Product Description

Something has gone deeply wrong with the university - too deeply wrong to be put right by any merely bureaucratic means. What's wrong is, simply, that our official idea of education, the idea that inspires all government policies and 'initiatives', is itself uneducated. With the growing emphasis in higher education on training in supposedly useful skills, has the very ethos of the university been subverted? And, does this more utilitarian university succeed in adding to the national wealth, the basis on which politicians justify the large public expenditure on the higher education system? Should we get our idea of a university from politicians and bureaucrats or from J. H. Newman, Jane Austen and Socrates? This book is an entertaining and highly readable defence of the philosophy of liberal arts education and an attack on the sham that has been substituted for it.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #93492 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Review
'A seminal text in the battle to save quality education'. THES. 'A severe indictment of British universities'. Oxford Magazine. 'The most important essay published on the university system in the past 20 years'. Cambridge Quarterly. Anthony Smith, THES 'May well become a seminal text in the battle to save quality education' Chris Woodhead, Sunday Telegraph 'This wonderful book should make the powers that be stop and think' Peter Mullen, Spectator 'Blunkett should read this book -- but he won't' Oxford Magazine 'A severe indictment of the current state of British universities' John Clare, Daily Telegraph 'A question we ought to have debated 10 or 15 years ago and still avoid'.

Chris Woodhead, Sunday Telegraph
'This wonderful book should make the powers that be stop and think'

Peter Mullen, Spectator
'Blunkett should read this book — but he won’t'