Forget the old model: Modern universities need to turn outwards to thrive

There still exists an idealised conception of the university. It’s what makes international rankings plausible, because everybody thinks they know what a university should be and therefore can compare them. In that conception, research is well supported and academics are left to focus on what captures their excitement. Should their work yield results, the best measure of its quality is the assessment of their peers in response to papers published in peer-reviewed journals.