INTRODUCTION: IDEAS OF A UNIVERSITY

The subject of this chapter is the history of the ‘idea of a university’, or rather, it is the history of the idea that a university derives its identity from an idea. The subject is puzzling. Why does a university require an ‘idea’? Quite simply, it does not. The historical answer, however, is more interesting. Whether or not a university needs an ‘idea’, it has been assigned one, more than one, in fact. For two centuries a particular kind of debate has gone on, revived in every generation, concerning the role and purpose of a university and the education it provides. The debate has been inconclusive. Yet what is significant about the history of the idea of a university is the search for one, the striving after an ideal that must satisfy two conditions: it must be pure, like a platonic ideal, and it must be lasting, superior to all apparent transformations.

By ‘idea’, then, is meant an inherent purpose, embedded, as it were, into the university and possibly its history – but this is not always clear from debate. An ‘idea’ is also a genetic code that dictates the subsequent development of a university; but like all such inheritances, the signals are not always recognised.

Metaphors such as these come readily to mind, for the history of the idea of the idea of a university lacks precision.