Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education (review)

David L. Kirp has outdone himself with this fascinating account of the transformation of the university, providing a snapshot of how it has become more closely intertwined with the economy than ever before. While the university has been linked to the economy from its earliest days, what is different now is that, for the first time, the economy itself is knowledge based. For this reason, the university no longer plays an autonomous, supporting role in economic matters. Rather, it is beginning to be central to the economy—and losing its independence in the process. As Kirp says, "What is new, and troubling, is the raw power that money directly exerts over so many aspects of higher education" (p. 3). Kirp makes his case about the effects of market forces on the university through a series of narratives, rather than by abstract analysis, coauthoring some of the chapters of his book with Jeffrey Holman, Jonathan VanAntwerpen, Patrick S. Roberts, Elizabeth Popp Berman, Robert Ness, and Debra Solomon.

First, there exists a new kind of institution of higher learning, catering directly to the market and teaching according to a set formula, much like a franchise. As Kirp points out, this type of school replicates itself as demand for its services increases. This is very different behavior from that of the traditional university, which responds to increases in demand by becoming more selective. The emergence of these new, for-profit institutions, exemplified by the University of Phoenix and DeVry University, is one of the most striking effects of market forces on higher education.

In addition, traditional universities are undergoing significant changes. Examples of mostly positive changes, according to Kirp, are the initiatives undertaken by Dickinson College to attract better students and by New York University to recruit superior faculty. In their eagerness to enhance their presence in the market, or "mindshare," however, these institutions effected worrisome dislocations, such as decreasing the number of scholarships for students with financial need, in order to be able to offer merit fellowships to top students, and increasing the number of non-tenure-track faculty to make it possible to pay high salaries to stellar professors.

Presented in a rather negative light are all moves toward revenue center management, a decentralized budgeting system that encourages units to become self-supporting. Advocates of this budget model, which has been implemented by such institutions as Indiana University and the University of Illinois, say that it brings clarity and discipline to the budget process by creating financial transparency and enticing units to focus on the bottom line. Detractors point out that this model affects behavior in ways that do not necessarily enhance quality, stressing that, in academia, the bottom line is not money, but excellence.

Kirp seems to admire academic leaders who fought this type of budgeting system. One of them is Lee Bollinger, who, as dean of the Law School at the University of Michigan, opposed revenue center management and discontinued it when he became president. Another is Steve Sample, president of the University of Southern California and one of the best fund raisers in the history of higher education, who describes himself as a contrarian thinker.

According to Kirp, the University of Southern California, guided by revenue center management principles, had become an institution that knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. Its various administrative units had created lightweight undergraduate courses to attract more students and increase their respective revenue, while the most costly areas of graduate education and research suffered. Sample resolved these problems by abandoning revenue center management and focusing on academic planning. By creating a strong general education program for undergraduates and strengthening graduate education and research, he greatly improved the reputation of the school, thus capturing the imagination of potential students and donors alike. Sample stands out as a leader who was able to combine academic values with market considerations in productive...