University Revolution

Eric Lybeck is Presidential Fellow at the University of Manchester, UK, and co-editor of Sociological Amnesia: Cross Currents in Disciplinary History. He is editor-in-chief of the open-access journal, Civic Sociology.

"This is an important and timely book. The modern university was formed in the last decades of the 19th century. However, its collegial organization facilitated a later adaptation of knowledge and culture toward democratic purposes. Lybeck shows how recent re-organization along managerial lines has shifted the university toward private interest in human capital and service to the knowledge economy. It represents an educational counter-revolution with profound implications for society and culture."John Holmwood, University of Nottingham, UK

• 1. The University Revolution; or Academization Process; 2. The Systemic Evolution of Universities: Ben-David’s ‘Centers of Learning’ as World-systems Analysis; 3. The Ideological Organization of University Systems: A Theoretical Framework; 4. Paradoxes of the Academization Process: Foreign and Classical Language Education since 1864; 5. Women and Higher Education: Two Ideas of Equality in 19th-Century Britain; 6. "Without any Reason for Being": Interdisciplinarity at the 1904 World's Fair; 7. Conclusion: Reconstructing the Academic Profession