Episode Synopsis "Professor Stefan Collini - The Very Idea of the University"

Professor Stefan Collini (English, University of Cambridge) will give the first in a series of six lectures on The Idea of the University. Abstract A lot of different, and incompatible, roles are assigned to universities, as they always have been, but one way to begin to think about their distinctiveness is to see them as institutions which are primarily devoted to extending and deepening human understanding. This is a pretty outrageous idea: no other institutions have this as their primary purpose. But what is the relation between such abstract generalities and the great variety of types of university that actually exist and the circumstances in which they, now, in 2011, find themselves? This lecture offers a few brief reflections on the history and current state of the institution we call the university, and then goes on to propose a vocabulary and a perspective which enable us to discuss the role of such institutions in more fruitful terms than the clichés about ‘contributing to economic growth’ which currently dominate public debate on the topic.

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More episodes of the podcast Idea of the University

• Professor Martin Rees: Universities in a Networked World
• Professor Onora O'Neill: University and Diversity
• Professor Simon Szreter: The Idea of a University in a Democracy: Rivalry, Diversity and Equality of Opportunity
• Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: Putting Research Back at the Heart of the System
• Professor Stefan Collini - The Very Idea of the University