Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education

Kirp, David L.; Roberts, Patrick [Contributor]; Berman, Elizabeth Popp [Contributor]; Solomon, Debra [Contributor]; VanAntwerpen, Jonathan [Contributor]; Holman, Jeffrey T. [Contributor];

ISBN 10: 0674011465 / ISBN 13: 9780674011465

Published by Harvard University Press, 2003

About this Item

Octavo, 9 1/2" tall, vi + 328 pages, red cloth. A fine, clean, hard cover first edition with light shelf wear, gently read; binding tight, paper white. In a fine, lightly worn dust jacket with the original price present.

Seller Inventory # 53887

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication Date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674011465
• ISBN 13: 9780674011465
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 2nd printing.
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Weight: 22 ounces
• Seller catalogs:
  • Education

About this title

Synopsis

How can you turn an English department into a revenue centre? 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, this book 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. Author David Kirp relates stories of marketing incursions into places as diverse as New York University's philiosophy department and the University of Virginia's business school, the high-minded University of Chicago and for-profit DeVry Univerity. He describes how universities "brand" themselves for greater appeal in the competition for top students; how academic superstars 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?

About the Authors

David L. Kirp is Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of many books, including Almost Home: America’s Love–Hate Relationship with Community.

Jonathan VanAntwerpen is Program Director for Religion and Theology at the Henry Luce Foundation. He was founding editor of The Immanent Frame, a Social Science Research Council digital forum on religion, secularism, and the public sphere.