Higher Education Cannot Escape History
Higher Education Cannot Escape History

Author: Clark Kerr

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 1993-12-07

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1438408811

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As we approach the end of the twentieth century and enter the twenty-first, the nation's system of colleges and universities, as well as higher education around the world, will face some enduring conflicts and contradictions—the basic challenges that must be confronted and solved again and again in every generation. These include nationalization versus internationalization in higher education, merit in academic pursuits versus equality of treatment, the preservation of the past versus improvement of the present or changes in the future, differentiation of functions among higher education institutions versus their homogenization in a world of mass access, and commitment to ethical conduct in the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge versus exploitation of the process for individual gain. This book outlines possible solutions to these dilemmas that will enable higher education to continue to serve its own imperatives as well as contribute to the quality of life around the world in the coming years and decades.

Higher Education Cannot Escape History
Higher Education Cannot Escape History

Author: Clark Kerr

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1994-01-01

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 9780791417072

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Our taste for blood sport stops short at the bruising clash of football players or the gloved blows of boxers, and the suicide of a politician is no more than a personal tragedy. What, then, are we to make of the ancient Romans, for whom the meaning of sport and politics often depended on death? In this provocative, thoughtful book, Paul Plass shows how the deadly violence of arena sport and political suicide served a social purpose in ancient Rome. His work offers a reminder of the complex uses to which institutionalized violence can be put. Violence, Plass observes, is a universal part of human life, and so must be integrated into social order. Grounding his study in evidence from Roman history and drawing on ideas from contemporary sociology and anthropology, he first discusses gladiatorial combat in ancient Rome. Massive bloodshed in the arena, Plass argues, embodied the element of danger for a society frequently engaged in war, with outsiders--whether slaves, criminals, or prisoners of war--sacrificed for a sense of public security

A History of American Higher Education
A History of American Higher Education

Author: John R. Thelin

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2011-11-15

Total Pages: 499

ISBN-13: 1421404990

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Colleges and universities are among the most cherished—and controversial—institutions in the United States. In this updated edition of A History of American Higher Education, John R. Thelin offers welcome perspective on the triumphs and crises of this highly influential sector in American life. Thelin’s work has distinguished itself as the most wide-ranging and engaging account of the origins and evolution of America's institutions of higher learning. This edition brings the discussion of perennial hot-button issues such as big-time sports programs up to date and addresses such current areas of contention as the changing role of governing boards and the financial challenges posed by the economic downturn.

Higher Education in Transition
Higher Education in Transition

Author: John Seiler Brubacher

Publisher: Transaction Publishers

Published: 1997-01-01

Total Pages: 582

ISBN-13: 9781412815383

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At a time when our colleges and universities face momentous questions of new growth and direction, the republication of Higher Education in Transition is more timely than ever. Beginning with colonial times, the authors trace the development of our college and university system chronologically, in terms of men and institutions. They bring into focus such major areas of concern as curriculum, administration, academic freedom, and student life. They tell their story with a sharp eye for the human values at stake and the issues that will be with us in the future. One gets a sense not only of temporal sequence by centuries and decades but also of unity and continuity by a review of major themes and topics. Rudy's new chapters update developments in higher education during the last twenty years. Higher Education in Transition continues to have significance not only for those who work in higher education, but for everyone interested in American ideas, traditions, and social and intellectual history. "[Higher Education in Transition] is a superb contribution to American social and intellectual history, and the best history extant of the American college and university." -Sol Cohen, Change This volume is highly recommended, not only to students and practitioners of higher education, to whom it is indispensable, but to all who would truly understand what may well be the most important factor in our ultimate survival-our colleges and universities." -Francis H. Horn, New York Times Book Review

Essential Documents in the History of American Higher Education
Essential Documents in the History of American Higher Education

Author: John R. Thelin

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2021-07-06

Total Pages: 439

ISBN-13: 1421441454

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The thoroughly updated second edition of this dynamic and thoughtful collection focuses on the issues that have shaped American higher education in the past decade. Essential Documents in the History of American Higher Education, designed to be used alongside John R. Thelin's A History of American Higher Education or on its own, presents a rich collection of primary sources that chart the social, intellectual, political, and cultural history of American colleges and universities from the seventeenth century to the present. The documents are organized in sections that parallel the chapters in A History both chronologically and thematically, and sections are introduced with brief headnotes establishing the context for each source. This updated edition of Essential Documents focuses on the issues that have shaped American higher education in the past decade, from congressional investigations into endowments and court cases about paying student-athletes to accounts of campus protests over racial discrimination and adjuncts struggling in the "gig economy." From the successful fund-raising campaigns of 2014 to the closing of campuses because of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, the book also includes • a new tenth chapter, "Prominence and Problems: American Higher Education since 2010," and an updated introduction; • a number of landmark documents, including the charter for the College of Rhode Island (1764), the Morrill Land Grand Act (1862), the GI Bill (1944), and the Knight Commission Report on College Sports (2010); and • lively firsthand accounts by students and teachers that tell what it was like to be a Harvard student in the 1700s, to participate in the campus riots of the 1960s, to be a female college athlete in the 1970s, or to enroll at UCLA as an economically disadvantaged Latina in the 1990s. Thelin even stretches the usual bounds of documentary sources, incorporating popular pieces by Robert Benchley and James Thurber on their own college days as well as an excerpt from Groucho Marx's screwball film Horse Feathers. What emerges is a complex and nuanced collection that reflects the richness of more than three centuries of American higher education.

Perspectives on the History of Higher Education
Perspectives on the History of Higher Education

Author: Roger L. Geiger

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 1351500074

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The early twentieth century witnessed the rise of middle-class mass periodicals that, while offering readers congenial material, also conveyed new depictions of manliness, liberal education, and the image of business leaders. "Should Your Boy Go to College?" asked one magazine story; and for over two decades these middle-class magazines answered, in numerous permutations, with a collective "yes!" In the course of interpreting these themes they reshaped the vision of a college education, and created the ideal of a college-educated businessman.Volume 24 of the Perspectives on the History of Higher Education: 2005 provides historical studies touching on contemporary concerns--gender, high-ability students, academic freedom, and, in the case of the Barnes Foundation, the authority of donor intent. Daniel Clark discusses the nuanced changes that occurred to the image of college at the turn of the century. Michael David Cohen offers an important corrective to stereotypes about gender relations in nineteenth-century coeducational colleges. Jane Robbins traces how the young National Research Council embraced the cause of how to identify and encourage superior students as a vehicle for incorporating wartime advances in psychological testing. Susan R. Richardson considers the long Texas tradition of political interference in university affairs. Finally, Edward Epstein and Marybeth Gasman shed historical light on the recent controversy surrounding the Barnes Foundation.The volume also contains brief descriptions of twenty recent doctoral dissertations in the history of higher education. This serial publication will be of interest to historians, sociologists, and of course, educational policymakers.

For the Common Good
For the Common Good

Author: Charles Dorn

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2017-06-06

Total Pages: 478

ISBN-13: 1501712608

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Are colleges and universities in a period of unprecedented disruption? Is a bachelor's degree still worth the investment? Are the humanities coming to an end? What, exactly, is higher education good for? In For the Common Good, Charles Dorn challenges the rhetoric of America's so-called crisis in higher education by investigating two centuries of college and university history. From the community college to the elite research university—in states from California to Maine—Dorn engages a fundamental question confronted by higher education institutions ever since the nation's founding: Do colleges and universities contribute to the common good? Tracking changes in the prevailing social ethos between the late eighteenth and early twenty-first centuries, Dorn illustrates the ways in which civic-mindedness, practicality, commercialism, and affluence influenced higher education's dedication to the public good. Each ethos, long a part of American history and tradition, came to predominate over the others during one of the four chronological periods examined in the book, informing the character of institutional debates and telling the definitive story of its time. For the Common Good demonstrates how two hundred years of political, economic, and social change prompted transformation among colleges and universities—including the establishment of entirely new kinds of institutions—and refashioned higher education in the United States over time in essential and often vibrant ways.

A Perfect Mess
A Perfect Mess

Author: David F. Labaree

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2017-04-21

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 022625058X

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A history of higher education in America and an investigation into the secrets of its success: “A Perfect Mess should become a classic.” —Times Higher Education Read about America’s colleges and universities—rising student debt, affirmative action debates, conflicts between faculty and administrators—and it’s clear that higher education in this country is a total mess. But as David F. Labaree reminds us in this book, it’s always been that way. And that’s exactly why it has become the most successful and sought-after source of learning in the world. Detailing American higher education’s unusual struggle for survival in a free market that never guaranteed its place in society—a fact that seemed to doom it in its early days in the nineteenth century—he tells a lively story of the entrepreneurial spirit that drove American higher education to become the best. And the best it is: today America’s universities and colleges produce the most scholarship, earn the most Nobel prizes, hold the largest endowments, and attract the most esteemed students and scholars from around the world. But this was not an inevitability. In their early years, weakly funded American schools had to rely on student tuition and alumni donations to survive. This gave them tremendous autonomy to seek out sources of financial support and pursue unconventional opportunities. As Labaree shows, by striving mightily to meet social needs and fulfill individual ambitions, they developed a broad base of political and financial support that, grounded by large undergraduate programs, allowed for the most cutting-edge research and advanced graduate study ever conducted. As a result, American higher education eventually managed to combine a unique mix of the populist, the practical, and the elite in a single complex system. The answers to today’s problems in higher education are not easy, but as this book shows, they shouldn’t be: No single person or institution can determine higher education’s future. It is something that faculty, administrators, and students, adapting to society’s needs, will determine together—just as they have always done.

Jim Crow Campus
Jim Crow Campus

Author: Joy Ann Williamson-Lott

Publisher: Teachers College Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 0807776971

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This well-researched volume explores how the Black freedom struggle and the anti–Vietnam War movement dovetailed with faculty and student activism in the South to undermine the traditional role of higher education and bring about social change. It uses the battles between students, faculty, presidents, trustees, elected officials, and funding agencies to explain how Black and White southern campuses transformed themselves into reputable academic centers. No matter the type of institution, these battles represented cracks in the edifice of the Old South and precipitated wide-ranging changes in southern higher education and society as well. This thought-provoking history offers scholars and others interested in institutional autonomy and the value of civil society a deep understanding of the central role that institutions of higher education can play in social and political change and the vital importance of independent institutions during times of national crisis. “The riveting prose and well-researched narrative tell the stories of the past while also teaching lessons for today.” —Marybeth Gasman, University of Pennsylvania “A must-read for every serious student of higher education, academic freedom, free speech, civil rights, student protest, and southern history.” —Robert Cohen, New York University “Takes us back to a recent period in the American South in which the suppression of speech was commonplace in government and in the routines of everyday life.” —James D. Anderson, University of Illinois