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Austerity Blues: Fighting for the Soul of Public Higher Education

Public higher education in the postwar era was a key economic and social driver in American life, making college available to millions of working men and women.   In Austerity Blues, Stephen Brier and Michael Fabricant describe the extraordinary growth of public higher education after 1945, the alternative intellectual and political traditions that defined the 1960s in public higher education, and the social and economic forces that produced austerity policies and inequality beginning in the late 1970s and 1980s. Since the 1980s, austerity policies and politics have severely reduced public investment in higher education, exacerbating inequality among poor and working-class students of color, as well as part-time faculty. The book includes analysis of the many changes currently sweeping public higher education, including the growing use of educational technology, online learning, and privatization, while exploring how these developments hurt students and teachers.  The central theme of the book is the ways in which factors as diverse as online learning, privatization, and disinvestment cohere into a single powerful force driving deepening inequality.











When: Tue., Dec. 6, 2016 at 6:00 pm
Where: New York Public Library—Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
476 Fifth Ave.
917-275-6975
Price: Free
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Public higher education in the postwar era was a key economic and social driver in American life, making college available to millions of working men and women.   In Austerity Blues, Stephen Brier and Michael Fabricant describe the extraordinary growth of public higher education after 1945, the alternative intellectual and political traditions that defined the 1960s in public higher education, and the social and economic forces that produced austerity policies and inequality beginning in the late 1970s and 1980s. Since the 1980s, austerity policies and politics have severely reduced public investment in higher education, exacerbating inequality among poor and working-class students of color, as well as part-time faculty. The book includes analysis of the many changes currently sweeping public higher education, including the growing use of educational technology, online learning, and privatization, while exploring how these developments hurt students and teachers.  The central theme of the book is the ways in which factors as diverse as online learning, privatization, and disinvestment cohere into a single powerful force driving deepening inequality.

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