**3.1 Perception of university teachers about the university**

The perception of university teachers about what the university is emerged centred on the description of its mission being the focus placed essentially on four aspects: university as a context of production and diffusion of knowledge for society, as a space for creative and critical thinking about the world, as a multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary space and as a system centred on teaching and research. In relation to the first aspect, the university is perceived as a context for the production and dissemination of knowledge for society, a view that is in line with the 'knowledge society', although it is not possible to infer whether university lecturers are aware that in this model, as Barnett [14] states, society ends up generating its own definitions of legitimate knowledge, creating constraints at the level of 'academic freedom' or even of the 'academic community' in a more classical view of the concepts. The university perceived as a space for creative and critical thinking and about the world revealed a conception more in line with the Kantian vision that presupposes the ability to think and judge freely and independently in a context of academic freedom; however, this is not a very present vision in the teachers' discourse, which allowed us to infer that the idea of the university as a producer of great universal ideas or as a critical awareness of society is no longer present in corporate universities that operate with business models and assume agendas, values and operating principles of the society in general, making the existence of a certain ideal of the university capable of transforming the world through the thought it produces unfeasible, as Jarvis states [36]. The university seen as a multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary space indicates to us that the discourse around the need to respond to new challenges that require innovative approaches and solutions from the crossing of various disciplinary sources have entered the academy, so it is not surprising to find it in the teachers' discourse. The university perceived as a system centred on teaching and research emerged in the teachers' vision, although the introduction of the Bologna assumptions associated with the Lisbon strategy agenda has emphasized the research component as a central aspect in universities.

We also found in the teachers' discourse references to the structure and functioning of the university and, in this case, teachers highlighted more negative aspects. We find references to the very hierarchical, complex and bureaucratic structure of the institution and the perception of an increasing functionalization of teachers in a competitive and dehumanized space, marked by a hypervalorisation of bibliometrics.

## **3.2 Changes in the university perceived by university teachers**

The perceived changes focus on aspects related to the change in the structure of education due to the Bologna Process, the greater diversity of publics, research and internationalization, new technologies, institutional cooperation, the bureaucratization of decision-making processes and the relationship with the community. In most of these themes, there is some ambivalence among teachers, as detailed below.

## *3.2.1 Change in the training structure*

As we can see in the two examples below, teachers refer to changes resulting from the implementation of the Bologna Process related to the shortening of the duration of the study cycles (in particular the 1st cycle). The change of paradigm in terms of the teaching and learning process is also mentioned, which shifts the centrality from the teacher to the student.

*University Teachers' Conceptions of What University Is: Implications for the Future of Higher… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.100813*

*The changes I identify as most significant are related to the reduction in the duration of 1st cycle courses. The hurried training of our students has robbed them of time for personal and intellectual growth. I feel that students reach the end of their training increasingly unprepared and immature (S1).*

*The post-Bologna transition in the way of understanding the learning process in students and the teacher's mediation function (S5).*
