Before the Neoliberal Campus: University, Place and the Business of Higher Education

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between the university and physical place over time, setting out the rise of the placed-based higher education institution leading to its current role as an attractant for the academy. The association between campus and community, known as the town–gown relationship, influenced the material form that the university initially took, and this relationship continues to play a prominent role today. However, a new and more globalized outset provokes growth and change in the physicality of the modern neoliberal university, where the campus responds to an increasingly larger market of potential users and investors. The article argues that the business of higher education has always existed and is amplified, rather than instigated, by the globalized knowledge-based economy. While place has become an important aspect of the higher education experience, the creation of knowledge is expressly tied to human organization and spans well beyond the tangible environment.

Keywords:

• campus history
• campus urban form
• campus planning
• town and gown
• place-making
• neoliberal campus

Notes

1. Jonathan Coulson, Paul Roberts, and Isabelle Taylor, “The Future of the Campus: Architecture and Master Planning Trends,” Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education 19, no. 4 (2015): 117.

2. Daniel R. Kenney, Ricardo Dumont, and Ginger Kenney, Mission and Place: Strengthening Learning and Community Through Campus Design (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2005); and M. Perry Chapman, American Places: In Search of the Twenty-First Century Campus (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2006).

3. C. C. Strange and James H. Banning, Education by Design: Creating Campus Learning Environments that Work (San Francisco, CA: The Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series, 2001); and Rudolf H. Moos, Evaluating Educational Environments, 1st ed. (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1979).

4. James Vernon, “The Making of the Neoliberal University in Britain,” Critical Historical Studies 5 (2018): 268.

5. Brian Edwards, University Architecture (London: Spon Press, 2000), 156.

6. Charles H. Haskins, The Rise of Universities (New York: H. Holt and Company, 1923); Robert S. Rait, Life in the Medieval University (Luton: Andrews UK, 2012); and Thomas Bender, The University and the City: From Medieval Origins to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).

7. Haskins, Rise of Universities, 2.

8. Ibid., 7.

9. Ibid., 3–4.

10. Ibid., 2–3.

11. Bender, University and the City, 14.

12. Jonathan Coulson, Paul Roberts, and Isabelle Taylor, University Planning and Architecture: The Search for Perfection (London: Routledge, 2015), 5.

13. Rait, Life in the Medieval University, 3–4.

14. Gaines Post, “Master’s Salaries and Student-Fees in Mediaeval Universities,” Speculum 7, no. 2 (1932): 181, 198.

15. Gaines Post, Kimon Giocarinis, and Richard Kay, “The Medieval Heritage of a Humanistic Ideal: ‘Scientia Donum Dei Est, Unde Vendi Non Potest’,” Tradito 11 (1955): 207.

16. Post, “Master’s Salaries and Student-Fees,” 198.

17. Ibid., 189.

18. Rait, Life in the Medieval University, 5.

19. Bender, University and the City, 19.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid., 16.

22. Hastings Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1895), 290.

23. Bender, University and the City, 23.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid., 22–23.

26. Ibid., 24 (original emphases).

27. Paul Venable Turner, Campus: An American Planning Tradition (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), 10.

28. Haskins, Rise of Universities, 23.

29. Coulson, Roberts, and Taylor, University Planning and Architecture, 13.

30. Turner, Campus, 9.

31. Ibid., 15. Some historians liken this architectural revision at Cambridge to the fashionable chateaux of the time in France, a less civic and idealistic motif.

32. Ibid., 6.

33. Ibid., 27. Turner speculates that this could have served the pragmatic purpose of mitigating fire hazards as many of the structures were made of wood.

34. Chapman, American Places, 8.

35. Coulson, Roberts, and Taylor, University Planning and Architecture, 14.

36. Turner, Campus, 23; and Coulson, Roberts, and Taylor, University Planning and Architecture, 14.

37. John S. Brubacher and Willis Rudy, Higher Education in Transition; An American History, 1636–1956 (New York: Harper, 1958), 41–2.

38. Thomas A. Gaines, The Campus as a Work of Art (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1991), 8.

39. Turner, Campus, 53.

40. Bender, University and the City, 3.

41. Turner, Campus, 4.

42. Chapman, American Places, 9.

43. Ibid., 13.

44. Ibid., 14.

45. Ibid., 14.

46. Coulson, Roberts, and Taylor, University Planning and Architecture, 21.

47. Turner, Campus, 150.

48. Ibid.

49. Vernon, “Making of the Neoliberal University,” 268–70; Bronwyn Davies, Michael Gottsche, and Peter Bansel, “The Rise and Fall of the Neo-Liberal University,” European Journal of Education 41, no. 2 (2006): 311–14.

50. Coulson, Roberts, and Taylor, “Future of the Campus”; David Perry and Wim Wiewel, eds, The University as Urban Developer: Case Studies and Analysis (Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2005).

51. Catherine A. Conner, “The University that Ate Birmingham: The Healthcare Industry, Urban Development, and Neoliberalism,” Journal of Urban History 42, no. 2 (2016): 284–305; and Gary M. Stern, “The Colleges That Ate New York,” Commercial Observer, January 21, 2015. https://commercialobserver.com/2015/01/the-colleges-that-ate-new-york/

52. Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhodes. “The Neo-liberal University,” New Labor Forum 6 (2000): 73.

53. J. Coulson, P. Roberts, and I. Taylor, University Trends: Contemporary Campus Design (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014).

54. P. C. Rickes, “Make Way for Millennials! How Today’s Students are Shaping Higher Education Space: From Generations in Perspectives, Through Generational Cycles, and on to the Influence of Millennials on Campus Space,” Planning for Higher Education 37, no. 2 (2009): 11.

55. Coulson, Roberts, and Taylor, “Future of the Campus,” 1–2.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jessica Fernandez

Jessica Fernandez is Lecturer of Design Communication and Visual Literacy in the University of Georgia’s College of Environment and Design. She holds a Bachelor of Environmental Design and Master of Landscape Architecture from Auburn University and a Ph.D. in Planning, Design and the Built Environment from Clemson University. Her research interests are in the areas of place-based design and human perceptions of the built environment specifically in higher education and urban settings. Her research also focuses on the use of new and developing design communications technologies. Dr Fernandez is a licensed landscape architect, campus planner and LEED Accredited Professional in Neighborhood Development, and has practiced for over a decade on a variety of award-winning design and building projects nationwide.

Matthew Powers

Matthew Powers is Director of Landscape Architecture and Undergraduate Programs and Associate Professor in Clemson University’s School of Architecture. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Landscape Architecture from West Virginia University and a Master of Landscape Architecture and Ph.D. in Environmental Design and Planning from Virginia Tech. Prior to entering academia, he worked in landscape architecture and community design in the states of West Virginia, South Carolina and Virginia. His primary research interests include cognitive-oriented approaches to design pedagogy and the relationship between environmental design and health disparities. Dr Powers and his students have received state and national awards for outstanding research and innovative design.