The Virtual University?

Kevin Robins studied at the universities of Sussex, York, and Kent. He is Professor of Communications, Goldsmith's College, University of London. His books include The Technical Fix: Education, Computers, and Industry (1989, with Frank Webster), Into the Image (1996), Times of the Technoculture (1999, with Frank Webster), and Spaces of Identity (1995, with David Morley).Frank Webster was educated at the University of Durham and the London School of Economics. He is Professor of Sociology at City University. He was previously Professor of Sociology in the Department of Cultural Studies and Sociology, University of Birmingham (1999-2002). Recent publications are: Times of the Technoculture (1999, with Kevin Robins), Theories of the Information Society (2002), and Culture and Politics in the Information Age (2001).

This valuable collection of essays avoids both cynical renunciation and breathless proclamation: it can be used as a lucid agenda of the issues.

• PART I: THE NEW GLOBAL CONTEXT ; 1. The Virtual University? ; 2. Globalizing the Academy ; 3. The University and Modernity: A History of the Present ; 4. The University in the 'Global' Economy ; PART II: PRACTICES AND POLICIES ; 5. Working Through the Work of Making Work Mobile ; 6. The Virtual University: The Learner's Perspective ; 7. New Managerialism: The Manager-Academic and Technologies of Management in Universities--Looking Forward to Virtuality? ; 8. Exporting Management - Neo-Imperialism and Global Consumerism ; 9. Saving the Soul of the University: What is to be Done? ; 10. Commodity and Community: Institutional Design for the Networked University ; PART III: PROSPECTS AND POSSIBILITIES ; 11. Marketizing Higher Education: Neo-Liberal Strategies and Counter Strategies ; 12. Digital Discourses, Online Classes, Electronic Documents: Developing New University Techno-Cultures ; 13. Rehearsal for the Revolution ; 14. Some Consequences of the New Information and Communications Technologies for Higher Education ; Afterword: What Will be the Global Identity of the University?