The ends are already given—the preservation of the eternal truths, the creation of new knowledge, the improvement of service wherever truth and knowledge of high order may serve the needs of man. The ends are there; the means must be ever improved in a competitive dynamic environment.

Although to me, the term “multiversity” seems uninspired, almost an off the cuff term, Clark Kerr in the Chapters 1 and 3 of his monograph The Uses of the University makes a compelling argument for the inevitable rebranding of the institution of higher education we continue to call the University. The university, he writes “is so many things to so many different people that it must, of necessity, be partially at war with itself.” Tracing the history of higher learning from its medieval roots to the well-known cloistered institutions of Oxford and Cambridge, to the modern university seated in Berlin, onward to the American system, Kerr tactfully brings us to the cusp of our current system and stops there. He covers so much ground in the process, I found it was useful to start grouping his metaphors and key terms into blocks.

Idea of a University:
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