Policy Futures in Education

ISSN 1478-2103

Volume 8 Issue 2 2010

CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text]

SPECIAL ISSUE
The University in Transition
Guest Editor: GARETT GIETZEN

Garett Gietzen. Introduction. Challenges and Possibilities for Today’s University, pages 148‑150 doi:10.2304/pfie.2010.8.2.148 VIEW FULL TEXT
Michael A. Peters. Re-imagining the University in the Global Era, pages 151‑165
Garett Gietzen. Jean-François Lyotard and the Question of Disciplinary Legitimacy, pages 166‑176
Stephanie Mackler. From the Positivist to the Hermeneutic University: restoring the place of meaning and liberal learning in higher education, pages 177‑190
Casey E. George-Jackson. The Cosmopolitan University: the medium toward global citizenship and justice, pages 191‑200
Rodrigo Britez & Michael A. Peters. Internationalization and the Cosmopolitical University, pages 201‑216
Daniel Araya. Cultural Democracy: universities in the creative economy, pages 217‑231

BOOK EXCERPT
Henry A. Giroux. Challenging the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex after 9/11. Introduction to University in Chains: confronting the military-industrial-academic complex (Paradigm Publishers, 2007), pages 232‑237 doi:10.2304/pfie.2010.8.2.232 VIEW FULL TEXT

REVIEW ESSAY
Eugenie A. Samier. The Evolution of the Modern University: from scholarship to disenchanted economic handmaiden, pages 238‑247 doi:10.2304/pfie.2010.8.2.238 VIEW FULL TEXT

OBAMA’S AMERICA
Michael A. Peters. Economics Trumps Politics; Market Trumps Democracy: the US Supreme Court’s decision on campaign financing, pages 248‑253 doi:10.2304/pfie.2010.8.2.248 VIEW FULL TEXT

BOOK REVIEWS
Higher Learning, Greater Good: the private and social benefits of higher education (Walter W. McMahon), reviewed by Jennifer A. Delaney & Patricia Yu, pages 254‑255
Multiversities, Ideas, and Democracy (George Fallis), reviewed by David J. Ondercin, pages 256‑257 doi:10.2304/pfie.2010.8.2.254 VIEW FULL TEXT

Re-imagining the University in the Global Era

MICHAEL A. PETERS University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

doi:10.2304/pfie.2010.8.2.151

This article charts the crisis of the modern university using Bill Readings’ (1996) The University in Ruins. Readings distinguishes three principal ideas underpinning the concept of the modern university: the Kantian idea of reason, the Humboldtian idea of culture, and the technological idea of excellence. The article reviews these three motivating ideas to focus on the last one under the description of the ‘post-historical university’. It investigates this idea giving two examples based on the United Kingdom’s Dearing report, The Global Service University, and Australia’s West report, The Hollowed-Out University. On the basis of this examination, the article re-imagines the idea of the university in the postmodern condition when metanarratives have lost their narrative unifying power by employing the concept of openness as developed by Wittgenstein.

Jean-François Lyotard and the Question of Disciplinary Legitimacy

GARETT GIETZEN Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

doi:10.2304/pfie.2010.8.2.166

The modern university developed as an institution legitimated by external referents, including national culture and its emancipatory potential. Today’s university, however, has been largely destabilized as these referents have become, at the very least, significantly less compelling relative to larger concerns about economic competitiveness and, more extremely, met with incredulity within the context of postmodernity. This article examines the current state of the university through a consideration of Jean-François Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition, particularly Lyotard’s ideas of performativity and language games. This analysis demonstrates the tenuous position of those disciplines that have not been reconciled to the logic of performativity. Using the example of the humanities, it is argued that endangered disciplines must become re-referentialized in order to survive.

From the Positivist to the Hermeneutic University: restoring the place of meaning and liberal learning in higher education

STEPHANIE MACKLER Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA, USA

doi:10.2304/pfie.2010.8.2.177

This article argues that the university must shift from a positivist model, which emphasizes knowledge production and job training, to a hermeneutic one, which emphasizes understanding and meaning. Such a shift would be a response to two interrelated problems. First, the university suffers from an identity crisis in that it no longer holds a monopoly on the production and dissemination of knowledge. Second, Western culture at large suffers from a crisis of meaning both in a visceral sense and in the use of language to express meaning. Both of these crises are related to the increasing access to information and globalization. This article endeavors primarily to understand and assess these interrelated crises, but it also concludes with preliminary suggestions for how to begin to think about reformulating higher learning in hermeneutic terms.

The Cosmopolitan University: the medium toward global citizenship and justice

CASEY E. GEORGE-JACKSON Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

doi:10.2304/pfie.2010.8.2.191

This article promotes the idea of universities adopting cosmopolitanism as a way to manage the changing demands on the system of higher education in the USA, namely to improve the inclusion of international students, minority students and other historically underrepresented groups, often referred to as the ‘Other’, which will in turn improve the quality of their experience in college. The population of college students served by these institutions, both on American soil and abroad, has undergone serious transformations in recent decades as a result of internationalization, globalization and increased access to a more diverse group of students. Universities should seek to be respectful and inclusive of these cultures via cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitan universities can and should become a medium from which to promote global citizenship and global justice. This article also addresses the challenges and limitations associated with a cosmopolitan university.

Internationalization and the Cosmopolitical University

RODRIGO BRITEZ & MICHAEL A. PETERS Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

doi:10.2304/pfie.2010.8.2.201

This article discusses some of the issues that surround the internationalization of higher education as a way to open discussion about the construction of an alternative cosmopolitical vision of the university, necessary if the university is to fulfill any historic tasks concerning the creation of globally aware citizens. The authors indicate that economic and technological globalization has resulted not only in the growth of international education, but also in the increasing significance of transnational spaces. In this environment, the internationalization of higher education refers to strategies to attract students and also to specific patterns of movement. The authors maintain that the neo-liberal metanarrative informing strategies of internationalization not only ignores the complexity of those patterns of interaction, connectedness and movement, but also implies modes of insertion of higher education into transnational spaces, as receptors or senders of certain flows. The way in which students’ movements are managed by university institutions and systems leads the authors to reflect about the cosmopolitical project of the university implicit in those strategies. The article presents different concepts of cosmopolitanism linked to projects of political integration in transnational spaces influencing university institutions and brings forward the argument that cosmopolitical neo-liberalism looks at the cultivation of students as consumers, ignoring the potential social and cultural disjunctures in current globalization projects. Moreover, it maintains that this neo-liberal project essentially ignores the potential contributions of university institutions to the creation of public transnational spaces. Finally, against this, the article presents a vision of a cosmopolitical project of the university as an alternative to the one implicit in neo-liberal internationalization strategies.

Cultural Democracy: universities in the creative economy

DANIEL ARAYA Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

doi:10.2304/pfie.2010.8.2.217

The influence of globalization on institutions of higher education is one of the leading topics in educational policy today. As the nexus of innovation increasingly moves from labor-intensive ‘smokestack industries’ to ‘mind work’, education is becoming critical to policy discussions on economic growth. Tracing current discourse on the ‘corporatization’ of higher education, this article suggests that the challenge for reconceptualizing the university today is linked to changes in the global economy. Alongside discourse on a global knowledge economy, many scholars now point to the increasing importance of creativity and a creative economy. Examining higher education from the perspective of a creative economy, the author explores the need to better understand the linkages between democracy and innovation.

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