Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preface -- List of Abbreviations -- PART I The Idea of the University -- Bob MACKENZIE: The Decline of the Professor: The Impact of Higher Education Change on Academic Roles -- Kenneth B. PETER: Weberian Collegiality and Academic Freedom in the Western University -- David Seth PRESTON: Managerialism and the Post-Enlightenment Crisis of the British University -- Robert GRANT: The End of Liberal Education -- David JENKINS: Diced Carrots: The RAE Explained in the Light of Game Theory -- PART II Macro Contemporary Issues of the University -- George DIEHR and John R. MONTANARI: The Role of Private Sector Models in Higher Education: Back to the Future -- Glynis COUSIN: "It's the Way They Tell It..." The RAE Explained in the Light of Rhetorical Criticism -- Len HOLMES: Reframing the Skills Agenda in Higher Education: Graduate Identity and the Double Warrant -- PART III Micro Contemporary Issues of the University -- Amanda RELPH: The Influence of Key Skills on Higher Education -- Ann BARLOW: The Implications of Widening Participation Initiatives for Learning Support in Higher Education -- Elizabeth MYTTON and Janet HANSON: W(h)ither the academic Law Teacher -- Ann IRVING: The Investors in People Standard and UK Higher Education -- Index -- Notes on Contributors.

This book began as a collection of papers presented at a conference entitled 'The Future Business of Higher Education' held at Oxford University. The contributions range from those who grapple with the question of what a University should do, through those concerned with making Higher Education more efficient, to some who were already planning for some technologically inevitable virtual future. These disparate leanings led to inevitable conflict and a challenge in editing into book form. In compiling and editing the chapters the editor has tried to preserve some of the diversity of opinion presented at Oxford. By doing so it is apparent that some individual contributors would find unacceptable much of what others in the book have to say. The traditionalists clash with the modernizers, the Left with the Right, Public with Private and the theorists with the practitioners. It is this very divergence of philosophical opinion as to the future of Higher Education that makes this book such an enjoyable and stimulating read.

Description based on print version record.