Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line

by Kirp, David L.

• ISBN13: 9780674016347
• ISBN10: 0674016343
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-09-30
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

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?

Table of Contents

Introduction: The New U	1	(10)
I THE HIGHER EDUCATION BAZAAR
1. This Little Student Went to Market	11	(22)
2. Nietzsche's Niche: The University of Chicago	33	(19)
3. Benjamin Rush's "Brat": Dickinson College	52	(14)
4. Star Wars: New York University	66	(35)
II MANAGEMENT	101	(48)
5. The Dead Hand of Precedent: New York Law School	93	(17)
6. Kafka Was an Optimist: The University of Southern California and the University of Michigan	110	(20)
7. Mr. Jefferson's "Private" College: Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Virginia	130	(19)
III VIRTUAL WORLDS
8. Rebel Alliance: Classics Departments in the Associated Colleges of the South	149	(15)
9. The Market in Ideas: Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology	164	(21)
10. The British Are Coming-and Going: Open University	185	(22)
IV THE SMART MONEY
11. A Good Deal of Collaboration: The University of California, Berkeley	207	(14)
12. The Information Technology Gold Rush: IT Certification Courses in Silicon Valley	221	(19)
13. They're All Business: DeVry University	240	(15)
Conclusion: The Corporation of Learning	255	(10)
Notes	265	(50)
Acknowledgments	315	(3)
Index	318