Customer Reviews

Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education

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What an engaging book, neat anecdotes abound. Each chapter presents a case study of some kind to show the sorts of adjustments colleges and universities make to gain and maintain competitive advantage. Much has been written of the packaging of students for display and evaluation by university admissions committees. This book explores the opposite end. Kirp shows how NYU wooed the finest analytic philosophers money can buy in order to gain top students and international reputation, how many public universities are rethinking their commitments to their charter states as the tax-based funding dwindles, and how schools such as DeVry, Phoenix, and many two-year colleges now fill a niche offering IT certification, practical courses most universities choose to ignore.

One of my favorite chapters exhibits the cooperation of several small southern liberal arts colleges in an effort to maximize the utility of the internet and defy the complications of location to offer a world class education in the Classics. The chapter on the University of Chicago's efforts to market itself by emphasizing the rigors and intensity of its offerings at the expense of its reputation as a party school provides some humorous moments.

Kirp seems to know all of the people he needs to know to get the stories straight and compelling. From the brainstorming of catchy college name to the purchase of science departments by the funding dollar, public and private, Kirp explores the variety of decisions, the successes and failures of faculty involvement, and the remarkable institutional overhauls that occur while remaining solvent and functional.

Money changes everything for the college and university. It seems all institutions need more of it, yet Kirp shows how many schools and their leaders are able to adapt to the market without compromising everything of value. The book fascinates so because the institutional norm is an aberration and so much of the success of an institution in its upkeep depends on the personality of the place, its faculty, and alumni. Would that each endowment provided its school with enough to prevent it from having to hire the marketeers for the make-overs. I have never read a book such as this, one that combines the hurt and impetus of wanting money and reputation with the creative and curious ways approaching a fix.

This informative and provocative book is presented as a series of case studies. They cover a quite comprehensive set of issues and institutions. Among schools mentioned or treated in depth are U of Chicato, Dickinson College, NYU, New York Law School, USC, U Michigan, UVA, Columbia, MIT, Rhodes College in Memphis, the British "Open University," the University of CA (various campuses), the University of Phoenix, and DeVry University (the last two are for-profits). The problems faced by these various schools -- raising operating funds, preserving their missions, collaborating with private industry, surviving a ratings-driven admissions process, adapting to and exploiting technology -- are issues that each institution faces in ways that are both distinctive and overlapping. The case-study method permits exploration of the complexities of the higher education landscape without reductiveness.

The method, however, does have its drawbacks. Too many issues (for instance, the role of technology) circle around repeatedly, so one starts to feel issue-fatigue. Also, the case study method attempts to "tell a story," often featuring personalities. The approach borrows a lot from the "New Journalism." For example, here is the opening sentence of Chapter 3: "For William Durden, the peripatetic president of Dickinson College, the October 5, 2001, issue of the Wall Street Journal contained some very good news." Well, maybe that gets a reader to want to keep going (actually, it turns me off), but it also suggests a focus on individuals and their impact on the places where they work, not on the abstract patterns to be found in the problems they confront.

This focus competes with the underlying structural argument of the book, which I take to be the following: The line between the academy and the marketplace is increasingly blurred in ways that are both exciting but also dangerous to the underlying mission of higher education. If institutions and their leaders do not become more self-conscious about this problem, they will be in danger of selling their schools down the river; i.e., there will be no problem with selling the academy because in essence the academy, as a separate institution in our society, will not longer exist. It will already have morphed into a trade school.

However, I did not really understand that this was the message until I got to the final chapter, entitled "Conclusion: The Corporation of Learning." (I'd actually suggest readers START with this chapter.) That's because the case study method provides lots of details and not very much analysis. It's also because Kirp wrote this book by conducting (or having others conduct) a lot of very specific interviews, which he does not seem entirely to have digested and because he entrusted the writing of a good part of this book to his graduate students and research assistants (see his "Acknowledgments," which are tucked away at the very end of the book).

In sum, this is an engaging book. It's full of interesting and useful narratives. In the broadness of its focus, it's really quite ambitious. But, in the end, it feels a little half-baked. It's a reasonable place to start thinking about some of the important issues it raises, but its focus is too fragmented and specific to permit the kind of abstract and sustained analysis that these issues truly require.

This is an excellent analysis of the current state of affairs in higher education. The book includes 14 chapters including the conclusion. Each chapter can be read independently, as they follow the famed Harvard case study method. Each chapter describes a unique issue impacting higher education. Some of these interesting issues include: a) the advent and so far failing of online higher education; b) the success of for profit publicly traded university companies; c) the new sources of funds for universities, including copyrights and patents; d) the ongoing restructuring of undergraduate core curriculum to please the students and private industry; e) the shrinking government subsidization of public universities and their resulting de facto privatization; f) the compromising of the independence of university research when financed by the private sector; and f) various attempts to revive the liberal arts discipline within an increasingly profit driven higher education culture.

Throughout these issues, the authors covers recurring themes. These include the many conflict of interest between: a) intellectual culture and profits; b) professors' research activities and undergraduate teaching; c) practical job oriented education and liberal arts.

Some of these fascinating themes beg the questions of what is knowledge? What is culture? Even what is critical thinking? During the Renaissance the answer to such questions would include being fluent in both Latin and Greek in addition to a couple of vernacular languages. It also entailed having an extremely developed art appreciation supported by demonstrated artistic capabilities. A broad and deep understanding of most aspects of science was also important. Thus, in comparison to this ideal Renaissance Mind model, we are really all a bunch of illiterates no matter how well educated we are.

The author finishes the book by asking what will be the Latin and Greek disciplines of tomorrow. What he means by that is what will be the dying intellectual disciplines that will not survive our practical and profit driven culture. He ventures to offer some candidates for the intellectual cemetery, including: English literature, pure mathematics, foreign languages, maybe sociology and other liberal arts disciplines. He mentions these with much sadness. He does not want it to happen. But, he suggests that the painting may be on the wall.

The bright side of the coin is that higher education has never been so alive. Universities attempt a cocktail of different strategies to survive and thrive. Also, a bunch of smart institutions are attacking the higher education monopoly from all sides. Students of all ages never had so many opportunities to acquire higher learning in so many different ways. None of us does speak Latin and Greek anymore. But, we all have infinite opportunities to keep on learning throughout our lives be it a certification in C++ programming, or a business or law degree from specialized institutions. Also, online education is bound to make a come back and compound learning opportunities for all of us. What's wrong with all that? Not much really.

Thus, there is a lot of food for thought in this book. You will never think of higher education quite the same way after reading it.

David Kirp does a superlative job of illustrating the many ways in which universities, indeed all types of higher and further education, are being increasingly exposed to market forces. By the judicious use of case studies based upon educational institutions as diverse as Dickinson College, the University of Chicago, the University of California Berkeley, MIT, the Open University and DeVry University, he shows how the embrace of the market has led some universities astray, some to prosper enormously, and at least one to prosper by giving its "product" away.

Kirp generally provides a balanced view of his subject, although it is evident that he is very concerned about the injury to the "academic commons" to which market forces can lead. In this respect he recognizes the ongoing phenomenon, describes it well and leaves it to his readers to devise an appropriate response.

The book is clearly and engagingly written, and nicely complements Derek Bok's _Universities in the Marketplace_ (2003), which takes a narrower view of the diversity of higher educational institutions while also considering a broader set of functional aspects of the university, for example, athletics. Together Kirp and Bok have left this reader impressed by the power and persistence of market forces and keenly aware that something very valuable will be lost if they dominate higher education completely.

One of the first things you learn in policy schools is: Never wander too far from your data. David Kirp's book is wonderfully rich with original case material and backed up with an impressive set of secondary sources. Don't expect the easy answers you get from one-note oped pieces and think tanks. Well-written and thought-provoking at the same time, the book's weight of evidence is matched by the weight of its argument. For once, the for-profit sector in education is actually assessed rather than dismissed out of hand, and new approaches are brought to the fore--what can we learn from the successful Open University distance learning model of education? What I take away from Kirp and his colleagues is that no flaming angels or social darwinism can direct our way to better post-secondary education. It's got to be done case by case by those whose careers are invested in making colleges and universities the best they can be. Speaking of the cases, I'd be surprised if those who teach or are students in these institutions don't see themselves and their concerns reflected in this book!

First things first: anyone who is interested in higher education policy (whether as an academic, investor, administrator, or student) will almost certainly find this book well worth their time.

Professor Kirp's well-written case studies provide an insightful look at the changing environment of higher education, where institutions may be increasingly driven to act less like collegial scholars in a marketplace of ideas and more like the half-starved castaways on a bad episode of "Survivor."

As the other reviews attest, the book provides an equal measure of readability and rigor; Kirp clearly knows what he's talking about, and he says it skillfully enough that at times you might think you were reading an article in the Atlantic Monthly instead of a book from a noted academic. Any student who finds this book on their assigned reading list should consider themselves lucky.

Moreover, some of the most interesting parts of this book come not from the details of the case studies that comprise the bulk of the book, but from the larger implications and the questions they raise. Any good book raises more questions than it answers, and Kirp does not disappoint on this score. After I finished reading "Shakespeare," I was left with a couple of burning questions:

If the winners write the history books, how might history look if one day the "winner" of the higher education battles ends up being a for-profit subsidiary of a company like Enron? What are the pros and cons of allowing private companies to gain control over the content of American education?

Furthermore, if "producers" of higher education are becoming increasingly sophisticated in marketing their product, how can "consumers" develop the savvy to ensure that they really know what they're buying (and getting what they paid for)? I imagine there are a great many parents of high school seniors, as well as adult professionals looking for a career upgrade, who would want to know how to sort through the big promises and slick brochures much like Kirp's consumer exemplar, Mohammed Ziaee.

I very much enjoyed reading this book and highly recommend it.

With sharp-edged sympathy, David Kirp tells us in a shrewd, example-rich, and compelling narrative why we should worry more than we do about whether the ability to keep their moral balance is hard-wired into higher education's genes. As good a writer as he is a thinker, Kirp can simplify his subject even as he reveals the complexity of the current scene and the dilemmas college and university leaders face. The picture he paints shows educational leaders mixing creative thinking with short-sightedness, economic tough-mindedness with decisions that could sell key values short. Kirp's argument with higher education is a measured one because his is a lover's quarrel. Unmoved by nostalgia but indignant when core values get compromised, he describes with equal fervor the people and institutions whose moral compass is off and those breaking new ground with a clear eye on values. Among the book's most appealing features is the author's teacherly style. He is provocative but not unfair, objective but not coy about it--the reader knows where he stands. Kirp likes an argument better tnan most, and he writes to stimulate dialogue as much as to inform. The reader is likely to come away from this book looking around for a companion so he or she can keep the dialogue going.

David Kirp's analysis is an insightful discussion of the challenges facing American higher education in the 21st century. His case studies are for the most part interesting and informative. His bottom line is that the old "ivory tower" face of the university (and college) is becoming a thing of the past as financial pressures, skyrocketing tuition, and the pressure to maintain student enrollments is fundamentally changing the face of higher education. Kirp appreciates that business-based marketing is essential to maintaining the solvency of most of America's colleges, yet he rightly laments what happens when marketing overshadows the grand purposes for which the university exists. For those in higher education this is a useful book, although toward the book's end the case studies become a bit repetitive. Also, Kirp's right-minded discussion about the dangers of a purely market-driven higher education ignores an equally dangerous and more insidious threat to the noble purposes of higher education; namely, political correctness.

I'm the President of GGU and have been in higher ed. since 1968... This is the best volume on the challanges and strategies of our industry I have ever read - for me, facing a competitive environment, technical change and the need to focus on mission, this book has been wonderful. The case studies have the feel of an insider's perspective. The authors comments point to the strategic and organizational dilemmas that colleges and university adminstrators face everyday.

This book was an interesting case study review of financial forces that are shaping our universities. While reading I found myself contemplating questions such as "Can schools preserve their heritage of `the disciplines of the mind' while adapting to the competitive pressures of the new millennium?" Kirp has thoroughly investigated the problems and opportunities facing the funding and the recruiting practices of universities today. It was fascinating to learn how courageous and creative leaders were able to turn their institutions around. I would recommend this book to individuals who make decisions regarding the funding and on-going solvency of institutions of higher learning.