Abstract

In recent years, a new vision of the University has emerged. The neoliberal University understands higher education and the knowledge derived from it as a commercial service, and advocates for the business organisation of the University. Digital transformation has been a great instrument for the deconstruction of the public and social value of the University. The neoliberal University has taken advantage of network and platform effects to establish automated (efficient), cheap (with marginal reproduction costs tending to zero) and highly scalable (with increasing returns) digital business models, which make open, distance and digital higher education a big business. But this explosion of short-term economic returns of the corporate University generates many costs and problems for the sustainability of the vast majority of its stakeholders in the long term. Using the principles of political economy, in this article we argue that another type of University in the digital and sustainable era is possible. In contrast to visions based solely on business, we have called it a social University because it is able to combine innovation and efficiency in its digitalised academic practices with a socio-environmental purpose for the common good. The social University has three components: the inclusion of all its stakeholders; the plurality of technologies, resources and disciplines, of pedagogical methodologies and of organisational and management objectives; and the digital and socio-environmental transformation of society. Throughout the article, these three components are addressed and their suitability for the digital and sustainable era is justified in comparison with the neoliberal response.