The New Power University: The social purpose of higher education in the 21st century

Postface

What looks like a crisis today is actually an equivalent opportunity.

John Ralston Saul (2005), p. 295

I was half-way through writing this book when the world was confronted with, in the words of the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the ‘most challenging crisis we have faced since the Second World War’.³⁸⁵ The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted virtually all aspects of life and mobilised nations globally on a scale not seen since that conflict. A new infectious virus that caused a severe acute respiratory disease, especially in the elderly, killed half a million people and infected over seven million worldwide, within six months of it emerging in the Chinese City of Wuhan in December 2019.³⁸⁶ There was no treatment nor vaccine, meaning ...