Despite an increasing volume of talk about and a growing literature on higher education, very little of it asks the question - what, in essence is higher education? The tradition of overarching thinking about higher education - from Newman onwards - has almost vanished. The debate has focused, instead, on technical, administrative, financial and narrow academic concerns and the terms of discussion have been framed by concepts such as efficiency, unit costs, access and the needs of industry - none of which focus on higher education as such. There is, therefore, a need for the aims of higher education to be restated in modern terms.

The Idea Of Higher Education

Education & Teaching

Barnett, Ronald

Higher & Continuing Education

Open University Press

This text provides the first systematic exploration of the topic of quality in higher education. Ronald Barnett examines the meaning of quality and its improvement at the levels of both the institution and the course - contemporary discussion having tended to focus on one or the other, without integtrating the two perspectives. He argues against a simple identification of equality assessment with numerical performance indicators or with academic audit or with the messages of the market. These are the contending definitions of the modern age, but they all contain interests tangential to the main business of higher education. Dr Barnett offers an alternative approach which begins from a sense of educators attempting to promote an open-ended development in their students. It is this view of higher education which, he argues, should be at the heart of our thinking about quality. Quality cannot be managed, but it can be cared for. Building on the conceptual base he established, Dr Barnett offers proposals for action in assessing institutional performance, in reviewing the quality of course programmes, and in improving the curriculum and the character of the student experience.

Improving Higher Education: Total Quality Care (The Society for Research into Higher Education)

Open Univ Pr

Competence is a term which is making its entrance in the university. How might it be understood at this level? "The Limits of Competence" takes an uncompromising line, providing a sustained critique of the notion of competence as wholly inadequate for higher education. Currently, we are seeing the displacement of one limited version of competence by another even more limited interpretation. In the older definition - one of academic competence - notions of disciplines, objectivity and truth have been central. In the new version, competence is given an operational twist and is marked out by know-how, competence and skills. In this operationalism, the key question is not 'What do students understand?' but 'What can students do?' The book develops an alternative view, suggesting that, for our universities, a third and heretical conception of human being is worth considering. Our curricula might, instead, offer an education for life.

The Limits of Competence: Knowledge, Higher Education and Society (Society for Research into Higher Education)

Schools & Teaching

Higher Education: A Critical Business

One cannot fault this volume co-published by the Society for Research into Higher Education for not operationally defining its terms, for the glossary lists ten variants on critical thought and action. From the prefatory infamous photo of the student challenging tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989, one is immediately cued that the ramifications of critical thought are considered beyond the purely academic by Barnett (U. of London). His thesis is that contemporary society necessitates a broader view of critical thinking, incorporating the dimensions of critical self-reflection and critical action into the organizational psychology and management of universities and the work world. Distributed by Taylor &amp; Francis. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

The university has lost its way. The world needs the university more than ever but for new reasons. If we are to clarify its new role in the world, we need to find a new vocabulary and a new sense of purpose. The university is faced with supercomplexity, in which our very frames of understanding, action and self-identity are all continually challenged. In such a world, the university has explicitly to take on a dual role: firstly, of compounding supercomplexity, so making the world ever more challenging; and secondly, of enabling us to live effectively in this chaotic world. Internally, too, the university has to become a new kind of organization, adept at fulfilling this dual role. The university has to live by the uncertainty principle: it has to generate uncertainty, to help us live with uncertainty, and even to revel in our uncertainty. Ronald Barnett offers nothing less than a fundamental reworking of the way in which we understand the modern university. Realizing the University is essential reading for all those concerned about the future of higher education.

Realizing The University

Realizing the University in an Age of Supercomplexity

Beyond All Reason: Living with Ideology in the University

"stimulating and full of insight" British Journal of Educational Studies "a major work ... provocative, unsettling and profoundly challenging. I think it should be prescribed reading for all vice-chancellors." (Professor Colin Bundy, Director of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) "Ron Barnett's latest book lives up to, and possibly exceeds, the high standards he has set himself in his previous books - which are now established as the premier series of reflective books on higher education." (Professor Peter Scott, Vice-Chancellor, Kingston University) "Ron Barnett has produced a thought provoking volume that raises fundamental issues about higher education. It is essential reading for all who work in universities." (Professor Robert Burgess, Vice-Chancellor, University of Leicester) "a lively and engaging book which addresses the problems of the modern university from the perspective of modern social theory." Higher Education Review "The issues taken up in this book are significant to everyone in the academy, particularly those in leadership positions." Studies in Higher Education "This is a knowing, stimulating treatise that confronts some of the most difficult and complicated problems that universities face." Journal of Higher Education Universities are increasingly ideological. Many of the ideologies that are to be found on campus, such as entrepreneurialism, competition, quality and managerialism, express interests of the wider society but the university's own activities, such as research and even learning and teaching, are also becoming ideologies. Since ideologies are dogmatic in character, universities are being undermined and are being placed beyond all reason. How, then, might universities live effectively, beset as they are with ideologies in their midst? Indeed, is it still sensible to conceive of universities as places of reason? In Beyond All Reason, Ronald Barnett argues that ideology is now a fact of life in universities but that a positive way forward is within reach. Ideologies have been understood, rightly, as pernicious in nature, thwarting reason and the expression of human being. However, by returning to the ideals of reasonableness and generosity within the idea of the university, and by developing creative practices that build on those ideals, it is possible to construct virtuous idealogies that do justice to universities as universities in the twenty-first century. Beyond All Reason continues Ronald Barnett's attempts to show that it is still possible to hold to and to live out an idea of the university. It is a bold and optimistic statement and is required reading for anyone concerned about the current state of university life.

Reshaping the University

What is the emerging shape of the University? Are there spaces for present activities to be practised anew or even for new activities? If these questions have force, they show that the metaphors of shapes and spaces can be helpful in understanding the contemporary university. Research, teaching and scholarship remain the dominant activities in universities and so it is their relationships that form the main concerns of this volume. Are these activities pulling apart from each other? Or might these activities be brought more together in illuminating ways? Is there space to redesign these activities so that they shed light on each other? Is there room for yet other purposes?
 In this volume, a distinguished set of scholars engage with these pertinent but challenging issues. Ideas are offered, and evidence is marshalled, of practices that suggest a re-shaping of the University may be possible. 
 Reshaping the University appeals to those who are interested in the future of universities, including students, researchers, managers and policy makers. It also addresses global issues and it will, therefore, interest the higher education community worldwide.
 Contributors: Ronald Barnett, David Dill, Carol Bond, Lewis Elton, Mick Healey, Mark Hughes, Rajani Naidoo, Mark Olssen, Bruce Macfarlane, Kathleen Nolan, Jan Parker, Michael Peters, Alison Phipps, Jane Robertson, Peter Scott, Stephen Rowland.

What is the emerging shape of the University? Are there spaces for present activities to be practised anew or even for new activities? If these questions have force, they show that the metaphors of shapes and spaces can be helpful in understanding the contemporary university. Research, teaching and scholarship remain the dominant activities in universities and so it is their relationships that form the main concerns of this volume. Are these activities pulling apart from each other? Or might these activities be brought more together in illuminating ways? Is there space to redesign these activities so that they shed light on each other? Is there room for yet other purposes? In this volume, a distinguished set of scholars engage with these pertinent but challenging issues. Ideas are offered, and evidence is marshalled, of practices that suggest a re-shaping of the University may be possible.  Reshaping the University appeals to those who are interested in the future of universities, including students, researchers, managers and policy makers. It also addresses global issues and it will, therefore, interest the higher education community worldwide. Contributors: Ronald Barnett, David Dill, Carol Bond, Lewis Elton, Mick Healey, Mark Hughes, Rajani Naidoo, Mark Olssen, Bruce Macfarlane, Kathleen Nolan, Jan Parker, Michael Peters, Alison Phipps, Jane Robertson, Peter Scott, Stephen Rowland.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Barnett, Ronald. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Barnett, Ronald

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Barnett, Ronald. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Idea Of Higher Education

Improving Higher Education: Total Quality Care (The Society for Research into Higher Education)

The Limits of Competence: Knowledge, Higher Education and Society (Society for Research into Higher Education)

Higher Education: A Critical Business

Realizing The University

Realizing the University in an Age of Supercomplexity

Beyond All Reason: Living with Ideology in the University

Beyond All Reason: Living with Ideology in the University

Reshaping the University

Reshaping the University