As If Learning Mattered: Reforming Higher Education

As a new university administrator, I found that this book provided excellent historical context for my daily work, and a useful set of concepts for reconceiving administration as a kind of educational reform. By transcending the conventional idea of the academic bureaucrat as an intellectual untouchable, someone whose caste is unclean but sadly indispensable for getting rid of those tough administrative stains, AS IF LEARNING MATTERED helped me to think of my job as a local node in a larger network of reform stretching into the past and across national boundaries. In this sense, it seems to be an invaluable resource. I hope that in the future, the author will consider extending his analysis to the connection between bureaucracy and more overt forms of activism like union organizing and international labor movements.