What are the purposes that higher education is meant to fulfill in any nation? What do we expect from it, and for it? We may imagine that the answers are obvious to everyone — but they are not, even among some specialists.
Higher education has multiple benefits, all of which converge on one truth: it is the locomotive of development in any society. It is not a reactive form of education that simply responds to job-market conditions, unemployment rates, or the state of a particular profession at a specific moment in time. Rather, it is the kind of education that outlines the features of the future, and builds people capable of creating development — not merely filling gaps in current needs. It builds the human who creates opportunities and realizes them, not just the one who benefits from them.
Here arises a crucial question:
Are universities merely providers of an educational service, or are they builders of modernity and makers of civilization?
The next, more dangerous question is: How do universities die — and how can we prevent their slow death?
Every university needs to “reproduce,” “spread,” and “evolve,” while also understanding the reasons behind change as well as the reasons behind maintaining traditions. To do this, the university must question what it has inherited and test the different patterns of thought present in society. The university must also take the risk of presenting what is unexpected to societies that prefer keeping things as they are — societies that even resist renewal and change in order to preserve the familiar status quo, regardless of its flaws.
Universities embody processes of change. Their role in society is to innovate and absorb the new, to transmit and produce knowledge, and to harmonize between knowledge and how it is acquired and used in the present, while preparing for the demands of the future.
Based on this, the role of academic institutions becomes clearer in research, teaching, and supporting all societal activities through their ability to challenge (the critical dimension) and affirm (the commitment to social needs).
The Functions of the University
The Magna Charta Observatory uses a model to understand how reform balances coherence and adaptation in higher education. It assumes that everywhere, universities aim to fulfill four goals: welfare, order, meaning, and truth. These goals together form the reason universities exist.
1. Welfare:
The university promotes the welfare of society either by preparing its students to integrate constructively into the job market — through acquiring knowledge and skills that enable progress and development — or by enhancing its capacity for research and innovation to strengthen the economic power of the nation.
2. Social Order:
The university helps society become a “coherent community,” where groups share common references, and where knowledge, science, and technical skills serve the collective good. This requires shaping the skills and knowledge necessary for civic integration, teaching them, and adapting them to current societal needs.
Higher education also defines the “qualifications” of individuals. Its degrees become passports to respected positions with appropriate pay across the social hierarchy. Universities are the main source for structuring higher qualifications.
3. Meaning:
On the level of meaning, the university examines the foundational assumptions of life as understood by society. It studies old and new worldviews, revisits accepted intellectual references, and reorganizes knowledge according to new and diverse standards — intellectual, ethical, or aesthetic.
Enriching meaning requires comprehensive knowledge of diverse perspectives, questioning assumptions, and reorganizing our understanding of the world accordingly. This enables universities to point toward possible reforms in society — the foundation of any civilizational leap for nations.
4. Truth:
In the pursuit of truth, the university explores the unknown as part of the natural order to which humanity belongs. The goal is not merely to break down walls of ignorance, but to deeply question humanity’s understanding of the surrounding universe. Searching for truth is central to the university’s function.
Modernization: The Essential Task of Universities
Modernization is the primary mission assigned to universities in developing societies, just as it was assigned to universities in advanced economies. This goal encompasses all four university functions mentioned above.
To define modernity and understand the transformations that drive social change and scientific development, universities — as essential institutions of the nation and cornerstones of cultural advancement — must survey the environment in which they operate and understand the complexities of potential change.
(This requires academic freedom.)
Universities must also articulate their vision regarding their responsibilities in this transformation, and determine how best to use their assets.
(This requires institutional autonomy.)
Practically, this means identifying medium-term strategies that lead to institutional policies which can be tested, measured, and verified.
(This requires accountability.)
The Challenge of the Present and the Future
Considering what the Trump administration is doing in its clashes with the world’s top universities — imposing political views upon them — and what governments in developing countries do through intervention and control over universities, the contemporary university finds itself in a phase of radical transformation that threatens its symbolic existence.
Market logic, quantitative metrics, militarized administration, and governmental intrusion have reshaped the structure of the university and redefined the relationship between scholars and their work, the university and society, and research and its purpose.
This global crisis reflects similar fractures in universities across both the Global North and Global South, making the study of the future of the university not only an academic necessity — but a political one as well.
