The creative university: Creative social development and academic entrepreneurship

Abstract

The idea that the university needs re-imagining has gained considerable currency since the 21th century. Just why this should be needs some analysis and an examination of the functions and role(s) of universities. Some universities, especially in USA, have recently conducted exercises to achieve this in specific ways that deal with local issues (e.g. Cornell, Harvard, Minnesota, New York, Brown¹). It seems that much of the re-imagining discourse focuses on institutional financial issues, and this tends to play out as part of the crisis in universities literature, which may well be related to the crisis in schools and reform movements there as promoted by neoliberal policy agendas. Crisis discourses frequently use economic consultant advisory reports from large multinational companies (e.g. Ernst & Young and Pearson as described later in this chapter) to provide some degree of analysis. More often than not solutions offered tend to promote forms of university that such as the entrepreneurial university that emphasize research and forms of academic entrepreneurship beyond the traditional forms related to publishing. More recently teaching has become the focus in re-imagining as many universities not only become more global in their focus, but as they start to address modalities of pedagogy as presented by recent IT based systems in MOOCs.