Responsibilities of contemporary universities
Responsibilities of contemporary universities

Summary/Abstract: The ‘idea of the university’ and its ‘mission’ has been the subject of numerous publications since the end of the First World War. The majority of them are fi lled with concern. This concern is strongest among people from the academic community itself. Their anxiety bespeaks a disorientation about the long-term tasks of the university. This disorientation appeared with the emergence of the long-term tendency towards massifi cation of higher education. As a result of massifi cation, universities opened up to new social groups. Regardless of the variety of historically established types of academic institutions and the not insignifi cant differences between the major national scientifi c traditions (Gocheva 2005: 34–36), the prevalent view throughout the nineteenth century was that the university was, firstly, an institution producing, preserving and advancing scientifi c knowledge, and secondly, that educating national elites was the other, just as important, task of the university.

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