Knowledge matters
Subtitle: the public mission of the research university
By: edited by Diana Rhoten and Craig Calhoun
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 539
ISBN-13: 9780231151146; 9780231521833
Subjects: Public universities and colleges; Higher Education; Aims and objectives; Education and globalization; Sociology of Knowledge; Social aspects; Research
Description: Universities Are Changing Around The World. In China and Africa there is massive expansion, while many of America's greatest public universities are experiencing major budget cuts. In Latin America universities have been affected by dictatorships and privatization but are now growing in ways central to economic development. In Europe universities built as state institutions are being told to raise more money from private sources and are being reorganized so they will compete better in global rankings. In this context clarity about the public mission of universities is vital, yet it is lacking both outside and inside academia.

When universities educate students, is this simply a private benefit because it advances their careers? Or is it a public good because informed citizens are integral to democracy and essential for national economic development? How important is equal opportunity? What are the effects of hierarchy? Who pays now and who will pay tomorrow? Should the results of academic research be private property for sale or openly available for public use? Who sets the university research agendas? What kinds of scholarship flourish and what kinds suffer? Should producing competitive research take priority over educating competent students? Do international rankings distort these and other university priorities or provide needed objective assessments? What are the university's roles and responsibilities in terms of knowledge creation and dissemination today? And tomorrow?

In this collection, scholars report from Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and North America. They confront the realities and challenges of higher education as it is torn between multiple public and private agendas. This comparative perspective illuminates both the continuing importance of the university's public mission and the pressing need to clarify it.

Diana Rhoten is the founder and director of the Knowledge Institutions Program and the Digital Media and Learning Project at the Social Science Research Council. She has published in a range of academic journals and advises cultural, scientific, and educational institutions on issues of organizational design, creative collaboration, and adaptive change.

Craig Calhoun is president of the Social Science Research Council and University Professor of the Social Sciences at New York University. He has served in a variety of academic leadership positions, including as a dean, and has conducted research in many international settings. His most recent book is an edited collection, Robert K Merton: Sociology of Science and Sociology as Science (Columbia). --Book Jacket.
Notes: "A Columbia/SSRC Book."

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: The public mission of the research university / Craig Calhoun; title: Great expectations, past promises, and golden ages: rethinking the "crisis" of public research universities / Gustavo E. Fischman, Sarah E. Igo, Diana Rhoten; title: "El central volumen de la fuerza": global hegemony in higher education and research / Simon Marginson, Imanol Ordorika; title: The state, the university, and society in Soviet and Russian higher education: the search for a new public mission / Mark S. Johnson, Andrey V. Kortunov; title: Public research universities in Latin America and their relation to economic development / Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid, Pablo Ruiz-Nápoles; title: When neoliberalism colonizes higher education in Asia: bringing the "public" back to the contemporary university / Ka Ho Mok; title: Challenges for higher education in Africa, Ubuntu, and democratic justice / Yusef Waghid; title: The idea of the public university and the national project in Africa: toward a full circle, from the 1960s to the present / N'Dri T. Assié-Lumumba, Tukumbi Lumumba-Kasongo; title: Rethinking what is made public in the university's public mission / John Willinsky; title: Public research universities: from land grant to federal grant to patent grant institutions / Diana Rhoten, Walter Powell; title: German universities in the new knowledge ecology: current changes in research conditions and university-industry relations / Stefan Lange, Georg Krücken; title: The micropolitics of knowledge in England and Europe: the Cambridge University IPRs controversy and its macropolitical lessons / Voldemar Tomusk; title: Playing the quality game: whose quality and whose higher education? / John Brennan, Mala Singh; title: The academic workplace: what we already know, what we still do not know, and what we would like to know / Christine Musselin; title: Cultural formations of the public university: globalization, diversity, and the state at the University of Michigan / Michael D. Kennedy.