826 Human Factors of a Global Society
that the creation and distribution of socially relevant knowledge is something that needs to be at
the core of university activity, thereby strengthening their social responsibility. As the GUNI report
puts so well, this calls for us to rethink the purpose of higher education, a purpose that is one of
transformation rather than transmission:
The central educative purpose of HEIs ought to be the explicit facilitation of progressive, reexive,
critical, transformative learning that leads to much improved understanding of the need for, and expres-
sion of, responsible paradigms for living and for ‘being’ and ‘becoming’, both as individuals alone and
collectively as communities (GUNI 2009, p. 7).
This notion of ...