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Over the last three decades, higher education institutions have experienced massive changes. In particular, institutions of higher education have been positioned as a means to contribute to the knowledge economy and gain a level of competitive advantage in the global marketplace. "Advancing Knowledge in Higher Education: Universities in Turbulent Times" addresses ways in which knowledge is shaped, produced, and reworked to meet international demands for productive workforces. Divided into three sections that interrogate the higher education policy context, knowledge production, and knowledge workers, this reference publication focuses on the role of higher education in business value creation and competitive advantage, serving as a useful reference for academicians, professionals, researchers, and students. After a preface (Tanya Fitzgerald), chapters include: (1) Troubling Higher Education (Tanya Fitzgerald); (2) Organizational Agility in Universities: Tensions and Challenges (Sheila Mukerjee); (3) Professional Knowledge Workers: Tensions and Binaries (Andrea Simpson and Tanya Fitzgerald); (4) Equity Policy and Knowledge in Australian Higher Education (Matthew Brett); (5) Higher and Further: Can We Keep Our Educational Promises? (Damon Cartledge); (6) A Rhetoric of Certainty: Modern Knowledge Practices in Contemporary Education (Dorothy Smith); (7) In Search of Relevant Learning Spaces (Greg Powell); (8) Embracing Social Media to Advance Knowledge Creation and Transfer in the Modernized University: Management of the Space, the Tool, and the Message (Catherine Lang and Narelle Lemon); (9) Inclusive Growth in Higher Education: The Development of Pathways from Vocational Education and Training (Mike Brown); (10) A Fourth Wave of Education for Sustainability (EfS) in Higher Education (Mike Brown); (11) Re-Valuing Constructed Knowledge: An Agenda for STE(A)M (Damon Cartledge); (12) Properties of Knowledge Matter: A Re-Examination of the Glitz of Entrepreneurialism as a Change Paradigm for Higher Education (Mary A. Burston); (13) From Professional Expert to Novice Academic: Challenges and Complexities (Jacolyn Weller); (14) The Scholarship of Knowledge in the Modernised University (Gregory Heath); (15) Knowledges, Discontinuities, Spirals, and Universities (Lorraine Ling); and (16) On the Production Line? Academics in Modernized Universities (Dorothy Smith). A section about the contributors and an index are included.

This book was written across a period of intense turmoil and change in higher education in Australia and England. The authors are deeply unsettled by these changes and wish to open up the discussion about what it means to be an academic and engage in academic work in the 21st century. Accordingly, each of the authors has nominated a theme or lens through which to examine the changes, tensions and uncertainties that have erupted in higher education. Thus, the authors offer this book as a constellation of ideas that traverse a number of aspects of their work and identities as academics. The overlap between these ideas is deliberate so that the multiple and complex challenges that underpin the higher education landscape can be examined. This book contains the following chapters: (1) Tracing the Fault Lines (Tanya Fitzgerald); (2) Intellectual Work and Knowledge Production (Helen M. Gunter); (3) Scholarly Identity (Julie White); (4) Academic Work and Performance (Helen M. Gunter); (5) Turning a Scholarly Blind Eye (Julie White); (6) Ivory Basements and Ivory Towers (Tanya Fitzgerald); (7) Scholarly Work in a Globalised World (Tanya Fitzgerald); and (8) Continuing Challenges (Tanya Fitzgerald). Individual chapters contain tables and notes. [Series editor, Malcolm Tight.]