How can you turn an English department into a revenue center? How do you grade students if they are "customers" you must please? How do you keep industry from dictating a university's research agenda? What happens when the life of the mind meets the bottom line? Wry and insightful, Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line takes us on a cross-country tour of the most powerful trend in academic life today--the rise of business values and the belief that efficiency, immediate practical usefulness, and marketplace triumph are the best measures of a university's success. With a shrewd eye for the telling example, David Kirp relates stories of marketing incursions into places as diverse as New York University's philosophy department and the University of Virginia's business school, the high-minded University of Chicago and for-profit DeVry University. He describes how universities "brand" themselves for greater appeal in the competition for top students; how academic super-stars are wooed at outsized salaries to boost an institution's visibility and prestige; how taxpayer-supported academic research gets turned into profitable patents and ideas get sold to the highest bidder; and how the liberal arts shrink under the pressure to be self-supporting. Far from doctrinaire, Kirp believes there's a place for the market--but the market must be kept in its place. While skewering Philistinism, he admires the entrepreneurial energy that has invigorated academe's dreary precincts. And finally, he issues a challenge to those who decry the ascent of market values: given the plight of higher education, what is the alternative? (20031228)
Author(s): David L. Kirp
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: 336
Contents
......Page 6
Introduction: The New U......Page 10
I. THE HIGHER EDUCATION BAZAAR......Page 18
1. This Little Student Went to Market......Page 20
2. Nietzsche’s Niche: The University of Chicago
......Page 42
3. Benjamin Rush’s “Brat”: Dickinson College
......Page 61
4. Star Wars: New York University
......Page 75
II. MANAGEMENT 101
......Page 100
5. The Dead Hand of Precedent: New York Law School
......Page 102
6. Kafka Was an Optimist: The University of Southern California and the University of Michigan
......Page 119
7. Mr. Jefferson’s “Private” College: Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Virginia
......Page 139
III. VIRTUAL WORLDS......Page 156
8. Rebel Alliance: Classics Departments in the Associated Colleges of the South
......Page 158
9. The Market in Ideas: Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
......Page 173
10. The British Are Coming—and Going: Open University
......Page 194
IV. THE SMART MONEY......Page 214
11. A Good Deal of Collaboration: The University of California, Berkeley
......Page 216
12. The Information Technology Gold Rush: IT Certification Courses in Silicon Valley
......Page 230
13. They’re All Business: DeVry University......Page 249
Conclusion: The Corporation of Learning......Page 264
Notes......Page 274
Acknowledgments......Page 324
Index......Page 327
