Higher Education and Its Communities Book

Universities and colleges have long been seen as academic communities. This book explores how the nature of these communities is changing under pressure for autonomy to be balanced by accountability; and from resource constraints from the state that is now a sponsor or client rather than a patron (leading to competition rather than collegiality). It also explains the positions of higher education institutions in relation to their regional communities, minority groups, the work of the European Community, and links to employers and learning in the community, at work and elsewhere. The final section of Higher Education and its Communities looks at how new technologies open up the global community but also may affect relationships within the learning communities at the heart of higher education's core functions; and looks at the danger of a control culture in a community where IT allows, indeed requires, a record of activities and transactions that are open to surveillance. Nevertheless, the values of the academic community live on even in societies with a historical oppression and that is the message of the book's final chapter.Read More