The Virtual University? Knowledge, Markets and Management

Citation

Petuchovaitė, R. (2003), "The Virtual University? Knowledge, Markets and Management", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 59 No. 6, pp. 742-745. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410310506376

Only at first sight academia life looks steady and unchangeable. This book, The Virtual University? Knowledge, Markets and Management, presents a variety of aspects, features, approaches and achievements in changing university – virtual or global university phenomena. The text is organised into three major parts:

• •

  Part I. The new global context.

• •

  Part II. Practices and policies.

• •

  Part III. Prospects and possibilities.

There are 14 contributions in total by mainly UK and American authors. Although there are contrasting European and US examples, few African and Asian cases are presented. Some chapters and discussions are based on university practices of the last decade of the twentieth century still the book provides a challenging and well balanced set of metaphors, models and insights for “thinking of academy” (p. 29) in the twenty‐first century.

In the first part the changes of environment as well as development of university and/or higher education institutions are discussed. In the first chapter Kevin Robins and Frank Webster, editors of the collection, question the phenomenon of “the virtual university” and make a distinction between the complex situation of real universities today and of the technologically transformed fully “virtual university” in the future. The second chapter, “Globalizing the academy”, by John Urry discusses university landscape transformation by information society or “scapes and flows”. He argues that in interdependent and heterogeneous global society no “ivory towers” remain but flexible, able to compete universities in the networks with other knowledge providers. Gerard Delanty in “The university and modernity: a history of the present” provides an interesting outlook of historical development of university, namely four main stages: the Humboldtian university, the civic university, the mass university and the virtual university of the twenty‐first century. Clearly, the latest changes in wider context can be seen not as the end of university but as consistent stage of development. And the relevance of the university for the society will be continued in order “to enable society to live with choice and uncertainty”. “The university in the ‘global’ economy” by Masao Miyoshi closes the first part with observations of recent changes of higher education in the USA and discussion of the failure of humanities to fit into prospering academic capitalism.

James Cornford and Neil Pollock start the second part with the article “Working through the work of making work mobile”. ICT creates “distributed university”, where there is no need for the students and the faculty to be at the same place. A case research shows that a technology enabled virtual university should be built into traditional one. The sixth chapter by Charles Crookm, “The virtual university: the learner's perspective”, advocates for the student in the process of virtualization and increasing dependence on technologies. The virtual studies penetrate traditional university culture – time, place, materials and social environment, thus policy and strategies should be defined in consideration with learning and cultural psychology. Then discussion goes on to management in the seventh chapter, “New managerialism: the manager‐academic and technologies of management in universities – looking forward to virtuality?”, by Mike Reed and Rosemary Deem. Results of “new managerialism” phenomenon study in uk universities reveals the development of hybrid forms of management in universities though it is slower than elsewhere in public services. Yiannis Gabriel and Andrew Sturdy in the chapter “Exporting management: neo‐imperialism and global consumerism” continue the management theme while they analyse the case of management education export to Malaysia and point out the impact of transnational spread of Western management ideas and knowledge. They conclude that in the global market management educator may turn into an entertainer as opposed to expert – selling attractively packaged, high priced standard goods to an emerging market. The next chapter, “Saving the soul of the university: what is to be done?”, by Lee Benson and Ira Harkavy provides interesting polemic about American higher education developments through the perspective of two twenty‐first century scenarios: global democratic century and global commodification‐of everything century. The last chapter in the second part, “Commodity and community: institutional design for the networked university”, by Phillip E. Agre presents the policies and design of the university that combines commodity and community models and manage the tension between values of industry and community.

Part three starts with the critical contribution entitled as “Marketizing higher education: neoliberal strategies and counter‐strategies” by Les Levidow. He argues that in the heavily ideological information society environment universities loose their positions as guides of social change and rather become subordinate to external funds generation and managerialism. This approach is supported by three cases: African, North American and European. The conclusion derived is that there is a need for thought‐out opposition to marketization of higher education and in the end the author proposes four counter‐strategies to neoliberal agenda. The twelfth chapter, by Timothy W. Luke, gives a more protagonistic view on “Digital discourses, online classes, electronic documents: developing new university technocultures”. Fundamental changes of human work culture and ICT raise the conflict between an older technoculture and new ones in higher education. Virtual teaching as it is stated “undercut the personal sovereignty of professors” and therefore inflame with the intense resistance. Nevertheless, it is essential to study the “digital discourses in learning” in order to find a happy medium between neo‐conservative alarms and neo‐liberal reforms. So, in the next chapter, David F. Noble suggests that what indeed is happening is a “Rehearsal for the revolution”. In other words it is a repetition of correspondence education development with a new name, “distance education”, although both are cast up by profit pursued more than just by technology transfer. This standpoint underlies serious dangers such as even in case of failure to deliver promised economic and pedagogic miracles it will be pushed to make invested time and money square. So, in the 14th and last chapter, Martin Trow presents “Some consequences of the new information and communication technologies for higher education”. Outcomes are discussed through a scheme of five major characteristics of ICT: speed of change, ability to weaken and blur institutional and intellectual boundaries, democratizing effect, varying impact on academic subjects, different ways of usage determined by user motivational and capability factors. Probably higher education institutions will employ a mix of traditional and distance learning still abrupt computer technology breakthrough may reverse all expectations.

Overall, it would be more than short‐sighted to embrace all innovations related to globalisation, technological transfer and virtualisation of education with pure enthusiasm when the basic university values such as autonomy, academic freedom, pluralism and universality is under the threat. So this collection is a good base of a sound resistance to overwhelming hype up of information society. The book may be useful to academics involved in university management roles, to professional managers and strategists in the forefront of education industry as well as to wider academic community tracing the orientation in the university in transition.