Democracy is a blessing. As a politician, you can't get away with just anything. But the political time horizon is short, and for parties and individual politicians, election cycles frame their lives. In this way, political life in a democracy resembles a giant project. The short time horizon and the constant threat of 'evaluation' are now leaving their definitive mark not only on politics but on public life in general. This book is about the project society and its challenges. About how short-term project thinking is changing what we value, what we prioritize, and how we work. In particular, it is about what happens in a key area where the project society meets its opposite: research and higher education. So what happens when the project society, with its logic of short-term delivery, thorough planning, and evaluation by the so-called clients, starts to make its presence felt in areas where 'delivery' is slow and perhaps even sometimes non-existent? This is the question we ask in this book. We have chosen to shed light on it by writing about what is happening in academia right now, in universities and other institutions of higher education, what values are at stake, but also what we can do to safeguard the norms and structures that have been proven throughout the 20th century to be conducive to free inquiry and critical review.