The Breakdown of Higher Education
The Breakdown of Higher Education

Author: John M. Ellis

Publisher: Encounter Books

Published: 2021-08-10

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 1641772158

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A series of near-riots on campuses aimed at silencing guest speakers has exposed the fact that our universities are no longer devoted to the free exchange of ideas in pursuit of truth. But this hostility to free speech is only a symptom of a deeper problem, writes John Ellis. Having watched the deterioration of academia up close for the past fifty years, Ellis locates the core of the problem in a change in the composition of the faculty during this time, from mildly left-leaning to almost exclusively leftist. He explains how astonishing historical luck led to the success of a plan first devised by a small group of activists to use college campuses to promote radical politics, and why laws and regulations designed to prevent the politicizing of higher education proved insufficient. Ellis shows that political motivation is always destructive of higher learning. Even science and technology departments are not immune. The corruption of universities by radical politics also does wider damage: to primary and secondary education, to race relations, to preparation for the workplace, and to the political and social fabric of the nation. Commonly suggested remedies—new free-speech rules, or enforced right-of-center appointments—will fail because they don’t touch the core problem, a controlling faculty majority of political activists with no real interest in scholarship. This book proposes more drastic and effective reform measures. The first step is for Americans to recognize that vast sums of public money intended for education are being diverted to a political agenda, and to demand that this fraud be stopped.

College Disrupted
College Disrupted

Author: Ryan Craig

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2015-03-10

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1137279699

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There is a revolution happening in higher education—and this is how it's unfolding

How the University Works
How the University Works

Author: Marc Bousquet

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2008-01-01

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 0814791123

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Uncovers the labor exploitation occurring in universities across the country As much as we think we know about the modern university, very little has been said about what it's like to work there. Instead of the high-wage, high-profit world of knowledge work, most campus employees—including the vast majority of faculty—really work in the low-wage, low-profit sphere of the service economy. Tenure-track positions are at an all-time low, with adjuncts and graduate students teaching the majority of courses. This super-exploited corps of disposable workers commonly earn fewer than $16,000 annually, without benefits, teaching as many as eight classes per year. Even undergraduates are being exploited as a low-cost, disposable workforce. Marc Bousquet, a major figure in the academic labor movement, exposes the seamy underbelly of higher education—a world where faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates work long hours for fast-food wages. Assessing the costs of higher education's corporatization on faculty and students at every level, How the University Works is urgent reading for anyone interested in the fate of the university.

For the Common Good
For the Common Good

Author: Charles Dorn

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2017-06-06

Total Pages: 440

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.

How to Educate an American
How to Educate an American

Author: Michael J. Petrilli

Publisher: Templeton Foundation Press

Published: 2020-02-24

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1599475707

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In the years after A Nation at Risk, conservatives’ ideas to reform America’s lagging education system gained much traction. Key items like school choice and rigorous academic standards drew bipartisan support and were put into practice across the country. Today, these gains are in retreat, ceding ground to progressive nostrums that do little to boost the skills and knowledge of young people. Far from being discouraged, however, conservatives should seize the moment to refresh their vision of quality K–12 education for today’s America. These essays by 20 leading conservative thinkers do just that. Students, according to this vision, should complete high school with a thorough understanding of the country’s history, including gratitude for its sacrifices, respect for its achievements, and awareness of its shortcomings. They should also learn to be trustworthy stewards of a democratic republic, capable of exercising virtue and civic responsibility. Beyond helping to form their character, schools ought to ready their pupils for careers that are productive, rewarding, and dignified. Excellent technical-training opportunities will await those not headed to a traditional college. Regardless of the paths and schools that they select, all students must come to understand that they can succeed in America if they are industrious, creative, and responsible. Anchored in tradition yet looking towards tomorrow, How to Educate an American should be read by anyone concerned with teaching future generations to preserve the country’s heritage, embody its universal ethic, and pursue its founding ideals.

Profscam
Profscam

Author: Charles J. Sykes

Publisher: Regnery Publishing

Published: 1988-10-01

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9780895265593

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ProfScam reveals the direct and ultimate reason for the collapse of higher education in the Unites States— the selfish, wayward, and corrupt American university professor.

Academia Next
Academia Next

Author: Bryan Alexander

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

Published: 2020-01-14

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 1421436426

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An unusually multifaceted approach to American higher education that views institutions as complex organisms, Academia Next offers a fresh perspective on the emerging colleges and universities of today and tomorrow.

A Perfect Mess
A Perfect Mess

Author: David F. Labaree

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2017-04-21

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 022625044X

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Read the news about America’s colleges and universities—rising student debt, affirmative action debates, and 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. Weakly funded by the state, American schools in their early years had to rely on student tuition and alumni donations in order to survive. This gave them tremendous autonomy to seek out sources of financial support and pursue unconventional opportunities to ensure their success. As Labaree shows, by striving as much as possible 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.

Building the Intentional University
Building the Intentional University

Author: Stephen M. Kosslyn

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2018-08-28

Total Pages: 457

ISBN-13: 0262536196

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How to rebuild higher education from the ground up for the twenty-first century. Higher education is in crisis. It is too expensive, ineffective, and impractical for many of the world's students. But how would you reinvent it for the twenty-first century—how would you build it from the ground up? Many have speculated about changing higher education, but Minerva has actually created a new kind of university program. Its founders raised the funding, assembled the team, devised the curriculum and pedagogy, recruited the students, hired the faculty, and implemented a bold vision of a new and improved higher education. This book explains that vision and how it is being realized. The Minerva curriculum focuses on “practical knowledge” (knowledge students can use to adapt to a changing world); its pedagogy is based on scientific research on learning; it uses a novel technology platform to deliver small seminars in real time; and it offers a hybrid residential model where students live together, rotating through seven cities around the world. Minerva equips students with the cognitive tools they need to succeed in the world after graduation, building the core competencies of critical thinking, creative thinking, effective communication, and effective interaction. The book offers readers both the story of this grand and sweeping idea and a blueprint for transforming higher education.

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

Author: John R. Thelin

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

Published: 2019-04-02

Total Pages: 555

ISBN-13: 1421428830

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The definitive history of American higher education—now up to date. 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. Exploring American higher education from its founding in the seventeenth century to its struggle to innovate and adapt in the first decades of the twenty-first century, Thelin demonstrates that the experience of going to college has been central to American life for generations of students and their families. Drawing from archival research, along with the pioneering scholarship of leading historians, Thelin raises profound questions about what colleges are—and what they should be. Covering issues of social class, race, gender, and ethnicity in each era and chapter, this new edition showcases a fresh concluding chapter that focuses on both the opportunities and problems American higher education has faced since 2010. The essay on sources has been revised to incorporate books and articles published over the past decade. The book also updates the discussion of perennial hot-button issues such as big-time sports programs, online learning, the debt crisis, the adjunct crisis, and the return of the culture wars and addresses current areas of contention, including the changing role of governing boards and the financial challenges posed by the economic downturn. Anyone studying the history of this institution in America must read Thelin's classic text, which has distinguished itself as the most wide-ranging and engaging account of the origins and evolution of America's institutions of higher learning.