Inspiration

Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our being as humans and the catastrophe toward which the world is headed – whether it be ecological, social, demographic or a general breakdown of civilization – will be unavoidable.
Havel, address to the United States Congress, Washington, February 1990


What is needed now is a kind of university that has never existed before.... I propose that we can and should remake the university so that it becomes an intentional force for good in the world. Such a project runs counter to the kind of academic analysis that is modelled in the university today, for it is a project informed by care and passion and developed from within a distinct philosophical commitment and political interpretation.
Marcus P. Ford

We believe the next transformation will give rise to the integrative university or transversity representing the next stage in evolution from the university and multiversity. The transversity is a new institution that will be multi–dimensionally connected not only within and across disciplines, but across cultural boundaries and across barriers to the broader society that separate it from primary education, industry, business, government and other institutions. These integrative universities will become living institutions in which organizational structure and patterns of behavior provide permeable boundaries to the outside community with fluid internal boundaries that allow people and resources to coalesce around prominent issues, opportunities, and challenges. These changes will enhance the exchange of research expertise and practical knowledge between universities and society. D. K. Scott

In the coming century, there will be an urgent need for scholars who go beyond the  isolated facts; who make connections across the disciplines; and who begin to discover a more coherent view of knowledge and a more integrated, more authentic view of life  the academy must become a more vigorous partner in the search for answers to our most pressing social, civic, economic, and moral problems and must reaffirm its historic commitment to what I … call … the scholarship of engagement. 

Ernest Boyer

This revolution —intellectual, institutional and cultural— if it ever comes about, would be comparable in its long-term impact to that of the Renaissance, the scientific revolution, or the Enlightenment. The outcome would be traditions and institutions of learning rationally designed to help us acquire wisdom. There are a few scattered signs that this intellectual revolution, from knowledge to wisdom, is already under way. It will need, however, much wider cooperative support—from scientists, scholars, students, research councils, university administrators, vice chancellors, teachers, the media and the general public— if it is to become anything more than what it is at present, a fragmentary and often impotent  movement of protest and opposition, often at odds with itself, exercising little influence on the main body of academic work. I can hardly imagine any more important work for anyone associated with academia than, in teaching, learning and research, to help comparable in its long-term impact to that of the Renaissance, the scientific revolution, or the Enlightenment. 

Maxwell, N. (2007).
From knowledge to wisdom : the need for an academic revolution. London Review of Education, 5, 97-115.



For more inspiration and citations :

Toward Integral Higher Education Study Programs in

the European Higher Education Area:

A Programmatic and Strategic View
Markus Molz