Ivy and Industry: Business and the Making of the American University, 1880-1980

Rating:
Summary: Middle Class values
Review: Ivy and Industry is a must-read for anyone who teaches in (or is interested in) the academy in the US. Newfield eloquently and exactingly traces the role of the university in "inventing" the American middle class, and the conflicts that have emerged between critical and independent thought on the one hand, and the discipline attendant in the "managerial condition" on the other. The tension that runs through this book is between the social role of the university in encouraging research, invention and other aspects of "free thought" and the "unfree" and uncritical pressures of the capitalist economy during a century of relatively steady growth. Newfield convinced me that it is not too late for the university to be an important part of a solution to the inclusive society envisioned by the arts and sciences alike. Readable and enlightening!

Rating:
Summary: A Populist Voice from an Elite World
Review: The subject du jour seems to be the influence of American business on its universities. Of the several books I have read on this subject, Newfield's is by far the most readable, but more importantly, it's the most human. He doesn't preach from a lofty lectern to those of us who just don't get it. I felt included in his exploration, as if he were willing to let the data actually determine his conclusions. His thorough tracking of the stances taken by university presidents through the years provided material I had not seen elsewhere, and I particularly enjoyed the anecdotes concerning Clark Kerr, the UC president.
Primarily I recommend this book as proof that academic writing doesn't have to be turgid and virtually untranslatable into common speech. Ivy and Industry includes the complexities and paradoxes inherent in the entanglement of education and corporation, but it allows us to participate in the reasoning as it develops and share the author's process as he reaches his conclusions.