Building on Ourania Filippakou's previous work on higher education in the fields of governance, neoliberalism, university entrepreneurialism and marketization, institutional and social stratification, Rethinking Higher Education and the Crisis of Legitimation in Europe contributes to the debate on higher education from a critical policy perspective. Introducing new ideas on the relationships between the alleged pursuit of excellence in higher education and the ways in which both deploys and reflects how power is wielded in Europe and other neoliberal capitalist societies. The term "legitimation" is here coined to emphasize how new coercive strategies, political decisions, and management styles have emerged in the age of excellence in higher education. The book concludes with a more personal reflection on the neutrality of higher education and its illusory promises.

Ourania Filippakou is Reader in Education at Brunel University London. Her PhD in Higher Education is from the UCL Institute of Education, University of London. Her research focuses the politics of higher education with particular reference to comparative historical analysis, a perspective that seeks to combine the methods of history with social sciences theories and concepts. In 2007 she was elected as a council member of the Society for Research into Higher Education and currently she is co-editor of the British Educational Research Journal.

Dedication Acknowledgments Part I: Higher Education and the Crisis of Politics in Europe Chapter 1: Rethinking the changing landscape of higher education Chapter 2: Higher education and critical pedagogy: A path forward Part II: Neoliberal Ideology and the Politics of the Quality Agenda in the UK and Europe Chapter 3: Confronting the quality agenda: A case study Chapter 4: Legitimising the quality agenda: Evolution and the politics of normalization Part III: The New Managerialism and the Changing Face of Higher Education Chapter 5: The changing politics of governance in higher education under neoliberalism Chapter 6: Rethinking higher education beyond the neoliberal paradigm Part IV: Challenges and Possibilities Chapter 7: Critical pedagogy in the age of multiple pandemics (with Henry A. Giroux) Chapter 8: Conclusion: Why higher education policy, pedagogy, and research should not be neutral: Reclaiming higher education as a public good