Digital transformation has played a key role in dismantling the public and social value of universities. By exploiting network and platform effects, neoliberal universities have implemented lucrative digital business models. Similarly, the classical/Humboldtian university, based on the unity of science and teaching, must evolve to meet new digital and socioenvironmental needs. Drawing on the new political economy of higher education, this article argues that an alternative vision of universities is both possible and necessary. We propose the transformative university as a normative ideal-type that combines disruptive innovation and efficiency in its academic practices with a socioenvironmental mission serving the common good. Transformative universities are structured around four key normative pillars: (1) inclusion of all stakeholders; (2) a plurality of technologies, resources, disciplines, methodologies, and organisational goals; (3) the pursuit of socioenvironmental impact; and (4) interoperability as a means of fostering collaboration, enhancing social mobility, and ensuring seamless knowledge exchange.
Fitó-Bertran et al. (Wed,) studied this question.