Instead of following the Magna Charta Universitatum the declaration of the principles of
knowledge signed in 1988 in Bologna the academic approach pursued in Europe and the other
continents over the past 30 years has strictly employed a utilitarian model of higher
education. This jeopardizes academic freedom shared governance and tenure the three pillars
of the long-established model of universities. Scientific conformism and fragmentation
educational bias and authoritarianism are the major drawbacks together with a poor readiness
to meet the emerging challenges in the labor market and technology. In this book Renzo Rosso
presents a new model for countering these developments e.g. by establishing novel democratic
rules for university governance. The Slow University paradigm positions culture and education
as essential tools for the long-term survival of humankind.
