In times of rapid international political and economic change the great universities of Europe and North America are being transformed. Public expectations about access to higher education, government concerns about the role that universities can play in innovation and economic development, and the application of the principals of market economics to the university systems of all countries have created a new context for higher education. Universities whose governance and organization have been among the most stable and predictable in modern society are experiencing unprecedented pressure for change. Social demands in Europe are leading for the first time in history to a corporate form of university, similar in structure to American institutions.
American universities are confronted with new levels of national and international competition as well as new government policies.

The papers of this volume are the outcome of the remarkable process of discussions which took place during the 1995 international symposium on the future role of the university held in Vienna, Austria. The papers have been thoughtfully revised to reflect the insights and contributions of the participants at the symposium and the editors have provided a synthesizing introduction and conclusion. The respective chapters are rich in scholarly insight regarding the complex intersection between public policy and university organization.

For over eighty years, tourists have flocked to Natchez, Mississippi, seeking the "Old South," but what they encounter is invention: a pageant and rewrite of history first concocted during the Great Depression. In Heritage and Hoop Skirts: How Natchez Created the Old South, author Paul Hardin Kapp reveals how the women of the Natchez Garden Club saved their city, created one of the first cultural tourism economies in the United States, changed the Mississippi landscape through historic preservation, and fashioned elements of the Lost Cause into an industry. Beginning with the first Natchez Spring Pilgrimage of Antebellum Homes in 1932, such women as Katherine Grafton Miller, Roane Fleming Byrnes, and Edith Wyatt Moore challenged the notion that smokestack industries were key to Natchez’s prosperity. These women developed a narrative of graceful living and aristocratic gentlepeople centered on grand but decaying mansions. In crafting this pageantry, they created a tourism magnet based on the antebellum architecture of Natchez. Through their determination and political guile, they enlisted New Deal programs, such as the WPA Writers’ Project and the Historic American Buildings Survey, to promote their version of the city. Their work did save numerous historic buildings and employed both white and African American workers during the Depression. Still, the transformation of Natchez into a tourist draw came at a racial cost and further marginalized African American Natchezians. By attending to the history of preservation in Natchez, Kapp draws on a rich archive of images, architectural documents, and popular culture to explore how meaning is assigned to place and how meaning evolves over time. In showing how and why the Natchez buildings of the "Old South" were first preserved, commercialized, and transformed into a brand, this volume makes a much-needed contribution to ongoing debates over the meaning attached to cultural patrimony.