In spite of constantly shifting accounts of the purpose of higher education, however, among academics there exists a core of consensus about what comprises higher learning.
It may seem as though the nature and scope of higher education is being determined by the economic and political concerns of the last decade of the twentieth century. It is clear, however, that for the past hundred or so years the same issues and dilemmas have underpinned the development of tertiary institutions.
In an essay first published in 1929, A.N. Whitehead wrote:
"The university imparts information, but it imparts it imaginatively... This atmosphere of excitement, arising from imaginative consideration, transforms knowledge. A fact is no longer a bare fact: it is invested w
Adding only that we aim for excellence and pursue it through rigorous study, many Oxford academics would endorse this vision of higher education as the pursuit of higher-order cognitive capabilities in the context of disciplinary knowledge.
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