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A review by charlottesteggz
What Are Universities for? by Stefan Collini
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.