This contribution wants to deliberate on the question how universities can (and possibly will) react upon future challenges of the knowledge society. Although universities are unique in producing new knowledge through research that is then consolidated and distributed through teaching, there is no guarantee for a continuity of this characteristic trait. Are they really 'dumb organisations' (that's what the former Fortune editor Tom Stewart called them) with too much 'human capital' but not enough 'structural capital'? If so, the scenario of Fuller might become true: universities might evolve into two 'post-academic' organisations by disaggregating the unity of teaching and research: to a 'diploma mill', the other to a 'patent factory' (Fuller 2003: 119) ...