Remaking the American University: Market-Smart and Mission-Centered - Higher Education Reform Book for Administrators & Educators | Campus Leadership & Academic Strategy Guide
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Product Description
At one time, universities educated new generations and were a source of social change. Today colleges and universities are less places of public purpose, than agencies of personal advantage. Remaking the American University provides a penetrating analysis of the ways market forces have shaped and distorted the behaviors, purposes, and ultimately the missions of universities and colleges over the past half-century. The authors describe how a competitive preoccupation with rankings and markets published by the media spawned an admissions arms race that drains institutional resources and energies. Equally revealing are the depictions of the ways faculty distance themselves from their universities with the resulting increase in the number of administrators, which contributes substantially to institutional costs. Other chapters focus on the impact of intercollegiate athletics on educational mission, even among selective institutions; on the unforeseen result of higher education's "outsourcing" a substantial share of the scholarly publication function to for-profit interests; and on the potentially dire consequences of today's zealous investments in e-learning.A central question extends through this series of explorations: Can universities and colleges today still choose to be places of public purpose? In the answers they provide, both sobering and enlightening, the authors underscore a consistent and powerful lesson-academic institutions cannot ignore the workings of the markets. The challenge ahead is to learn how to better use those markets to achieve public purposes.
Customer Reviews
Based on the need of contemporary colleges in managing markets in light of decreased sources of secured revenues, I anticipated this book. I was somewhat disappointed. The biggest problem is that the author narrows his focus to the most selective institutions. While critical of the system that rewards and provides prestige for these institutions, beyond a few standard recommendations and a few standard (and light) criticisms, the author does not lay the blame on them. Rather, the author asserts it is decreased funding and a system that rewards prestige over educational quality, absolving the institutions of blame.Second, many of the recommendations lack substance and are really nothing that have not been recommended before. The one exception is the description of the academic audit, which is a great idea. However, hundreds of institutions (including community colleges), are already doing reviews and evaluations very similar to audits. Of course, these institutions, despite enrolling the vast majority of U.S. college students, are outside the author's radar and aren't dealt with in this book. Zemsky has the unfortunate fate of falling into two categories - a Stanford professor who can't imagine a student ever attending an institution that is not one of the top 50 or so in the nation and a higher ed. researcher who is more interested in impressing his colleagues than in impacting any real policy change or making a difference in the lives of the other 98% of college students.Much better books that cover similar terrain written by someone with practical experience are Duderstadt's "A University for the 21st Century" & "The Public University." These texts provide recommendations that can provide substantive, not theoretical, change.
