The Future of the City of Intellect: The Changing American University (review)

Editor Stephen Brint has orchestrated a talented cast to probe and project the American university's future in the 21st century. The title pays homage to the "city of the intellect" terminology that Clark Kerr introduced in the concluding chapter of The Uses of the University 40 years ago. What makes this new work appealing is that the authors acknowledge Kerr's landmark work without pandering. Each selection is crisp and critical. In sum, they show that the study of higher education is no stranger to disciplinary rigor. Authors represent such fields as sociology, history, economics, rhetoric, political science, and psychology. Although the book is organized around a common theme, contributors avoid homogeneity; their respective tones range from the measured optimism of senior scholar Burton Clark to the justifiable skepticism of sociologist Randall Collins and the critical warnings of Sheila Slaughter.

Since the book was based on papers presented at a symposium at University of California, Riverside, it understandably has a West Coast character. Given the historical importance of the University of California as a prototype for the multi-versity, this emphasis makes sense. Balancing this regional flavor are Roger Geiger from Penn State, Richard Chait from Harvard, Andrew Abbott from the University of Chicago, David Collis from Yale, and Randall Collins from Penn. Brint, already well known as a sociologist and as coauthor, with Jerome Karabel, of The Diverted Dream: Community Colleges and the Promise of Educational Opportuity in America, 1900-1985 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989) brings comparable critical insight to the research university that he earlier used in analyzing the history and missions of community colleges.

Space limitations prevent comments on each selection. Suffice it to say that this anthology provides abundant food for thought about higher education. The caveat with this rich diet is that discussing the future leans toward "social science fiction" embellished by melodrama of either very favorable or very catastrophic projections. In fact, much of the future—as with the past and present—is banal. For example, whether in Kerr's original 1963 Godkin Lectures or 2002, futurologists seldom mention the quiet yet pervasive importance of an innovation such as Xerox which made cheap, quick, abundant photocopying a staple of institutional life—and also contributed the latent dysfunction of finding storage space for duplicate copies of every memo. More attention goes to the glamour of computers and a "digital revolution" than the accumulation of paper. In fact, both spectacular and pedestrian changes coexist.

Readers also must be on the alert when futurology merely confirms the obvious. This involves a grammatical sleight of hand in which an author takes an established practice and announces it as a prophecy. For example, we know today that "biological sciences are important." But one can be pseudo-profound by proclaiming, "In the not too distant future, biological sciences will be important." Mercifully, the essays commit only petty larceny on these foibles of futurism.

Richard Lanham, UCLA English professor emeritus turned entrepreneur, uses his essay on virtual universities to uncover the hypocrisies that universities invoke to maintain existing practices. Having made a good point, he then chides the university for being the only organization that is oblivious to efficiency. But is the university truly unique in this syndrome? Many modern organizations prize effectiveness far more than efficiency. When one is working on exciting projects, saving money is a peripheral consideration—whether it is NASA, NASCAR, the NFL, Lockheed, the Department of Defense, Haliburton Corporation, or a research park sponsored by the University of California. If you are on a roll, who cares how much it costs?

Various selections, including one by Lanham and others by, respectively, Carol Tomlinson-Keasey and David Collis, discuss the impact of new technology on teaching and learning. They hint at an understudied phenomenon: namely, the proposition that...