Contemporary Reflections on the University

(For the idea of the university in past historical periods, see History of the University)

Higher Education (General Discussion)
The Humanities
The Vision of Administrators
The University Portrayed in the Arts

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Higher Education (General Discussion)

• Philip G. Altback, et al., ed., Higher Education in American Society, 3rd. ed. (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1994)
• Stanley Aronowitz and William DiFazio, The Jobless Future: Sci-Tech and the Dogma of Work (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1994) (esp. Chap. 8, "A Taxonomy of Teacher Work")
• J. Victor Baldridge
  1. Power and Conflict in the University: Research in the Sociology of Complex Organizations (New York: J. Wiley, 1971)
  2. and Terrence Deal, with Cynthia Ingols, ed., The Dynamics of Organizational Change in Education (Berkeley, CA: McCutchan, 1983)
  3. and Terrence Deal, ed., Managing Change in Educational Organizations: Sociological Perspectives, Strategies, and Case Studies (Berkeley: McCutchan, 1975)
• Regina Barreca and Deborah Denenholz Morse, ed., The Erotics of Instruction (Hanover, NH: Univ. Press of New England, 1997)
• Michael Berube and Cary Nelson, Higher Education Under Fire: Politics, Economics, and the Crisis of the Humanities (New York: Routledge, 1995)
• Derek Curtis Bok, Universities and the Future of America (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1990)
• Leon Botstein, Jefferson's Children : Education and the Promise of American Culture (New York: Doubleday, 1997)
• Pierre Bourdieu
  1. with Jean-Claude Passeron, The Inheritors: French Students and Their Relation to Culture (1964; rpt. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1979)
  2. Homo Academicus, trans. Peter Collier (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 1988)
• Howard Rothmann Bowen, with Peter Clecak, Jacqueline Powers Doud, and Gordon K. Douglass, Investment in Learning: The Individual and Social Value of American Higher Education (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1977) (2nd ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1997)
• Alfonso Borrero Cabal, The University as an Institution Today (Paris: UNESCO, International Development Research Center, 1993)
• Steven M. Cahn
  1. The Eclipse of Excellence: A Critique of American Higher Education (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs, 1973)
  2. Education and the Democratic Ideal (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1979)
• Canadian Assoc. of University Teachers' Bulletin Online, "World Bank Promotes Its Agenda in Paris" (Nov. 1998) (report on the World Conference on Higher Education held at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, Oct. 5-9, 1998: "For the powerful forces seeking to control post-secondary education, led by the World Bank and its allies, the enemy are university teachers around the world; and war has been declared. The battle cry is that higher education 'must proceed to the most radical change and renewal it has ever been required to undertake.' And that means radically changing the 'traditional' or 'classical' or 'research based' university and its personnel to meet the ravenous needs of the knowledge-based global economy")
• Anne Carson (McGill U.), "The Idea of a University (after John Henry Newman)" (1999) (Threepenny Review)
• Alan H. Cromer, Connected Knowledge: Science, Philosophy, and Education (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997)
• Lynn Curry and Jon F. Wergin, Educating Professionals: Responding to New Expectations for Competence and Accountability (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993) ("The authors show, for example, how liberal learning - traditionally thought to be solely a concern of undergraduate curricula - is critical to effective professional education and describe how liberal learning goals can be adapted for and assessed in specific professional curricula. They describe how the subject of professional ethics can indeed be taught and learned . . . ")
• The Dearing Report (UK) (see Featured Controversy) (the 1997 report that initiated the legislative agenda in Britain to restructure higher education)
• Christopher Jon Delogu, "Crisis and Chance in Higher Education: The View from Here," Profession 1996, pp. 50-59 (on higher education in France)
• Ronald G. Ehrenberg, ed., The American University : National Treasure or Endangered Species? (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1997)
• James Engell and Anthony Dangerfield, "The Market-Model University: Humanities in the Age of Money" (1998) | Bibliography ("The starved logic that sees money as the most desirable result of education--that knowledge is money or should be directly convertible to it--has produced what we call the Three Criteria[:] . . . A Promise of Money . . . A Knowledge of Money . . . A Source of Money . . . Is our disinvestment in the humanities--what we might call the dehumanization of higher education--a legitimate response to desirable market factors?") (Harvard Alumni Magazine)
• James S. Fairweather, Faculty Work and Public Trust: Restoring the Value of Teaching and Public Service in American Academic Life (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1996)
• James O. Freedman, Idealism and Liberal Education (Ann Arbor, MI: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1996)
• Claire Gaudiani, "The Soul in the Machine or the Machine in the Soul?" Profession 1996, pp. 26-36 ("With changes in age-old relationships in and outside the university and deep financial pressures, internal governance and trust are so disordred in many institutions that higher education is in danger of becoming just another modern machine grinding at the human soul," pp. 26-27)
• A. Bartlett Giamatti, A Free and Ordered Space: The Real World of the University (New York: W.W. Norton, 1988)
• Charles E. Glassick, et al., Scholarship Assessed: Evaluation of the Professoriate, Special Report, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997)
• Mark B. Ginsburg, ed., The Politics of Educators' Work and Lives (New York: Garland, 1995)
• Jürgen Habermas, "The Idea of the University: Learning Processes," in The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians' Debate, trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989)
• Roger Harris (Middlesex U., UK), "Dearing Boring: The Massification of Higher Education" (1998) (commentary on the Dearing debate over widening access to higher education in Britain; "What of the consequences for academics of a mass market in [higher education] as a middle-class consumer product? No one is in any doubt of the relative market positions of UK universities once deregulation is allowed; and the USA provides a clear indication of where we are headed"; concludes with thoughts about the current nature of "knowledge") (Radical Philosophy)
• Ruth Hayhoe and Julia Pan, ed. East-West Dialogue in Knowledge and Higher Education (M.E. Sharpe, 1996)
• Donald Kennedy, Academic Duty (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1997)
• Clark Kerr
  1. The Uses of the University (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1963)
  2. with Marian L. Gade and Maureen Kawaoka, Troubled times for American Higher Education: The 1990s and Beyond (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994)
• Bruce A. Kimball, The Condition of American Liberal Education: Pragmatism and a Changing Tradition (New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1995)
• Annette Kolodny, Failing the Future: A Dean Looks at Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 1998)
• Christopher Lasch
  1. "Academic Pseudo-Radicalism: The Charade of 'Subversion,'" Chap. 10 of The Revolt of the Elite and the Betrayal of Democracy (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996)
  2. "Schooling and the New Illiteracy," Chap. 6 of The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: W. W. Norton,1979), pp. 125-53
• Paul Lauter, Canons and Contexts (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1991), esp. Part II, "The University and the Republic"
• Christopher J. Lucas, Crisis in the Academy: Rethinking Higher Education in America, vol. 1 (New York: St. Martin's, 1996)
• Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1984)
• Anne Matthews, Bright College Years: Inside the American Campus Today (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997)
• Reece McGee, Academic Janus: The Private College and Its Faculty (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1971)
• Louis Menand, ed., The Future of Academic Freedom (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1996)
• Richard E. Miller, As If Learning Mattered: Reforming Higher Education (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1998)
• Cary Nelson, Manifesto of a Tenured Radical (New York and London: New York Univ. Press, 1997)
• The New Zealand "Green Paper on a Future Tertiary Education" Controversy, 1997-98 (the controversy over plans to corporatize New Zealand's higher-education system; for a fuller overview of the issues, see Featured Controversies)
  1. Green Paper on "A Future Tertiary Education Policy for New Zealand (1997) (the government document)
  2. Nature: International Weekly Journal of Science, "New Zealand's Universities Face 'Privatization' Bid," March 26, 1998 (press "Continue" after free registration process) (this is the article that brought the controversy to international attention; "Radical proposals from the New Zealand government for turning universities into private bodies fully exposed to market forces, and with all academics designated as either teachers or researchers, have generated fierce criticism from the academic community.")
  3. Public Submissions (responses to the Green Paper by groups, institutions, and individuals answering the New Zealand government's call for submissions)
  4. New Zealand Association of University Staff (AUS) Web Site (includes archive of documents and criticisms related to the controversy)
     • Selected Resources:
     • AUS Submission in Response to the "Green Paper"
     • "Don't Corporatise the Tertiary Education Sector!"(AUS press release)
     • AUS Bibliography on the Issues
  5. Update:White Paper on "Tertiary Education in New Zealand: Policy Directions for the 21st Century" (Nov. 1998)
• George Dennis O'Brien, All the Essential Half-Truths About Higher Education (Chicago: U. Chicago Press, 1997)
• Martha C. Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1997)
• Robert Orrill, "An End to Mourning: Liberal Education in Contemporary America" and "Introduction", in The Condition of American Liberal Education: Pragmatism and a Changing Tradition (New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1995)
• Jaroslav Pelikan, The Idea of the University: A Reexamination (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1992)
• Profession 1996 (New York: MLA, 1996) (esp. the section on "The Changing Academy")
• Bill Readings, The University in Ruins (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1996)
• Alan Ryan (Oxford U.), "The American Way" (1999) ("The British university system is in a mess. To combine successfully mass higher education with elite excellence, it must follow the decentralised US model. It must introduce differentiated tuition fees, allow a mixture of public and private funding, and give up the pretence of uniform standards") (Prospect)
• Peter Sacks, Generation X Goes to College: An Eye-Opening Account of Teaching in Postmodern America (Chicago and LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1996)
• Carol Geary Schneider and Robert Shoenberg, "Contemporary Understandings of Liberal Education" (1998) (Assoc. of American Colleges and Universities)
• Edward Shils
  1. The Calling of Education: The Academic Ethic and Other Essays on Higher Education, ed. Steven Grosby (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1997)
  2. The Order of Learning: Essays on the Contemporary University (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1997)
• John W. Somme, ed., The Academy in Crisis: The Political Economy of Higher Education (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1995)
• William V. Spanos, The End of Education: Toward Posthumanism (Minneapolis, MN: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1993)
• John G. Sperling and Robert W. Tucker, For-Profit Higher Education: Developing a World-Class Workforce (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1997)
• Jane Tompkins, A Life in School: What the Teacher learned (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1996)
• Carol A. Twigg and Diana G. Oblinger, "The Virtual University" (1996) (Educom)
• David Ward, "Technology and the Changing Boundaries of Higher Education" (1994) ("The idea of the modern American university, with its graduate programs based on the assumption that basic knowledge was essential to our economic development, came into existence between 1895 and 1905. . . . we're now in a similar decade that will have consequences just as momentous for the shape of higher education") (Educom Review)
• William H. Willimon and Thomas H. Naylor, The Abandoned Generation: Rethinking Higher Education (William B. Eerdmans, 1995)
• Bruce Wilshire [Wiltshire], The Moral Collapse of the University: Professionalism, Purity, and Alienation (Albany, NY: State Univ. of New York Press, 1990)
• Wingspread Group on Higher Education, "An American Imperative: Higher Expectations for Higher Education: An Open Letter to Those Concerned about the American Future" (1993)
• Langdon Winner (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), "The Handwriting on the Wall: Resisting Technoglobalism's Assault on Education" (1997) (major essay on the general problem of the corporatization of education by a well-known philosopher and historian of technology)

The Humanities

• Rebecca W. Bushnell, A Culture of Teaching: Early Modern Humanism in Theory and Practice(Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1996) (reflects on the relation between past and present humanist education)
• Chester E. Finn, Jr., Diane Ravitch, P. Holley Roberts, eds., Challenges to the Humanities (New York : Holmes and Meier, 1985)
• Henry A. Giroux, "Is There a Place for Cultural Studies in Colleges of Education?" in Henry A. Giroux with Patrick Shannon, eds., Education and Cultural Studies: Toward a Performative Practice (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 231-47
• Todd Gitlin, "The Liberal Arts in an Age of Info-Glut" (1998) ("When information piles up higgledy-piggledy -- when information becomes the noise of our culture -- the need to teach the lessons of the liberal arts is urgent.") (Chronicle of Higher Education)
• Christian Gregory (U. Florida), "The Future of an Illusion" (1998) (Workplace)
• John Guillory, "Preprofessionalism: What Graduate Students Want," Profession 1996, pp. 91-99 (argues that the current "preprofessionalism" of literature graduate students under the gun of the sparse job market--as attested by the perceived need to publish and give papers--is an extreme form of the "phantasmic" desires of the literature profession generally, caught as it is in the paradox between its long-term decline in social centrality and its imitation/internalization of mainstream organizational and productivity norms; also links the present hyper-politicization of literary studies to its social marginality)
• Alvin Kernan, ed., What's Happened to the Humanities? (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997) | Preannouncement by Kernan: "A New Volume of Essays: Changes in the Humanities since World War II"
• J. Hillis Miller, "Literary Study in the Transnational University," Profession 1996, pp. 6-14
• Martha C. Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1997) (Also see her "Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism" (1996) (Boston Review)
• Clifford Siskin, "The Business of Romanticism" (1997) ("the particular configuration of genres we call Literature is, in fact, a specific historical instance of a larger category--the technology of writing") (Romantic Circles)
• William V. Spanos, The End of Education: Toward Posthumanism (Minneapolis, MN: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1993)

The Vision of Administrators

(Note: since "administrators" in higher education are often, if not always, drawn from the ranks of accomplished working scholars, the following category of resources is less about the separate identity, "administrator," than about the discourse of educational governance. Some of these authors and works also appear in other categories of this bibliography.)

• General Resources on Higher Ed Administrators
  • James R. Appleton, et al., Pieces of Eight: The Rites, Roles, and Styles of the Dean, By Eight Who Have Been There (Portland, OR: NASPA Institute of Research and Development, National Assoc. of Student Personnel Administrators, 1978)
  • Arthur James Dibden, ed., The Academic Deanship in American Colleges and Universities (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1968)
  • Elwood B. Ehrle and John B. Bennett, Managing the Academic Enterprise: Case Studies for Deans and Provosts (New York: Amer. Council on Education / Macmillan, 1987)
  • James L. Fisher
    1. and et al., The Effective College President (New York: Amer. Council on Education / Macmillan, 1988)
    2. and et al., ed., Leaders on Leadership: The College Presidency (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1988)
    3. Power of the Presidency (New York: Amer. Council on Education / Macmillan, 1984)
    4. and et al., The President and Fund Raising (New York: Amer. Council on Education / Macmillan, 1989)
    5. and et al., Presidential Leadership: Making a Difference (Phoenix, AZ: Oryx, 1996)
  • John Wesley Gould, The Academic Deanship (New York: Published for the Institute of Higher Education by the Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia Univ, 1964)
  • Richard T. Ingram and Associates, ed., Governing Independent Colleges and Universities: A Handbood for Trustees, Chief Executives, and Other Campus Leaders (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993)
  • James Martin and James E. Samels and Associates, First Among Equals: The Role of the Chief Academic Officer (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1997)
  • Van Cleve Morris, Deaning, Middle Management in Academe (Urbana, IL: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1981)
  • Allan Tucker and Robert A. Bryan, The Academic Dean: Dove, Dragon, and Diplomat, 2nd ed. (New York: Amer. Council on Education / Macmillan, 1991)
  • Merle Scott Ward, Philosophies of Administration Current in the Deanship of the Liberal Arts College (1934; rpt. New York: AMS, 1972)
• General Resources on Higher Ed Trustees and Boards
  • Henry L. Bowden, Boards of Trustees: Their Organization and Operation at Private Colleges and Universities (Macon, GA: Mercer Univ. Press, 1982)
  • John Carver and Miriam Mayhew Carver, A New Vision of Board Leadership: Governing the Community College (Assoc. of Community College Trustees, 1994)
  • Richard Chait
    1. and et al., The Effective Board of Trustees (New York: Amer. Council on Education / Macmillan, 1991)
    2. and et al., Improving the Performance of Governing Boards (Phoenix, AZ: Oryx, 1996)
    3. and et al., Trustee Responsibility for Academic Affairs (Washington, D.C.: Assoc. of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, 1984)
  • James L. Fisher, The Board and the President (New York: Amer. Council on Education / Macmillan, 1991)
  • Arthur C. Frantzreb, Trustee's Role in Advancement (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1981)
  • Louis H. Heilbron, The College and University Trustee (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1973)
  • Orley R. Herron, The Role of the Trustee (Scranton, PA: International Textbook, 1969)
  • Richard T. Ingram
    1. ed., Governing Independent Colleges and Universities: A Handbood for Trustees, Chief Executives, and Other Campus Leaders (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993)
    2. Handbook of College and University Trusteeship(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1980)
    3. Ten Basic Responsibilities of Nonprofit Boards (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Nonprofit Boards, 1988)
    Morton A Rauh
    1. College and University Trusteeship (Yellow Springs, OH: Antioch, 1959)
    2. A Trusteeship of Colleges and Universities (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969)
  • Miriam Mason Wood
    1. ed., Nonprofit Boards and Leadership: Cases on Governance, Change, and Board-Staff Dynamics (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996)
    2. Trusteeship in the Private College (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1985)
• Individual Administrators
  • Henry H. Bauer ["Josef Martin"], To Rise Above Principle: The Memoirs of an Unreconstructed Dean (Urbana, IL: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1988)
  • Lee C. Bollinger, "Inaugural Address" (U. Michigan; September 19, 1997)
  • William M. Bulger, "Inaugural Address" (U. Massachusetts; September 18, 1997)
  • Gerhard Casper, "Inaugural Address" (Stanford U.; October 2, 1992)
  • John R. Darling, "Inaugural Address: The Choice is Ours" (Pittsburgh State U.; March 7, 1996)
  • Nancy S. Dye, "Inaugural Address" (Oberlin College; October 8, 1994)
  • James O. Freedman, Idealism and Liberal Education (Ann Arbor, MI: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1996)
  • A. Bartlett Giamatti, A Free and Ordered Space: The Real World of the University (New York: W.W. Norton, 1988)
  • Daniel Coit Gilman, "Inaugural Address" (U. California; November 7, 1872); perhaps crosslist with 19C university?
  • M.R.C. Greenwood, "Inaugural Address" (U. California, Santa Cruz; May 26, 1997)
  • Richard L. Husfloen, "Inaugural Address" (Augustana University College, Canada; October 19, 1996)
  • G. Curtis Jones, Jr., "Inaugural Address: The Key is Credibility" (Phillips Univ.; January 24, 1997)
  • Annette Kolodny, Failing the Future: A Dean Looks at Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 1998)
  • Mamphela Ramphele, "Inaugural Address: Embracing the Future" (Univ. of Cape Town; October 11, 1996)
  • Hunter R. Rawlings, III, "Inaugural Address: To Compose Cornell: Cultivating the Mind" (Cornell U.; October 12, 1995)
  • Judith Rodin, "Inaugural Address" (U. Pennsylvania; October 21, 1994)
  • Hans van Ginkel, "Inaugural Address" (United Nations U., Tokyo; September 1, 1997)
  • James S. Tederman, Advice from the Dean: A Personal Perspective on the Philosophy, Roles, and Approaches of a Dean at a Small, Private Liberal Arts College (National Assoc. of Student Personnel Administrators, 1997)
  • Charles M. Vest, "Inaugural Address" (MIT; May 10, 1991)
  • Mark G. Yudof, "Inaugural Address" (Univ. of Minnesota; 1997)

The University Portrayed in the Arts

(This is a selection of creative works that engage powerfully or richly with the idea of business. Suggestions for this section are very welcome.)

• 19th-Century
  • Cuthbert Bede (Edward Bradley), The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green (1853-7)
  • Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure (1894-5)
  • Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxford (1861)
  • John Gibson Lockhart, Reginald Dalton: A Story of English University Life (1823)
  • John Henry Newman, Loss and Gain (1848)
  • Alfred Tennyson, "Lines on Cambridge of 1830" (1830)
• 20th-Century
  • Joe Amato (Illinois Institute of Technology), "What a Little Moonlighting Can Do" (1998) (a contemporary poet's essayistic / multimedia / free-form reflections on the arts and the academy in the age of business and technology)
  • A.S. Byatt, Possession: A Romance (New York: Vintage / Random House, 1991)
  • Coral Lansbury, Felicity (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1987)
  • David Lodge
    1. Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975; rpt.; New York: Viking, 1995)
    2. Small World: An Academic Romance (1984; rpt.; New York: Penguin, 1995)
    3. Nice Work (London: Secker & Warburg, 1988)
  • L.T. Meade, A Sweet Girl Graduate (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 19--?)
  • Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night (1935; rpt. New York: HarperPaperbacks / HarperCollins, 1985)
  • C. P. Snow, The Masters: A Novel (1951; rpt. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959) (the university and business, politics, and academic politics; basis for a 1-hour BBC show in the "Strangers and Brothers" series)