Thinking about higher education

Abstract

The very idea of 'thinking about higher education' implies two things. Firstly, that it is worthwhile to think seriously and hard about higher education and secondly that higher education opens itself to complexities and options. We do not often, after all, think seriously and hard about toothpaste or cabbages; typically, they do not warrant hard and serious thinking; and nor do they much open themselves to manifold complexities and options. Higher education, on the other hand, seems to possess features of complexity, worthwhileness, elusivity and options. But what then is it to think seriously about higher education? To what end? And what form should such thinking take? What forms, indeed, has thinking about higher education taken? How, for instance, might the thinking embedded in the chapters in this book be characterised? Just what are the options? And why might thinking now about higher education be especially timely?.