Description
Book SynopsisAs is obvious to the casual newspaper reader, the debt-saddled student, the increasingly precarious university teaching force, the reactionary politician, and the budget-constrained administrator, the entire system of higher education is in crisis. This book brings necessary clarity to contentious debates about the state and future of the university by reconstructing the institution’s history around the theme of crisis.
Since its origins in medieval Bologna, the university has been a site where humanity has worked out many of the thorniest questions of individual and collective purpose, often in what were described as crisis conditions. This book is not just a history of the university or a survey of contemporary debates, though. It is also an impassioned defence of the university as a privileged institution through which threats to collective self-governance are most acutely felt and from which strategies for its rehabilitation can be most fruitfully developed.
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Chapter 1: The Past vs. The Future
Chapter 2: The Student vs. Society
Chapter 3: Discipline vs. Discipline
Chapter 4: The Local vs. The Global
Chapter 5: The Professor vs. The Administration
Chapter 6: The Educational vs. The Economic
Chapter 7: Kant vs. the Managers: Managerialism, Self-Governance, and the Burden of Institutional Reproduction
Bibliography
About the Author
