Introduction: The Background

The Introduction provides the landscape for the argument that neoliberalism and neoliberal policies have a pervasive influence upon higher education institutions and a potentially intractable effect on organizational behaviors and actions. The chapter sets the stage for the focus of the book: seven organizations—four present day community colleges and three universities that were former community colleges—and the influences of neoliberalism on the development of these institutions, as well as the interplay between institutional logics and neoliberal ideology and between government policy and institutional logics.