Higher education has come under increasing public scrutiny in recent years, assailed with demands for greater efficiency, accountability, cost reduction, and, above all, job training. Drawing upon examples from across the world, with an emphasis on Anglo-American higher-education systems, this handbook employs sociological approaches to address these pressing concerns. The second edition is thoroughly updated and adds several new chapters to shed further light on the transformations wrought by the interrelated processes of massification, vocationalization, and marketization that have swept through universities in the wake of neoliberal reforms introduced by governments since the 1980s.
The handbook explores recent developments in higher-education systems and policy as well as the everyday experiences of students and staff and ongoing problems of inequality and diversity within universities. In doing so, the chapters address a number of current issues concerning the legitimacy of higher-educational credentials, from the continuing debate regarding traditional pedagogies and the role of universities in social class reproduction to more recent concerns about standards in mass systems.
Collectively, this handbook demonstrates that the sociology of higher education has the potential to play a leadership role in improving the myriad higher-education systems around the world that are now part of an interrelated set of subsystems, replete with both persistent problems and promising prospects. This book is therefore necessary reading for a variety of stakeholders within academia as well as professionals and policy-makers interested in understanding higher education and the acute challenges it faces.
James E. Côté is an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. His research explores the sociology of higher education, youth, and identity formation. He is the co-author of Lowering Higher Education: The Rise of Corporate Universities and the Fall of Liberal Education (University of Toronto Press, 2011) and Ivory Tower Blues: A University System in Crisis (University of Toronto Press, 2007). His other recent books include Youth Development in Identity Societies (Routledge, 2018); Identity Formation, Youth and Development: A Simplified Approach (co-authored with Charles G. Levine, Psychology Press, 2015); and Youth Studies: Fundamental Issues and Debates (Red Globe Press, 2014). He is also the founding editor of Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research and is currently an associate editor on the Journal of Adolescence. He has also served as president of the Society for Research on Identity Formation (SRIF) and as president of the International Sociological Association's Research Committee on the Sociology of Youth.
Sarah Pickard is a senior lecturer in British politics and society and researcher in youth studies at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, France. Her research uses a holistic approach to explore issues affecting young people, including political participation, student activism, and education. She is the author of Politics, Protest and Young People: Political Participation and Dissent in 21st Century Britain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters. She is also the editor of Higher Education in the UK and the US: Converging University Models in a Global Academic World? (Brill, 2014) and Anti-Social Behaviour in Britain: Victorian and Contemporary Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and co-editor of When Students Protest (three volumes, Rowman & Littlefield, 2021) and Young People Re-Generating Politics in Times of Crises (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). She is a convenor for the Political Studies Association specialist group Young People's Politics and a vice president of the International Sociological Association Research Committee on the Sociology of Youth.
