THE KNOWLEDGE FACTORY: DISMANTLING THE CORPORATE UNIVERSITY AND CREATING TRUE HIGHER LEARNING [Hardcover]

Stanley Aronowitz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 15, 2000

Americans can't get a good education for love or money, argues Stanley Aronowitz in this groundbreaking look at the structure and curriculum of higher education. Moving beyond the canon wars begun in Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, Aronowitz offers a vision for true higher learning that places a well-rounded education back at the center of the university's mission.

"Aronowitz should be commended for the high seriousness of his endeavor, which sidesteps the comparatively petty canon wars to ask: What is the true purpose of higher education and how can we restructure our universities to achieve it?" —Publishers Weekly

"One of the most important books written on higher education in the last fifty years." —Henry A. Giroux, author of The Mouse That Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence

"Bold, brassy, and provocative." —Michelle Fine, coauthor of The Unknown City: Lives of Poor and Working-Class Young Adults

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

After taking a disparaging look at the current state of American universities, Aronowitz, a professor at the City University of New York (From the Ashes of the Old, etc.) who has long been active in the labor movement and educational reform, proposes a radical reorganization of American higher education. He reports that there is scarce evidence of "higher learning"--as opposed to "training" or "education"--taking place in our post-secondary educational institutions. Even in today's best universities, he contends, students are rewarded for uncritically regurgitating knowledge, rather than for participating in or challenging "established intellectual authority." Aronowitz further castigates colleges and universities for selling out to corporate America by offering themselves as training sites for businesses and for turning their presidents into full-time fund-raisers who resemble CEOs more than academic leaders. As a remedy, Aronowitz proposes a renewed emphasis on pedagogy and a curriculum centered around a transdisciplinary introduction to science, philosophy and literature within a historical framework. Throughout the book, Aronowitz provides abundant examples of actual policies at American universities and profiles several critical issues, including the unionization of graduate teaching assistants. While his Marxist-influenced rhetoric may put off some readers, Aronowitz should be commended for the high seriousness of his endeavor, which sidesteps the comparatively petty canon wars to ask: What is the true purpose of higher education and how can we restructure our universities to achieve it? (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Addressing what he sees as an overall "intellectual decline" in higher education, Aronowitz (sociology, Graduate Ctr., CUNY) argues that the American academic system has failed to meet its lofty goals of providing students with a well-rounded education. Instead, most colleges and universities offer specialized fields of study without requiring students to take courses outside those fields. The fundamental mission of higher education, Aronowitz says, should be to play a leading role in the development of general culture--a mission that is undermined when academic institutions allow student-athletes to slide through the system. Other factors Aronowitz ponders include the G.I. Bill--which, he says, allowed a broad base of the populace to attend college and to consider a college education a right instead of a privilege--and corporate partnerships, which can dilute an institution's integrity. He also suggests that colleges emphasize pedagogy. Even his old, familiar complaints are put in a new perspective. For academic and larger public libraries.
-Terry A. Christner, Hutchinson P.L., KS
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 217 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press; 1 edition (February 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807031224
• ISBN-13: 978-0807031223
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,382,574 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When it comes to looking at education, nothing maches it, February 4, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: THE KNOWLEDGE FACTORY: DISMANTLING THE CORPORATE UNIVERSITY AND CREATING TRUE HIGHER LEARNING (Hardcover)

This is the best book on the crisis in higher education ever written. What makes it so significant is that Aronowitz never underestimates the value of education, just as he convincingly demonstrates that few colleges are invested in actully cultivating the critical minds of students. Instead, he argues, that universities -- and he persuades us that he's talking about every university, from the community college to the ivy leagues -- are more interested in the payoff of advertizing to parents and prospective students that they are able to prepare people for their work lives. While this may sound important, once you read this book and understand that preparation for work amounts to little more than a very expensive vocational training course, you'll realize how shortchanged students are, and how society as a whole has lost the chance to actually prepare individuals for citizenship and engagement in the work of repairing society. In other words, universities have not lived up to the promise of helping to make the world a better place.

The crisis Aronowitz describes may seem reflective of an idealistic belief in the power of higher education, but even a cursory glance at the political and economic landscape shows the dearth of ideas in handling the multi-layer problems facing us as a country; it's hard to avoid the fact that the evident source of this problem is how we prepare people for life in the larger world. If preparation is merely an exercise in training clerks, accountants, and even professionals, then we have what we asked for: a country of clerks, accountants, doctors and lawyers, rather than a culture committed to democracy and one that values the involvement of every person -- regardless of their occupation -- in the democratic enterprise. Perhaps -- as Aronowitz proposes in his very clear last chapter, which includes a higher education curriculum of his own -- we prepared citizens instead of proficient employees, people could attach value to themselves and their potential for being part of their society in a way that isn't linked to their career or occupation.

Hats off to Aronowitz; he's written a book that should be read by every educator, every college administrator, and every person who counts himself as a citizen above all.

38 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, but also nothing new, March 16, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: THE KNOWLEDGE FACTORY: DISMANTLING THE CORPORATE UNIVERSITY AND CREATING TRUE HIGHER LEARNING (Hardcover)

Aronowitz has written an excellent book here, but the overall message is nothing new. Richard Hofstadter, in his early 1960s book, Anti-intellectualism in American Life (which won a Pulitzer Prize), demonstrated that American culture had been anti-intellectual since the early 19th century and perhaps earlier. Approximately one-fourth of that book was concerned with anti-intellectualism in U.S. education. In 1987, the liberal Russel Jacoby published The Last Intellectuals and the conservative Allan Bloom published The Closing of the American Mind; Bloom's book also was essentially about anti-intellectual American culture, while Jacoby's was about anti-intellectual intellectuals, a group that largely overlaps with U.S. college professors. Most recently, Edward Said called attention to the dearth of public intellectuals in his Representation of the Intellectuals (including [American] colleges' responsibility for this situation), and Daniel Rigney, Leon Fink, Dane Claussen and others have written about anti-intellectualism and higher education, or (the lack of) public intellectuals and higher education.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent!, August 14, 2002

By 

Tim Kidd (Plover, WI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the Corporate University and Creating True Higher Learning (Paperback)

Like the previous reader, I've read both Hofstadter's "Anti-Intellecutalism..." and Jacoby's "Last Intellectuals". This work is just as enlightening as both of them.

Aronowitz sheds light on the suspicions of most anyone familiar with university life today (I'm a recent college graduate). He charts out how physics and engineering grew to dominate the university during the cold war and how corporates sponsorship largely took the place of military support in the post-Cold War era.

But what especially intrigued me was his background information on NYU and John Brademas' largely successful efforts to shake down wealthy donors and buy academic superstars. This transformed the reputation of the school. I'm going to graduate school at NYU in the fall, so I enjoyed hearing these details.

Aronowitz is unique among academics, given his working-class background and unorthodox method of attaining his degrees. These experiences are reflected in a passionate yet realistic prose. "The Knowledge Factory" is an engaging read that should be picked up by anyone affiliated with high education (students, teachers...especially administrators).