This book addresses the costly non-sustainable policies, programs, practices, and priorities currently driving the tuition crisis in American public higher education. In this era of growing competition among public colleges and universities for more students and higher rankings, their leaders and governing boards have lost sight of student-centered missions in favor of more and greater non-education related amenities, facilities, programs, and practices that have added substantially to the cost of a college degree without increasing its quality. This book is an appeal to all interested taxpaying citizens, public officials, governors, governing boards, and university presidents to take a second look at these costly decisions and begin a new era of placing the higher education needs and interests of students above all. We have created this tuition crisis; now we must solve it.
How will America's colleges and universities adapt to remarkable technological, economic, and demographic change? The United States is in the midst of a profound transformation the likes of which hasn't been seen since the Industrial Revolution, when America's classical colleges adapted to meet the needs of an emerging industrial economy. Today, as the world shifts to an increasingly interconnected knowledge economy, the intersecting forces of technological innovation, globalization, and demographic change create vast new challenges, opportunities, and uncertainties. In this great upheaval, the nation's most enduring social institutions are at a crossroads. In The Great Upheaval, Arthur Levine and Scott Van Pelt examine higher and postsecondary education to see how it has changed to become what it is today—and how it might be refitted for an uncertain future. Taking a unique historical, cross-industry perspective, Levine and Van Pelt perform a 360-degree survey of American higher education. Combining historical, trend, and comparative analyses of other business sectors, they ask • how much will colleges and universities change, what will change, and how will these changes occur? • will institutions of higher learning be able to adapt to the challenges they face, or will they be disrupted by them? • will the industrial model of higher education be repaired or replaced? • why is higher education more important than ever? The book is neither an attempt to advocate for a particular future direction nor a warning about that future. Rather, it looks objectively at the contexts in which higher education has operated—and will continue to operate. It also seeks to identify likely developments that will aid those involved in steering higher education forward, as well as the many millions of Americans who have a stake in its future. Concluding with a detailed agenda for action, The Great Upheaval is aimed at policy makers, college administrators, faculty, trustees, and students, as well as general readers and people who work for nonprofits facing the same big changes.
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.
The future of handwriting is anything but certain. Its history, however, shows how much it has affected culture and civilization for millennia. In the digital age of instant communication, handwriting is less necessary than ever before, and indeed fewer and fewer schoolchildren are being taught how to write in cursive. Signatures--far from John Hancock’s elegant model--have become scrawls. In her recent and widely discussed and debated essays, Anne Trubek argues that the decline and even elimination of handwriting from daily life does not signal a decline in civilization, but rather the next stage in the evolution of communication. Now, in The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting, Trubek uncovers the long and significant impact handwriting has had on culture and humanity--from the first recorded handwriting on the clay tablets of the Sumerians some four thousand years ago and the invention of the alphabet as we know it, to the rising value of handwritten manuscripts today. Each innovation over the millennia has threatened existing standards and entrenched interests: Indeed, in ancient Athens, Socrates and his followers decried the very use of handwriting, claiming memory would be destroyed; while Gutenberg’s printing press ultimately overturned the livelihood of the monks who created books in the pre-printing era. And yet new methods of writing and communication have always appeared. Establishing a novel link between our deep past and emerging future, Anne Trubek offers a colorful lens through which to view our shared social experience.
Why a strong mission and inspired leadership are vital to the success of America’s colleges and universities In 1998, soon after assuming the presidency of Tulane University, Scott Cowen was confronted with a setback. Despite an undefeated football season and putting the best financial deal on the table, Cowen was unable to retain the school's football coach. The coach wanted something the president didn't have--a football program so popular, as the coach put it, that fans would line up their Winnebagos on Wednesdays in anticipation of Saturday games. In that moment, Cowen improbably found himself in the entertainment business—and his university was deemed wanting. At a time when schools seem overrun by sports programs, spiraling costs, and absurd ranking systems, Winnebagos on Wednesdays argues that colleges and universities of all stripes and sizes can achieve their educational aims if they possess two things: visionary leadership and a strong mission. Cowen, named one of the nation's top university presidents by Time magazine in 2009, gives a behind-the-scenes look at the critical demands faced by many education leaders. He profiles a range of situations, from how Diana Natalicio of the University of Texas at El Paso expanded a school serving a specific demographic into an academic powerhouse to how Michael Sorrell shifted Paul Quinn College's mission to urban entrepreneurship in order to save the institution. Cowen also draws from his own hard-won experiences, including the rebuilding of Tulane and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and the decision to maintain Tulane's football program. He shows how crucial choices in tough situations shape organizations, for better or ill. A sweeping overview of the higher education landscape, Winnebagos on Wednesdays demonstrates that the courage of transformative leadership is essential for colleges and universities to remain vital.
Public research universities are an integral part of American society. They play the leading role in educating future leaders in agriculture, engineering, the arts and sciences, humanities, business, education, and other professions. Public research universities generate the new products, processes, inventions, discoveries, insights, and interpretations that advance the human condition.
This book offers formal and informal leaders at all levels of their institution theory-informed and practical guidance on implementing and sustaining change through collaborative leadership. The framework and concepts presented are applicable at the department, program, campus, or system level to guide minor, incremental, or transformative change.Achieving a shared organizational vision can be a daunting challenge, given the multiple missions of higher education, varied and often conflicting stakeholder viewpoints, siloed organizational structures, traditions of shared governance, and a highly educated workforce bringing together colleagues with diverse disciplinary perspectives. Achieving these aims requires taking into account the organization’s systems and values and the needs and aspirations of corresponding stakeholders across the enterprise. Ruben provides a guide for achieving and sustaining these goals in an engaged and collaborative manner.Employing the author’s widely used Excellence in Higher Education (EHE) framework, this book offers principles and practices relative to change, collaboration, and organizational vision that can greatly enhance the prospects for effective outcomes, highlighting three key themes:·Understanding and leveraging the dynamics of change. ·Leading collaboratively, and meaningfully engaging one’s colleagues. ·Adopting and pursuing a shared vision of organizational purpose and aspirations.The book is intended for faculty and staff who want to advance the effectiveness and impact of their program, department, and institution, and to do so in a way that creates a shared vision to sustain these benefits into the future. It serves as a text for the growing number of leadership development programs, and for courses with a focus on higher education leadership.
The book aims to advance global knowledge and practice in applying data science to transform higher education learning and teaching to improve personalization, access and effectiveness of education for all. Currently, higher education institutions and involved stakeholders can derive multiple benefits from educational data mining and learning analytics by using different data analytics strategies to produce summative, real-time, and predictive or prescriptive insights and recommendations. Educational data mining refers to the process of extracting useful information out of a large collection of complex educational datasets while learning analytics emphasizes insights and responses to real-time learning processes based on educational information from digital learning environments, administrative systems, and social platforms. This volume provides insight into the emerging paradigms, frameworks, methods and processes of managing change to better facilitate organizational transformation toward implementation of educational data mining and learning analytics. It features current research exploring the (a) theoretical foundation and empirical evidence of the adoption of learning analytics, (b) technological infrastructure and staff capabilities required, as well as (c) case studies that describe current practices and experiences in the use of data analytics in higher education.
This is the authoritative guide to implementing COIL Virtual Exchange, conceived, and co-edited by one of the originators of this innovative approach to internationalization, Jon Rubin. COIL, the acronym for Collaborative Online International Learning, is a central modality of what has come to be known as virtual exchange. Since its first iteration in 2002, it has gradually established itself as a mature pedagogy that is being increasingly implemented across the world and is validated by a growing body of research. COIL Virtual Exchange at its most essential is a bi-lateral online exchange involving the integration of existing courses across two, or sometimes more, institutions that are geographically and/or culturally distinct. To launch a COIL VE course, the instructor of a class at a higher education institution in one location links online with a professor and his or her class in another region or country. Together, their students engage and develop joint projects, usually over a continuous five to eight-week period. Compared to the limited number of students worldwide who can engage in study abroad, COIL VE potentially opens up more equitable and inclusive participation in international education and intercultural experiences to all students, involves them in rigorous disciplinary and interdisciplinary studies, and promotes close and constructive engagement with students with different cultural perspectives.While many COIL courses are launched by individual instructors, based on their research connections and online outreach, they are being increasingly supported and led by dedicated COIL Coordinators who facilitate virtual exchanges and provide professional development. This comprehensive guide covers COIL VE pedagogy, provides examples of what takes place in the COIL classroom, and explores what instructors and staff need to know to facilitate and support a variety of COIL courses across the curriculum. It addresses how institutional stakeholders, especially those in leadership positions, can develop and embed a successful COIL initiative at their institution. It offers varied perspectives of COIL viewed from different institutional and cultural vantage points -- from research universities, community and technical colleges, and university systems -- and describes how COIL VE is developing in five different world regions, presenting eleven case studies.The book concludes with a guide to thirteen global organizations that support COIL and other forms of VE. Additionally, the book provides links to the COIL Connect for Virtual Exchange website (https://coilconnect.org) which includes an updated directory of organizations, an expanding database of faculty and institutions participating in COIL and looking for partners, course templates, survey data, and case studies.This book offers faculty and administrators across the world -- whether formally involved in international education, in service-learning and community engagement, or wanting to incorporate a cross-cultural perspective in their disciplinary courses -- theoretical foundations, guidance on effective collaboration, and the strategic and pedagogical considerations to develop robust COIL VE courses and programs.
