The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities / Edition 1

by Frank Donoghue

Overview

"What makes the modern university different from any other corporation?" asked Columbia's Andrew Delbanco recently in the New York Times. There is more and more reason to think: less and less,he answered. In this provocative book, Frank Donoghue shows how this growing corporate culture of higher education threatens its most fundamental values by erasing one of its defining features: the tenured professor. Taking a clear-eyed look at American higher education over the last twenty years, Donoghue outlines a web of forces-social, political, and institutional-dismantling the professoriate. Today, fewer than 30 percent of college and university teachers are tenured or on tenure tracks, and signs point to a future where professors will disappear. Why? What will universities look like without professors? Who will teach? Why should it matter? The fate of the professor, Donoghue shows, has always been tied to that of the liberal arts -with thehumanities at its core. The rise to prominence of the American university has been defined by the strength of the humanities and by the central role of the autonomous, tenured professor who can be both scholar and teacher. Yet in today's market-driven, rank- and ratings-obsessed world of higher education, corporate logic prevails: faculties are to be managed for optimal efficiency, productivity, and competitive advantage; casual armies of adjuncts and graduate students now fill the demand for teachers.Bypassing the distractions of the culture wars and other crises,Donoghue sheds light on the structural changes in higher education-the rise of community colleges and for-profit universities, the frenzied pursuit of prestige everywhere, the brutally competitive realities facing new Ph.D.s -that threaten the survival of professors as we've known them. There are no quick fixes in The Last Professors; rather, Donoghue offers his fellow teachers and scholarsan essential field guide to making their way in a world that no longer has room for their dreams.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823228607
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	04/30/2008
Edition description:	3
Pages:	172
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

FRANK DONOGHUE is Associate Professor of English at the Ohio State University. He is the author of The Fame Machine: Book Reviewing and Eighteenth-Century Literary Careers.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     ix
Preface     xi
Rhetoric, History, and the Problems of the Humanities     1
Competing in Academia     24
The Erosion of Tenure     55
Professors of the Future     83
Prestige and Prestige Envy     111
Notes     139
Bibliography     161
Index     171

Editorial Reviews

. . . focuses on the daunting challenges facing new humanities Ph.D.s in an increasingly corporatized academy.-D.R. Koukal

Donoghue says that in our time the corporate university will end professors as we have come to know them.-Leonard R. N. Ashley

. . . Donoghue writes that tenure-track and tenured professors now make up only 35 percent of college facutly, and that number is steadily falling.-Valerie Saturen

"Donoghue does what few other critics of higher education have been able to do - present a balanced look at a complex issue within the university and college system."-Teaching Theology and Religion

"Donoghue's well written, thoroughly documented and convincingly reported book is a must read. . ." -The Ukrainian Quarterly

"[Donoghue] presents his thesis in five well-researched and documented chapters ... his personal perspective helps him make a convincing argument that what is happening to the humanities and academics in these disciplines has a long history, has barely survived several twists in its story, and is in need of reinvention to stay alive." -Canadian Association of University Teachers

"The historical analysis of The Last Professors is a significant contribution in that it presents a coherent story of long-term structural developments. This well-written and provocative book is based on data and relevant literature." -H-Net

"An associate professor of English at Ohio State University, Frank Donoghue, insightfully analyzes, predicts, and laments the inevitable extinction of the faculty of the humanities- especially literature- at flagship state universities." -The Journal of Higher Education

From the Publisher

Donoghue (English, Ohio State Univ.; The Fame Machine: Book Reviewing and Eighteenth-Century Literary Careers) provides a rapid overview of the influences shaping and, he believes, weakening, contemporary U.S. higher education. Ever since the end of the 19th century, the American preference for corporate efficiency has undermined the core liberal arts curriculum, leading to the emergence of for-profit colleges and universities that emphasize career preparation and have no time for the humanities. Combined with a shrinking and increasingly competitive job market for PhD candidates, this environment threatens the autonomous academic life that allows tenured professors to pursue their intellectual interests and combine teaching with scholarship. In lively prose, Donoghue draws together a wide range of perspectives, asserting that higher education, especially general education and the humanities, offers important values for American society. He urges his colleagues to become more active in defending a richer mode of education and to make themselves better informed about the factors now shaping colleges and universities. This book raises important issues in a zealous tone and is recommended for any library on-or near-a college campus.
—Elizabeth R. Hayford

Library Journal

Donoghue's well written, thoroughly documented and convincingly reported book is a must read. . .

The Ukrainian Quarterly

. . . focuses on the daunting challenges facing new humanities Ph.D.s in an increasingly corporatized academy.

Technology and Culture

"How is it that the number of students attending American universities has surged in recent decades, but the number of professors—especially humanities professors—has dwindled? The perplexing institutional dynamics of the modern university come in for penetrating scrutiny here. Donoghue, an Ohio State English professor, sees a troubling new conception of higher education emerging among administrators whose thinking reflects the bottom-line calculations of business executives, not the intellectual ideals of liberal arts scholars. Inclined to view traditional professors as a costly anachronism, such administrators have been hiring low-pay adjunct instructors to replace them—and restricting their educational task to that of teaching employment skills. Even in the elite Ivy League, the humanities professors now must justify their work as a way of enhancing a school’s marketable prestige. Beleaguered professors face a dire situation in burgeoning state universities, where institutional accountants assess their research using simplistic ranking systems akin to those applied to football teams. A sobering analysis, sure to attract serious readers on and off campus."

Booklist

People sometimes believe that they were born too late or too early. After reading Donoghue's book, I feel that I have timed it just right, for it seems that I have had a career that would not have been available to me had I entered the world 50 years later. Just lucky, I guess.“

New York Times - Stanley Fish

Donoghue says that in our time the corporate university will end professors as we have come to know them.

Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance - Leonard R. N. Ashley

An associate professor of English at Ohio State University, Frank Donoghue, insightfully analyzes, predicts, and laments the inevitable extinction of the faculty of the humanities—especially literature—at flagship state universities.

The Journal of Higher Education - Bruce A. Kimball

. . . Donoghue writes that tenure-track and tenured professors now make up only 35 percent of college facutly, and that number is steadily falling.

In These Times - Valerie Saturen

Bristles with striking facts, statistics, data, and citations of expert testimony. . . . A fascinating book.

University of California, Irvine - J. Hillis Miller

"How is it that the number of students attending American universities has surged in recent decades, but the number of professors—especially humanities professors—has dwindled? The perplexing institutional dynamics of the modern university come in for penetrating scrutiny here. Donoghue, an Ohio State English professor, sees a troubling new conception of higher education emerging among administrators whose thinking reflects the bottom-line calculations of business executives, not the intellectual ideals of liberal arts scholars. Inclined to view traditional professors as a costly anachronism, such administrators have been hiring low-pay adjunct instructors to replace them—and restricting their educational task to that of teaching employment skills. Even in the elite Ivy League, the humanities professors now must justify their work as a way of enhancing a school’s marketable prestige. Beleaguered professors face a dire situation in burgeoning state universities, where institutional accountants assess their research using simplistic ranking systems akin to those applied to football teams. A sobering analysis, sure to attract serious readers on and off campus."

Booklist