The Modern University and its Transaction with Students

This chapter is about the marketisation of the modern university and its transaction with students. It identifies opportunities for responding to the challenges associated with marketisation. While appealing to the idea of knowledge for its own sake as a public good is an important part of preserving the idea of a university, more needs to be done if there is to be an adequate response. Responding to the challenges of marketisation requires active and constructive engagement in means as well as ends while resisting their excesses. While the idea of the university is typically constructed as an end worth advocating for, there is growing separation between this and the reality of the contemporary means of engaging with students in market terms, via the university-student transaction.