THE ROLE OF THE UNIVERSITY IN THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY: ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACADEMIC RESEARCH IN THE AGE OF CORPORATE SCIENCE
THE ROLE OF THE UNIVERSITY IN THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY: ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACADEMIC RESEARCH IN THE AGE OF CORPORATE SCIENCE

Summary/Abstract: Knowledge society lies on the ruins of national culture that thought people to function in a single universal form of science. This type of society is tightly related to a post-national multicultural world that nourishes the erosion of classical (Kantian and Humboldian) cultural and scientific foundations of the university. We are now witnessing it’s transformation into a “multiversity” dominated by the competitive international academic market for students and scholars and “commodified” knowledge. The fiscal crisis of publicly financed universities forced them to constantly pursue other forms of income, the industry being the most obvious solution. In the place of universities of reason and culture the drastic decrease of public funding generated the commercialization of the universities. This is because there is an “asymmetric convergence”: while universities are adopting corporate values and principles the industry itself is not influenced by the academic values and norms. The pursuit of knowledge for mere intellectual curiosity and also the conception of the knowledge as a public good have been abandoned in favor of applied research serving corporate interests. The resulting academic capitalism is far from being the best solution to budget cuts and this study is trying to highlight some of advantages but also the most important shortcomings of this present trend in our universities.

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