An Outline of the Postliberal University: Public, Private, and Partisan Goods

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Bibliographic Details
Title: An Outline of the Postliberal University: Public, Private, and Partisan Goods
Language: English
Authors: Barrett J. Taylor, Brendan Cantwell (ORCID 0000-0003-3882-4200)
Source: Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning. 2024 56(6):5-11.
Availability: Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 7
Publication Date: 2024
Document Type: Journal Articles
Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Higher Education
Postsecondary Education
Descriptors: Universities, Governance, Cultural Context, Administrative Organization, Barriers, Administrators, Higher Education, Administrator Role, Modern History, Political Attitudes, State Regulation, Social Change, Public Colleges, Private Colleges, Politics of Education
DOI: 10.1080/00091383.2024.2419341
ISSN: 0009-1383
1939-9146
Abstract: Existing scholarship tends to understand university governance structurally (emphasizing formal authority and resource environments), culturally (focusing on history, norms, and leadership), or by combining both approaches (Kezar & Eckel, 2004). These models understand governance in instrumental terms, as the means for steering the university. Governance as steering implies baseline consensus about goals and mission. Pursuing these agreed-on goals can be managed through reform and leadership. In this article, the authors argue that higher education leaders and scholars will be better prepared to grapple with contemporary challenges by thinking about governance as the way universities are incorporated into and contribute to the formation of the state and society (see Pusser, 2018). Understood in this way, the underlying goals and mission of higher education are not agreed on. Instead, they are hotly contested because they are linked to partisan political struggles over the kind of society people want to have. To help kick-start a process of retheorizing governance, the authors chronicle a shift in how public universities in the United States are situated vis-à-vis the state. They identify these shifting governance arrangements through the transformation of the liberal university to the neoliberal and, now, postliberal university.
Abstractor: ERIC
Entry Date: 2024
Accession Number: EJ1453177
Database: ERIC
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Abstract:Existing scholarship tends to understand university governance structurally (emphasizing formal authority and resource environments), culturally (focusing on history, norms, and leadership), or by combining both approaches (Kezar & Eckel, 2004). These models understand governance in instrumental terms, as the means for steering the university. Governance as steering implies baseline consensus about goals and mission. Pursuing these agreed-on goals can be managed through reform and leadership. In this article, the authors argue that higher education leaders and scholars will be better prepared to grapple with contemporary challenges by thinking about governance as the way universities are incorporated into and contribute to the formation of the state and society (see Pusser, 2018). Understood in this way, the underlying goals and mission of higher education are not agreed on. Instead, they are hotly contested because they are linked to partisan political struggles over the kind of society people want to have. To help kick-start a process of retheorizing governance, the authors chronicle a shift in how public universities in the United States are situated vis-à-vis the state. They identify these shifting governance arrangements through the transformation of the liberal university to the neoliberal and, now, postliberal university.
ISSN:0009-1383
1939-9146
DOI:10.1080/00091383.2024.2419341