The Future of Higher Education: Rhetoric, Reality, and the Risks of the Market (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Future of Higher Education: Rhetoric, Reality, and the Risks of the Market Gustavo J. Gregorutti The Future of Higher Education: Rhetoric, Reality, and the Risks of the Market, by Frank Newman, Lara Couturier, & Jamie Scurry. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004. 304 pp. ISBN 0-7879-6972-9. It is difficult to find books that effectively portray and interconnect past, present, and future trends in higher education. While it is relatively easy to describe the past, to unfold current forces of change within an established market and to foresee new tendencies is the task that Newman, Couturier, and Scurry have undertaken in The Future of Higher Education, and they do so successfully. Funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Ford Foundation, this book not only provides an overview of current trends and topics in higher education but also reviews emerging issues, among them new market players in academic funding, competition between institutions, the increase of for-profit and virtual institutions, the influence of technology on teaching approaches and learning, and the rethinking of the mission of universities in the context of the 21st century. The book's main concern is with market-oriented pressures that are reshaping institutions of higher education. The authors offer creative approaches to new challenges in an attempt to stimulate a productive dialogue among policymakers, politicians, faculty, and administrators, as the authors explain at the outset of the book: First, we want the book to serve as a wake-up call to the leaders of our colleges and universities. A second goal is to provide policy makers with policy solutions that have emerged worldwide to restructure higher education. A third goal is to convince both of these groups—the academic and the political leaders—as well as the engaged civic leaders including business and community leaders, that American society has an enormous stake in preserving, clarifying, and enhancing the public purposes of higher education. (p. xii) Based on past examples such as the Morrill Act of 1862, the Wisconsin experience in the early 1900s ("the university in the service of the people," p. 216), and the G.I. Bill of 1944, the authors argue that higher education leaders and society at large must take responsibility for restructuring the established market forces into a new model that ensures the public purpose of education. [End Page 487] The book is not divided into distinct sections, although the chapters are grouped naturally into three parts. In the first five chapters, the authors describe how American universities have come under fire for tensions and contradictions in their missions and outcomes. A society that has increasingly seen education as a private asset to obtain personal profit has distorted and overemphasized one of the many dimensions in a rich universe of values. Over the last 15 years, there has been increasing concern about the mission and future of higher education, since universities have increasing influence in the new globalized society (Etzkowitz, Webster, & Healey, 1998). Competition among colleges and the growing influence of market values are compelling universities to become entrepreneurial in order to survive and prosper in a continually changing environment (Callan & Finney, 1997; Duderstadt, 2000; Slaughter & Leslie, 1997). On one hand, Newman, Couturier, and Scurry point out that higher education needs more resources to cope with increasing costs. Many traditional sources of income, such as state support and federal grants, are diminishing. On the other hand, the new missions of a knowledge-driven economy and society are creating perplexing paths through a transition that seems never-ending. Political and corporate actions playing with market-oriented rules have generated changes in the environment surrounding universities and have triggered important changes in higher education. This entrepreneurial environment is challenging the mission and traditional view of higher education. This identity crisis finds universities, for instance, facing demands for equal opportunities for low-income and minority students in the context of demographic shifts. Education must mirror society's needs to avoid social risks. In this book, Newman, Couturier, and Scurry depict academics, businessmen, and political leaders as being somewhat confused about the goals and purposes of higher education. The authors remark that policymakers must have a strategy to fill the gap between...