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Stanley Aronowitz, The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the Corporate University and Creating True Higher Learning (Beacon Press, 2000) Reissued in paperback by Beacon in 2001. Have American universities given up the classical ideal of an encompassing academic education for mere professional training? Yes, argues Stanley Aronowitz, a sociology professor at City University of New York. In 192 pages, the longtime labor activist bemoans what he describes as intellectual deterioration in public education. Universities have dropped the notion of nurturing "cultural capital" by instilling values and beliefs for a shortsighted approach of "vocationalization," writes Aronowitz. Aronowitz knows both worlds from his own experience. He has shifted between the world of factory workers and the world of academia, attending four different colleges without graduating. This, writes Aronowitz in the preface, gives him a perspective as neither an insider nor an outsider - and the free thinking to sketch out some ideas for reform, the outspoken aim of his book. In seven chapters, Aronowitz outlines the history of U.S. higher education, describes the expansion of public universities after the Second World War and pins down the factors of their demise since the 1970s. As money from the defense sector slowly trickled up, public universities began to act more like private corporations, Aronowitz writes. But this move has eroded the conception of higher education, degrading universities to vocational training centers rather than places of academic excellence. Higher education has become higher training – propelled by the fact that most schools depend on assistants and adjunct professors to educate undergraduate students. The future, however, needs broadly and widely educated people who are able to think critically in a globalized world. Thus, Aronowitz advocates a different approach: Creating a core curriculum of four key domains - history, literature, science, and philosophy. All those disciplines should be applied to explore different time periods, since each of them "participates in, and is influenced by, the prevailing spirit of the time, but each has its own internal history as well." Aronowitz's critique of the current state of U.S. higher education has found a mixed following among reviewers. Library Journal found that "familiar complaints are put in a new perspective." Publishers Weekly credited Aronowitz with the "high seriousness of his endeavor," but warned that his "Marxist-influenced rhetoric" might deter some readers. A reviewer in Adult Education Review found the book a good source for progressive educators, but was put off by its "Eurocentric monochrome male worldview" that excluded other perspectives. MORE: A Compendium Website of Topics in Higher Education Reform Aronowitz's Political Career |
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