Designing the New American University [Book Review]

Abstract

In Designing the New American University, Michael Crow, outspoken president of Arizona State University, promises ‘a recasting of the American research university as a complex and adaptive comprehensive knowledge enterprise ... accessible to the broadest possible demographic.’ He offers no jeremiad about the ongoing public disinvestment in higher education, which he argues has led to its marketization and, in turn, to a prestige economy based on the generic emulation of élite universities (‘Harvardization’). Instead, he envisages a ‘moonshot’ project in higher education: a university that can combine excellence, inclusion and public good, or, in Bill Readings’ (1996) terms, a university of excellence and a university of culture. Crow acknowledges the antecedents of his vision: Duderstadt (2000), on the decline of the research university; Christensen and Eyring (2011), on the resulting need for the so-called disruptive innovation in higher education; and Etzkowitz (2008), on a shift from education to entrepreneurship as the answer to that need. What is different about Crow’s vision is that he is in a position to enact it. [Excerpt from review]