Book

When the University's Mission Withers

Dr. Bakri Maatouq Assas

Date of publication: July 14, 2026 23:20 KSA

A university is not merely buildings, classrooms, laboratories, libraries, and degrees awarded at the end; it is, at its core, the intellectual conscience of society, the laboratory where ideas are formed, major questions are crafted, and minds capable of shaping the future are cultivated. The more universities flourish, the more nations prosper, and the weaker their mission becomes, the dimmer the glow of knowledge, and the wider the gap between society and its future.

However, the economic and administrative transformations that have swept through higher education institutions in recent decades have raised profound questions about whether the university remains faithful to its historical mission, or whether it has gradually slipped toward market logic, where value is measured by profits, and education is reduced to performance indicators and global rankings. Hence emerges the importance of the book 'Dark Academia: How Universities Die' by British academic Peter Fleming, as one of the most prominent works that have critically analyzed these transformations, attempting to answer a crucial question: How did the modern university reach this critical moment? Fleming sees that the COVID-19 pandemic was not the cause of the universities' crisis, but rather a revealing moment of a crisis that had silently accumulated over many years, until the modern university became more akin to an economic enterprise than a space for knowledge production.

The author explains how universities gradually shifted from institutions serving the public good to institutions managed according to profitability and efficiency criteria, where performance indicators and global rankings dominated, administrative bodies swelled, and success came to be measured by numbers and funding rather than by the quality and impact of knowledge. Among the most controversial ideas in the book is his description of the student becoming a 'customer' and the professor becoming an 'employee' subject to pressures of publication, citations, and funding, under a 'publish or perish' culture—a culture that has sparked widespread debate in Western universities. Fleming highlights the rise of university bureaucracy, as the powers of executive administrations expanded, and academics spend increasing time on reports, evaluations, and administrative tasks at the expense of research and teaching. The book also discusses rising rates of burnout and anxiety among academics, especially young researchers and those on temporary contracts, and argues that these phenomena are not isolated individual cases but rather a reflection of a structural crisis. It seems that many of these problems are not confined to one particular region but extend to prestigious universities in Europe, America, and Australia, albeit with varying severity depending on national policies and funding systems. Despite the importance of Fleming's thesis, it is not without criticisms; he focuses on the darker aspects more than models of success, and many of the phenomena he criticizes are linked to neoliberal economic shifts in general, not limited to the university environment. On the other hand, it should not be overlooked that universities still achieve major accomplishments in scientific research and innovation, contributing to the development of vaccines and modern technologies; this underscores that criticism should be directed at management and governance models, not the idea of the university itself. The true value of this book lies in its awakening of major questions: What is the real function of the university? Can knowledge remain independent under market logic? How do we balance financial sustainability with the scientific mission? These are questions worth pondering, because the future of universities is not merely an academic matter, but an issue that affects the future of societies and their capacity to produce knowledge and critical thought.

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