The last twenty five years have witnessed a number of profound changes in the landscape of higher education, changes that have been collectively described as a shift towards the "managed university." Although other terms have also been proposed to name this shift, there is wide agreement about some of the basic characteristics of the trend.1 The power of corporate interests to shape higher education funding and policy has grown, and many colleges and universities have themselves adopted overtly business-oriented models of management. Institutions are making aggressive efforts to cut costs and maximize revenues in the face of diminished state subsidies. Among the many results of such changes has been the emergence of a new kind of "academic capitalism" (Rhoades and Slaughter) that shifts resources away from a wide range of traditional, but economically marginal, university activities, and redirects them to activities that generate revenues and enhance the competitive position of US corporations in the global economy.

Argues that the practices of English studies are defined not only by the obvious variety of objects and methods of inquiry but also by competing divisions of service. Calls for a reconfiguration of the geography of the discipline’s service functions with the goal of developing new ways of reaching extra-disciplinary student and community constituencies.

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