The Multidimensional Consequences of Disruption in Higher Education

• Author: Derrick Anderson,Kevin Todd
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12618
• Published date: 01 September 2016
• Date: 01 September 2016

Book Reviews 821

Kevin Todd is research associate at

the Center for Organization Research and

Design at Arizona State University. He works

on projects related to science, technology

and higher education management, law

and policy.

E-mail: kevin.a.todd@asu.edu

T here is no doubt that higher education, or at

least many aspects thereof, are in the midst

of radical change. Recent years have seen

more than a few book-length accounts of the various,

occasionally calamitous, transformations underway.

Such texts range from the highly theoretical to the

highly practical. While “higher education” is now

its own field of theory and practice, many public

organization and management theorists have been

drawn to cases in higher education. The attraction

to higher education is easily explained: It is a critical

social enterprise where problems and their appropriate

solutions are inherently economic, political,

managerial, and human in nature.

Within this context, Jon McGee ’ s Breakpoint makes

an important contribution to our understanding

Danny L. Balfour and Stephanie P. Newbold , Editors

Kevin Todd

Derrick Anderson

Arizona State University

The Multidimensional Consequences of Disruption

in Higher Education

Derrick Anderson is assistant professor

in the Center for Organization Research

and Design and the School of Public

Affairs at Arizona State University. His

research examines the economic, political

and managerial control of knowledge

enterprises.

E-mail: derrick.anderson@asu.edu

John McGee , Breakpoint:  e Changing Marketplace

for Higher Education (Baltimore, MD: Johns

Hopkins University Press, 2015). 192 pp. $26.95

(paper), ISBN: 9781421418209; $26.95 (e-book),

ISBN: 9781421418216 .

of how social enterprises adapt to change. While

McGee ’ s decidedly practical perspective adopts the

language of disruption developed and popularized

by assorted business economists, his understanding

of the consequences of disruption is arguably

more nuanced. Specifically, McGee compellingly

argues that traditional universities, particularly elite

private and major public institutions, are so socially

significant as to render predictions of their eventual

displacement untenable. Alternatively, the veteran

university planner argues that the great consequence

for universities that fail to adapt is the reduced

capacity to provide for the common good. In other

words, traditional characterizations of disruption are

concerned primarily with threats to market share,

whereas McGee ’ s characterization is concerned with

threats to public value and social impact.

The first half of the book is dedicated to McGee ’ s

interpretation of three broad disruptions facing higher

education: demographic disruption, a combination

of rapidly increasing ethnic diversity on campus,

increasing numbers of first-generation college

students, and a national migration pattern leading to

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 76, Iss. 5, pp. 821–822. © 2016 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12618.