Universities and Innovation Economies: The Creative Wasteland of Post-Industrial Society - Hardcover

Murphy, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1472425359 ISBN 13: 9781472425355

Publisher: Routledge, 2015

Synopsis

Students drop out of universities in large numbers, many graduate to jobs that do not require a degree and a large number learn little at university, whilst graduate salaries have shrunk over time and student loan debt and default have grown. University research achievements have declined while university administration has expanded massively. The contemporary university is mired in auditing, regulation, waste and aimlessness and its contribution to serious social innovation has deteriorated markedly. The miserable state of the universities reflects a larger social reality, as bureaucratic capitalism has replaced creative capitalism. Universities and Innovation Economies examines the rise and fall of the mass university and post-industrial society, considering how we might revitalize economic and intellectual creativity. Looking to a much more inventive social and economic paradigm to drive long-term growth, the author argues for a smaller, leaner, more effective university model - one capable of delivering a greater degree of high-level discovery and creative power. A potent critique of the post-industrial mass university that urges a reimagination of universities as places of discovery and invention, this book will appeal to readers interested in higher education, creativity, social theory, the sociology of work and organisations, political economy, pedagogy and public policy.

About this title

About the Author:

Peter Murphy is Adjunct Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University, Australia.. He is the author of The Collective Imagination, and Civic Justice and co-author of Dialectic of Romanticism, Creativity and the Global Knowledge Economy, Global Creation, and Imagination.

Review:

"Peter Murphy has written a cogent and compelling indictment of the  costs to society and education of the bureaucratization of the  university. The fatal unintended consequence of the mass expansion of  universities since 1970 has been the swamping of the university's core  functions of teaching and research by policy, process, and performance  management. The destruction of academic autonomy by a proliferating  parasitic administration is at the heart of the systemic crisis of the  signature institution of post-industrial knowledge society. Peter  Murphy's book is essential reading for all who care about the future of  universities." David Roberts, Emeritus Professor of German, Monash  University, Australia. 

"Peter Murphy's new book is a bold, courageous and unintimidated attempt  to offer a fresh perspective on the role, contribution and nature of  the institution of the academy. It combines historical analysis with  ideological critique, statistical data and academic performance against  the background of the changing cultural and philosophical trends that  have shaped individuals and practices over the last forty years. Murphy  argues for a new kind of university: resourceful, entrepreneurial and  creative, an institution that will challenge conformism and conformity  with new ideas, solid knowledge of the past and openness to innovation  and critique. This is a very opportune book: it exposes the current  stagnation but at the same time envisions new horizons. It is also a  necessary book - for all academics, students and governments. It shapes a  new cultural and epistemic paradigm for the function of the most  important Western institution of learning and acting." Vrasidas Karalis,  Sir Nicholas Laurantus Professor of Modern Greek, University of Sydney,  Australia.

"If there is a myth which universities have woven around themselves, it  is that they are centres of innovation and world-changing research.  Peter Murphy's excellent new book both punctures those illusions and  provides a sober picture of the many failings of the contemporary  university. He demonstrates that the amount of ground-breaking research  achieved by universities is declining just as the cost of research is  ballooning, and that what universities stand for now is stultifying  bureaucratic regimentation. Murphy demonstrates that this can only be  reversed if the dinosaurs of today can become fleet-of-foot small  mammals. A brilliant book which needs to be read by our political  leaders." Gregory Melleuish, Associate Professor of History and  Politics, University of Wollongong, Australia.

"This is a brilliant, indeed an indispensable book. It provides a  compelling diagnosis of the decline and failure of the contemporary  bureaucratic and managerially governed university, the  post-industrial-bureaucratic driven economy, and the social  liberal-democratic-bureaucratic state... what makes the book truly  remarkable is the thoroughness of the diagnosis and the mountains of  evidence that the book marshals to make its case. Moreover, both the  diagnosis and the evidence that is summoned to confirm the diagnosis  could only have been made by someone who effortlessly moves between the  disciplinary compartmentalisations... [Murphy] is a real scholar, a  prodigious researcher, and an inventive thinker... equally capable of  drawing upon Sociology, Economics, Political Science, History,  Philosophy, Education, Management Theory, and Statistics... Although  Murphy's diagnosis is of our time, the wisdom of this work makes it a  great unmasking of the delusions that drive our society spiritually and  economically ever more into the despotic depths that Tocqueville rightly  feared laid incubating within modern democracies, were they not  addressed and dealt with. In this respect, this book should have a very  long shelf-life... Murphy's book is a litany of the pertinent inconvenient  facts that surround the new roles that have accrued to universities in  their task of enabling 'innovative economies'. What makes Murphy's  critique so devastating is that he outplays the managerialists in the  one game that managers pride themselves on--the game of requiring that  the facts that really count can be counted numerically."  Wayne  Cristaudo (Charles Darwin University), Journal of Economics Library,  3:2, June 2016, 353-358.

...the core argument that underlines his thoughts about universities is about modernity, creativity and their trajectories. [Murphy's book is] engaging and vivid in its examples and data, and it often draws on Australian cases to make the point... [He] counter-poses management to creativity [and] makes the argument that the central functions of universities are both inherently aggregative and as they grow, increasingly ineffective. Unlike cities, universities do not become more efficient with size... Murphy supports [his] thesis... with extensive and fascinating data of historical patterns of creativity in the science and arts... Murphy's ideas are equally determined in expression, brimming with the joy of fearless unorthodoxy... Universities and Innovation Economies... is remarkable in the range of its curiosity and its scholarship... Murphy knows exactly what he wants: a much smaller university focused on discovery and stimulating learning, alongside colleges devoted to scholarship, and institutes of vocational training."  Simon Marginson, University of London, Australian Universities Review, 58:1, 2016, 72-80.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1472425359
• ISBN 13: 9781472425355
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 268