This paper examines the relation between epistemology and higher education. We shall start by briefly examining three classical texts on the understanding of knowledge at universities, as well as noting some others, and go on to sketch a version of our own. Our argument is as follows: the world is such that the relationship between the university…

In collaborative ventures in higher education are to be seen both potentials and risks. But how, then, is collaboration to be understood? Is it simply a matter of a point of view, with individuals focusing more on the potentials or more on the risks, depending on their dispositions? The risks and potentials of collaboration, it might be suggested,…

In countries such as Chile in which a neoliberal economic approach is predominant, higher education systems are characterized by productivity, competition for resources and income generation, all of which have impact on academics' experiences of time. Through a qualitative approach in which 20 interviews and two focus groups were conducted, this…

What is it to be a university? In what does the being of the university reside in the 21st century? To draw on a Heideggerian expression, what is its "being possible"? To address such questions seriously, we are drawn to imagine the university as it might unfold and so sketch out feasible utopias for it. But such a project of the…

What is it to learn in the modern world? We can identify four "learning epochs" through which our understanding of learning has passed: a metaphysical view; an empirical view; an experiential view; and, currently, a "learning-amid-contestation" view. In this last and current view, learning has its place in a world in which, the more one learns,…

What is it to learn for an unknown future? It might be said that the future has always been unknown but this question surely takes on a new pedagogical challenge in the contemporary age. Generic skills may seem to offer the basis of just such a learning for an unknown future. Generic skills, by definition, are those that surely hold across…

If a curriculum in higher education is understood to be an educational vehicle to promote a student's development, and if a curriculum in higher education is also understood to be built in large part around a project of knowledge, then the issue arises as to the links between knowledge and student being and becoming. A distinction is made here…

Academic hospitality is a feature of academic life. It takes many forms. It takes material form in the hosting of academics giving papers. It takes epistemological form in the welcome of new ideas. It takes linguistic form in the translation of academic work into other languages, and it takes touristic form through the welcome and generosity with…

This book is an exploration of the changing definitions of knowledge competence held to be valuable in universities. The central argument is that one ideology, that of academic competence, is being displaced with another ideology, that of operational competence. The book begins by considering the relationships among higher education, knowledge,…

Asserts that, in modern society, knowledge, higher education, and society act upon each other as separate forces. Examines and compares critical theory and postmodernism and their impact on higher education. Concludes that the differences between these two frameworks as interpretations of higher education can be reconciled. (CFR)

The Great Khan's atlas contains also the maps of the promised lands visited in thought but not yet discovered or founded: New Atlantis, Utopia, the City of the Sun, Oceana, Tamoe, New Harmony, New Lanark, Icaria. Kublai asked Marco: "You, who go about exploring and who see signs, can you tell me towards which of these futures the favouring winds…

Current concepts of critical thinking need to be reconstrued into the much broader concept of "critical being" and applied to higher education. Under this construct, critical persons (students) become more than just critical thinkers; they engage critically with the world and with themselves; they not only reflect critically on…