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The Review of Higher Education 27.4 (2004) 591-593



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Derek Bok. Universities in the Market Place: The Commercialization of Higher Education. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. 256 pp. Cloth: $22.95. ISBN 0-691-11412-9.

In Universities in the Market Place: The Commercialization of Higher Education, Derek Bok critically examines the commercialization of higher education and raises questions that help distinguish commercialization from the privatization of public universities. As with all research on higher education, the author's viewpoint is crucial in interpreting his or her work accurately. Derek Bok, former president of Harvard University, is an important voice on higher education whose work is centered in private higher education. Locating Bok's perspectives and assumptions is important, not only because it helps readers understand his interpretive position but also because it helps clarify the critical nature of the book's argument and how it applies to both public and private colleges.

Bok examines the history of the commercialization process in higher education, critiques recent developments using a historical frame, and highlights moral dilemmas facing higher education. These analyses and reflections provide important insights for scholars of higher education. [End Page 591] Bok's core argument is situated as a critique of Sheila Slaughter and Larry Leslie's (1997) argument in Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies, and the Entrepreneurial University. Bok quotes their assertion that "the recent wave of entrepreneurial [commercial] behavior is a response to the reductions in government support for higher education that began in the 1970s" (Bok, p. 8). He then positions his own argument in disagreement, a historical perspective situated in an understanding of the private sector:

In this sense, the recent surge of commercial activity is best understood as only the latest in a series of steps to acquire more resources, beginning with the use of aggressive marketing to attract tuition-paying students in the early twentieth century, and moving on to the determined search for government and foundation funding after World War II, and the increasingly sophisticated and intensive effort over the last fifty years to coax gifts from well-to-do alumni and other potential donors. (p. 10)

Bok does not dispute Slaughter and Leslie's claim that revenue dependency plays a role in commercialization; rather he questions whether the shift in public funding was a catalyst in the recent period of rapid commercialization. Before probing this issue further, it is important to summarize the contribution Bok's book makes. He reviews the history of commercialization, including:

  • The historical evolution of externally funded research and of efforts to avoid bias in funded research (chap. 2).
  • The historical evolution of college athletics, competition in sports, and the costs and returns from universities' investments in sports (chap. 3).
  • The recent evolution of internet education programs that have been a locus of high levels of public investment in higher education (chap. 4).

While the new technologies have become a locus of investment since the 1970s, the other sources of commercialization have long histories predating the recent period. However, if we look at these issues from a private college perspective, which is Bok's point of view, all of these issues have historical origins preceding the recent response of public universities to the decline in state funding—a process appropriately characterized as privatization. If we make this distinction (between commercialization as an acceleration of entrepreneurial behavior and privatization as a shift toward tuition-based funding in public higher education) then we have lenses through to interpret the discursive issue that underpins the implicit debate between the two texts and through which to understand Bok's contribution.

In this book, Bok makes an important contribution to our general understanding of how the problematic aspects of the new entrepreneurialism might be mitigated. Bok documents that these new activities have not been sources of substantial new revenue for universities—that there are financial risks to the new behavior (chap. 6). Then he turns his attention to remedies. He examines strategies for reforming athletics (chap. 7), protecting the integrity of research from the...

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