This book provides a definitive examination of higher education: locating it in a wider neo-liberal context involving the state and the market, with a specific focus on recent higher policy and on the elite group of senior managers in universities. Written in a clear, accessible style, and drawing on policy analysis and interviews with those at the top three levels of university management, it provides an in-depth analysis of university structures, cultures and practices at senior management level and locates these in a cross-national context.
Despite the managerialist rhetoric of accountability, we see structures where access to power is effectively through the Presidents' 'blessing,' very much as in a medieval court. We see a culture that is less than comfortable with the presence of women, and which, in its narratives, stereotypes and interactions exemplifies a rather nineteenth-century view of women. Sites and agents of change are also identified, both in the universities and in the wider international policy context. Essential for both students and lecturers in education, management, sociology policy and gender studies, this book challenges us to critically reflect on management and on higher education in a global context where diversity is crucial to innovation.

Prologue: My own journey
1. The big picture: Universities in a changing society
2. Finding a compass and mapping the terrain
3. Policy priorities: instrumentality, scientizisation, degendering
4. Gentleman's club or medieval court?
5. There is no problem; or if there is, the problem is women
6. 'Think manager - think male'?
7. An attractive job, but no place for a woman
8. Summary and conclusions
References
Appendix
Index

Pat O'Connor is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Limerick