The Idea of the University: Contemporary Perspectives, Volume 2 is a companion to The Idea of the University: A Reader, Volume 1, which presents readings from the major texts on the idea of the university over the last two hundred years. This volume consists of essays from the leading contemporary scholars of the university across the world. The essays examine ideas of the university that lie tacitly in its national and global framing, and offer creative ideas in taking the university forward, both on a regional and on a world-wide basis. Specific lines of inquiry include those of citizenship, cosmopolitanism, wisdom, ecology and freedom.
The thirty chapters in this volume have been invitingly grouped to offer intriguing ways into the material, which in turn opens the way to very large conceptual and theoretical issues. In an era of marketization, can universities attend to any global responsibilities? Might regionalism¿in Europe, in South America, in Africäprompt new ideas of the university? What understandings of knowledge are feasible in a digital age? Amid local, national, regional and worldly callings, how might citizenship be construed?
In a final section, a space opens for more speculative inquiries as to the conceptual possibilities ahead: Just what ideas of the university might feasibly be entertained for the twenty-first century? Might it be envisaged that the university has both responsibilities and possibilities in playing a part in bringing about a better world? Those concluding chapters in The Idea of the University: Contemporary Perspectives respond in original ways and all in an optimistic fashion.

Ronald Barnett is Emeritus Professor of Higher Education, University College London Institute of Education. He has spent a lifetime in establishing the philosophy of higher education as a field, advancing original concepts and practical principles. His latest book is The Ecological University: A Feasible Utopia (2018).
Michael A. Peters is Professor in the Wilf Malcolm Institute for Educational Research at Waikato University, NZ, and Emeritus Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. He is also Distinguished Visiting Professor in the School of Sociology, BNU, China. He is Executive Editor of Educational Philosophy and Theory and founding editor of several other journals. His latest books are Wittgenstein and Education: Pedagogical Investigations (2017), with Jeff Stickney, and The Digital University: Manifesto and Dialogue (2017), with Petar Jandric.

Acknowledgements - Ronald Barnett/Michael A. Peters: Introduction: Overcoming Pessimism, Forging Possibilities - Part One: Addressing Neoliberalism - Michael A. Peters: Introduction - Jana Bacevic: Chapter One: University under Attack? Politics, Contestation and Agency beyond the 'Neoliberal University' - Henry A. Giroux: Chapter Two: Defending Higher Education in the Age of Barbarism - Sheila Slaughter/Brendan Cantwell: Chapter Three: Academic Capitalism: Reflections on Higher Education in the United States and European Union - Wesley Shumar and Sarah Robinson: Chapter Four: Rethinking the Entrepreneurial University for the 21st Century - Part Two: The Global University - Ronald Barnett: Introduction - Jane Knight: Chapter Five: The International University: Models and Muddles - Simon Marginson: Chapter Six: The Anglo-American University: Support Structure for the 1 per cent - Francine Rochford: Chapter Seven: Freedom and Control in the Constrained Modern University - Nicolas Standaert: Chapter Eight: Displaced towards a Networked University - Part Three: European Ideas - Michael A. Peters: Introduction - Marek Kwiek: Chapter Nine: The University and the State in Europe: The Uncertain Future of the Traditional Social Contract - Susan L. Robertson/Joanna Tidy/Janja Komljenovic: Chapter Ten: Forum Shifting and Shape Making in Higher Education Services - Peter Scott: Chapter Eleven: The European University: Heartland to Periphery and Even Back Again? - Jussi Välimaa: Chapter Twelve: The Nordic Idea of University - Thorsten Nybom: Chapter Thirteen: European Universities: Another Somewhat Lamenting-Yet Basically Hopeful-Account - Part Four: Regional Perspectives - Ronald Barnett: Introduction - N'Dri Thérèse Assié-Lumumba: Chapter Fourteen: The Idea of the University in the Evolving Higher Education Landscape in Africa - Carolina Guzmán-Valenzuela/Andrés Bernasconi: Chapter Fifteen: The Latin-American University: Past, Present and Future - Yusef Waghid/Nuraan Davids: Chapter Sixteen: Towards an African University in Becoming: Positive Risk, Hope and Imagination - Part Five: Knowledge and Research - Ronald Barnett: Introduction - Gerard Delanty: Chapter Seventeen: Citizenship and the University: The Consequences of Globalization - Alberto Amaral: Chapter Eighteen: Universities and the Knowledge Society Revisited - Robert Hassan: Chapter Nineteen: Parting Ways: Analogue People in a Digital University - Part Six: Teaching and Students - Ronald Barnett: Introduction - Martha C. Nussbaum: Chapter Twenty: Citizens of the World - Paul Gibbs: Chapter Twenty-One: Trust in the University - Jan Masschelein/Maarten Simons: Chapter Twenty-Two: The University as Public Pedagogic Form - Jon Nixon: Chapter Twenty-Three: Universities as Civic Spaces: In the Footsteps of Arendt and Jaspers - Part Seven: Possibilities - Michael A. Peters: Introduction - Gary Rolfe: Chapter Twenty-Four: The Idea(l) of a Paraversity - Peter Murphy: Chapter Twenty-Five: The Platform University: The Destruction and Resurrection of Universities in the Auto-Industrial Age - Tom Bourner: Chapter Twenty-Six: The Fully-Functioning University - Rikke Toft Nørgard/Søren Smedegaard Ernst Bengsten: Chapter Twenty-Seven: Academic Citizenship beyond the Campus: A Call for the Placeful University - Nicholas Maxwell: Chapter Twenty-Eight: Do We Need an Academic Revolution to Create a Wiser World? - Michael A. Peters: Chapter Twenty-Nine: Renewing the Idea of the University: The Cosmopolitan and Postcolonial Projects - Ronald Barnett: Chapter Thirty: The Ecological University-A University Whose Time Has Come- Contributor Biographies - Subject Index - Name Index.