Ivy and Industry: Business and the Making of the American University, 1880-1980 - Hardcover

Newfield, Christopher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0822332019 ISBN 13: 9780822332015

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2004

Synopsis

Emphasizing how profoundly the American research university has been shaped by business and the humanities alike, Ivy and Industry is a vital contribution to debates about the corporatization of higher education in the United States. Christopher Newfield traces major trends in the intellectual and institutional history of the research university from 1880 to 1980. He pays particular attention to the connections between the changing forms and demands of American business and the cultivation of a university-trained middle class. He contends that by imbuing its staff and students with seemingly opposed ideas—of self-development on the one hand and of an economic system existing prior to and inviolate of their own activity on the other—the university has created a deeply conflicted middle class.

Newfield views management as neither inherently good nor bad, but rather as a challenge to and tool for negotiating modern life. In Ivy and Industry he integrates business and managerial philosophies from Taylorism through Tom Peters’s “culture of excellence” with the speeches and writings of leading university administrators and federal and state education and science policies. He discusses the financial dependence on industry and government that was established in the university’s early years and the equal influence of liberal arts traditions on faculty and administrators. He describes the arrival of a managerial ethos on campus well before World War II, showing how managerial strategies shaped even fields seemingly isolated from commerce, like literary studies. Demonstrating that business and the humanities have each had a far stronger impact on higher education in the United States than is commonly thought, Ivy and Industry is the dramatic story of how universities have approached their dual mission of expanding the mind of the individual while stimulating economic growth.

About this title

From the Author:

Over the past ten years, there's been a mounting concern over the increasing role business has been playing in higher education. Private funding of scientific research, art exhibitions, clinical trials, and equipment budgets has been growing, and so has the influence of corporate management styles on college administrations. These trends have convinced many people that the university's independence and objectivity are in danger. My book looks at the history of these trends. I show that business and the university have always been close and that there's between a continuous struggle between them on college campuses. I describe a range of remarkable educators who play as important and dramatic a role in building society as do politicians, businesspeople, musicians, and television producers. I explain why discovery, invention and creativity require a strong and independent university dedicated to public service. I wrote this book because I've always been grateful to the university for having opened up a bigger world to me and have wanted as many people as possible to share this experience. At a time when social and human development are more crucial than ever, I hope my book can help discussions of how we can expand higher education to achieve greater intellectual freedom and broader justice.

From the Back Cover:

"Christopher Newfield's application of the management model and metaphor to the academic scene leads him into what is by far the freshest and most nuanced argument on the corporatization of the university that I can think of."--Bruce Robbins, author of "Secular Vocations: Intellectuals, Professionalism, Culture"

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0822332019
• ISBN 13: 9780822332015
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304