The last professors : the corporate university and the fate of the humanities / Frank Donoghue.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Donoghue, Frank, 1958-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Universities and colleges--United States--Faculty.

Universities and colleges.

College teachers.

United States.

College teachers--Professional relationships--United States.

College teachers--Tenure--United States.

College teachers--Tenure.

Humanities--Study and teaching (Higher)--United States.

Humanities.

Humanities--Study and teaching (Higher).

Physical Description:

xix, 180 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Fordham University Press, 2008.

Summary:

In this provocative book, Frank Donoghue shows how the growing corporate culture of higher education threatens its most fundamental values by erasing one of its defining features: the tenured professor. Taking a clear-eyed look at American higher education over the past twenty years, Donoghue outlines the forces-social, political, and institutional-that are dismantling the professoriate. Today, fewer than 30 percent of college and university teachers are tenured or on tenure tracks, and signs point to a future in which professors will disappear. Why? What will universities look like without professors? Who will teach? Why should it matter?

The fate of the professor, Donoghue shows, has always been tied to that of the liberal arts, with the humanities at its core. The rise to prominence of the American university has always been defined by the autonomous, tenured professor who's both scholar and teacher. Yet in today's market-driven, rank- and ratings-obsessed world of higher education, faculties are to be managed for optimal efficiency, productivity, and competitive advantage, while casual armies of adjuncts and graduate students fill the demand for teachers.

Donoghue sheds light on the structural changes in higher education-the rise of community colleges and for-profit universities, the frenzied pursuit of prestige, the brutally competitive realities facing new Ph.D.s-that threaten the survival of professors as we've known them.

Contents:

Rhetoric, history, and the problems of the humanities

Competing in Academia

The erosion of tenure

Professors of the future

Prestige and prestige envy.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 161-170) and index.

ISBN:

9780823228591

0823228592

9780823228607

0823228606

OCLC:

191767742