Sohail Inayatullah - The University in Transformation: Global Perspectives on the Futures of the University

Cover

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THE UNIVERSITY IN
TRANSFORMATION

Global Perspectives on the Futures
of the University

EDITED BY
Sohail Inayatullah and
Jennifer Gidley

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The university in transformation : global perspectives on the futures
of the university / edited by Sohail Inayatullah and Jennifer
Gidley.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0897897188 (alk. paper)
1. Universities and collegesForecasting. 2. Education, Higher
Aims and objectives. 3. Educational change. I. Inayatullah,
Sohail, 1958 . II. Gidley, Jennifer.
LB2324.U56 2000
378.01dc21 9916061

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.

Copyright 2000 by Sohail Inayatullah and Jennifer Gidley

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without
the express written consent of the publisher.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 9916061
ISBN: 0897897188

First published in 2000

Bergin & Garvey, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.greenwood.com

Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the
Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.481984).

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Sohail Inayatullah and Jennifer Gidley

While it often appears to academics that the university is stable, looking back in history and forward to the future, the university is far more malleable. Just as in Western history where there were a range of possibilitiesthe Bologna student model versus the Paris university of masters model, or in recent colonial Indian history between indigenous traditions and modernist British modelsthe university stands at the gateway of a range of futures. Creating these futures are a number of trends and emergent issues, among others, globalism, multiculturalism (including indigenization), virtualization, and politicization. These promise to dramatically change the face of the university, in some ways taking it back to more ancient indigenous models, in other ways transforming it in ways that will make the future university all but unrecognizable to those of us in the 20th century.

This book is divided into four sections: Futures of Higher Education in the West (which, given the dominating positions of Western universities has direct and structural implications for the rest of the world); Futures of the University in the nonwest (these are not as representative as they ideally could be, still, modernist, scholar/activist, dissenting, and multicultural approaches are presented); Alternative Universities (these contest the foundations of the modern university and seek to offer disjunctive alternatives); and, Transformations of the University (our concluding chapters, where we summarize what has gone before and offer alternative futures ahead).