From the Producers’ Cooperative to the Court Fool – The Social Roles of the University in the 21st Century

Abstract

Although there is a broad consensus that universities play an important role in society, opinions are already divided  on exactly what this role is. The expectations are very  diverse and contradictory. In this study, I seek the answer  to the question of how the social roles of the university  could be systematised and whether this provides clues to  the challenges the university of the 21st century faces (loss  of knowledge monopoly, weakening of nation states,  relativisation of knowledge). The proposed framework  describes the social roles of the university according to two  dimensions: on the one hand, on the basis of the nature of  production (product/process), and on the other hand, on  the basis of the relation to the social, economic and political  system (consensus/dissensus). Based on this, I  present four social role models: the producers’ cooperative,  the catalyst, the light tower and the distorting mirror. At the end of the study, I examine the integrability  of views.