The intent of this paper is to explore different discourses on the purposes of higher education, i.e. the mandates addressed to higher education and the educational ideologies that inspire them. Instead of mainly looking at official statements or policy documents where these purposes and mandates might show up, the discourses in describing the purpose of higher education used by academics of research universities in the United States and New Zealand will be looked at.

The modern university emerged around the 18th century strongly linked to the consolidation of the nation states (Jensen, 2010; Magalhães, 2001; Masschelein & Simons, 2009). It continued its existence without vast changes for about two centuries. After World War II, student numbers expanded and higher education shifted from elite to mass higher education systems (Scott, 1995). Currently, knowledge is being assumed as a major factor for the global economy and higher education is increasingly seen as the engine of growth and employment. Higher education and research universities in particular are placed at the centre of the “Knowledge Based Economy” and have become a serious economic, administrative and political issue (Altbach, 2011, p. 11): “[Research universities] provide the key link between global science and scholarship and a nation’s scientific and knowledge system” (Altbach, 2011, p. 11). This context and these governance changes led to the crisis of the modern university, opening the way to the entrepreneurial university (Simons & Masschelein, 2009).

These governance reforms in the second half of the XXth century induced changes in the mandates addressed to higher education. In times of transition, the question of the very purpose of higher education becomes at issue: “What is higher education for?” It is a question addressed by Magalhães and Veiga (2013). Within the hegemonic discourse on the ‘Knowledge Based Economy´, universities are seen in a different perspective. In this context the university’s nature is seen as an entrepreneurial university and the university’s mission as serving this knowledge society, reflecting new or different purposes for higher education.

The main questions informing this paper are: “In what way are the purposes of higher education addressed by academics of research universities in the United States and New Zealand? How do academics report on how they enact their view on the purpose of higher education in their teaching?”

Purposes and mandates ascribed to higher education are manifold. As a framework of analysis, three mandates are identified by Magalhães and Veiga (2013) and Stoer and Magalhaes (2004): “the formation of individuals, citizens and professionals” (Magalhães & Veiga, 2013, pp. 60-61). Educating responsible citizens, preparation for the labour market or the development of personal capacities can be seen as the three main drivers of higher education. These mandates might be seen as emerging within different educational ideologies (Fanghanel, 2012): the production ideology with an emphasis on the production of human capital, the reproduction ideology with a commitment for the reproduction of the researcher discipline and the transformational ideology which sees education as enabling transformation on the social, personal, human or global level (Fanghanel, 2012).

Of course, the question about the aim of higher education is not a new query. With the different transitions in the conceptualisation of the university, from the medieval university to the modern university and from there to the current transition to an entrepreneurial university, the mandates addressed to higher education have been subject to change. In the course of history, these different mandates have been shaped by different discourses competing for hegemony. The dominant mandate addressed to higher education emerges from the ‘discursive struggle’ between contemporaneous hegemonic and counter-hegemonic discourses (Jorgensen & Phillips, 2002, p. 6).

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