176 Book Review s/Comptes Rendus analysis of the development of an entrepreneurial pathway. These issues were obviously over-ridden by market and financial concerns. The reader can construe a second unintended reading of the text, between the lines, about the impact of the entrepreneurial model on the principles governing universities such as academic freedom, tenure, equity and inclusivity, collégial governance, and specially, about the role of the university as social critic. The universities reviewed in this book and praised by the author chose to work within the parameters of a market ideology, an ideology that has carried an atmosphere of inevitability, and is affecting the nature of major educational institutions. The choice for educational institutions is an old existential one: either they decide to exist in the world as defined by external forces (mainly the market through corporate influence) or they decide to participate in it by assuming a critical and transformative role on terms that emerge from the institutions' history and praxis (interaction with practice and constituencies) rather than becoming an object of change. ^ ^ ^ Jan C u r r i e & Jan N e w s o n (Editors). (1998). Universities and Globalization: Critical Perspectives. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Pages: 335 (paperback). Reviewed by Jamie-Lynn Magnusson, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto. Over the years I've been indebted to Jan Newson's consistent and clear voice in her various writings on Canadian higher education. Her book co-authored with Howard Buchbinder, The University Means Business, has been required reading in my graduate courses on higher education, as have various articles and chapters written by her. In her new book, Universities and Globalization, Newson teams up with Jan Currie, an Australian-based researcher, to bring together a collection of writings examining how universities are being shaped by market ideology in an era characterized by the restructuring of parts of national economies onto parts of transnational economies. An important theme in The Canadian Journal of Higher Education Volume XXX, No. 2, 2000 1843 Book Review s/Comptes Rendus the collection involves the implications of moving away from Keynesian economic policies to the relatively deregulated economic terrain of transnational capital. The collection features writers who take a decidedly social critical perspective on neoliberal economic policies, and the impact that these policies have had on postsecondary education. In a field of studies such as higher education, in which restructuring literature takes on an institutional "how to" tone, and terms such as "quality" and "excellence" are used uncritically to signify alignment with market imperative, this text offers an important alternative to the oftentimes conservative, mainstream literature. In her introductory chapter, Currie argues that the role of the university as a source of civic literacy is under threat as a result of adopting practices that shift tertiary education "toward business values and a market agenda" (p. 2). Those familiar with the history of the university as a research institution realize that throughout this century, universities in industrialized nations have had a corporate agenda. The difference now, according to Currie, is that the business practices currently shaping universities succeed in extending neoliberal hegemony into the intellectual work and everyday life of academia (p. 7). In Canada, universities evolved primarily as a post-WWII institution to support the development of the capitalist welfare state. Academia, then, became aligned with Keynesian progressivist reform, through which certain notions of social democratic citizenship and entitlement were constructed. This vision included regulated business practices, decommodification of certain services, and universal benefits extending to health, education, and such. University education under this system was accessible, and oriented, in terms of its institutional culture, research, and curriculum, to this vision of social democratic citizenship. In contrast to Keynesian economic philosophy, neoliberalism promotes deregulation of business practices, commodification of services, the shifting away from universal entitlements, dissembling of the welfare state, and curtailment of democratic participation in matters that are considered within the realm of corporations and business. As national economies undergo restructuring, then, the notion of an interventionist democratic state is eroded through expansion of neoliberal hegemony, The Canadian Journal of Higher Education Volume XXX, No. 2, 2000 178 Book Review s/Comptes Rendus which then becomes a characterizing feature of "globalization" or transnational economics. Universities, by adopting certain kinds of globalizing practices, according to Newson in her final chapter, move away from "their traditional commitment to developing and disseminating knowledge as a public (rather than private) resource, and their historic association with democratic life and values. Instead of being an influential agent and a voice of lively self-reflection, the university as conveyed in the chapters of this book appears to have been ravaged by the force of these changes — reoriented, restructured, reconfigured — even while, and perhaps because, it has adjusted its goals and its modus operandi to them" (p. 309). That is, rather than serving public interest, universities are corporatized. Section I of the text has two chapters by Janice Dudley (from Australia) and Sheila Slaughter (author of Academic Capitalism written with Larry Leslie) meant to provide a critical analysis of globalization "as a discourse of neoliberal capitalism" (p. 15). These provide an introduction to some economic concepts associated with the term "globalization," and show how these apply to policies that affect higher education. Although I do not necessarily agree with certain elements of their analyses, I have certainly found these chapters useful with respect to acquainting graduate students with key issues related to universities and globalization, especially in terms of policy implications. Section 2 of the book deals with national responses to globalization, and contains chapters by Donald Fisher and Kjell Rubenson who examine the Canadian context, Arild Tjeldvoll on Norway, and Richard DeAngelis on Australia and France. This section is meant to underscore the importance of understanding globalization as a collection of diverse local responses, decisions, policies, etc., rather than a pressure that has a universal, homogenizing effect that is somehow beyond our local control and decision-making. Each chapter is an interesting read, but the lack of an overarching, synthesizing analysis made this section somewhat less effective than it could have been. The chapter on Canadian higher education by Fisher and Rubenson is an important follow-up statement to Slaughter and Leslie's conclusions in their text, Academic Capitalism, that Canada has somehow been immune from the kinds of changes to The Canadian Journal of Higher Education Volume XXX, No. 2, 2000 179 Book Review s/Comptes Rendus higher education that has affected the university sector in the U.K., Australia, and U.S. In contrast, Fisher and Rubenson point out that the restructuring of block transfer payments under the Chretien government has lead to extensive restructuring activities in each of the provinces, including in the postsecondary sector. After very briefly outlining some of the different responses on the part of the different provinces, they go on to develop a more extensive examination of the higher education system in the province of British Columbia. Their chapter shows that the trends discussed in the Slaughter and Leslie text are indeed taking place in Canadian universities, and particularly in jurisdictions that have mandates that are explicitly neoliberal, including Alberta under the Klein regime, and Ontario under the Harris regime. Section 3 is an exciting section of the book because the contributing authors provide an analysis of specific practices by which universities are being restructured, and they evaluate some of the consequences. Organized under the headings of managerialism, accountability, and privatization, the practices analysed in the four different chapters describe strategic locations at which to resist neoliberal restructuring. These are the material practices by which the corporatization of the university is realized. Managerialism signals a diminishing of autonomy of faculty through increased decision making and power given over to university managers who do not represent faculty interests and values. The chapter on this topic written by Currie and Leslie Vidovich presents findings from an interview study assessing faculty members perceptions of these changes with respect to decision-making and power. As university managers become the primary spokespersons for these changes, the loss of faculty voice and collégial participation reveals the decidedly undemocratic nature of the decision-making structures being erected within universities. Their chapter attempts to reclaim this voice by reporting on faculty perceptions and insights into these changes. The next two chapters examine the issues of performance and accountability. Polster and Newson's chapter provides an analysis of key performance indicators using concepts associated with Dorothy Smith's work. As with each of the practices discussed in this section, the emphasis is on how the performance indicator movement reorganizes social The Canadian Journal ofHigher Education Volume XXX, No. 2, 2000 180 Book Review s/Comptes Rendus relations that coordinate academic work in alignment with market ideology. Smith's theoretical framework is particularly powerful in that it offers an analysis of the ideological implications of social science methodologies such as performance measurement. It further reveals how the institutionalization of these measures accomplishes local reforms with respect to how academic work is carried out, but organized translocally in accordance with global relations of power. Hence local changes in terms of restructuring exercises can be understood in terms of much broader political implications; this type of analysis, then is a powerful tool for politicizing the academy. For this reason I would have like to have seen Smith's analytical strategies carried through more systematically throughout this chapter, but enjoyed the read nevertheless. The chapter on accountability by Vidovich and Currie offers an analysis of changes in day to day academic work as result of evaluation strategies instituted to purportedly increase "accountability." In her other writings, Vidovich examines the discourse of accountability using Foucauldian concepts, and therefore does not go into as much detail on this issue here. Rather, the emphasis is on actual practices of accountability, in order to provide a microanalysis of how academic work is configured according to an economic appraisal and how the regulation of academic work is achieved through the evaluation strategies. Although I personally prefer Dorothy Smith's framework to analyze these issues, Vidovich and Currie follow through with a Foucauldian analysis, borrowing from writers such as Stephen Ball. Using interview data they attempt to show that increased activity in the use of accountability technologies have diminished autonomy in the areas of teaching and research. Barrows, in his history of the of the U.S. postsecondary system reveals the very explicit agenda to proletarianize faculty work in order to subordinate faculty work to nationalistic capitalist agenda in the early part of this century. Vidovich and Currie make a similar argument, but with respect to a more recent economic context. I would have appreciated a more detailed and sustained analysis of how practices associated with accountability discourse have, for example, reshaped academic work in a way that has brought everyday activities of faculty and students closer to market pressures. The evaluation of courses that are The Canadian Journal of Higher Education Volume XXX, No. 2, 2000 181 Book Review s/Comptes Rendus packaged and marketed to lucrative niches, for example, brings the culture of academia closer to that of private-for-profit universities such as the University of Phoenix. The evaluation of research productivity in terms outlined by "Centres of Excellence" and by many universities that pride themselves on "research excellence" brings scholarship directly in line with corporate agenda, and corporate control. These kinds of linkages need to be made explicit. The chapter is a worthwhile read nevertheless, especially as a companion piece to some of Vidovich's other writings. The final chapter in this section, by Edward Berman, in fact moves into this kind of analysis by examining the issue of privatization in terms of the ways in which universities have been reconfigured as entrepreneurial institutions. Everyone in academia reading this chapter will be able to relate to his clear examples and illustrations of the commodification of academic work. Section IV of the book contains three chapters that provide an important connection between the reorganization and reconfiguration of universities as regulated through transnational and supranational institutions and mechanisms. For example, Robert Lingard and Fazal Rizvi examine the regulating effect of the Organization for Economic Control and Development (OECD) in the specific case of Australian universities. In another chapter by Heriberta Castanos-Lomnitz, Axel Didriksson, and Jan Newson, the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is examined in terms of exacerbating macrolevel inequalities that exist in the 'starting points" of the higher education systems within each of the trading blocs. Their analysis is a particularly critical one in this book about globalization in that it is the only one that examines inequities in economic relations between trading partners, and the effect of agreements such as NAFTA in steering educational reforms that do not benefit those trading blocs already disadvantaged. The other chapter in this section, by Mick Campion and David Freeman, examine the evolution of the mega-university as post-Fordist institution with international implications for the role of postsecondary education within a postindustrial context. Although I enjoyed this chapter, I have always been somewhat skeptical of analysés organized in terms of distinct The Canadian Journal of Higher Education Volume XXX, No. 2, 2000 182 Book Review s/Comptes Rendus Fordist-post-Fordist categories, for reasons outlined by writers such as Alex Callinicos in his marxist critique of post-Fordist analyses. Currently I own two copies of this text, because one copy is inevitably on loan to graduate students or other faculty members interested in corporatization of universities. In reading through the chapters, however, I was constantly aware that there was insufficient attention given to the history of universities as capitalist institutions in industrialized nations. I did not agree with the notion that universities have historically and traditionally been associated with pursuing "democratic life and values," and that this function of the universities had to be reclaimed and protected. Rather, I feel that this kind of commitment has traditionally been marginalized within universities, and is becoming even more marginalized through restructuring. It is a commitment that needs to be invented, and expanded, rather than reclaimed. I was reminded of an excellent video entitled "Subtext of a Yale Education" in which the filmmaker juxtaposes the rhetoric of Yale's commitment to humanistic ideals such as equality, with its brutal labour practices. The role of Yale, one the wealthiest universities in the U.S., in the local economy of New Haven, one of the most disadvantaged communities in the U.S., reveal the contradictions inherent in the progressivist discourses of universities, and the role of these discourses in reproducing inequities. A critique of postsecondary education in terms of their role in expanding Keynesian reformist practices is important, I believe, in creating a social imaginary that resolves the contradictions inherent in capitalist social welfare policies. As Gary Teeple suggests, the social democratic privileges achieved through these reforms only apply to certain members of the population, and not to categories of people marginal to the work force, and therefore reproduce ruling relations characterized by systemic inequities. Moreover, these reforms keep in tact the basic economic framework characterized by economic exploitation. Analysing the historical fragility of the university's commitment to equity is important in negotiating a new vision. In spite of some disagreements I have with some of the analyses offered by the contributing authors, I have to applaud the editors' efforts in bringing together this collection. In one of her many interviews, The Canadian Journal ofHigher Education Volume XXX, No. 2, 2000 183 Book Review s/Comptes Rendus Giyatri Spivak commented on the political insight of many southern NGO's in terms of maintaining an inherently antagonist role vis a vis government. On the one hand, they place their political efforts behind the nation state when the state resists economic restructuring. On the other hand, they recognize that the state is also complicit in economic restructuring and must therefore be continuously scrutinized. Jan Currie and Jan Newson, it seems to me, display this kind of insight in their collection. That is, the university can serve as an important site for resisting neoliberal hegemony, but is at the same time complicit in expanding neoliberal hegemony. Personally, I will be looking forward to reading these chapters with my students and colleagues for the next few years. 4? Neil Tudiver. (1999). Universities for Sale: Resisting Corporate Control over Canadian Higher Education. Toronto,ON: Canadian Association of University Teachers/James Lorimer & Company. Pages: 248. Price: $19.95 (paperback). Reviewed by Glen A. Jones, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/ University of Toronto. Neil Tudiver describes Universities for Sale as a book about the continuing commercialization and privatization of Canadian universities, but it might more accurately be viewed as an attempt to document and describe the importance of faculty unionization. Based largely on secondary sources, the author provides an interesting description of the various changes in Canadian higher education that created a stimulus for faculty unionization, the rise of the faculty union movement across Canada, and the importance of collective bargaining in terms of protecting the working conditions and job security of the professoriate. Given the relatively small body of literature on Canadian faculty unionization, the central, core chapters of this book represent an important contribution to our understanding of this important aspect of decision-making within these institutions. The Canadian Journal ofHigher Education Volume XXX, No. 2, 2000