Routledge Handbook of the Sociology of Higher Education

Higher education has come under increasing public scrutiny in recent years, with demands for greater efficiency, accountability, cost reduction, and job training. This handbook employs sociological approaches to address these concerns, focusing on Anglo-American higher-education systems. The second edition is updated and adds new chapters to shed light on the transformations wrought by massification, vocationalization, and marketization. It explores recent developments in higher-education systems and policy, as well as the everyday experiences of students and staff. The chapters address current issues concerning the legitimacy of higher-educational credentials, from traditional pedagogies to mass systems. The sociology of higher education has the potential to play a leadership role in improving these systems.

Format: Hardback
Length: 428 pages
Publication date: 22 March 2022
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

In recent years, higher education has faced mounting public scrutiny, with demands for greater efficiency, accountability, cost reduction, and, above all, job training. This handbook employs sociological approaches to address these pressing concerns, drawing upon examples from across the world, with an emphasis on Anglo-American higher-education systems. The second edition of the handbook is thoroughly updated and includes several new chapters that 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.

Dimension: 246 x 174 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032201474
Edition number: 2 ed