Challenges and perspectives of Universities in terms of Postmodern

Higher education and the university are modern institutions which come from the heart of the modernity in postmodern era are in crisis .The crisis is more because of challenging the concepts and the elements of modernity such as "merit" and "academic community ". Declining metanarratives, delegitimation of knowledge and fading of the hierarchical nature of knowledge are the main topics and challenges of higher education in postmodern era. Despite such challenges, it seems that the global university or looking into higher education from a global perspective, publicizing academic educations, getting away from the elitist domination of modernity, internationalizing and cross-bordering higher education, encouraging and reinforcing scientific and academic cooperation between universities, can help the life of higher education and universities. In general, today the transformation of the values and the ideas of the higher education is necessarily inevitable. Derrida, Lyotard and Foucault as the pioneers of postmodern theorists are going to deconstruct and analyze power in institutions, including universities and seek to shed new scheme for higher education and knowledge. On the other hand, Delanty and Habermas as representatives of the unfinished project of modernity seek to solve problems and to open dead-end concepts and the ideas of the modernity.

Keywords: Postmodern, Higher education, Challenges, merit