The Dream Is Over: The Crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of Higher Education

Marginson, Simon

doi:10.1525/luminos.17

Cited by 78 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Newly participating social layers are largely confined to the sub-elite institutions where participation alone is not enough to generate strong social outcomes. The exceptions to these generalisations are when social mobility is unusually high, as in the 1960s/1970s in the US when higher education and social mobility grew together (Marginson 2016b), and/or when a determined policy effort is made by government to match growth with equalisation. Only under these circumstances is the natural tendency to greater inequality corrected.…”

Section: Family Background and Educational Stratificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems

2016

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Worldwide participation in higher education now includes one-third of the age cohort and is growing at an unprecedented rate. The tendency to rapid growth, leading towards high participation systems (HPS), has spread to most middle-income and some low-income countries. Though expansion of higher education requires threshold development of the state and the middle class, it is primarily powered not by economic growth but by the ambitions of families to advance or maintain social position. However, expansion is mostly not accompanied by more equal social access to elite institutions. The quality of mass higher education is often problematic. Societies vary in the extent of upward social mobility from low-socio-economic-status backgrounds. The paper explores the intersection between stratified social backgrounds and the stratifying structures in HPS. These differentiating structures include public/private distinctions in schooling and higher education, different fields of study, binary systems and tiered hierarchies of institutions, the vertical 'stretching' of stratification in competitive HPS, and the unequalising effects of tuition. Larger social inequalities set limits on what education can achieve. Countries with high mobility sustain a consensus about social equality, and value rigorous and autonomous systems of learning, assessment and selection in education.

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Section: Family Background and Educational Stratificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…States in many low-income countries cannot build inclusive HPS. HPS in very unequal societies, such as today's United States (US), tend to be highly stratified, and strengthen not weaken the effects of social background in educational and social outcomes (Marginson 2016b). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems

2016

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“…It was a product of either direct State regulation, funding and planning or of more complex relationships between the State (at multiple levels—national, regional, local), private foundations, civil society institutions and (to a limited extent) market organisations. Between the 1950s and the 1980s the most clearly articulated—and highest profile – systems of Higher Education were produced by US State master plans, of which California was the brightest beacon even if Clark Kerr's vision has struggled to remain relevant today (Marginson, ).…”

Section: Looking Forward and New Lines Of Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Martin Trow’s elite‐mass‐universal triptych: Conceptualising Higher Education development

Scott¹

2019

Higher Education Quarterly

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Martin Trow was among the most influential scholar in Higher Education studies in the second half of the 20th century. He is best known for his conceptualisation of the development of Higher Education into three stages—elite, mass and universal systems. This article considers, first, his intellectual method and the underpinning theory (or lack of it); secondly, the extent to which his ideas, generated in the exceptional environment of post‐war America were, and are, relevant to different national contexts and in the very different environment of the 21st century; thirdly, the strengths—and weaknesses—of Trow’s conceptualisation of three stages of Higher Education development; and, finally the new lines of research suggested by an overall assessment of his work.

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“…First, the proliferation of professional staff as a culturally legitimised form of institutional action raises important questions about the degree to which the increase in non-academic professionals is functional in helping universities achieve their goals and targets (rather than a mere enactment of how a university Bis expected to be^) (Krücken et al 2009, p. 5). Research in this area is particularly needed as highly influential models of higher education (purporting a vision of expansive, strategic and high-quality higher education) are coming under scrutiny more than ever before (Marginson 2016;Baltaru 2018). Second, universities' transformation into organisational actors fosters increasing similarity in university missions as well as in the ways in which universities are assimilating such missions at the institutional level.…”

Section: Implications For Universities As Transforming Institutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Universities’ pursuit of inclusion and its effects on professional staff: the case of the United Kingdom

Baltaru

2018

High Educ

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This paper explores the proliferation of non-academic professionals as a cultural response to universities' mission of inclusion. Departing from a neo-institutionalist perspective, the author argues that the diffusion of highly rationalised models of institutional action shapes universities as formal organisations who engage with new levels of professional expertise in the pursuit of goals and missions. The United Kingdom (UK) offers an illustrative example, the emergence of statutory equality duties on public institutions (race equality duty 2001, disability equality duty 2006 and gender equality duty 2007) nurturing an image of universities as strategic for the pursuit of demographic inclusion. Using yearly longitudinal data on 109 UK universities from 2003 to 2011, the author shows that universities increase their professional staff in catering for demographic inclusion in terms of ethnicity and disability, revealing highly rationalised institutional responses to the aforementioned equality duties. The findings contribute to the neo-institutionalist literature drawing attention to the transformation of universities into organisational actors (i.e. highly integrated entities, strategically oriented towards the pursuit of formally articulated goals and targets), which contrasts with traditional conceptions of the university as an institution with a taken-for-granted societal role and loosely defined organisational backbone. The findings provide the impetuous for further empirical research into the role of professional staff as universities assimilate new goals and missions.

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The Dream Is Over: The Crisis of Clark Kerr’s California Idea of Higher Education

Cited by 78 publications

References 7 publications

The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems

The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems

Martin Trow’s elite‐mass‐universal triptych: Conceptualising Higher Education development

Universities’ pursuit of inclusion and its effects on professional staff: the case of the United Kingdom

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