Chapter 1. The Gift of the Interval? Revisiting the Promises of Higher Education (Áine Mahon) -- Part I: Facing Darkness -- Chapter 2. Character, Corruption, and ‘Cultures of Speed’ in Higher Education (Ian James Kidd) -- Chapter 3. The Corrosion of Academic Character (Sharon Rider) -- Chapter 4. Trust and Institutional Values in Higher Education (Penny Enslin and Nicki Hedge) -- Chapter 5. A Culture of Egotism: Rorty and Higher Education (Tracy Llanera and Nicholas H. Smith) -- Chapter 6. Early Career Anxieties in the University: The Crisis of Institutional Bad Faith (Alison M. Brady) -- Part II: Dispelling Shadow -- Chapter 7. Re-enchanting Undergraduate Education: On the Project of Metamorphosis in English Higher Education (Joshua Forstenzer) -- Chapter 8. Reconsidering Student Voice: Švankmajer’s Dimensions of Dialogue and the Claim to Community (Claire Skea) -- Chapter 9. The Enlightened University (Richard Smith) -- Chapter 10. Cultivating Curiosity at University: How Universities Fall Short of Aspiration (Lani Watson) -- Chapter 11. Darkness, Wellness, and World Views: The University’s Role in Shaping Students’ Experience of Mental Health and Distress (Emma Farrell) -- Part III: Regaining Light -- Chapter 12. Into or Out of the Light? Four Shades of Pedagogical Darkness (Ronald Barnett and Søren S.E. Bengsten) -- Chapter 13. Academic Freedom and Trans Experiences: Moving from Proclamation to Response (Seán Henry) -- Chapter 14. Disillusioned, Disenchanted, Disembodied? Towards a Collective Imagination of the University (Lindsay Jordan) -- Chapter 15. ‘Bothy Culture’: Towards a New Ethics for the University (Anne Pirrie, Nini Fang, and Elizabeth O’Brien) -- Chapter 16. The Twilight of the University (Naoko Saito) -- Afterword (Áine Mahon) -- Index.

This book offers philosophical readings of the contemporary university and is motivated by a series of pressing challenges in the global context of Higher Education. It argues that the university is a place for community, for refuge, for enlightenment and the careful questioning of knowledge, but it is also a place for visceral ambition and for intellectual cowardice, for blinkered individualism and professional competitiveness. In the context of a highly competitive post-crash global economy, contemporary students are placed under increasing pressure to distinguish themselves from their peers via a portfolio of learning excellence and extracurricular achievement. Growing numbers undertake part or full-time employment in order to cover registration fees and the basic costs of living. University staff take on very different forms of pressure that operate across the life-course of an academic career – from early-career anxieties to the worries of more privileged and permanent faculty who fear they do not meet ever-changing structures, assumptions and demands of the university itself. This book argues that these interlinked agendas demand consideration from philosophers of education in Ireland, Europe and further afield. It proposes that we must embody a very careful balancing act: one where we remember the romantic ideals and promises of the university while still acknowledging the very real and pressing challenges faced by our staff and students. The book will be of interest to academics, graduate students, and advanced-level undergraduates in Philosophy, Education, Mental Health, and Organizational Psychology in both North America and Europe.