Higher education has come under increasing public scrutiny in recent years, assailed with demands for greater efficiency, accountability, cost reduction, and, above all, job training. Drawing upon examples from across the world, with an emphasis on Anglo-American higher-education systems, this handbook employs sociological approaches to address these pressing concerns. The second edition is thoroughly updated and adds several new chapters to shed further light on the transformations wrought by the interrelated processes of massification, vocationalization, and marketization that have swept through universities in the wake of neoliberal reforms introduced by governments since the 1980s.
The handbook explores recent developments in higher-education systems and policy as well as the everyday experiences of students and staff and ongoing problems of inequality and diversity within universities. In doing so, the chapters address a number of current issues concerning the legitimacy of higher-educational credentials, from the continuing debate regarding traditional pedagogies and the role of universities in social class reproduction to more recent concerns about standards in mass systems.
Collectively, this handbook demonstrates that the sociology of higher education has the potential to play a leadership role in improving the myriad higher-education systems around the world that are now part of an interrelated set of subsystems, replete with both persistent problems and promising prospects. This book is therefore necessary reading for a variety of stakeholders within academia as well as professionals and policy-makers interested in understanding higher education and the acute challenges it faces.
1. The history and scope of the sociology of higher education Section 1: Anglo-American Higher-Education Institutions through Time and Place 2. The university and society: Structural change and conflicting roles 3. Higher-education phases and missions over time in Anglo-American institutions 4. Maintaining status in new times: The continuing stratification of Anglo-American universities 5. The evolving character of the US public research university: Critical organizational shifts in neoliberal context Section 2: Life in Higher-Education Institutions for Students and Faculty 6. From in loco parentis to consumer choice: Examining the changing relationship between students and higher-education institutions in the United States 7. The McDonaldization of higher education updated: The therapeutic turn 8. After the neoliberal university: Student voice and protest 9. The vicious circle of academic insecurity and privatization in Western universities 10. The digital revolution in higher education: Rhetoric and reality 11, Peer relations and friendship among postsecondary students Section 3: Inequality and Diversity in Higher Education 12. Theories of the sociology of higher-education access and participation 13. The barriers to access in higher education and their alleviation 14. Working-class students in UK higher education: Still the elephant in the room 15. The American working-class student experience: Swimming upstream 16. Moving towards more holistic assessment: Selective admissions in the US and England at the brink of the 2020s 17. At-risk and unprepared students in American higher education: The impact on institutions and strategies to address the new student body landscape 18. Higher education, social mobility, and unequal outcomes in the United States: A brief history Section 4: Anglo-American Systems Contrasted 19. Invoking Humboldt: The German model of higher education 20. Massification, marketization, vocationalization, and stratification in Russian higher education 21. Exchanging tyrannies: The impact of the neoliberalization of higher education on academics’ work life in a post-Soviet country 22. Higher education in France: Massification, social reproduction, and social stratification 23. The Nordic model of higher education from a comparative and historical perspective 24. Higher education and social change in South Asia: From intellectual elitism to equality of opportunity 25. Convergent and divergent trends of internationalization: A comparative perspective between Japanese and Anglo-American universities 26. Revisiting the discourse of a Chinese model of the university: A Confucian-Legalist legacy impact perspective Section 5: Higher Education in a Global Policy Perspective 27. Higher education, credentialism, and social mobility 28. Internationalization of higher-education institutions: Challenges and opportunities 29. A sociological analysis of the flows of human capital and knowledge in higher-education partnerships 30. The massification of higher-education systems in Brazil and China: Institutional models and students’ experiences 31. Gender equality and inequality in global higher education in the neoliberal era 32. Neo-institutional approaches to understanding how higher education transforms society and the world of work
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