EDUCATION / Schools / Levels / Higher

Leading academics reflect on concepts and aspects of public sociology education in this perceptive collection of case studies, linked by critical dialogue between contributors. They consider publics, practices and special knowledges in the field, and go beyond academia’s boundaries to explore the purposes and targets of sociological knowledge.

Student fees have saddled graduates with enormous debt, satisfaction rates are low, a high proportion of graduates are in non-graduate jobs, and public debt from unpaid loans is rocketing. This timely and challenging analysis gives robust new policy proposals to encourage excellence and ultimately benefit society.

This book shows how community groups can work in partnership with universities to imagine better futures and make them happen, co-producing knowledge to achieve positive change.

Who are universities for? argues for a large-scale shake up of how we organise higher education. It includes radical proposals for reform of the curriculum and how we admit students to higher education. Offering concrete solutions, it provides a way forward for universities to become more responsive to challenges.

How can we re-establish universities’ social purpose? The solution lies with asking not only ‘what are we good at?’, but also ‘what are we good for?’. Chris Brink shows how universities can – and should - promote positive social change.

This text brings together academics, artists, practitioners and ‘community activists’ to explore the possibilities for and tensions of social justice work under the contemporary drive for community-oriented ‘impact’ in the academy.

In this empirically-grounded analysis, Lorenza Antonucci compares the lives of university students at a time of austerity and financial crisis from three very different European welfare systems – Italy, England and Sweden.

Miriam David celebrates the achievements of international feminists as activists and scholars and provides a critique of the expansion of global higher education masking their pioneering zeal and zest for knowledge.

This timely book provides an alternative vision of social mobility and a route-map to achieving it. It examines how the term ‘social mobility’ structures what success means and the impact that has on society. It recasts the relationship with employers and covers progress in non-work areas of life.