“… The rate of change in universities today is almost dizzying. So much so, she states, that people hardly realise what is happening. Universities throughout their whole history have been in flux, subjected to conflicting agendas and demands, not only by internal factors, but most characteristically by forces within the wider society. This has become even more the case in our own time. For much of their history universities were bastions of elite education. The classes born to higher knowledge could do much as they pleased. There was little scrutiny or accountability. Academics had freedom to muse endlessly over the meaning of some obscure verse of romantic poetry or yet another piece of Berkeley paraphernalia, often at public expense. This idea of the university came under massive challenge in the 1960s and 1970s …” (more)
[Watchdog on Higher Education in Ireland, 27 April]