Rethinking the University: Structure, Critique, Vocation

Soo Tian Lee

B & W 229 x 152 mm | Perfect Bound on White w/Matte Laminate | 224 pages | Paperback ISBN 978-1-910761-06-9 | E-book (PDF) ISBN N/A | 11 June 2017

description

Rethinking the University: Structure, Critique, Vocation is an attempt to escape the discursive ruts that characterize debates over higher education in the United Kingdom. It explores three distinct perspectives inspired by Kojin Karatani’s ‘triad of concepts’ — instrumentalism, idealism, and community — which the author further develops trans-genealogically to open the way to a heterodox reading of the post-war British university. To deal with the co-existence of these three perspectives, this book focuses on the idea of vocation and concludes with a plea for a university oriented towards the future, engaged in the present, and grounded in an appreciation of the past.

Read interview with the author on Critical Legal Thinking.

How did the British university arrive at its present impasse—and with which concepts can we grasp its contradictions? Lee’s timely book provides fresh answers to these questions by historicizing the post-war university while subjecting its ideals to a fundamental critique. Drawing from the philosophy of Kojin Karatani, Lee unfolds a powerful, novel theory of the university within which there is no a priori standard by which to judge its success or failure. The result is an erudite study of the post-war British university and the concepts by which we judge higher education. A major contribution to study of the university ideal.

— Joel Wainwright, Professor (Ohio State University), author of Decolonizing Development, Geopiracy, and Climate Leviathan (with Geoff Mann).

This eloquently written and engaging account of the trajectory of the British university is an important addition to the literature on the topic. It presents a bold and original treatment of recent history and future implications of higher education that is a must-read for researchers and commentators in the field. While being theoretically complex, it manages to avoid obscurantism, and provides a constructive response to the threats to the public university so evident in contemporary times. The book provides a response that is hopeful but without naïveté, and that recuperates fundamental principles of the university without slipping into romanticized golden-ageism. A breath of fresh air in this perennial debate.

— Tristan McCowan, Reader in Education and International Development (Institute of Education, University College London).