Educational economies

Abstract

Contemporary public discussion of and policy formation with respect to higher education pay scant attention to the history and structure of the modern university. In part this is forgivable, since educational historians deal almost exclusively with schooling to the neglect of any wider assessment of formal education within the public sphere. Nonetheless, personal ‘experience’, much less sheer prejudice, is no substitute for an understanding of ‘higher learning’. This review essay considers the outline history provided by Robert Stevens’ From University to Uni and suggests that we are now entering an era of a ‘postmodern’ university whose purposes are both incoherent and implausible. Keith Tribe was born in London in 1949. A former member of the Editorial Board of Economy and Society (1976–84), he is now a private scholar, translator and Junior Rowing Coach at The King's School, Worcester. He most recently edited A Critical Bibliography of Adam Smith (Pickering & Chatto, 2002), and a new edition of his translation of Reinhart Koselleck's Futures Past was published this year by Columbia University Press. His new translations of Max Weber's ‘Basic sociological concepts’, Chapter 1 of Economy and Society, and ‘The “objectivity” of knowledge in social science and social policy’ were published in Sam Whimster's Essential Weber (Routledge, 2004). His current research is on the early development of ‘neoclassical’ economics in Europe and North America from 1850 to 1950.