Is the concept of open society still relevant in the 21st century? Do the current social, moral, and political realities call for a drastic revision of this concept? Here fifteen essays address real-world contemporary challenges to open society from a variety of perspectives. What unites the individual authors and chapters is an interest in open society’s continuing usefulness and relevance to address current problems. And what distinguishes them is a rich variety of geographical and cultural backgrounds, and a wide range of academic disciplines and traditions.

While focusing on probing the contemporary relevance of the concept, several chapters approach it historically. The book features a comprehensive introduction to the history and current ‘uses’ of the theory of open society. The authors link the concept to contemporary themes including education, Artificial Intelligence, cognitive science, African cosmology, colonialism, and feminism. The diversity of viewpoints in the analysis reflects a commitment to plurality that is at the heart of this book and of the idea of open society itself.

The thirteen papers in this collection address three aspects of higher education, primarily in Europe but also in the United States. These aspects are competition, collaboration, and complementarity, both on the level of policy and on the practical level of impact on students and staff. Competition, especially for funding, occurs between and within institutions. Collaboration, more than a basic code of conduct, has become a political principle across Europe. Complementarity in the market for higher education facilitates this collaboration. The themes and contexts in higher education for which the three Cs are examined include missions and identities, response to external forces, the impact of evaluation systems and ranking schemes, the effects of globalisation, intercultural awareness and gender imbalance, and the challenges of student participation. Statistical tables and visual aids support the analysis and arguments. This book is the fifth in a series of publications drawn from the annual Forums of the European Association of Institutional Research (EAIR) from 2013 onwards