Every period of human history has witnessed institutions of (higher) education and science that have hosted knowledge with their characteristics. As a result of the reorganization of knowledge and its institutions with the establishment of the modern nation-state, the university became the sole center of academic studies. The social sciences constituted the theoretical foundations and source of power for this institutionalization.
The university, which is the center of production of scientific knowledge, has been conceived as an institutional structure in which the Enlightenment thought's idea that "truth" can be reached through the understanding of "a supra-historical-historical human nature free from distortions and prejudices of a certain time and place" is formulated in the education and training of qualified people needed by modern society and in the production of knowledge, and where objective-pure knowledge is distinguished from subjective-impure knowledge. In the last two centuries, there have been ruptures and debates from this conception, as well as alternative searches.
The institution of the university, which has been the subject of new searches in terms of its main functions and alternatives in some areas, has been subjected to intense criticism and questioning in terms of its legitimacy, function, effectiveness, and relations with society for half a century, and has been subjected to pressure to develop its economic functions (vocational education, industrial cooperation, R&D, etc.). These developments show that the need for a thorough evaluation and repositioning of the modern academic world, which is formed together with non-university institutions where scientific knowledge is produced, continues.
In this framework, the 8th issue of the Journal of Human and Society is prepared under the title of 'Academia and Knowledge Production' with its theoretical dimensions, taking into account the historical-social experience of the last two centuries.
