The university in the loop of time

Abstract

The university enjoys a long and respected history as an institution. Often, it is presented in a linear fashion. In this text, the author departs from the perspective of historical time and plants the description of the university in societal time. The perception of time as a societal phenomenon is tied to the proliferation of mechanical clocks, which have transformed ‘God’s time’ into ‘human time’. It has taken place through a social construct with a regulative character. The activity of people and the functioning of social institutions has become dominated by timeframes, which contemporarily
emerged as a type of organisational capital. The article illustrates the ways in which governing this
capital influences the undertaking of research and the conduct of science at university. It concludes
that the university has found itself in the orbit of the fever of acceleration which typifies the modern age. The statutory narrowing of timeframes for the realisation of projects leads to the narrowing of their thematic scope, instead focusing on responding to the acute demands of the market. As a result, the university has become frozen in the present – eroding the links with its commendable past, and
increasingly helpless in facing the foggy, unpredictable future.