Book review
Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education
Princeton University Press, April 2003
Author: Derek Bok
Review by Donald Clark, Epic Group plc
Higher Education or Education for Hire?
This book was recommended to me by Jane Massy, who has an eye for interesting texts and research. As is so often the case, a recommended text was well worth the read.
From 1971 to 1991, Derek Bok was the President of Harvard, arguably
the most important university on the planet, so he has both stature
and highly relevant experience. However, he is no carping conservative.
His 1997 book, The State of the Nation, showed
that he was a liberal who was not past making a direct attack on
the US government for its failure in poorly designed legislation,
burdensome regulation, the neglect of working-class interests and
failed anti-poverty policies. In The Shape of the River
(2000) he tackled a major educational issue, affirmative action,
head on. In an empirical follow-up to the US affirmative action
programme, he showed that affirmative action worked. Unfortunately,
in this present work he veers back towards a more elitist view of
the world; that aside, however, this is a key text in the general
arguments about the future of universities.
The book has one interesting core message. The triumph of the market
economy has led to pressures on universities to see themselves as
corporate entities in which everything is up for sale. In Bok’s
view, the Academy should not be extending its reach too far beyond
the campus, for the simple reason that it’s not very good at it.
The values, organisational structures, types of people and habits
of Academe are, in his opinion, ill suited to commerce. He also
shows that many of these efforts are not in fact commercially sound.
His solution is for them to stick to what they know best: research
and teaching.
The ‘Yahoo Professor of Computer Science’
Looking at the commercialisation of education and research he examines the actual costs against benefits. When you factor in hidden costs, he argues, these changes are not as profitable as their supporters claim. By not taking the high moral ground, his arguments remain of greater relevance. In some cases his attacks are direct, as with the funding of academic programmes by pharmaceutical companies. In other cases they are a little condescending, as with the distain he reserves for faculty members bearing titles such as the ‘Yahoo Professor of Computer Science’.
Sprawling multiversities
Vision, not ‘sprawling multiversities’ is what is needed. Under
pressure from the triumph of science and computer courses, the humanities
are being squeezed. However, there is little here on the failure
of universities to see this as progress. Bill Gates, Larry Ellison,
Steve Jobs, Michael Dell and a host of other younger luminaries,
all university drop-outs, built this brave new world. The Academy
can’t blame them for its failings. It must respond by proposing
ways in which it can become more responsive and flexible in the
face of technological change.
US bias as Bok knocks the jocks
Very much an American text, the book spends an unnatural amount of time on sports in the US system: two of its eleven chapters are dedicated to athletics in universities. Bok clearly despises the ‘jock’ culture that has been allowed to develop on the back of promised sports revenues. This is clearly not true of universities outside of the US, so one can safely skip these two chapters, and other material in the book where the US bias becomes too obvious.
High on critique, low on solutions
As a critique, this book does a great job; but it fails to provide
solutions, other than a snail-shell retreat into older academic
values. It is high on DON’Ts, low on DOs. If you are interested
in solutions rather than critiques, read The Uses of the
University (2001) by Clark Kerr. Kerr starts with a diagnosis,
outlining the challenges of change, and is refreshingly honest about
the current failings of the system; poor undergraduate teaching,
turf wars, ageing faculty management, technological pressures, political
pressures around access, and so on. He would like to see proactive
change, rather than the current reactive posturing.
The language of Bok’s volume is slick, and one could not describe the book as anything other than well written; but it does have the slow, languid ‘seen it all’ prose style one tends to associate with world-weary academics. It’s a style I personally like, but many will find that it smacks of the ‘high table’. As my friend Ken Robertson, ex-academic, always says of those that run universities; ‘it’s not that they’re not part of the rat race, they’re just incredibly smart rats!’
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