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charlottesteggz's review against another edition
2.0
What universities are for is such an important question to ask - and yet, as many other reviewers have said, this is not answered in this book.
I also don't think that the author, as a professor of history and English at Cambridge, is the right person to be answering the question. Which is why he is so defensive about humanities, and doesn't seem to understand how the world outside of academia works. He mentions that organisations prefer recruiting arts graduates as they're more intelligent - as great as arts grads are, I have never (as someone who manages massive grad programmes and has experience doing so all over the world) heard of anyone saying to me to go find arts grads.
There's also a big piece around the affect of more people going to university on the wider society - for example how people with degrees tended to vote remain in the referendum. He talks about university's role in social mobility as if they were asked to fix all of society's problems, when there are so many other affects of having a degree...including having a wider range of viewpoints within his beloved humanities.
I also don't think that the author, as a professor of history and English at Cambridge, is the right person to be answering the question. Which is why he is so defensive about humanities, and doesn't seem to understand how the world outside of academia works. He mentions that organisations prefer recruiting arts graduates as they're more intelligent - as great as arts grads are, I have never (as someone who manages massive grad programmes and has experience doing so all over the world) heard of anyone saying to me to go find arts grads.
There's also a big piece around the affect of more people going to university on the wider society - for example how people with degrees tended to vote remain in the referendum. He talks about university's role in social mobility as if they were asked to fix all of society's problems, when there are so many other affects of having a degree...including having a wider range of viewpoints within his beloved humanities.
davidsteinsaltz's review against another edition
4.0
Rhetorically often brilliant, this is the propaganda we need if anything of the traditional university is to be saved into the middle of the 21st century. Which it won't be, at least not in Britain. But it's a comfort to read someone stating the losing case so eloquently.
iamleeg's review against another edition
5.0
A good exploration not just of how policy affects academia, but more generally about how populism has changed the way we value our practices and institutions.
a_serpent_with_corners's review
Decent, if a bit repetitive in the second half. I imagine it's mostly preaching to the choir, though. The reading of Newman was the part I found most interesting.
matthew_p's review against another edition
5.0
Written by a British academic primarily to address the contemporary debates on higher education in the U.K., this is still a robust critique of how that debate is prosecuted here in the U.S. Definitely worth a read for anyone thinking about how we should think about and support post-secondary educational institutions.
davidsteinsaltz's review
4.0
Rhetorically often brilliant, this is the propaganda we need if anything of the traditional university is to be saved into the middle of the 21st century. Which it won't be, at least not in Britain. But it's a comfort to read someone stating the losing case so eloquently.
leeg's review
5.0
A good exploration not just of how policy affects academia, but more generally about how populism has changed the way we value our practices and institutions.
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