Higher Education and the Public Good: Imagining the University

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What constitutes the public good in a highly individualistic, consumerist and privatized society The global financial crisis of 2008 revealed the extent to which the public realm had been eroded over the last thirty years and the inroads that privatization and commercialization have made into the higher education sector. This book explores the institutional and sector-wide implications of the financial crisis for higher education; and the lessons to be learnt from that crisis and its aftermath for the university sector as a whole. Jon Nixon argues that the university now has to be re-imagined as a social, civic and cosmopolitan good that is central to the well-being of civil society and its citizens. Key chapters focus on capability, reasoning and purposefulness as the common resources of higher education. The book highlights the urgent need for sector-wide planning and collaboration, the development of a public culture across institutions, and a broadening of the higher education curriculum. Higher Education and the Public Good points a way forward to the new and emergent civic and cosmopolitan spaces of learning.

Reviews

Beautifully written, of wide scope and offering a much needed and humane vision of higher education as serving the public good - it is difficult to imagine a better book on the university than this. If only every university vice-chancellor and principal would pay it at least some attention. -- Ron Barnett, Emeritus Professor of Higher Education and Consultant, Institute of Education, University of London, UK
In this excellent book, Jon Nixon salvages higher education from the wreckage wrought by three decades of commercialisation, commodification, competition and classification. He articulates a powerful, cogent and realisable vision of higher education as a public good -- a site for the development of human capability, reason and purpose, existing within and contributing to the social interconnectivities of the res publica and cosmopolis. -- Bob Adamson, Head, Dept of International Education & Lifelong Learning, Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong
While the context within which Nixon is writing is the UK, his canvas is broad and his intention bold... The purposes of higher education are discussed in terms of human flourishing, personhood and inter- ependency; civic presence, participation and purpose; and cosmopolitan connectivity, reflexivity and futures. -- Malcolm Tight, Lancaster University * Teachers College Record *

Author Bio

Jon Nixon is Honorary Professor in the Centre for Lifelong Learning Research and Development, Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong. He also lectures at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and holds an honorary chair at the University of Sheffield, UK.