After-postmodern University

University is an institution whose origin was in Middle Ages. Its configuration and purposes changed from time to time and in the beginning of the 19^th century it followed a “modern” model associated to the establishment of the state-nation, with some characteristics of the emergent science. That modern model became different in postmodern era.

In the book “University in Ruins” (posthumous publication – 1996), Bill Readings argued that the University with strong cultural tendencies became controlled by consumerism and international bureaucracy, where the administrators were more important than the professors; everything under the so called “globalization”. The aims were excellency, quality, efficiency, and other similar impressive words all conditioned by that consumerism and bureaucracy. So, university lost its cultural finality.

We can add to it the weakening of subjectivity. Guattari wrote that if one cannot take care of its own subjectivity, other will do it instead and inner freedom of each one can be lost.

In after-postmodern times it is all mixed: modern and after-postmodern conditions together with the end of the efficiency in the productive sense of the end of the 20^th century. After all, young people are questioning what kind of job they can take after years of study, or maybe they do not feel anymore that the university can bring meaning and understanding of life in full sense.

At the same time, the university expanded in the virtual space and achieves much more people in the world, although subjectivity is something more difficult to cultivate far from some kind of mentor…

The university in after-postmodern times is an opened question looking for after-postmodern paradigms.