On the one hand one could say that the question about learning in academia leads to thinking of a place. It is significantly indicated by the location of learning subjects ‘in academia’. On the other I perceive this topic from a pedagogical perspective through which the processes of learning cannot be conceived without reflection on where learning subject acts. Thus the question of place has always been of pedagogues’ interest. One of the possible explanations of it is an obvious direct interdependence between pedagogical action and its context. Education, undeniably an interference, is always done somewhere and has its place as it constitutes an introduction to a dialectical relationship of the educated with the world; it is also a metaphysics, ontology taking place under conditions of mutuality and transcendence. One can thus say about the notion of place, in which pedagogues are interested, that it is both philosophical and pedagogical, and that this fact constitutes its nature. That is why pedagogical reflection about place is being developed somehow along with philosophical thought about place. As D.Gruenewald, analysing place-conscious education, notices: “consciousness of place fundamentally challenges assumptions and conventions associated with schooling, specifically, assumptions about the purposes of educational reform, the possibilities for democracy, and the meaning of accountability and achievement” [2003, p. 621]. Thus while studying university as a place one may also discover politically meant perspectives of individual and community development. This creates a challenge for me and provokes the direction of final conclusions of this article. This is about university as a place and it might prove that the academics’ own familiarised space of daily lives is ‘pedagogical.’ The analysis of people ‘in academia’ can show how, while simultaneously living our lives and learning, we get to know the creative role of places where we happen to experience our constant personal change. Following distinction of Yi-Fu Tuan, space is open and is associated with freedom, while place is some kind of closure of space, it is our own space, ‘our’ world touched and signified by our presence; it is home that we love. Thus the university might be perceived as ritual passage performance [in A.Van Gennep's term] and 'corridor' between place and space.

The analysis bases on the reports prepared for the project “Students as Journeymen between Communities of Higher Education and Work” [HPSE-CT-2001-00068, international project financed by the 5th Framework Programme of The European Commission in the years 2001-2005. I was a member of Polish group of researchers which was lead by professor Tomasz Szkudlarek,University of Gdansk]. The methodology of this project used following approaches: phenomenograpy, critical discourse analysis, and hermeneutic study. My paper is a conceptualization of the university as a place in the light of this empirical research findings.

The universities consciously treated and clearly named as 'corridors' might act more transparently and fair offering their students more readable face. The students move in the mist. The mysterious sign that is labelled: ‘university’ produces the emptiness while offering deep gap between its culturally formulated promises and ‘junk fruits’ that are mostly not necessarily welcome in the work market [majority of students are redundant mass]. In a frame of place-based HE most important thing to do is not to obscure the fact that indispensability of the mass of students studying at university level seems to be one of politically created and economically accounted myth [the idea of Lifelong Learning contradicts this myth because the very nature of learning is far of diplomas and all the forms in which credential society acts.