Higher Education and the Public Good: Imagining the University - Softcover

Nixon, Jon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 144116491X ISBN 13: 9781441164919

Publisher: Continuum, 2012

Synopsis

What constitutes the public good in a highly individualistic, consumerist and privatized society?

The global financial crisis of 2008 revealed the extent to which the public realm had been eroded over the last thirty years and the inroads that privatization and commercialization have made into the higher education sector. This book explores the institutional and sector-wide implications of the financial crisis for higher education; and the lessons to be learnt from that crisis and its aftermath for the university sector as a whole.

Jon Nixon argues that the university now has to be re-imagined as a social, civic and cosmopolitan good that is central to the well-being of civil society and its citizens. Key chapters focus on capability, reasoning and purposefulness as the common resources of higher education. The book highlights the urgent need for sector-wide planning and collaboration, the development of a public culture across institutions, and a broadening of the higher education curriculum.

Higher Education and the Public Good points a way forward to the new and emergent civic and cosmopolitan spaces of learning.

About this title

Book Description:

Argues the necessity of higher education as a public good, defining the institutional spaces necessary for sustaining these public goods and ensuring that they flourish.

About the Author:

Jon Nixon is Honorary Professor in the Centre for Lifelong Learning Research and Development, Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong. He also lectures at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and holds an honorary chair at the University of Sheffield, UK.

About this edition

• Publisher: Continuum
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 144116491X
• ISBN 13: 9781441164919
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176