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In “Your mission, should you accept it” (New Scientist, 8 June, p 49) Philip
Wilson took an irreverent look at the corporate identity syndrome infecting
modern higher education establishments. For something more serious, try
University in Ruins (Harvard University Press, £18.95/$29.95, ISBN
0 674 92952 7). Bill Readings takes a serious look at whether the university is
about to enter a new age, built on corporate excellence and profit
margins—or whether the old university, with its allusions to the nation
state and Romantic nostalgia, will survive. Without a new breed of thinkers who
neither hanker for the past nor are focused entirely on the corporate future,
Readings warns that higher education might continue to crumble.