Issue 27(1)
Arenas
of
Entrepreneurship: Where Nonprofit and For-Profit Institutions
Compete (New Directions for Higher Education,
No. 29). (2005). Brian Pusser (Ed.).
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 106 pp.,
$29.00. ISBN # 0-7879-8052-8.
Review
by: Shannon Lynn Burton
Academic
Advising Specialist
School
of Criminal
Justice
Michigan
State
University
Close examination
shows that higher education today is viewed as a private good,
i.e., education benefits the individual. Altbach (2002)
notes that people once felt that education brought benefits to
society as a whole; thus it was thought that government should
fund the greater part of the bill for public higher education.
This view shifted in the 1970s as conservative economists asserted
that since individuals profit from higher education, individuals
and their families should pay the majority of the costs for higher
education. Altbach (2002) continues, "This ideological shift,
combined with growing pressures on public budgets, led to a dramatic
change in thinking about public higher education. Most states
have been slowly shifting the cost of public higher education
from tax revenues to tuition paid by students." Arenas of
Entrepreneurship: Where Nonprofit and For-Profit Institutions
Compete builds upon this notion that tuition costs are increasingly
born by students as it examines other ways in which institutions
have been forced to finance their operating expenses without the
use of public funds.
This
text consists of a series of chapters that focus on the cultural
effects of this move toward privatization on goals and practices
within higher education. The text begins with a discussion of
the political and economic pressures that have affected various
sectors within higher education including how these pressures
relate to the community college. The role of continuing education
programs and summer sessions within nonprofit institutions are
explored and related to similar entrepreneurial activities at
for-profit institutions. Authors discuss how these new entrepreneurial
programs affect and serve nontraditional learners and include
suggestions for how faculty and academic staff may better work
with these students. The text then refocuses on the bigger picture
as authors offer profiles of sample for-profit institutions and
examines how they compete with nonprofits. Finally, authors consider
the impact of the traditional mission of the public good within
higher education.
This
work expertly details the realities of organizational culture
on the new institutional landscape in which advisors must operate.
The organizational structure of the text lends itself to an easy
understanding from both macro and micro viewpoints before focusing
on the overall macro-view and the implications for higher education.
By far the best part of this book is its highlights of history
and the various aspects of entrepreneurial activity at institutions
of higher education. The text provides the reader with a thorough
understanding of nontraditional students and the means through
which they arrive in our offices. The examples and data presented
in this book have the potential to stimulate discussion and research
on the experiences of nontraditional students in relation to the
entrepreneurial activities of the institution.
I highly recommend
this book to individuals working at institutions facing the challenges
of entrepreneurial education. This volume offers a historical
overview of the issues and succinctly provides an explanation
of the ideological shift from education as a public good to that
of education as a private benefit.
Reference
Altbach,
P. G. (2002, Spring). Who is paying for higher education, and
why? International
Higher Education, 27 . Retrieved September
7, 2003 , from http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/cihe/newsletter/News27/text003.htm.
