Management Fads in Higher Education: Where They Come From, What They Do, Why They Fail

"Vintage Birnbaum--crisp and ironic, with a contrarian touch. Management fads in higher education will never be the same. Birnbaum's penetrating analysis reveals in the clearest possible terms why fads die an early death."(Burton R. Clark, Allan M. Cartter Professor Emeritus of Higher Education and Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles)

"College and university leaders will welcome Bob Birnbaum's new book, Management Fads in Higher Education, largely because the environment for learning is changing so swiftly. It has become increasingly difficult to separate passing fads from best-practice imperatives. Birnbaum's analysis will be helpful to those who must strain to discern the distinction."(Stanley O. Ikenberry, president, American Council on Education)

"This study will provide chapter and verse for university mid-rank administrators and their faculty colleagues who have to absorb and react to the latest Bright Idea imposed on the system by business-oriented members of the board or state legislature. In showing how such fads have come and gone in the past forty years, Birnbaum also indicates that change has to take the university culture into account: its politics, its working consensus, and--most of all--its values."(Mary Burgan, general secretary, American Association of University Professors)

"Anyone in higher education leadership should read this critical and amusing book. It goes much further than the dull descriptions of management techniques for universities and colleges. It is fair, convincing, and well documented."(Frans van Vught, Rector Magnificus, University of Twente, The Netherlands)