The future of higher education is in question as universities struggle to remain relevant to the present and future needs of society. The context in which learning occurs is rapidly changing and those engaged and interested in the place and position of university education need to figure out to adapt.

Dr David Hornsby and myself edited a book titled Universities, the Citizen Scholar and the Future of Higher Education for Palgrave Macmillan. The book embodies a vision for higher education where graduate attributes and proficiencies are at the core of the academic project, where degree programs move beyond disciplinary content and where students are encouraged to be Citizen Scholars. Through a series of cross-disciplinary and contextual cases, the contributors to this book articulate how this vision can be achieved in our pedagogical environments, future proofing higher education.

This first chapter titled, Are Universities Redundant? argues that Universities face becoming redundant unless the way teaching and learning takes place changes. Drawing on inspiration from Gramsci and Friere, the authors provides the conceptual linchpin for the rest of the book and introduce the idea that the higher education pedagogy needs to focus not just on the transfer of disciplinary content, but on developing our students into Citizen Scholars. Through proposing a set of graduate proficiencies and attributes, the authors give meaning to the concept of the Citizen Scholar and offer a way to ‘future-proof’ higher education.

A proof copy of the chapter can be downloaded from here….