Showing papers by "Philip G. Altbach published in 2005"

Academic Challenges: The American Professoriate in Comparative Perspective

Abstract: The academic profession faces significant challenges everywhere. Financial pressures have contributed to ever-increasing demands for accountability. The privatisation of public higher education and the expansion of private academic institutions in many countries have changed the configuration of academe. Questions about the relevance of much of academic research have been linked to demands that professors teach more—accountability and evaluation are central themes of contemporary higher education. The new technologies and distance education are beginning to impact upon the academic profession. The traditional high status of the professoriate has been diminished by unrelenting criticism in the media and elsewhere. This chapter provides a discussion of the problems facing the contemporary university and the way they affect the academic profession. This discussion is presented in a comparative and international context because similar issues affect higher education worldwide. The university of the 21 st century, in the United States and elsewhere, is an t increasingly competitive institution. Competition for students, for prestige, for research funds, and increasingly for basic financing, is changing the nature of academic work. Competition from other providers of advanced education, including from new for-profit institutions and internet-based schools, is evident. Universities from other countries have entered markets that have traditionally been dominated by home-based institutions through twinning and other arrangements. Increasingly close linkages between universities and industry have created further competitive pressures. The professoriate is inevitably affected by these competitive trends. The relationship between the professor and the university, the ownership of knowledge, and teaching and learning responsibilities, among other aspects of academic life, will all be affected by the new competitive realities. The academic profession, in the United States and abroad, continues to function without basic change or even much consciousness of the external forces that buffet the universities. Yet, change is inevitable and it is quite likely that the working conditions of the professoriate will deteriorate. The profession’s “golden age,” characterised by institutional expansion, increased autonomy, availability of research funds, and growing prestige and salaries, at least in the industrialized countries, has come to an end. We are concerned here with understanding the realities that confront the professoriate in the United States and abroad. The modern American university is an international institution. It traces its origins to the medieval University of Paris, was deeply influenced by academic models from England and Scotland and from nineteenth-century Germany, and today educates students from all over the world (Ben-David and Zloczower, 45-84). The American university stands at the centre of a world system of science and scholarship, and is the largest producer of research and scholarly publications. The

Rethinking Centre–Periphery

Abstract: This issue of the Asia Pacific Journal of Education (APJE) seeks to reexamine some of the ways in which educational policy and practice have been analysed. For well over a generation, a persistent and significant challenge for educational policy-makers, scholars, and practitioners has been that of explaining and responding to the inequalities, exclusions, and marginalisation that have continued to persist among education systems and institutions worldwide, both within and between nations. Working from what we would broadly term classical development models and neoliberal approaches to educational development and governance, international organisations like the World Bank have sought to formulate both neo-liberal policies and funding regimes (e.g., the Education for All initiative) as their responses. These policies have been based on paradigms, generally implicit, about societal and educational development. There are, of course, other explanatory theoretical frameworks that draw variously upon dependency models and, most recently, broad theories of postcolonialism, feminist perspectives, and globalisation, to explain educational inequality and development generally. This special issue ofAPJE includes articles that grapple with the explanations of educational development from a variety of mainly alternative perspectives. When we formulated the idea for this issue, we were cognizant that the 1970s and 1980s were especially fruitful for theory-building, with scholars seeking to provide overarching frameworks for understanding the roles and functions of education systems. Among the more widely discussed explanations for worldwide educational inequalities were theories such as centre–periphery, neo-colonialism, and dependency. Each of these in turn relied on broader explanatory theories from the social sciences, such as modernisation, structural functionalism, and Marxism. Experience of the last three decades and more recent events, notably the 9/11 incident and broader issues of societal conflict, have raised serious questions about the adequacy of some of these approaches. The impressive economic development in some Asian

The Rise of the Pseudouniversity

Abstract: An array of institutions, agencies, corporations, and other businesses are calling themselves universities these days. It is time to call a halt to this trend, which is debasing the nomenclature of knowledge and scholarship. Just as important, these institutions are in many cases providing "degrees" to people who have not studied in a university and who have not earned the academic titles. I refer here to a wide variety of organizations, including: * University of Phoenix-This is now America's largest private "university" and is accredited to offer academic degrees; * Jones International University-Also accredited, it is the first U.S.-based Internet-only "university"; * Cardean University-Part of U-Next, a company with links to Stanford, Columbia and other major universities, it "packages" courses for Internet delivery and offers degrees in several professional fields; and * Motorola University-Owned by a major corporation, this "university" offers training to employees as well as outsiders. These examples are all in the for-proflt sector, as are most of the new pseudouniversities, but the issue of for-profit versus nonprofit status is not the critical factor here.These new pscudouniversities are not universities. They may offer valuable training in fields that appeal to eager customers. They may provide this training in "classes" taught by teachers in a "site based" traditional format, offer instruction through the Internet or other new distance arrangements, or perhaps use a combination of modes of delivery. They may employ well-qualified instructors, although seldom on a full-time basis. But they do not fit the definition of a university and should not bear this title. The time has come to scrutinize the role of this new phenomenon in the universe of postsccondary education. The issue here is not the value or usefulness of the new providers of training but rather protecting one of society's most valuable institutions-the university. What is a University? Denning a university is not an easy task, especially in this era of differentiation in higher education, with new and diverse institutions emerging everywhere. However, we can probably agree on a set of common functions and values. Universities, from their medieval beginnings, have seen themselves as independent places of teaching and analysis, encompassing most of the disciplines known at the time. Universities are normally expected to offer undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees in a variety of disciplines and fields, and have been imbued with a sense of responsibility for the public good, be it preserving books in libraries, sponsoring art museums, or service to local communities. For almost two centuries, research, especially basic research, has been a key function of a university. Often times professors-with long-term or permanent appointments-have been at the heart of the university, exercising control over the curriculum, the admission of students, and the awarding of degrees. Contemporary universities are themselves varied. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology docs not call itself a university, but is one in every sense of the word. Boston College, despite its name, is a university because it offers graduate and professional degrees in many fields. Rockefeller University, a small institution that specializes in graduate training and research in the biomedical fields, calls itself a university, but might be overly specialized to warrant the title, despite its quality and reputation. Universities can be publicly owned and receive their funds largely from the government, or they can be privately controlled and responsible for their own budgets. Some are managed by religious organizations; in some countries, universities are managed by families; and there are a small number of for-profit universities, for example in the Philippines. The Pseudouniversities Over the past several decades, an entirely new model of postsecondary institution has arrived on the scene. …