Part One

The role of the university in the 21st century

Old power works like a currency. It is held by few. Once gained, it is jealously guarded . . . New power operates differently, like a current. It is made by many. It is open, participatory, and peer driven. It uploads, and it distributes. Like water or electricity, it’s most forceful when it surges.

Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans (2018)

Throughout this book, I want to challenge conventional thinking about the question: what is the public purpose of a university in the 21st century. Being able to answer this question with clarity and precision is an essential first step in addressing the current, and largely deserved, negative reputation in some parts of the world that universities are elitist out-of-touch institutions that are exploiting students, their parents and broader society through worthless and expensive degrees and irrelevant esoteric research. I set the scene by introducing the concept of new power and why it is an idea of our time, relevant to universities today and in the near future. In doing so, I examine how the public purpose of the university has evolved, identifying four phases over a long history of a thousand years, and make the case that a new era is about to begin – that of the New Power University.