Office Hours

by Cary Nelson, Stephen Watt

In a series of stinging analyses, this book examines the current sorry state of higher education. The second half of the volume offers "alternative futures" for the academy, visions that involve academic organizations, public outreach through the internet, faculty unionization, and campus organizing. Office Hours is a roll-up-your-sleeves look at the avoidable disaster facing the modern university.

232 pages, Paperback

First published August 31, 2004

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not the book to read if you're looking for a comprehensive structural analysis of the problems afflicting higher education (stick with Marc Bousquet's How the University Works for that). Rather, Nelson and Watt set out to show "how a commitment to activist affiliation plays out in daily life," and they do so through case studies, anecdotal evidence, and personal accounts of the corporatization of the university and the efforts faculty and grad students have made to address it (100).