| Policy Futures in Education |
ISSN 1478-2103 | |
Volume 8 Issue 2 2010
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CONTENTS [click
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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
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Re-imagining the University in the Global Era
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MICHAEL A. PETERS University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign, USA
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doi:10.2304/pfie.2010.8.2.151
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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.
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Jean-François Lyotard and the Question of Disciplinary
Legitimacy
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GARETT GIETZEN Department of Educational Policy Studies, University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
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doi:10.2304/pfie.2010.8.2.166
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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.
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From the Positivist to the Hermeneutic University: restoring
the place of meaning and liberal learning in higher education
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STEPHANIE MACKLER Ursinus College, Collegeville,
PA, USA
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doi:10.2304/pfie.2010.8.2.177
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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.
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The Cosmopolitan University: the medium toward global
citizenship and justice
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CASEY E. GEORGE-JACKSON Department of Educational
Policy Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
USA
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doi:10.2304/pfie.2010.8.2.191
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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.
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Internationalization and the Cosmopolitical University
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RODRIGO BRITEZ & MICHAEL A. PETERS Department
of Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign, USA
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doi:10.2304/pfie.2010.8.2.201
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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.
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Cultural Democracy: universities in the creative economy
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DANIEL ARAYA Department of Educational Policy Studies, University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
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doi:10.2304/pfie.2010.8.2.217
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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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