Book Review: Wellmon, C. (2026). After the University: Higher Education and the Future of Intellectual Work. United States: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Abstract

Sampling crucial moments in his life that defined the concept of a university, Chad Wellmon, the author of this comprehensive analysis of higher learning, sets out on a journey to clarify the relationship between a university and higher learning. While working on the undergraduate curriculum at the University of Virginia (UVA), the author realized that a university might be called “a space and time set aside and made free for higher learning,” (p. 2) but that proved to be a narrow understanding of what such an institution actually was. Organized in three sections and 13 chapters, an Introduction, an Interlude, and a Conclusion, After the University is a book that traces the evolution of the university from medieval times through Enlightenment and finally into the modern world.