A Manifesto for the Public University

Description

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. The Browne report advocates, in effect, the privatisation of higher education in England. With the proposed removal of the current cap on student fees and the removal of state funding from most undergraduate degree programmes, universities are set for a period of major reorganisation not seen since the higher education reforms in the 1960s. This book brings together some of the leading figures in Higher Education in the UK to set out what they see as the role of the university in public life. The book argues for a more balanced understanding of the value of universities than that outlined in the Browne Report. It advocates that they should not purely be seen in terms of their contribution to economic growth and the human capital of individuals but also in terms of their contribution to the public. This book responds to the key debates that the Browne review and Government statements have sparked, with essays on the cultural significance of the university, the role of the government in funding research, inequality in higher education, the role of quangos in public life and the place of social science research. It is a timely, important and considered exploration of the role of the universities in the UK and a reminder of what we should value and protect in our higher education system.

John Holmwood is Professor of Sociology at the University of Nottingham, and is also the Chair of the Council of UK Heads and Professors of Sociology and a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. He currently holds a Leverhulme Research Fellowship on the moral economy of inequality. Contributors: Professor Michael Burawoy, Professor Stefan Collini, Professor, Desmond King, Professor Lisa Jardine, Professor Diane Reay, Professors Steve McKay and Karen Rowlingson and Professor Steve Smith

After years of quiet preparation, the Blitzkrieg against the public university is unfolding across such a massive front that no one scholar can stake out an adequate line of defence. In this timely volume, a company of leading experts sketches the cultural and intellectual fortifications needed to protect on of the world's best public university systems from serious and possibly irreparable damage. -- Howard Hotson, Professor of Early Modern Intellectual History, University of Oxford, UK It is no exaggeration that British universities are confronting their most substantial challenge since the Robbins Report set out the basis for public higher education in 1963. These essays re-state, in sharp and contemporary terms, the case for the development and dissemination of knowledge as a public good. -- Martin Hall, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Salford, UK This collection of essays by senior academics from a variety of disciplines should be read by anyone concerned about the future of higher education. The case they make for the public benefits derived from universities and therefore for public funding to be maintained is compelling. -- Baroness Tessa Blackstone, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Greenwich, UK Following the 2010 announcement of what John Holmwood so accurately describes as the privatizing of undergraduate education, all that was once solid in higher education in Britain, if not yet melting into air, is now far more uncertain. In this balanced, calmly and carefully argued collection of chapters the case for something far better than what undergraduates are about to be offered is made. -- Danny Dorling, Professor of Human Geography at the University of Sheffield, UK, and Adjunct Professor at the University of Canterbury, NZ