Part Two

The missions of a New Power University

A university is, first and foremost, a social undertaking to create a social good.

Amy Gutmann, president, University of Pennsylvania (2017)

Universities have lots of power – new and old – and how they choose to use it, or not use it, will have profound impacts. The new power of a university lies in empowering the students it educates, enhancing the lives of the beneficiaries of the research it undertakes and working together with the communities in which it resides.

This deliberately and consciously inverts the relationship away from the old power concept of the academy – a self-referential, entitled and fundamentally elitist notion that is no longer fit for purpose in the 21st century.

Making such a comment will upset many of my friends and colleagues but I will justify this when I examine the role of the new power academic. In the meantime, I review the three missions of the university – learning, research and social responsibility – and illustrate how a different public purpose for universities will emerge through the application of new power values and thinking to these missions.