being a co-author on Teacher Agency; An ecological approach Bloomsbury (Priestley, Biesta & Robinson; 2015). Sarah is on the board of the Philosophy and Theory of Higher Education Society (PaTHES) and arranges conferences, webinars, and online discussions that bring together a range of international scholars interested in Higher Education and its reforms. Currently she is working to design ‘a pedagogy for change’ by combining an exploration of academic identity with learning from enterprise education.
Wesley Shumar is a professor in the Department of Communication at Drexel University. His research focuses on higher education, mathematics education, and entrepreneurship education. His recent work in higher education focuses on the spatial transformation of American universities within the consumer spaces of cities and towns. From 1997 to 2018 he worked as an ethnographer at the Math Forum, a virtual math education community and resource center. He continues to do research into the use of online spaces to support mathematics education. He is author of College for Sale: A Critique of the Commodification of Higher Education, Falmer Press, 1997, and Inside Mathforum.org: Analysis of an Internet-based Education Community, Cambridge University Press, 2017. He co-edited, with Joyce Canaan, Structure and Agency in the Neoliberal University, Routledge/Falmer, 2008. He also co-edited, with K.Ann Renninger, Building Virtual Communities: Learning and Change in Cyberspace, Cambridge, 2002.
