Universities and the Knowledge Society: An Introduction

This chapter introduces the foundational volume in Springer’s Changing Academy Series, previewing the results of the Academic Profession in the Knowledge-based Society [APIKS] global survey of 22 higher education systems. It begins by introducing the twin concepts of the knowledge society and the knowledge economy and provides a quick overview of the emerging literature, chronicling the transformation of the global economy and the associated pressures to reform and redesign higher education systems in its wake. We trace much that is common among those reforms globally, including declining public subsidies to the university, the introduction of new stakeholders into the academic enterprise, the decline in faculty control, the rise of academic management, new work pressures to be entrepreneurial, and focus on income-generating research activity. This is followed by eighteen chapters that provide case studies of the responses of 18 higher education systems to the new regime. The cases span five continents and various stages of economic development and wealth. The chapter concludes with a few emerging generalizations.