Public Universities, Managerialism and the Value of Higher Education
Authors: Watts, Rob
Free Preview- Compares and contrasts the ways in which the university system has radically transformed over the years across Britain, America and Australia
- Seeks answers to the question: ‘what has happened to our universities?’
- Advances a provocative alternative argument to why universities are now percieved as businesses
- Critiques the current treatment of academics and lecturers, and highlights the long-term negative effects this will have
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- About this book
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This book provides a rigorous examination into the realities of the current university system in Britain, America and Australia. The radical makeover of the higher education system which began in the 1980s has conventionally been understood as universities being transformed into businesses which sell education and research in a competitive market. This engaging and provocative book argues that this is not actually the case. Drawing on lived experience, Watts asserts that the reality is actually a consequence of contradictory government policy and new public management whose exponents talk and act ‘as-if’ universities have become businesses. The result of which is ‘market crazed governance’, whereby universities are subjected to expensive rebranding and advertising campaigns and the spread of a toxic culture of customer satisfaction surveys which ask students to evaluate their teachers and what they have learned, based on government ‘metrics’ of research ‘quality’.
This has led to a situation where not only the normal teacher-student relationship is inverted, academic professional autonomy is eroded and many students are short-changed, but where universities are becoming places whose leaders are no longer prepared to tell the truth and too few academics are prepared to insist they do. An impassioned and methodical study, this book will be of great interest to academics and scholars in the field of higher education and education policy. - About the authors
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Rob Watts is Professor of Social Policy at RMIT University, Australia. His books include The Foundations of the National Welfare State, Sociology Australia, and States of Violence and the Civilising Process: On Criminology and State Crime.
- Table of contents (10 chapters)
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Introduction
Pages 1-27
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Thinking About the Public University
Pages 29-67
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The ‘Good Ol’ Days’: Life in the Public University
Pages 69-103
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Universities Under the Sign of the Market
Pages 105-146
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The Idea of ‘Marketising’ the University: Against Magical Thinking
Pages 147-179
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Table of contents (10 chapters)
Bibliographic Information
- Bibliographic Information
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- Book Title
- Public Universities, Managerialism and the Value of Higher Education
- Authors
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- Rob Watts
- Series Title
- Palgrave Critical University Studies
- Copyright
- 2017
- Publisher
- Palgrave Macmillan UK
- Copyright Holder
- The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)
- eBook ISBN
- 978-1-137-53599-3
- DOI
- 10.1057/978-1-137-53599-3
- Hardcover ISBN
- 978-1-137-53598-6
- Series ISSN
- 2662-7329
- Edition Number
- 1
- Number of Pages
- XXI, 359
- Topics
