This book is an exploration of the idea that interludes - or disruptions to our usual rhythms, rituals, and routines - offer individuals and institutions alike an incomparable opportunity to examine the governing assumptions that undergird academic work and to experiment with alternative modes and models of intellectual life. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as the prime example of an externally imposed interlude on a mass scale, the book argues that the compulsion of most colleges and universities to "return to business as usual" reveals that the "business" of the academic enterprise is only tangentially about learning, ideas, or the life of the mind. It is mostly about keeping the institutional machinery running at all costs, typically at the behest of state and market forces. Meanwhile, interludes of any size or duration, from massively disruptive global pandemics to brief elective personal retreats, offer occasions for interrogating our entrenched policies and practices and are simultaneously spaces for the pursuit of learning and idea play both within and beyond institutions.

This book explores the organizational responses of professional schools and colleges to pressures, demands, requirements, expectations, and incentives related to diversity. The macro-organizational perspective supplies much-needed balance and complexity to traditional depictions of post-secondary institutions as largely self-motivated in their diversity efforts.

The most complex social challenges - such as post-secondary access and success for under-represented students, diversification of the workforce, poverty, environmental degradation, and global health - exceed the problem-solving capacity of single organizations or societal sectors. Organizing for Social Partnership provides colleges and universities, corporations, government agencies, nonprofits, and other organizations with a model for how to effectively address these and other pressing social issues through strong, effective collaboration. This valuable book is relevant for graduate students enrolled in courses on postsecondary organization and governance, equity and diversity, access, administration, and contemporary issues. Organizing for Social Partnership will also spark dialogue among higher education leaders and their counterparts in business, government, and the social sector.

This book explores the organizational reponses of professional schools and colleges to pressures, demands, requirements, expectations and incentives related to diversity. As such it takes a view of post-secondary institutions (and their various academic and administrative units) as open systems engaged in complex inter-relationships with other organizations, such that key commitments, priorities, interests, agendas and strategies are directed and shaped by an array of forces. This arrangement is probably best illustrated by the fact that the academy is increasingly guided by the logic and discipline (as well as the rewards) of markets. This prevailing condition of inter-connectedness is examined as is the extent to which it influences whether and how colleges, universities and their constituent units address the issue of diversity. How do external pressures and expectations interact with internal features of organizational life (for example, the commitment of deans, faculty or other change agents) to produce a response that varies across units? Coming at the issue from a macro-organizational perspective supplies much-needed balance and complexity to traditional depictions of post-secondary institutions as largely self-motivated in their diversity efforts. Understanding that such efforts are undertaken in partnership with a variety of external stakeholders seems particularly important in the wake of current legal challenges to campus diversity initiatives.

At a time of great economic uncertainty, The Business of Higher Education looks at the pros and cons of colleges and universities taking a more business-like approach to fulfilling their missions. How can colleges and universities navigate their way between shrinking commitments and the increasing expectations of their students? Does the answer lie in taking a more business-like approach? This extraordinary resource considers the costs and benefits to both public and private institutions and to society when academe embraces business models for improving cost-efficiency, marketing, hiring practices, and customer service. Bringing together a diverse team of contributors from the academic and business worlds, The Business of Higher Education offers 35 essays in three volumes. The first volume explores issues of leadership and culture, the second focuses on management and fiscal strategies, and the third volume takes up issues of marketing and consumer interests. Throughout, the work balances the contrasting perspectives of those within the academy and those outside of it, as it considers whether higher education and the public interest are ultimately helped or harmed by the application of business methods to essential academic functions.

The most complex social challenges ? such as post-secondary access and success for under-represented students, diversification of the workforce, poverty, environmental degradation, and global health ? exceed the problem-solving capacity of single organizations or societal sectors. Organizing for Social Partnership provides colleges and universities, corporations, government agencies, nonprofits, and other organizations with a model for how to effectively address these and other pressing social issues through strong, effective collaboration. This valuable book is relevant for graduate students enrolled in courses on postsecondary organization and governance, equity and diversity, access, administration, and contemporary issues. Organizing for Social Partnership will also spark dialogue among higher education leaders and their counterparts in business, government, and the social sector.