The Higher Education System: Academic Organization in Cross-National Perspective

By Burton R. Clark

Book Overview

'First, this is a major work of scholarship, the product of immense knowledge and gestation over many years of study, which looks at higher education in a new way; second, at a time when confidence has been seriously undermined by the effects of the economic downturn this is a study which implicitly asserts the fundamental role of higher education in the broad spectrum of modern societies....his grasp of detail and his understanding of the historical context is secure and his bibliography is a treasure trove of little known material. Moreover he writes in an attractive and informal style....This will be an influential book and will set new trends of thinking in higher education.'-----M. L. Shattock, The Times Higher Education Supplement ( London ).

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520048415
• ISBN13: 9780520048416
• Release Date: January 1983
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr
• Length: 315 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Model of coordination: the state, market & academics

The triangle of coordination formulated by the author, Burton Clark, is influential that changing relationships between the state, market and academic oligarchy can be analyzed and compared more systematically across different countries. This model has been modified and developed by a number of scholars and researchers that Clark's model has become a classic in the field of higher education studies. Clark accurately points out that market becomes an important factor shaping the development of higher education systems in different countries, for instance, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and even Hong Kong. Based on this analytical framework, there has been a new balance between the state, market and academic oligarchy. In the era of globalization, higher education moves towards a new mode of management which has been commonly known as new managerialism or New Public Management, which replaces the tradition of collegiality inherited by the academic community. By all these, Clark's book is so stimulative that enlightens our research on the changing nature of higher education in the post-modern, globalizing society.