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This study aims to identify and explore the nature of ideas of the university in the present to demonstrate how the ideas both enable and constrain the emergence of its possible futures.

An integrated literature review of work on the western university was undertaken to identify the defining elements of ideas discussed in the literature – purpose, social legitimacy and embedded future – for the university in each idea.

Four contested and co-existing ideas of the university in the present were identified, and the nature of their co-existence and their underpinning assumptions about the purpose and social legitimacy and the embedded future held by each idea are made explicit.

The paper focuses only on public, non-profit western universities as they exist in Australia, Europe, the UK, Canada and the USA in the present. Whether other forms of the university such as private non-profit and private for-profit “fit” into the four ideas and university types identified here was not explored and is a topic for future research.

The paper draws on an extensive literature to identify a new frame to understand the evolution of multiple ideas of the university, the impact of these ideas on the empirical organisational form of the university and how they shape assumptions about the university’s possible futures.

The UK government’s attempt to “prevent” terrorism and extremism in the university sector is rightly seen as an intolerant threat to academic freedom. However, this development has not come from a “right wing” authoritarian impulse, but rather, replicates many of the discussions already taking place in universities about the need to protect “vulnerable” students from offensive and dangerous ideas. Historically, the threat to academic freedom came from outside the university, from pressures exerted from governments, from religious institutions who oversaw a particular institution or from the demands of business. Alternatively it has been seen as something that is a particular problem in non-Western countries that do not have democracy. While some of these problems and pressures remain, there is a more dangerous threat to academic freedom that comes from within universities, a triumvirate of a relativistic academic culture, a new body of identity-based student activists and a therapeutically oriented university management, all three of which have helped to construct universities as safe spaces for the newly conceptualized “vulnerable student.” With reference to the idea of vulnerability, this chapter attempts to chart and explain these modern developments.

With respect to the guiding “ideas” of Humboldt and their consequences for the constitution of science, describes the transition to a modern research university with the emergence of theory‐based practice, science‐based technology and technology‐based industry. The pure research imperative is endangered or even substituted by a new technological imperative

The so-called ‘Third Mission’ of the university is under debate for the last 20–30 years (Laredo, 2007) and this mission has received a wide variety of interpretations. In this chapter we adhere to execution of activities that contribute to the economic and social development of its territory. This new idea of the university as an entrepreneurial one requires a reorientation of its strategy to cope with the challenges imposed by its new task towards society. In this sense, the Entrepreneurship Support Programmes (ESPs), as university services, are a central element in the fulfilment of the aims and objectives of any entrepreneurial university, as those that combine and integrate the traditional activities of education and research with the contribution to the economic and social development (Etzkowitz, 1998; Goddard, 1998). The ESP services consist, for example, of programmes that promote entrepreneurship in all the fields; they support the creation of new innovative companies with a scientific or technologic base; they support the development of university spin-off and training related to the creation and management of companies; and they promote university–company relationship and interaction between other factors (Arroyo-Vázquez & van der Sijde, 2008). The reorientation of the strategy of the university into an entrepreneurial one involves also a strategy with regard to the university's ‘entrepreneurial’ services, which have to adapt to the new demands and needs of the university's ‘new’ users, entrepreneurs and companies as well as university staff members.

Contemporary education is in danger of losing that idea, expressed in Humboldt (1810/2002), Schleiermacher (1808/1991), Newman (1852/1996), Habermas (1987) and MacIntyre (2009), of the university as an autonomous, communal, intellectual space for scholars. The present chapter addresses the correlation between historical ideas of the university and pedagogies of learning but resists the easy pessimistic assumption that learners are contemporarily being reduced to elements in the reproduction of symbolic capital. It instead proposes an optimistic opportunity for learners to respond to changing material pressures in a socially autonomous way through an innovative pedagogical technique. Practices that manifest interdisciplinary, enquiry-based learning and are no longer dependent on outmoded individualistic modes of subjectivity are required in order to sustain an appropriate understanding of the autonomy of places of higher learning, as opposed to the ideological understanding of the autonomy of the individual. The main claim made in these pages is that, in order to protect the virtues of higher learning, the role of the lecturer needs to develop from that of expert, bastion or guardian of knowledge to that of steward or facilitator and the role of student needs to become more independent and productive through guerrilla, group-assessed context-based courses.

The purpose of this paper is to identify different program models supporting the creation of spin‐offs at universities, analyzes the characteristics that differentiate them, and identifies the factors that determine their effectiveness.

The analysis was performed using data collected through a survey targeting the heads of spin‐off support programs at universities in the UK and Spain. The authors then applied factorial and cluster analysis techniques and a logistic regression analysis to the data to confirm the results.

The analysis identified three types of spin‐off support programs in these universities. Among these, the authors found one that appears to be the most effective model. The authors also found a certain “country effect” on the characteristics of the most effective model. Finally, the authors noted the importance the literature places on university R&D activity and the existence of a favorable environment for the performance of spin‐off programs.

This research is limited by the use of number of spin‐offs and survival rate as performance indicators for support programs. Future research should consider the effective contributions to economic growth and the extent to which such effects are related to university‐level policies.

The typology of the spin‐off support programs identified here provides insight for recommendations to improve less‐effective models.

This study contributes to the understanding of the role of university policy measures in spin‐off support program effectiveness, and of how the environment influences these policies.

Este estudio identifica diferentes modelos de programas de apoyo a la creación de spin‐offs en las universidades, analiza sus características diferenciadoras e identifica los factores que determinan su eficacia.

El análisis se ha realizado a partir de los datos recabados a través de una encuesta, dirigida a responsables de programas de apoyo a la creación de spin‐offs en universidades del Reino Unido y España. A continuación se ha aplicado un análisis cluster y un análisis de regresión logística para confirmar sus resultados.

El análisis ha identificado tres tipos de programas de apoyo a la creación de spin‐offs en estas universidades. Entre éstos se ha encontrado uno que parece ser el modelo más eficaz. También se ha encontrado un cierto “efecto país” en las características del modelo más eficaz. Finalmente se ha podido confirmar la importancia dada por la literatura a la actividad de I+D de la universidad y a la existencia de un entorno favorable para el éxito de estos programas.

Esta investigación está limitada por el uso del número de spin‐offs y la tasa de supervivencia como indicadores de rendimiento de estos programas de apoyo. La futura investigación debe considerar su contribución efectiva al crecimiento económico y el grado en el que estos efectos se relacionan con las políticas a nivel universitario.

La tipología de programas de apoyo a la creación de spin‐offs identificada permite realizar algunas recomendaciones para la mejora de los modelos menos eficaces.

Este studio contribuye a la comprensión del papel de las medidas de política universitaria en la eficacia de los programas de apoyo a la creación de spin‐offs y de la influencia del entorno sobre estas políticas.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

The study aims to examine the development of student venture creation in a co-curricular business model lab initiative with collaboration between students, researchers, technology transfer offices (TTO) and industry. It presents a fresh approach to the study of student venture creation by discussing a unique co-curricular case, its embeddedness in a network and drawing on the concept of tension.

A qualitative, case-based research design is applied containing data from interviews, observations and active participation.

The findings point to the inherent difficulties in managing and organizing student venture creation and networks surrounding the student venture creation in a co-curricular setting that can lead to several different types of tensions. Episodes where task-, role-, process-, affective- and value-related tensions arise are identified. Furthermore, the findings highlight that affective-related tension is often an outcome of other types of tensions.

Our theoretical implications point to the importance of the context of student venture creation, but not only regarding curricular and co-curricular initiatives; depending on the context, such as if student surrogate entrepreneurship is used, different types of support structure might also be needed to enable student venture creation.

Research on the entrepreneurial university has mainly focused on entrepreneurship education and ventures created by researchers. This study responds to recent calls for research on the venture creation of students. The limited research conducted on student venture creation can be divided between curricular and co-curricular initiatives. Our research points out that many other contextual factors are of importance, such as the origin of ideas, student surrogate entrepreneurship, industry collaboration, team formation and expectations.

This paper presents the idea that the direction of the university, today, must be seen, first as an enterprise that is different from the idea of the university as seen by Newman, Kant and von Humboldt. Secondly, it must be seen as a problem for the faculty and not that of the institution.

This article examines and discusses the future of universities.

The probability of institutional closings is high. As with consolidation in any industry, the demand for employees, even with increasing enrolments will diminish and the purpose of the institutions, as with the replacement of one technology by another, will change. For many, particularly medallion institutions, survival by providing a selective on‐campus experience will be a defined opportunity. On the other hand, many institutions will become virtual or will be mixed in both brick and click space. These, of course, will have presence on the net that will not be tied to time or place. Others will become certification providers of many forms, from record keeping and advising to evaluation of qualifications for both students and employers.

The university is changing due to both internal and external pressures. Current efforts to formulate solutions are based on a model that no longer exists. Survival of many post secondary institutions depends on recasting the direction based on new models; survival of faculty at the baccalaureate level requires rethinking the idea of a teacher and a scholar.

This paper discusses the future and direction of universities.

This paper aims to propose a thesis about the historical evolution of the relationship of the European University in relation to the idea of social responsibility.

This paper is philosophical, conceptual and theoretical and in proffering a bold thesis, has an argumentative character appropriate to that style.

Three stages can be identified over the past 200 years in the relationship between the university and the matter of social responsibility, being successively tacit, weak and now hybrid. In the present stage, new spaces are opening for the university to transcend social responsibility, moving to a worldly and earthly responsibility. However, this new stage is having to contend against the university in an age of cognitive capitalism. As such, a large but hitherto unnoticed culture war is present, the outcome of which is unclear.

The scholarship informing this paper is wide-ranging and multi-disciplinary (history, social theory, philosophy, critical higher education studies, literature on the idea of the university, comparative higher education, ethics and sociology of knowledge), as it has to be in sustaining the large thesis being contended for, and it has broad hinterlands, which can only lightly be intimated.

The key implication is that the idea of social responsibility is currently being construed too narrowly and that, therefore, universities – in developing their corporate strategies and missions – should be more ambitious and set their responsibility goals against horizons that go well beyond the social realm.

The thesis developed here is original in offering a three-stage theory of a 200-year evolution of the socially responsible European university. A new stage of an Earthly responsibility is glimpsed but it is having to contend with a continuing performative university, so leading to a hidden culture war and such that the future of university social responsibility is in doubt.