26 May 2010

Where the wild things are

Reading 'University Colleges as Dangerous Places' by Anthony Potts in Anthony Potts & Tom O'Donoghue [ed] Schools as dangerous places: a historical perspective ( Cambria Press, 2007) 365-383 and Ben Wildavsky's The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities Are Reshaping the World (Princeton University Press, 2010). 

The latter strikes me as the academic version of Friedman's fatuous The World Is Flat or The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization. The University Business Is Flat? The Lexis and the Ivy League? More analysis, please, less acceptance of spin by administrators and a greater engagement with counter-claims about globalisation, meritocracy and the liberating effect of trophy buildings and trophy institutions.