Four books that have been across my desk recently:

Higher Education Accountability. This is a short and sweet book by Seton Hall prof Robert Kelchen which provides maybe the best taxonomy of accountability measures in higher education measures I have ever seen.  Internal/external, to government, to the public – you name it, its in there, all with copious references to major events in US higher ed over the past ten years.  It perhaps occasionally resembles notes for a course a bit too closely (I have a feeling Kelchen does teach exactly such a course), but it reads so well you won’t mind.  The exclusively American focus may limit its audience elsewhere, but everyone should read it anyway because it’s a model of brevity and clarity and Lord do we need more of both in higher ed.

Higher Education and Silicon Valley.    This should win some kind of award for the most pointless higher education book of the year.  Silicon Valley (more precisely, the book covers the Bay area as a whole, including Oakland, Berkeley and the East Bay) is home to some of the world’s most high-tech companies, as well as to some of the world’s most innovative universities.  So one might assume that one would be treated to some interesting dynamics of how the two interacted, say, a much-needed update to the tales told by Annalee Saxenian in her (fabulous) 1994 book Regional Advantage – especially since one of the lead authors (Michael Krist) is an Emeritus Professor of Education and Business Administration at Stanford.  But no.  There is literally nothing interesting in here.  The first five chapters recount how American higher education became diversified, the nature of the Bay Area economy, broad changes to the general economy, and the delivery of education before providing a kind of gazetteer of educational institutions in the region.  When it comes to looking at “trends” in the Valley, one learns such amazing secrets as “collegial institutions find it difficult to deal with rapid technological change”, “universities respond to budget cuts by hiring more sessionals” and the like.  Seriously, this book could have been written about any geographic region in North America and it would have looked exactly the same.  Huge disappointment.

A University Education.  This book, by former UK Minister of State for Universities and Science David Willetts, is a bit of a mixed bag.  On the one hand, it provides a nice history of UK universities and a tries-to-be-encyclopedic overview of the major policy issues in UK higher education (it succeeds in the former task a lot better than the latter).  On the other hand, it’s an apologia (with an occasional mea culpa) for a lot of what Willetts tried to do as Minister.  The two don’t always sit together well.  He is sharp on the fees issues, and while he provides a completely rational explanation for the whole thing he still seems baffled as to why he lost the communications war on handing students nominal  debts of £50-60,000 (“but most of you will never pay more than a fraction of that!” was always a bad answer to this problem).  It’s more good than bad, but it suffers from some unevenness and a couple of the later chapters probably could have been dropped with no real loss.  Buy if you want a non-Guardian perspective on UK higher education, otherwise you can give it a miss.

As By Fire: The End of the South African University.  This one is an early contender for my higher education book of the year.  Written by Jonathan Jansen, former vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State, this is a must-read not just for anyone interested in African higher education, but in current South African politics as well.  It’s partly an account of the #rhodesmustfall/#feesmustfall protests of 2015-2016 and how they affected the fabric of campus life, particularly once they turned violent in late 2016.  But it also has fascinating asides on the nature of student politics, the various theories of decolonization in education, and – most important – real lessons on leadership in higher education which are applicable anywhere.  His final chapter – on the structural weakness of universities when faced with a combination of underfunding, meddling governments and radicalized students – will resonate widely, I think (I’d definitely recommend that every university President in Quebec read this book).  It’s a wonderful book, and if there is one thing I am sure of, it’s that we need more university leaders like Jansen.  Two thumbs up.

Bon weekend.