Higher Education: Open for Business

In the 1960s, two significant events occurred. In 1963, Clark Kerr, president of the University of California, invented the concept of the multiversity in his book The Uses of the University. By that concept, Kerr meant an institution that was becoming increasingly indistinguishable from any other business enterprise in our industrial society, ‘a mechanism held together by administrative rules and powered by money.’ Second, in 1966, Ronald Reagan ran for governor on a platform that included ‘cleaning up the mess in Berkeley.’ When Reagan became president of the United States in the 1980s, a movement began to privatize and corporatize functions and institutions previously thought of as public, fueled by the questionable belief that the for-profit sector could do it less expensively and more efficiently. The chapters found in Higher Education explore the negative consequences of these trends upon colleges and universities and highlight important issues that have largely been ignored.

The book will be useful, particularly in graduate-level courses in higher education. Summing Up: Recommended.

The ever-growing power of the market ethic as a touchstone for university decision-making is transforming higher education. This provocative book casts a critical eye at how market values increasingly predominate across the campus landscape: in the science labs and on the athletic fields, in admissions offices and presidents’ offices. For anyone who’s troubled by the idea that higher education is losing sight of its true calling-the cultivation of knowledge-Higher Education delivers a confirmation and a call to arms.

The general issues raised by the authors are important ones.