Death of the Public University?: Uncertain Futures for Higher Education in the Knowledge Economy

by Susan Wright (Editor), Cris Shore (Editor)

Overview

Universities have been subjected to continuous government reforms since the 1980s, to make them ‘entrepreneurial’, ‘efficient’ and aligned to the predicted needs and challenges of a global knowledge economy. Under increasing pressure to pursue ‘excellence’ and ‘innovation’, many universities are struggling to maintain their traditional mission to be inclusive, improve social mobility and equality and act as the ‘critic and conscience’ of society. Drawing on a multi-disciplinary research project, University Reform, Globalisation and Europeanisation (URGE), this collection analyses the new landscapes of public universities emerging across Europe and the Asia-Pacific, and the different ways that academics are engaging with them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781785335433
Publisher:	Berghahn Books, Incorporated
Publication date:	05/01/2017
Series:	Higher Education in Critical Perspective: Practices and Policies , #3
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	350
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Susan Wright is Professor of Educational Anthropology at Aarhus University and Director of the Centre for Higher Education Futures (CHEF). She coordinated the EU project ‘University Reform, Globalisation and Europeanisation’ and the EU ITN project ‘Universities in the Knowledge Economy’ in Europe and the Asia-Pacific Rim. She co-edits (with Penny Welch) the journal LATISS (Learning and Teaching: International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences) and with Cris Shore and Davide Peró published Policy Worlds: Anthropology and the Anatomy of Contemporary Power (2011, Berghahn).

Cris Shore is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Auckland. He is founding editor of the journal Anthropology in Action, inaugural Director of Auckland University’s Europe Institute and, with Susan Wright, is editor of the Stanford University Press book series, Anthropology of Policy. His recent books include Up Close and Personal: On Peripheral Perspectives and the Production of Anthropological Knowledge, (with Susanna Trnka, 2013, Berghahn).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations, Figures and Tables
Acknowledgements
Preface

Introduction: Privatizing the Public University: Key Trends, Countertrends and Alternatives
Cris Shore and Susan Wright

PART I: REDEFINING THE MISSION AND MEANING OF THE UNIVERSITY

Chapter 1. Universities in Britain and the Spirit of ’45
John Morgan

Chapter 2. Managing the Third Mission: Reform or Reinvention of the Public University?
Nick Lewis and Cris Shore

Chapter 3. Universities in the Competition State: Lessons from Denmark
Susan Wright and Jakob Williams Ørberg

Chapter 4. Leadership in Higher Education: A Critical Feminist Perspective on Global Restructuring
Jill Blackmore

PART II: PERFORMING THE NEW UNIVERSITY - NEW PRIORITIES, NEW SUBJECTS

Chapter 5. Science/ Industry Collaboration: Bugs, Project Barons and Managing Symbiosis
Birgitte Gorm Hansen

Chapter 6. On Delivering the Consumer-Citizen: New Pedagogies and Their Affective Economies
Barbara M. Grant

Chapter 7. Tuning Up and Tuning In: How the European Bologna Process Is Influencing Students’ Time of Study
Gritt B. Nielsen and Laura Louise Sarauw

PART III: MANAGING THE RISK UNIVERSITY - RESEARCH, RANKING AND REPUTATION

Chapter 8. The Causes, Mechanisms and Consequences of Reputational Risk Management of Universities and the Higher
Education Sector
Roger Dale

Chapter 9. The Rise and Rise of the Performance-Based Research Fund?
Bruce Curtis

Chapter 10. Evaluating Academic Research: Ambivalence, Anxiety and Audit in the Risk University
Lisa Lucas

Chapter 11. The Ethics of University Ethics Committees: Risk Management and the Research Imagination
Tamara Kohn and Cris Shore

PART IV: REVIVING THE PUBLIC UNIVERSITY - ALTERNATIVE VISIONS

Chapter 12. Who Will Win the Global Hunger Games? The Emerging Significance of Research Universities in the International Relations of States
Christopher Tremewan

Chapter 13. Resistance in the Neoliberal University
Sandra Grey

Chapter 14. The University as a Place of Possibilities: Scholarship as Dissensus
Sean Sturm and Stephen Turner

Chapter 15. Crisis, Critique and the Contemporary University: Reinventing the Future
Susan L. Robertson

Index

Editorial Reviews

"...this book makes a unique and ethnographically-based contribution to the study of universities. Chapters are well written and avoid repetition, despite their overlapping concerns. Finally, as Shore and Wright note in their introduction, the volume focuses on contexts in the Global North, where the 'neoliberal' university is seen as most pervasive and enduring. Explorations of public universities elsewhere, which have received virtually no attention to date, may in future build on the work presented here, exposing further radical possibilities." - Anthropological Forum

"The book is a challenging approach to higher education studies and beyond. Dynamically questioning the relationship between the university and the dominant political economy at present, this book assumes a multidisciplinary approach and brings together macro and micro level analyses allowing the transformations in contemporary higher education to be mapped." - António M. Magalhães, University of Porto

From the Publisher