How to Mend a University: Towards a Sustainable Learning Environment in Higher Education

Many contemporary commentators present a damning account of the current state of higher education, to the extent that our universities may be considered to be broken.This book offers an alternative perspective to the dominant neoliberal discourse and provides the conceptual tools to help construct a trajectory of repair for our universities. These ideas are presented within this book as five moves to transform our current pathological situation and develop towards a more healthy and sustainable ecological learning environment.

In this book, Ian Kinchin draws upon a wide range of sources from the philosophy of education, biological and clinical sciences as well as educational research and academic development. This alternative ecology of ideas presents a challenge to university leaders and asks if we care enough about the future of our universities to encourage an evolution of practice that deals sustainably with the wicked problems our universities face in the coming century. It describes a move towards an ecological university.

The book includes a foreword written by Martyn Kingsbury, Professor of Higher Education and Director of the Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship, Imperial College London, UK.

Ian M. Kinchin is Emeritus Professor of Higher Education in the Surrey Institute of Education at the University of Surrey, UK.