Cohen launches book of journalism on university life

From autism research to a university scholarship for the best duck-quack imitation, higher education journalist David Cohen's new book shows that university life is as broad and colourful as life itself.

Welcome to the Campus of Struggle, is a collection of articles, profiles and columns that explore higher education around the world over the past five years.

Perhaps more widely-known in this country these days for his National Business Review media columns, Mr Cohen has, in the past decade, entertained and informed readers worldwide with his higher education journalism.

The book is a taster of the hundreds of pieces published in high-profile British, US and Australasian publications. Speaking to Subtext, Mr Cohen said he had always been crucially interested in the play of ideas between cultures and "arguments across borders". R eporting on universities had proven a good way to focus on those topics. "Universities are not divorced from life; they are often right at the centre of things."

Spending time with young Islamic fundamentalists at an Indonesian Muslim university just as militant Islam was becoming a global issue and watching Indonesian students protest during that country's economic crisis showed how interlinked universities were to the key issues of the day.

As the Campus of Struggle moves from the ransacking of a New Zealand university's GM potato plot to the worldwide rise of private colleges and the teaching of a university course on Oprah Winfrey in Canada, Mr Cohen's insistence that life inside higher education is as wide as the world becomes clear.

The book has its origins in a visit to Mr Cohen's Wellington office from a leading politician who, concerned that his party did not have a cohesive higher education policy, was after ideas and wondered if Mr Cohen could photocopy some articles for the party to mull over.

The visit highlighted what Mr Cohen sees as a lack of good ideas and public debate over higher education in New Zealand.

"Globally, it's a trillion dollar business. Locally, it is perhaps the biggest industry in Auckland and export education is a massive earner for New Zealand. Yet not one of our major papers has a fulltime higher education reporter.

"We are very poorly served by that - future social historians will find that preposterous."

The range of articles in Welcome to the Campus of Struggle - the product of more than 35 working trips to 15 countries and nearly 80 campuses - shows how important that debate is in other countries, and how it should be here.

While he writes regularly for left-leaning (the British Guardian), conservative (The Australian) and apolitical publications (the Chronicle of Higher Education), Mr Cohen describes his personal point of view on higher education as "American".

"In the States, families find it utterly natural to front up for the costs to put a child through a good university. My wife's family, for example, didn't think twice about paying US$30,000 for each year of her undergrad experience.

"The public-private partnership is clearly a major part of the US market and I think that has probably shown itself to be the best mix for a dynamic higher education sector." "

• The publication of Welcome to the Campus of Struggle (Dunmore Press, 2004) was materially supported by the Education Forum.

More information on the book is at this Education Forum web page.

A competition to win a copy of Mr Cohen's book is at this web page.