Modern entrepreneurial university: ontic grounds and political risks

Abstract

Discussions around the entrepreneurial "university of excellence" that replaced the "university of modernity" usually touch on one essential aspect: the need to "preserve" in a commercial firm, such as a modern university, those "remnants" of liberal education that are considered socially valuable ("public good"), politically significant (education of a citizen), necessary in theoretical (the specific form of knowledge and the peculiarities of teaching it) and methodological (the importance of philosophy as a methodology of sciences, in addition, the only one providing integration as interdisciplinarity) attitude. The article analyzes the arguments put forward by Lyotard in favor of the statement that a modern university in a "postmodern situation" is no longer capable of being a "protected place" (Collini) for knowledge: the legitimization of knowledge now has different sources and procedures than knowledge in a classical modern university. The main methods of politicization are studied (U. Bek) knowledge and university, undertaken in order to provide humanitarian knowledge and education a place in an entrepreneurial university. It is concluded that criticism of the current state of humanitarian knowledge and education does not matter either for university policy or for the public discourse of the university in market democracies.