This is a book of truly vital importance—no less today than when it first appeared in 1996. But this is not because its author had seen things unerringly but rather because his core arguments about culture were vitally important and thouh, as I see it, not quite correct, were raising the questions which needed to be discussed both then and now.

He raised questions which remain today of the first importance. We cannot afford to dismiss or ignore his analyses or arguments. In the intervening twenty-two years, it's possible to see where his views have held up and where they need further refinement; for the things about which he was mistaken concerning the real character of the decline in cutlure's content are as valuable to us now as are the things which he saw quite accurately. I would recommend this book as essential reading for anyone who wants to focus attention where it is much needed as far as an understanding of the contemporary world of society and business are concerned. This book and its key points ought to be at the center of a sustained and thoughtful debate until large numbers of people are more culturally awake, aware and informed about what is still being done to reduce culture's content to dangerously trivial nonsense. The challenge Readings poses is that we save ourselves from this continuing course; but his view of how that could best be done is not one I happen to share. Still, it is undeniable that we cannot afford to continue to simply look on confusedly and doing nothing. The first order of business is to read and discuss this book carefully. It's a demanding challenge but not beyond us --even yet. ( )

Money is now the measure of all things, and a crude cost-benefit logic pervades administrative decisions. University presidents pontificate about excellence while bean counters in the back rooms call the shots. The traditional university culture with its odd sense of community has been penetrated, disrupted and reconfigured by raw money power." A department can document excellence" all it wants, but if it cannot generate enough credit hours, its tenure will be short-lived. The result of this is devastating. "The hidden hand of the market distributes resources and rewards so as to ensure a proliferating freedom of market choices in higher education while denying the capacity to explore alternative values . . . . Knowledge is converted into information and students into consumers ' and transforming the ability to think into a capacity for information processing."

Personally, it's my observation that the days of factory education (let's see how many students we can cram in a lecture hall for English 101) as it evolved in the 20th century is probably doomed as students begin to seek out more individual ways to get an education; perhaps a combination of experience and online learning. Expectations have changed drastically in the last few decades and as students come to realize that that piece of paper we call a degree doesn't necessarily prepare them for a career or job nor higher pay, it will become more difficult to sell attending lectures by over-paid professors who teach but one class per week and have their grad students grade papers so they can write tomes that no one will read in pursuit of lifetime employment otherwise known as tenure.

One of the most important cases I read about years ago was handed down in Ohio. The local police department had required a BA for all applicants. One sued arguing that none of the skills required to be a good policeman required what was taught to get a BA. The judge agreed.

The author of University in Ruins makes a case that the university as we know it has outlived its purpose, one defined several centuries ago when it was needed to help solidify the national culture by fusing past and future tradition. This established role has been undermined by the .. "globalization of culture" and economies. So, what, asks Readings, "is the point of the university, if we realize that we are no longer to strive to realize a national identity, be it an ethnic essence or a republican will?" Surely, universities have been wracked by culture wars, a battle between the canonists and multiculturalists. The multiculturalists, by "lending primacy to the cultural have misunderstood that culture is no longer important to those in power who have switched their allegiance to Capital."

The university has become "an autonomous bureaucratic corporation" that adheres to the belief that what matters in today's world is "economic management" rather than "cultural conflict." Mundane values such as learning how to think no longer matter. The university is now a place where useful information is produced, marketed and consumed. "With devastating skill Readings takes apart the rhetoric of 'excellence' with which universities cover the emptiness at their core. Rankings measure it, and internal budgets focus on it. And the joy of excellence is that we all agree about it. Its invocation 'overcomes the problem of the question of value across disciplines, since excellence is the common denominator of good research in all fields,' while all manner of multicultural diversities can be accepted as equally excellent." "The trouble is that excellence is meaningless when it comes to key decisions (for example, to close a classics department and open up a multi-cultural-studies program). 'So to say that excellence is a criterion is to say absolutely nothing other than that the committee will not reveal the criteria used to judge applications.' The pursuit of excellence allows the university 'to understand itself solely in terms of the structure of corporate administration.' A key slippage then occurs, as the quite proper demand that the university be accountable gets translated into the reductionist idea that everything is simply a matter of accounting.

The book has an incomplete feel to it, perhaps explained by the death of the author in the crash of the American Eagle flight to Chicago in 1994. Apparently he did not have time to complete it.



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