Academic Capitalism and the New Economy: Markets, State, and Higher Education Paperback - 2009

From the jacket flap

As colleges and universities become more entrepreneurial in a post-industrial economy, they focus on knowledge less as a public good than as a commodity to be capitalized on in profit-oriented activities. In Academic Capitalism and the New Economy, higher education scholars Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades detail the aggressive engagement of U.S. higher education institutions in the knowledge-based economy and analyze the efforts of colleges and universities to develop, market, and sell research products, educational services, and consumer goods in the private marketplace.

Perhaps the best book for understanding the commercialization and commodification within higher education is Slaughter and Rhoades's Academic Capitalism and the New Economy . . . It tracks the deep and pervasive changes in policy and practice that have created new social network and organizational structures, vastly changing the function and role of higher education to serve corporate interests . . . and covers a variety of topics including expansion of patenting and patent policies, copyright policies, ownership of courseware and teaching materials, entrepreneurial activities by departments, corporate connections of university trustees, and advertising and branding contracts.--Journal of Higher Education

Slaughter and Rhoades offer the most coherent account of how the academy is mired in commercialism.--Academe

Provides a densely detailed and chilling description of the current 'state' of the university in the United States.--Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies

All students of the educational arrangements in the new economy will find themselves in debt to the authors for their far-reaching theory of academic capitalism, for the wide variety of studies they offer to confirm it, and for the standard they set and the model they provide for subsequent work.--Teachers College Record

This carefully argued and documented book fosters critical understanding of, if not the possibilities for 'regime change, ' the implications of our actions.--Review of Higher Education

Media reviews

Citations

• Reference and Research Bk News, 08/01/2009, Page 223