In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • On Higher Education: Selected Writings, 1956–2006
  • Caroline Sotello Viernes Turner
Burton R. Clark. On Higher Education: Selected Writings, 1956–2006. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. 575 pp. Paper: $25.00. ISBN: 0-8018-9021-7.

As Patricia J. Gumport indicates in her foreword, the breadth and depth of Burton R. Clark’s body of work, spanning 50 years, provides insights into the micro, meso, and macro levels of the functioning of higher education organizations in a complex and fluid environment. This volume captures Burton R. Clark’s critical scholarly contributions to the foundation and evolution of the sociology of higher education.

Clark’s invaluable introduction to each essay explains how he became interested in the topic, how he currently appraises the methodological approach used in investigating each topic, and how he sees the status of each research topic in the field today. These personal reflections place each article in context for the reader.

In Part 1, “Fashioning an Analytical Mode,” Clark describes his analytical approach to research, which is qualitative, based on institutional case studies. He underscores the value of reasoning inductively from observed practice when examining complicated social systems and contends that researchers must focus on the interactions of basic, context-specific elements that “propel actual decision-making” (p. 1). In this way, researcher knowledge becomes useful to college/university practitioners. He encourages researchers to publish the sociology of higher education simultaneously for scholarship and practitioner audiences.

Clark’s essays focus on the relationship of organizational values to organizational adaptation, the “cooling-out” function, and organizational saga in higher education. His case of the adult schools examines the tension “between being a service facility and a school enterprise” (p. 15).

His study of the open-door college leads to a description of ways in which students enrolled in one program are redirected into alternative programs to avoid being dismissed from the college. While the “cooling-out” concept emerged from Clark’s study of community colleges, examples of similar processes are exhibited in other higher and postsecondary education organizations. Clark contends that, as democracies continue to open previously closed doors, the values of equity, competence, and individual choice are in conflict, thus giving rise to compromise processes or actions that address the transition from elite to mass higher education.

Clark’s article on “organizational saga” is derived from case studies of Antioch, Reed, and Swarthmore, three leading liberal arts colleges. According to Clark, organizational saga is “a collective understanding of unique accomplishment in a formally established group” (p. 53). His article is frequently cited in the literature on organizational culture and was the first to be directly based on case studies. Its timing coincided with a surge of interest in organizations as having individual cultures. Clark suggests that saga can instill participant belief and loyalty in an organization, thus affecting the way governance-related problems are perceived and addressed.

The chapters in Part 2, “Probing the American National System,” examine Clark’s scholarly view of American higher education more than 40 years ago. He pays particular attention to student culture, faculty professionalization, universities under stress, and the development of the sociology of higher education as a field of study.

In his first essay, Clark postulates that “a college’s public image determines in large measure the kind of students that enter it” (p. 98). He suggests examining this phenomenon by conducting an intensive historical analysis of a few colleges with highly salient images, by collecting descriptions of current images from students, school counselors, and parents, and by linking entering students’ impressions to the ways in which they define their college participation. Certainly college rankings and similar measures developed to quantify the public perception of higher education institutions would be the antithesis of Clark’s approach.

Clark then describes student subcultures in terms of their level of involvement with ideas and their identification with the college, with the academic (high on both) and the vocational (low on both) subcultures as the extremes. This typology gave rise to many studies on student subcultures. Clark also wrote about faculty orientation and values, suggesting that they cluster around individual disciplines and departments. He discusses faculty commitment to local...

pdf

Share