women's studies. All work, or have worked, as academics in the modern univer-
sity to some extent, and all take a critical view of the current transformations that
universities are undergoing. This book is not an apologia of globalization. Even
if the scholars here are critical of current universities, they are more so of the
commodification process universities are undergoing. None are Luddites, but
they are cautiously optimistic about the role of the Internet, believing that while
it may lead to increased interaction, it may also continue to distance teacher from
student, knowledge from ethics. Some are more concerned about the content
("Does it dissent from current understandings?"), others more about the process
of education, and still others about the political economy of knowledge ("Who
gains and loses when structures of education change?"). All writers have a pre-
ferred future of the university. While assessing the trends creating the future, they
have not shied away from explicitly stating the future they want, and in some
cases, the future they fear.

Our hope for this book is that it impacts the policy debate on the futures of the
university, particularly by contesting current assumptions of the future, and offer-
ing alternative future possibilities. We understand that the forces changing the
university are often more than any particular university or nation can address, and
yet, there are spaces for agency--whether it be ensuring that content is more mul-
ticultural, finding ways for faculty to show solidarity, better meeting the chang-
ing needs of students, or creating alternative universities. More significantly, the
future undetected is a future given to us, and thus taken away from us. A future
contoured, alternative futures mapped, means that the possibility of influence can
increase, at the very least, it means that there is a possibility that the futures being
shaped are done more thoughtfully, more creatively, and with more urgency.

As with all such books, while the intention is comprehensiveness, complete
representation is often not achieved. Gaps have remained. From a conceptual per-
spective, although the current corporatization of universities is mentioned in
many of the chapters, in our seeking to access an author from within that frame-
work, our contact with colleagues in one of the largest international corporate
business degree providers was unfruitful. It became evident that they were too
busy creating the future to write a reflective chapter.

The cultural and gender imbalance is particularly evident in the first section
where we were seeking a range of critical views of shaping trends from the broad
perspective of the Western situation. The perspective of students has only been
addressed second hand by academics and this is indeed an oversight. The
geographic/cultural diversity we sought became somewhat more limited when
some of our prospective authors (from Nigeria, Hungary, Tibet in exile

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