Stephen Downes

This is quite a good interview with Simon Marginson, author of Global Higher Education in Times of Upheaval, available as open access (337 page PDF) and itself recommended. The premises is that in the anglophone world, the public role of the university, as defined by governments, has been reduced to a purely economic role.  "The state framework of regulation had decisively shifted into pure economism, if you like - the idea that the higher education system has to deliver for capital, and that is its sole rationale." So instead we turn to the 'common good': "the idea of a community committing to higher education as something that benefits it, and as an instrument for its own betterment and development."