Higher Education Institutions simultaneously critique and participate in national and international rankings of universities. However, this creates a difficult situation since if universities do participate in rankings they acquiesce to a system based in media logics that has little to do with academic norms of research. If they do not participate in the rankings they risk losing public funding, students and donors in an increasingly competitive and globalized environment. This book delves into the influence of journalists, business tycoons and multinational corporations in defining what world class is and how it will be measured. Rankings provide us with a rich study for understanding how universities define, deploy and manage their assets and liabilities in a mediatized globalized economy.

Course Syllabi in Faculties of Education problematizes one of the least researched phenomena in teacher education, the design of course syllabi, using critical and decolonial approaches. This book looks at the struggles that scholars, policy makers, and educators from a diverse range of countries including Australia, Canada, India, Iran, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the USA, and Zambia face as they design course syllabi in higher education settings. The chapter authors argue that course syllabi are political constructions, representing intense sites of struggles over visions of teacher education and visions of society. As such, they are deeply immersed in what Walter Mignolo calls the "geopolitics of knowledge". Authors also show how syllabi have become akin to contractual documents that define relations between instructors and students Based on a set of empirically grounded studies that are compared and contrasted, the chapters offer a clearer picture of how course syllabi function within distinct socio-political, economic, and historical contexts of practice and teacher education.

Course Syllabi in Faculties of Education problematizes one of the least researched phenomena in teacher education, the design of course syllabi, using critical and decolonial approaches. This book looks at the struggles that scholars, policy makers, and educators from a diverse range of countries including Australia, Canada, India, Iran, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the USA, and Zambia face as they design course syllabi in higher education settings. The chapter authors argue that course syllabi are political constructions, representing intense sites of struggles over visions of teacher education and visions of society. As such, they are deeply immersed in what Walter Mignolo calls the “geopolitics of knowledge�. Authors also show how syllabi have become akin to contractual documents that define relations between instructors and students Based on a set of empirically grounded studies that are compared and contrasted, the chapters offer a clearer picture of how course syllabi function within distinct socio-political, economic, and historical contexts of practice and teacher education.

John Bell a Philadelphia lawyer has been recruited to work on a campaign to re-elect the incumbent mayor. He finds, almost at once, that he has become the eyes and ears of the real campaign manager, the old congressman from South Philadelphia, Bill Corcoran. Corcoran is shrewd, sagacious, experienced, and almost cynical in his approach to the personnel in the campaign. The party leaders meet in secret determined to dump the incumbent and replace him with a blue blood candidate. The coterie around Walsh who have styled themselves as "close personal friends of the Mayor" each has his own agenda and far down on the list for each is the re-election of the Mayor. Corcoran finds his way through the ambitions of "the friends" to put together an organization which will be capable of battling the "machine" of the Democratic Party. Corcoran levers Bell into the inner sanctum of the policy committee directing Walsh's campaign. He is met with hostility and stony silence from the "friends." Bell, because of Corcoran, moves to the forefront of the organization preparing the campaign for its forthcoming battle with machine democrats. This puts him direct conflict with Senator Joe one of the "friends" whose ultimate ambition is to lead the Democratic Party. Will Corcoran be able to combat the devious double-dealing of "the friends?" And at the same time marshal the forces to ensure an honest election and if he can, can the fractured party be put back together? Looming ahead after the primary election is the formidable Morey Stern, the youthful District Attorney of Philadelphia who is the Republican candidate for Mayor.

Why can't Philadelphia mob boss Carmine Baldasano get a mob lawyer - or any lawyer - to represent him in a case where he is charged with the vicious murder of a prostitute? John Bell becomes his fourth court-appointed attorney. Each of the former attorneys withdrew from the case, giving the judge lame excused for doing so. Judge Stanford Parker summarily drafts Bell to represent Baldasano and places Bell on an unrealistically short trial schedule. Judge Parker's courtroom demeanor makes him look like a co-prosecutor with Radcliff Bogan. the ruthless and determined assistant district attorney. Bell puts off preparing the case for trial because he is invited by a lawyer he knows only casually to take part in a drug case where there are several defendants and he will be only one of many experienced lawyers. He can't resist the promise of easy and substantial money with a minimum of effort. Joining the other defendants' lawyers led by well-known mob lawyer Augie DiGuilio in several trips to the Atlantic City casinos, Bell meets Connie Lascalzo, a red-haired, green-eyed bombshell and former showgirl. At the crap tables she displays a delightful sense of humor, a skilled hand at craps and, later, seductive dance talents. Bell shortly finds himself in bed with her. Serious obstacles impede Bell's preparation for trial. The trial date is advanced without prior notice to Bell; his investigator is the victim of a suspicious, disabling hit-and-run accident which makes him unavailable; and the lives of Bell's young daughters are threatened as the trial is about to begin. Bell is outraged and ashamed when he discovers he has been an unwitting player in an insidious plot to murder Baldasano in thecourtroom. Bell finds himself squarely between competing mob families and quickly realizes Baldasano's enemies are using the criminal justice system to disgrace him and assure that he gets the death penalty. It takes

For many institutions, to ignore your university's ranking is to become invisible, a risky proposition in a competitive search for funding. But rankings tell us little if anything about the education, scholarship, or engagement with communities offered by a university. Drawing on a range of research and inquiry-based methods, Global University Rankings and the Politics of Knowledge exposes how universities became servants to the education industry and its impact. Conceptually unique in its scope, Global University Rankings and the Politics of Knowledge addresses the lack of empirical research behind university and journal ranking systems. Chapters from internationally recognized scholars in decolonial studies provide readers with robust frameworks to understand the intersections of coloniality and Indigeneity and how they play out in higher education. Contributions from diverse geographical and disciplinary contexts explore the political economy of rankings within the contexts of the Global North and South, and examine alternatives to media-driven rankings. This book allows readers to consider the intersections of power and knowledge within the wider contexts of politics, culture, and the economy, to explore how assumptions about gender, social class, sexuality, and race underpin the meanings attached to rankings, and to imagine a future that confronts and challenges cognitive, environmental, and social injustice.

A robot can build a car. But a robot cannot buy a car ... The explosion in the development of computer- and robot-based manufacturing is seeing the rapid expansion of laborless production systems. Such systems create enormous instability, both for the overall world economy where money previously paid in wages is now invested in labor-saving technology and therefore cannot be spent on goods, and for workers whose jobs are being de-skilled or are simply disappearing. Bringing together contributions from workers employed in the new electronics and information industries with theorists in economics, politics and science, Cutting Edge provides an up-to-the-minute analysis of the complex relations between technology and work. Individual essays look at topics including the cyclical nature of a technologically driven economy, the privatization of knowledge which new information industries demand, the convergence of different economic sectors under the impact of digitalization, and the strategies which trade unionists and governments might deploy to protect jobs and living standards. Technology has the potential to end material scarcity and lay the foundations for higher forms of human fulfillment. But under existing power structures, it is more likely to exacerbate the poverty and misery under which most people live. Cutting Edge weighs that balance and, in helping us to understand how technology interacts with the production of goods and services, tips it in the direction of a more equal and creative world.