Imagining the University [Paperback]

Around the world, what it is to be a university is a matter of much debate. The range of ideas of the university in public circulation is, however, exceedingly narrow and is dominated by the idea of the entrepreneurial university. As a consequence, the debate is hopelessly impoverished. Lurking in the literature, there is a broad and even imaginative array of ideas of the university, but those ideas are seldom heard. We need, consequently, not just more ideas of the university but betterideas.

Imagining the Universityforensically examines this situation, critically interrogating many of the current ideas of the university. Imagining the Universityargues for imaginative ideas that are critical, sensitive to the deep structures underlying universities and are yet optimistic, in short feasible utopiasof the university. The case is pressed for one such idea, that of the ecological university. The book concludes by offering a vision of the imagining university, a university that has the capacity continually to re-imagine itself.

Introduction  Part I: Imagining the university  1. Losing, and regaining, the imagination  2. Perchance to dream  3. Valuing the imagination  Part II: Structuring the imagination  4. Axes of the imagination  5. Sightings of the imagination  Part III: Forms of the imagination  6. The ideological imagination  7. The dystopian imagination  8. The persuasive imagination  9. The utopian imagination  Part IV: Being imaginative  10. Criteria of adequacy  11. Imagining the ecological university  12. The imaginative university  Coda: A forgetting of air?

Ronald Barnett, one of the worlds leading defenders of the universityl“