The Idea of the Digital University: Ancient Traditions, Disruptive Technologies and the Battle for the Soul of Higher Education

Idea of the Digital University’, Frank McCluskey and Melanie Winters quote the playwright Eugene Ionesco, ‘all history is a succession of crises, rupture, repudiations, resistances’. The authors’ larger idea here is that the 21st-century university is also not exempt from the current socio-technological crisis and rupture occurring through the present digital revolution. The book conducts an exploration of the relatively new phenomenon of the digital online university through perspectives of ancient traditions, disruptive technologies, and current debates occurring in the field of higher education. What is really to be enjoyed in this book is the text’s wide berth, situating the 21st-century online university in a wide historical trajectory and within ongoing present discussions. Larger questions that the book grapples with surround how the institution of the traditional university is transforming into larger sets of digital assets to be managed — how and by whom? Erudite, balanced and measured, McCluskey’s philosophy/academic administration background is in evidence, examining the online university from perspectives ranging from McLuhan and the Toronto School of Harold Innis’s Empire and Communication, to classic philosophical landscapes (Plato, Aristotle, Kant). The book also importantly situates the online university in the context of ‘learning’ and within current technological possibility. The text traverses a historical evolution of the university, ranging from histories of American universities, both the ivy leagues and recent for-profits, to the historical foundations of the institutions at Oxford and the Sorbonne, and to the completely new digital entrants. Present developments of the 21st-century university as database are also explored, including the wealth of digital asset, data and media to be managed, mined, explored and organised. To be sure, this is a fair and balanced text containing a multiplicity of views and offering plenty of room to reflect on the complex debates currently occurring on our campuses. Winter’s background adds the lesser-known ground of the digital transformation of the university registrar’s office, university libraries, student funding and various operational divisions, all explored and interlinked through the technological paradigm shift occurring.