Reforming (and Teaching?) Through Metaphors: from the Good to the New University

In the last decade, the foreign literature on University reformism has increasingly exploited the communicative impact of metaphors expressing a significant cognitive perspective, provided that university systems as a whole may be interpreted as complex and self-referential environment. The analysis of some metaphors used by aca demic scholars have the power to simplify the complexity of reformist processes going on in worldwide university systems may help us better understand the programmatic path that universities are supporting to cope with the challenges of transparency, efficiency, accountability. The purpose of this proposal is to analyze the relationship between communication, rhetoric and research in the field of university reformism imposing the effort of simplification and understanding not only for academic actors, but even for students and stakeholders. In this view, the critic reflection on some recent books, The New University (2021)byJamesCoeandTheGoodUniversitybyRaewynConnell(2019),investigatetheconvergenceofacademic discourse and reformist innovation through the cognitive efficiency of metaphors simplifying the understanding of academicinnovation through the symbolic andsemanticreduction of an ever-changing scenario. Their books have the merit to delve into the contingent and programmatic factors fueling academic reliability in terms of democra tization and inclusion through teaching activities. More specifically, James Coe and Raewyn Connell’s works exalt the attempt to build a critic academic discourse through the rhetoric and communication lens of reformism, even with the purpose to develop an academic meta discourse in reference to technological and dynamic evolution of communicative process within and beyond uni versity environments. This is what DavidWllets points outinAUniversityEducation(2019),whosechallengingbook exploits some educational metaphors in communicative way, thus confirming the cognitive force of metaphoric solutions explaining the academic pathway to excellence and renovation. Platformization, democratization, merit, quality teaching and networking are only some of the keywords inspiring the academic debate on the future of high education in our hyperconnected societies, in which old and new func tional risks sometimes overlap to undermine the credibility university authority