Globalization and Higher Education

Selected Bibliography

Selected Bibliography • 255 • Aronowitz, Stanley. The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the Corporate University and Creating True Higher Learning. Boston: Beacon, 2000. A political “radical” and academic conservative, Aronowitz connects labor market issues with education in a useful way, but would seem to be a bit nostalgic regarding City College (in the 1930s), his personal experiences as a blue-collar worker who made it, and unions. Perhaps paradoxically , while he rejects Dewey’s “largely ignored concept of education for democracy and democracy in education” as “beyond possibility” given the present situation, he offers us a more democratic, integrated version of the old Chicago core: history, literature, science, and philosophy (177). Unfortunately, he seems to lack understanding of the institutional obstacles to his reconstruction. He finds no justification for employing the new technologies (even while he thinks of CD-ROMs and e-mail as the core of this). Bérubé, Michael, and Cary Nelson (eds.). Higher Education Under Fire: Politics, Economics and the Crisis of the Humanities. New York: Routledge, 1995. This volume does not succeed in its promise to “orchestrate” perspectives on the “discourses of fiscal policy, politics and the production of knowledge” (5). Most of the contributors are in English Departments and related fields. Despite the title, there is very little economics (Michael Apple’s quasi-Marxist account is an exception), but as the subtitle also suggests, the main concern is the recent cultural wars. Barry Gross’s right-wing polemic may be the most interesting. Clark, Burton R. Creating Entrepreneurial Universities: Organizational Pathways of Transformation. Oxford: Pergamon, 2001. Sheldon Rothblatt, an informed historian of higher education, writes (on Amazon): “Here is an exploration, at once empirical and conceptual, in language that is sharp and effective, of the way we live now. Clark looks for and finds pathways out of current difficulties that address that old dilemma in the history of universities: how to escape from the vexations of the present without losing sight of the qualities that made universities so very special in the first place.” (Clark has a very good essay in Rothblatt and Wittrock, below). Cole, Jonathan R., Elinor G. Barber, and Stephen R. Graubard (eds.). The Research University in a Time of Discontent. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. This volume is mainly a defense of current practices in higher education: not surprising given that the contributors include five presidents (two emeriti), one VP (of Rockefeller), two provosts, the CEO of the Academy of Sciences, the president emeritus of the Association of American Universities, the editor of Daedalus, and three well-known neo-conservative social scientists. Currie, Jan, and Janice Angela Newson (eds.). Universities and Globalization: Critical Perspectives. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1998. This volume is excellent for comparative work on higher education, including Currie on Australia and America, Sheila Slaughter on Canadian universities, Donald Fisher and Kjell Rubenson on Norway, Arild Tjeldvoll on higher education reform in Australia and France, and Robert Lingard and Fazal Rizvi on the impact of NAFTA on Mexican universities. Delanty, Gerard. Challenging Knowledge: The University in the Knowledge Society. Buckingham, England: Open University Press, 2001. If we had to pick one book, this would be it. Delanty offers a very well-informed account of the modern university in transition, from its beginnings to today. He seems to have read everyone that is pertinent (including participants at the conference behind this book) and has put it together in a convincing way. He argues that the late 1960s and 1970s were critical, both as regards “organized modernity,” a dramatic shift in the production and legitimation of knowledge, and then as regards the self-understanding of the university. But unlike those who hold to grim scenarios (either postmodern or instrumentalist), he offers that the role of the university could be enhanced in a direction that would contribute to more democratic and cosmopolitan forms of citizenship. Duderstadt, James J. A University for the 21st Century. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. Duderstadt writes as a former president of the University of Michigan. The book is disappointing, partly because of the neatly bulleted style and because some of the ground is familiar. He has, however, a deep appreciation of governance issues (“the history of higher education in America suggests that, in reality, the faculty has had relatively little influence over the evolution of the university” [247]), the causes and consequences of “privatization,” and the challenge of the new technologies that could promote “the growth of entirely new learning organizations” (304). This book...