Saving State U

Saving State U PDF Author: Nancy Folbre
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1595580654
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
Whilst working as Chairperson in a university department of Economics, celebrated feminist Nancy Folbre saw first-hand how cut backs severely affected the quality of education and services available to students. In an incisive study, she explains how public education fits into the economy at large. As America faces a transition in administration, and a change in policies on public spending, this well-informed call to action provides a much needed perspective on public education.

Saving State U

Saving State U PDF Author: Nancy Folbre
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1595580654
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 211

Get Book Here

Book Description
Whilst working as Chairperson in a university department of Economics, celebrated feminist Nancy Folbre saw first-hand how cut backs severely affected the quality of education and services available to students. In an incisive study, she explains how public education fits into the economy at large. As America faces a transition in administration, and a change in policies on public spending, this well-informed call to action provides a much needed perspective on public education.

Why Public Higher Education Should Be Free

Why Public Higher Education Should Be Free PDF Author: Robert Samuels
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813561256
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Universities tend to be judged by the test scores of their incoming students and not on what students actually learn once they attend these institutions. While shared tests and surveys have been developed, most schools refuse to publish the results. Instead, they allow such publications as U.S. News & World Report to define educational quality. In order to raise their status in these rankings, institutions pour money into new facilities and extracurricular activities while underfunding their educational programs. In Why Public Higher Education Should Be Free, Robert Samuels argues that many institutions of higher education squander funds and mislead the public about such things as average class size, faculty-to-student ratios, number of faculty with PhDs, and other indicators of educational quality. Parents and students seem to have little knowledge of how colleges and universities have been restructured over the past thirty years. Samuels shows how research universities have begun to function as giant investment banks or hedge funds that spend money on athletics and administration while increasing tuition costs and actually lowering the quality of undergraduate education. In order to fight higher costs and lower quality, Samuels suggests, universities must reallocate these misused funds and concentrate on their core mission of instruction and related research. Throughout the book, Samuels argues that the future of our economy and democracy rests on our ability to train students to be thoughtful participants in the production and analysis of knowledge. If leading universities serve only to grant credentials and prestige, our society will suffer irrevocable harm. Presenting the problem of how universities make and spend money, Samuels provides solutions to make these important institutions less expensive and more vital. By using current resources in a more effective manner, we could even, he contends, make all public higher education free.

Saving Public Higher Education

Saving Public Higher Education PDF Author: Jennifer Ring
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031056469
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
In this book, eleven recent college graduates describe in vivid detail their journeys from racially segregated, underfunded public schools to a state university, and the obstacles they encountered along the way. Chapters highlight personal accounts of poverty, violence, and bullying in childhood, the persistence of racism on the university campus and the inability of faculty and administrators to combat it. Overcoming all-too-common barriers, these eleven students persevered, earned their degrees and continued on to graduate school and professional careers. The authors conclude the book with policy proposals that not only address the issues raised by the students, but that would also restore public education to its original role as an engine of opportunity and driver of democracy.

Saving Our Schools

Saving Our Schools PDF Author: Kenneth S. Goodman
Publisher: RDR Books
ISBN: 9781571431028
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
"Saving Our Schools exposes the ugly side of President George Bush's "No Child Left Behind" mandate, which has threatened to close more than 6,000 public schools, to the detriment of dedicated teachers and disadvantaged children alike. Revealing how NCLB forces schools with strictly limited resources to teach its children test-taking skills in a desperate bid to pass high-stakes standardized testing, and how the government blacklists successful professors, institutions, and methods that balk the NCLB party line, and much more, Saving Our Schools warns of an immediate threat to the integrity of public education and urges the reader to take action. An eye-opening social commentary, of keen importance in determining the nation's future. -Midwest Book Review

Public Policy and Higher Education

Public Policy and Higher Education PDF Author: Edward P. St. John
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415893569
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
Amid changing economic and social contexts, radical changes have occurred in public higher education policies over the past three decades. Public Policy and Higher Educationprovides readers with new ways to analyze these complex state policies and offers the tools to examine how policies affect students’ access and success in college. Rather than arguing for a single approach, the authors examine how policymakers and higher education administrators can work to inform and influence change within systems of higher education using research-based evidence along with consideration of political and historical values and beliefs. Special Features: Case Studies—allow readers to examine strategies used by different types of colleges to improve access and retention. Reflective Exercises—encourage readers to discuss state and campus context for policy decisions and to think about the strategies used in a state or institution. Approachable Explanations—unpack complex public policies and financial strategies for readers who seek understanding of public policy in higher education. Research-Based Recommendations—explore how policymakers, higher education administrators and faculty can work together to improve quality, diversity, and financial stewardship. This textbook is an invaluable resource for graduate students, administrators, policymakers, and researchers who seek to learn more about the crucial contexts underlying policy decisions and college access.

Pedagogy of the Depressed

Pedagogy of the Depressed PDF Author: Christopher Schaberg
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501364596
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
This book is one English professor's assessment of university life in the early 21st century. From rising mental health concerns and trigger warnings to learning management systems and the COVID pandemic, Christopher Schaberg reflects on the rapidly evolving landscape of higher education. Adopting an interdisciplinary public humanities approach, Schaberg considers the frequently exhausting and depressing realities of college today. Yet in these meditations he also finds hope: collaboration, mentoring, less grading, surface reading, and other pedagogical strategies open up opportunities to reinvigorate teaching and learning in the current turbulent decade.

Will Standards Save Public Education?

Will Standards Save Public Education? PDF Author: Deborah Meier
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 9780807004418
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 110

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Book Description
Somewhere. . . there is a place of sanity where education is intense and substantive. . . . It's in that place that Deborah Meier has been working all these years. Her voice conveys a life of struggle in the front lines-victories and losses, hopes and disappointments. . . . It's a voice our nation needs to hear. --Jonathan Kozol, from the Foreword Acclaimed educator Deborah Meier offers a fresh take on standardized tests. While others have criticized standards and what they measure, Meier rejects the very idea of a centralized authority that dictates how and what teachers teach. Standardization, she argues, prevents citizens-including teachers-from emerging as thoughtful, responsible adults, seriously engaged with shaping their own schools, classrooms, and communities. As a result, young people can't learn from them how to be thoughtful, responsible adults and good citizens, the primary goal of public education in a democracy. The New Democracy Forum is a series of short paperback originals exploring creative solutions to our most urgent national concerns. "A civic treasure. . . . A truly good idea, carried out with intelligence and panache." --Robert Pinsky

Paying the Price

Paying the Price PDF Author: Sara Goldrick-Rab
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022640448X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
A “bracing and well-argued” study of America’s college debt crisis—“necessary reading for anyone concerned about the fate of American higher education” (Kirkus). College is far too expensive for many people today, and the confusing mix of federal, state, institutional, and private financial aid leaves countless students without the resources they need to pay for it. In Paying the Price, education scholar Sara Goldrick-Rab reveals the devastating effect of these shortfalls. Goldrick-Rab examines a study of 3,000 students who used the support of federal aid and Pell Grants to enroll in public colleges and universities in Wisconsin in 2008. Half the students in the study left college without a degree, while less than 20 percent finished within five years. The cause of their problems, time and again, was lack of money. Unable to afford tuition, books, and living expenses, they worked too many hours at outside jobs, dropped classes, took time off to save money, and even went without adequate food or housing. In many heartbreaking cases, they simply left school—not with a degree, but with crippling debt. Goldrick-Rab combines that data with devastating stories of six individual students, whose struggles make clear the human and financial costs of our convoluted financial aid policies. In the final section of the book, Goldrick-Rab offers a range of possible solutions, from technical improvements to the financial aid application process, to a bold, public sector–focused “first degree free” program. "Honestly one of the most exciting books I've read, because [Goldrick-Rab has] solutions. It's a manual that I'd recommend to anyone out there, if you're a parent, if you're a teacher, if you're a student."—Trevor Noah, The Daily Show

Leading Higher Education As and For Public Good

Leading Higher Education As and For Public Good PDF Author: Tone Dyrdal Solbrekke
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429537522
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Leading Higher Education As and For Public Good asserts that the purpose of higher education is twofold: for public good and as public good. Acknowledging that the notion of public good increasingly cannot be taken for granted, the book argues that leading, teaching and learning must be directly connected to its pursuit. It avers and demonstrates how this may be accomplished, articulating specific approaches and dispositions that require cultivation within university communities. This volume argues that leading higher education occurs within competing and sometimes conflicting webs of commitments, necessitating a capacity to negotiate legitimate compromises. Its empirical chapters expand on this, providing examples of academic developers who use deliberate communication as a method in cultivating leading and teaching praxis. What emerges is the potential of deliberative leadership to be transformative in building sustainable leadership in higher education, while simultaneously renewing commitments to education and contributing to public good. Leading Higher Education As and For Public Good is essential reading for policy-makers, university leaders and administrators, academics, students and all those interested in building a sustainable future for higher education that also contributes to public good.

A Perfect Mess

A Perfect Mess PDF Author: David F. Labaree
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022625044X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
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.