University in Crisis: From the Middle Ages to the University of Excellence (Off the Fence: Morality, Politics and Society)

Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Acknowledgements Introduction How Not to Speak, Today, of the University? Crisis: What’s in a Word? The History of the University in Crisis Notes Chapter 1: The Past vs. the Future A History of the University in Four Ideas The University as Humanistic Enclave The University for Civic Training The University as Home to Disciplinary Research The University as Centre for Vocational Training The Crisis of the ‘Idea’ of the University Mandarins and the Modern State: The Crisis of the German University Conclusion Notes Chapter 2: The Student vs. the Society Strikes, Riots and the Origins of ‘Town and Gown’ Student Protest in the Post-War State Conclusion Notes Chapter 3: Discipline vs. Discipline Background: The Journey from Unity to Complexity The Two Cultures: The Spectre of Fragmentation Revisiting the Culture Wars: A Case Study in the Delegitimization of Knowledge30 Impact Factors and the Challenge of Disenchantment Knowledge (Still) Matters Notes Chapter 4: The Global vs. the Local From Universitas Magistrorum et Scholarium to National Differentiation The Global University, Area Studies and the World Citizen Excellence and the Evacuation of Responsibility Notes Chapter 5: The Professor vs. the Administration A Brief and Selective Taxonomy of Academic Governance New Public Management and the Radical-Creative Imagination The Material Underpinnings of the All-Administrative University36 Conclusion Notes Chapter 6: The Educational vs. the Economic Corporate Personhood or the Unintentional Economization of the American University The Wisconsin Idea in the Twenty-First Century From Apprentices to ‘Graduate Student Workers’ Conclusion Notes Chapter 7: Kant vs. the Managers: Managerialism, Self-Governance and the Burden of Institutional Reproduction Reclaiming the University of Aberdeen Legal and Illegal Conflicts Crisis, Critique and the Necessity of Conflict How to Speak of the University Today Notes Bibliography Index About the Author As 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. 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. It challenges administrators, faculty, students, and policy makers to enact rehabilitation of this essential social institution.