Michael Segre, Higher Education and the Growth of Knowledge. A Historical Outline of Aims and Tensions (New York/London: Routledge, 2015), 197pp. ISBN: 9780415735667

This chapter reviews the book Higher Education and the Growth of Knowledge. A Historical Outline of Aims and Tensions (2015), by Michael Segre. Comprised of eleven chapters, Segre’s book presents a historical account of how many closed aspects of the university comprise a ‘superfluous heritage’. Segree does so by drawing on Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies (1945). Beginning with ancient Near Eastern literate societies, Segre traces the history of education and learning through the European medieval, Renaissance, and early modern universities, Enlightenment technological schools and Humboldtian reform movements. He also looks at contemporary American and European institutions that have expanded their reach worldwide. Along the way, Segre discusses the closures that restricted the growth of knowledge in the Western tradition.