This book is a narrative of conversations between two professors, with different backgrounds, academic disciplines, life experiences, and from different continents. It shows how their discourse has brought them to a single destination defined by a mutual interest in the social purposes of universities, and a hope in common that their academic efforts will somehow do good in the world.The seventeen internationally-agreed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide focus for aspirations and plans regarding sustainability, but notably, the SDGs¿ targets and indicators rarely provide detailed accounts of who is expected to enact change. This book addresses the role of higher education in this context and explores the social purposes of universities and their relation to the Sustainable Development Goals. It presents an academic analysis of this complex situation, based on insights from published literature on higher education, and the personal but very different experiences oftwo professors with this shared interest.

Preface.- Prologue: social purpose, challenges to achievement, the possibility of universities with specific social purposes and a response.- Chapter 1 Universities and Social Purpose: setting the scene for a conversation on social purpose.- Chapter 2 Participation, social mobility and social purpose.- Chapter 3 Teaching in Universities and Specific Social Purposes.- Chapter 4 Research and social purpose.- Chapter 5 Community engagement and social purpose.- Chapter 6 Competitive individualism, intellectual independence and imagining some alternatives and consequences.- Chapter 7 Governance of universities' social purposes and monitoring, measuring, evaluating or researching universities' progress.- Epilogue.