Realizing the University

Professor Barnett argues that if we are to gain a distinctive role for the university in the modern age we need a new vocabulary and a new sense of purpose: what is called for is a reconstruction of the university if it is to be adequate to the challenges of the modern age.

There are four terms around which we should rebuild the university: unpredictability, uncertainty, contestability and challengeability.

These concepts constitute a constellation of fragility: they mark out a fragile world to which the university as a source of critical thought has contributed.

The university is faced not just with complexity but with supercomplexity, in which our very frames of understanding, action, valuing and self-identity are all continually challenged.

In such a world, the university has explicitly to take on a dual role: firstly, of compounding supercomplexity, especially through its research role; and secondly - principally through its teaching role - of enabling us to live effectively with all the discomforts of supercomplexity.

Internally, too, the university has to become a new kind of organization, adept at fulfilling this dual role.

The university has to live by the uncertainty principle: it has to generate uncertainty, to help us live uncertainty, and even to revel in our uncertainty.

In an age where everything is uncertain, there is no other task.