What and Who Is the University for?

There is no simple agreement about the purpose of the university and the benefits it brings to society. Lack of democratic debate about such purposes, and the values that inform them, can mean that taken-for-granted assumptions and ideologies, such as the overriding importance of business and economic factors, remain unchallenged and so existing arrangements are reinforced. This chapter considers different ideas of the purposes of the university from the perspective of policy and political discourses. In each case, the idea is examined to understand whose interests it might represent, how these interests position the student, and what they tell us about the underpinning assumptions of knowledge and justice. It then uses work on recognition and difference by Iris Marion Young (2011) and Axel Honneth (1996) to develop a model of the university as a public sphere, which relates the recognition of difference in students and diverse perspectives on knowledge to epistemic justice.