The concept of a university
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The concept of a university
Tranaction Publisher, c2005
- :pbk
Available at 3 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
“Originally published in 1973 by Weidenfeld and Nicolson"-T.p.verso
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Taking on the challenge of the postmodernists of politics, Kenneth Minogue argues forcefully and persuasively that the current dominant philosophies of education rest upon a mistake. The fashionable belief that the university is society's handmaiden is confronted by a view of the university as an institution with an independent vitality and function. Minogue at one and the same time reminds us of the sources of admiration for university life in the medieval world, and how it rested squarely on its essential autonomy from the very social pressures that have come to define the modern university.
The Concept of a University traces many confusions imposed by political ideology to a failure to distinguish academic inquiry from other kinds of intellectual activity, such as journalism, religious proselytizing, and high quality propaganda. Minogue holds that where the university lacks a clear sense of the difference between the academic and the pragmatic, its vitality is sapped by conflicting purposes.
Much of the present debate about the crisis in universities rests upon a fundamental error of trying to fit them into some scheme of social functions. Minogue's analysis breaks through much muddled thinking on this subject, presenting instead a coherent, relevant, and stimulating approach to higher education.
In a new introduction, Minogue tells us "we have become frightfully tolerant. Anyone can become anything, and we all belong to the one practical world of churning problems and solutions. There is no doubt that a new world is being born. It seems to be a world that will have little place for the disinterested pursuit of truth. A great deal of old fashioned scholarship survives--partly by silence, cunning and exile' --in the universities' of the present day, but little relationship remains between what we used to call universities' and the things called by that name today."
Kenneth Minogue is professor emeritus of political science at the London School of Economics. He was born in New Zealand, educated in Australia, and has made his life and academic career in the United Kingdom. He is the author of The Liberal Mind, Nationalism, and most recently, Democracy and the Moral Life. He is a director of the Centre for Policy Studies and also senior research fellow of the Bruges Group, where he remains a member of its academic advisory council.
Table of Contents
- Introduction Of Heels and Hammers
- One: The Problem of Identification
- 1: The Beginning of Universities
- 2: Religion and Academic Freedom
- 3: Lectures, Dons and Undergraduates : Institutional Resilience
- 4: The Academic and the Practical Worlds
- Two: Imitations of the Academic
- 5: The Battle of Beliefs
- 6: Journalism: Nutshell Truths for the Breakfast Table
- 7: The Ideological Imitation: The Dangers of a Little Learning
- 8: Is the Academic World Itself Ideological?
- Three: The Siege of Academe
- 9: The Doctrine of Social Adaptation
- 10: The Doctrine of Social Transformation
- 11: The Secret University
by "Nielsen BookData"