World University Rankings and the Future of Higher Education

World University Rankings and the Future of Higher Education PDF Author: Downing, Kevin
Publisher: IGI Global
ISBN: 1522508201
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 564

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Book Description
Delivering quality education to students while remaining competitive at an international level is only one of the many challenges universities face today. To attain their goals, universities must adopt new strategies to achieve academic excellence. World University Rankings and the Future of Higher Education is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly research on the implementation of a ranking system for higher education institutions, providing a thorough overview of the impacts of these rankings on educational quality. Exploring the benefits and challenges of this system in a global context, this book is ideally designed for academicians, researchers, students, administrators, and policy makers interested in the effects of university rankings in the education sector and beyond.

World University Rankings and the Future of Higher Education

World University Rankings and the Future of Higher Education PDF Author: Downing, Kevin
Publisher: IGI Global
ISBN: 1522508201
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 564

Get Book Here

Book Description
Delivering quality education to students while remaining competitive at an international level is only one of the many challenges universities face today. To attain their goals, universities must adopt new strategies to achieve academic excellence. World University Rankings and the Future of Higher Education is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly research on the implementation of a ranking system for higher education institutions, providing a thorough overview of the impacts of these rankings on educational quality. Exploring the benefits and challenges of this system in a global context, this book is ideally designed for academicians, researchers, students, administrators, and policy makers interested in the effects of university rankings in the education sector and beyond.

The Real World of College

The Real World of College PDF Author: Wendy Fischman
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262046539
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
Why higher education in the United States has lost its way, and how universities and colleges can focus sharply on their core mission. For The Real World of College, Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner analyzed in-depth interviews with more than 2,000 students, alumni, faculty, administrators, parents, trustees, and others, which were conducted at ten institutions ranging from highly selective liberal arts colleges to less-selective state schools. What they found challenged characterizations in the media: students are not preoccupied by political correctness, free speech, or even the cost of college. They are most concerned about their GPA and their resumes; they see jobs and earning potential as more important than learning. Many say they face mental health challenges, fear that they don’t belong, and feel a deep sense of alienation. Given this daily reality for students, has higher education lost its way? Fischman and Gardner contend that US universities and colleges must focus sharply on their core educational mission. Fischman and Gardner, both recognized authorities on education and learning, argue that higher education in the United States has lost sight of its principal reason for existing: not vocational training, not the provision of campus amenities, but to increase what Fischman and Gardner call “higher education capital”—to help students think well and broadly, express themselves clearly, explore new areas, and be open to possible transformations. Fischman and Gardner offer cogent recommendations for how every college can become a community of learners who are open to change as thinkers, citizens, and human beings.

A Third University Is Possible

A Third University Is Possible PDF Author: la paperson
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452954100
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 107

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Book Description
A Third University is Possible unravels the intimate relationship between the more than 200 US land grant institutions, American settler colonialism, and contemporary university expansion. Author la paperson cracks open uncanny connections between Indian boarding schools, Black education, and missionary schools in Kenya; and between the Department of Homeland Security and the University of California. Central to la paperson’s discussion is the “scyborg,” a decolonizing agent of technological subversion. Drawing parallels to Third Cinema and Black filmmaking assemblages, A Third University is Possible ultimately presents new ways of using language to develop a framework for hotwiring university “machines” to the practical work of decolonization. Forerunners: Ideas First is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital publications. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.

Seeing the World

Seeing the World PDF Author: Mitchell Stevens
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400887968
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
An in-depth look at why American universities continue to favor U.S.-focused social science research despite efforts to make scholarship more cosmopolitan U.S. research universities have long endeavored to be cosmopolitan places, yet the disciplines of economics, political science, and sociology have remained stubbornly parochial. Despite decades of government and philanthropic investment in international scholarship, the most prestigious academic departments still favor research and expertise on the United States. Why? Seeing the World answers this question by examining university research centers that focus on the Middle East and related regional area studies. Drawing on candid interviews with scores of top scholars and university leaders to understand how international inquiry is perceived and valued inside the academy, Seeing the World explains how intense competition for tenure-line appointments encourages faculty to pursue “American” projects that are most likely to garner professional advancement. At the same time, constrained by tight budgets at home, university leaders eagerly court patrons and clients worldwide but have a hard time getting departmental faculty to join the program. Together these dynamics shape how scholarship about the rest of the world evolves. At once a work-and-occupations study of scholarly disciplines, an essay on the formal organization of knowledge, and an inquiry into the fate of area studies, Seeing the World is a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of knowledge in a global era.

Empires of Ideas

Empires of Ideas PDF Author: William C. Kirby
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674737717
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 505

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Book Description
The United States is the global leader in higher education, but this was not always the case and may not remain so. William Kirby examines sources of—and threats to—US higher education supremacy and charts the rise of Chinese competitors. Yet Chinese institutions also face problems, including a state that challenges the commitment to free inquiry.

What Universities Owe Democracy

What Universities Owe Democracy PDF Author: Ronald J. Daniels
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421442698
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Introduction -- American dreams : access, mobility, fairness -- Free minds : educating democratic citizens -- Hard facts : knowledge creation and checking power -- Purposeful pluralism : dialogue across difference on campus -- Conclusion.

The Most Powerful Idea in the World

The Most Powerful Idea in the World PDF Author: William Rosen
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226726347
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
"The Most Powerful Idea in the World argues that the very notion of intellectual property drove not only the invention of the steam engine but also the entire Industrial Revolution." -- Back cover.

Unmaking the Public University

Unmaking the Public University PDF Author: Christopher Newfield
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674060369
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
An essential American dream—equal access to higher education—was becoming a reality with the GI Bill and civil rights movements after World War II. But this vital American promise has been broken. Christopher Newfield argues that the financial and political crises of public universities are not the result of economic downturns or of ultimately valuable restructuring, but of a conservative campaign to end public education’s democratizing influence on American society. Unmaking the Public University is the story of how conservatives have maligned and restructured public universities, deceiving the public to serve their own ends. It is a deep and revealing analysis that is long overdue. Newfield carefully describes how this campaign operated, using extensive research into public university archives. He launches the story with the expansive vision of an equitable and creative America that emerged from the post-war boom in college access, and traces the gradual emergence of the anti-egalitarian “corporate university,” practices that ranged from racial policies to research budgeting. Newfield shows that the culture wars have actually been an economic war that a conservative coalition in business, government, and academia have waged on that economically necessary but often independent group, the college-educated middle class. Newfield’s research exposes the crucial fact that the culture wars have functioned as a kind of neutron bomb, one that pulverizes the social and culture claims of college grads while leaving their technical expertise untouched. Unmaking the Public University incisively sets the record straight, describing a forty-year economic war waged on the college-educated public, and awakening us to a vision of social development shared by scientists and humanists alike.

The Idea of the Public University

The Idea of the Public University PDF Author: Allan Patience
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000684946
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 149

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Book Description
This book sheds light on the risk of losing the authoritative knowledge discovered and taught by public universities. It argues that public universities are as indispensable now, as never before, for providing governments and citizens with reliable knowledge crucial for confronting the looming environmental, cultural, economic, and political challenges now threatening humanity’s very existence. Acknowledging the history of universities around the world, the book highlights the role they have played in creating and curating knowledge. It examines John Henry Newman’s liberal idea of the university and Wilhelm von Humboldt’s conception of the institution and argues this is all under threat at the hands of fake prophets and biased media preaching "alternative facts" and populist falsehoods. Shedding light on neoliberalism and the tensions between research, education, and training, the author demonstrates that the best pedagogical and economic outcomes are achieved when these interests are dynamically informing each other. This book will be of interest to academics, university managers, and higher education policymakers questioning the role, value, and purpose of the contemporary public university.

Implausible Dream

Implausible Dream PDF Author: James H. Mittelman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691165181
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
Why the paradigm of the world-class university is an implausible dream for most institutions of higher education Universities have become major actors on the global stage. Yet, as they strive to be “world-class,” institutions of higher education are shifting away from their core missions of cultivating democratic citizenship, fostering critical thinking, and safeguarding academic freedom. In the contest to raise their national and global profiles, universities are embracing a new form of utilitarianism, one that favors market power over academic values. In this book, James Mittelman explains why the world-class university is an implausible dream for most institutions and proposes viable alternatives that can help universities thrive in today’s competitive global environment. Mittelman traces how the scale, reach, and impact of higher-education institutions expanded exponentially in the post–World War II era, and how the market-led educational model became widespread. Drawing on his own groundbreaking fieldwork, he offers three case studies—the United States, which exemplifies market-oriented educational globalization; Finland, representative of the strong public sphere; and Uganda, a postcolonial country with a historically public but now increasingly private university system. Mittelman shows that the “world-class” paradigm is untenable for all but a small group of wealthy, research-intensive universities, primarily in the global North. Nevertheless, institutions without substantial material resources and in far different contexts continue to aspire to world-class stature. An urgent wake-up call, Implausible Dream argues that universities are repurposing at the peril of their high principles and recommends structural reforms that are more practical than the unrealistic worldwide measures of excellence prevalent today.