This text attempts a reading of the transformations of the modern university using literary works, mainly Anglo-Saxon and to a lesser degree Latin American, with emphasis on some Chilean novels. For this, the notion of fiction will operate as key to the reading. This permits coverage of a broader corpus which makes it possible (after giving some historical background on the university) to present fiction as a privileged place to understand the displacement of knowledge as a linchpin of the modern university and its replacement by an institution based on flexibility and precariousness. Finally, the text again resorts to literary fiction to show its potential to configure a type of subjectivity going against the grain imposed by needs of capital and highlight the privileged place the university has to foster it.