The Engaged University in Practice?

Abstract

This final chapter draws together some of the more general threads emerging in this book to reflect on novel ‘ideas’ of a university, and the lessons that this gives more general for theories of higher education management and public administration more generally. This chapter begins with the idea of ‘system shift’ as a necessary pre-condition for effective university–community engagement, given the tendency of so many features of higher education systems to discourage serious engagement. The emphasis on system shift in turn highlights the importance of understanding wider shifts in policy perspectives and paradigms, and this chapter argues that the grand challenges may well produce a more systemic shift in the nature of public policy, recreating capacities for coordinated action that have been lost in recent shifts towards individualised public services and processes. This chapter concludes by offering three possible areas where more research is necessary to establish what the impacts of these wider changes may be, and to argue that although the future university is likely to remain a complex institution, it is likely in any case to be more collectively focused than has been the case in recent decades.