Rationalization of Higher Education

Bibliographic Data

ID23637405
AuthorsTressie Mcmillan Cottom (Emory University), Gaye Tuchman (University of Connecticut)
Year2015
Pages1-17
Publication date2015-05-15
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeOTHER
VenueEmerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences (JOURNAL)
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/9781118900772.etrds0274
OpenAlexW1505356112
ISBN9781118900772
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited27

Since roughly 1980, the rationalization of higher education has been escalating. That is, means‐end schema and bureaucratic organization have become ever more dominant as the authority over academic matters has been shifting from the professoriate to managers who in the mid‐twentieth century had been mainly responsible for economic affairs and “making things run.” At many research universities today, the administrative sector has grown so large that the budget devoted to administrative salaries and benefits exceeds the monies reserved for faculty. The transference of authority from educators to bureaucratic offices and roles has been driven by a larger market morality where the legitimacy of organizational functions resides in their reproduction of profit exchanges. We conceive of the institutional field of higher education—the universe of diverse institutions existing within a prestige hierarchy—as existing along a spectrum of rationalization with the for‐profit college organization at the extreme right. While there is much debate about the rightness of a college sector that reverses over 200 years of not‐for‐profit organization professing that education is for the public good, traditional colleges have adopted organizational arrangements that resemble those that characterize for‐profit colleges. Indeed, some like Bousquet (2008) argue that rather than the fully rationalized for‐profit model exerting pressure on traditional higher education to adopt rationalized regimes, traditional not‐for‐profit colleges have been steadily refining those regimes for at least 40 years. As we will discuss later, this presents a fundamental puzzle for classic neoinstitutional theories that do much of the intellectual work of interrogating organizations and rationalization. This mutual mimetic isomorphism, in which two competing organizational forms adapt to resemble each other rather than the dominant form, is most evident in rationalized arrangements in academic labor, curricular focus on “objective” outcomes, and neoliberal reframing of what constitutes education. We discuss the theoretical and empirical conditions that have increased the rationalization of higher education. We then explicate on the ideal form of rationalization in higher education and put forth an agenda that builds on emerging research in organizations, education, and rationalization.

Bureaucracy · Economics · For profit · Higher education · Legitimacy · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Rationalization (economics) · Sociology · Elite Sociology and Global Capitalism · Finance · Higher Education Governance and Development · Law · Management and Organizational Studies · Public Administration

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