Ethics ‘in’ and ‘for’ Higher Education

This paper analyses the apparent conspiracy of silence and/or culture of disinterest with regard to ethical issues in higher education. A first interpretation treats it as an almost entirely negative phenomenon – the subordination of university values to external political and market forces. The second interpretation, elaborated here, is more nuanced and less judgmental; the apparent erosion of the autonomy of the university and growing fuzziness of traditional academic values are seen as evidence not of decline‐and‐fall but of higher education's success within the expanding territory of the knowledge society.