Methodology of study of corruption in higher education

Higher education in the U.S. may be characterized by complexity and plurality of forms. The Ivy League universities and those trying to replicate them, or so-called “wanna be” universities, coexist with numerous large public institutions, four-year colleges and community colleges. While the former are actively involved in business-driven projects in research and services, the latter are quite distant from these processes. Nevertheless, all of them serve the industries, first of all by training professionals for these industries. In this sense community colleges are not less linked to businesses than major research universities. Curriculum in community colleges is tailored to meet the demands of specific industries and more so often local labor markets. Woshburn (2005) presents the negative sides of the impact of industries on the academia in the book titled University Incorporated: The Corporate Corruption of American Higher Education. This book would be of high interest for policymakers, managers, and theorists. While policymakers, university administrators, and business managers will appreciate good description of forms of cooperation of industries and universities as well as problems that such cooperation creates or exacerbates and some of the prescriptions, offered by the author, theorists will find wealth of material on which to build some concepts and theories of social and ethical responsibility versus commercialization and perhaps even some interesting niches for possible corrupt activities in higher education.