Book review: The Philosophy of Higher Education: A critical introduction, by Ronald Barnett

The last half-century or so has seen higher education studies grow from a field of, at best, marginal intellectual interest into a significant social scientific area. This intellectual expansion has unsurprisingly tracked the global expansion of higher education itself over the period, first in the United States in the immediate post-war period, then in Europe, and later in all but the very poorest countries. As with all areas of intellectual complexity, the field diversified into specialisms, in this case focusing on higher education’s teaching and research activities, its sociology, its economics, its history, its governance, its management, even its architecture, and more, and in doing so attracted students, researchers and research funding. One of the attractions of the field is that its products (knowledge about knowledge) are ones which public agencies around the world, with responsibilities for important national assets, are often prepared to pay for – prepared to underpay, most in the trade would say, but still.