Historically, in Europe and North America, the university has served as the primary institutional reservoir of national culture. This book examines contemporary shifts in the function of the "University" as the inculcator within the nation-state of the concept of national culture, arguing that as the nation-state has lost its power as the primary focus of society, it is no longer clear what role the University has within society nor what the exact nature of that society is. If the university is no longer the repository of national culture, and the notion of national culture is no longer the referent toward which research and teaching efforts are directed, then the university is no longer an ideological apparatus of the state but has become an independent bureaucratic system. This book tries to assess these implications, noting particularly the emergence of a discourse of "excellence" in place of earlier concepts of "culture" as the language with which the university seeks to explain itself to society. Other concepts explored are the status of the university in a transnational framework, the university and the Kantian concept of "reason," literary culture, culture wars, and cultural studies, the university during the l960s the period of student revolts, and university teaching today. (Contains 208 endnotes.) (CH)