The Struggle to Reform Our Colleges

The Struggle to Reform Our Colleges PDF Author: Derek Bok
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691177473
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Why efforts to improve American higher educational attainment haven't worked, and where to go from here During the first decade of this century, many commentators predicted that American higher education was about to undergo major changes that would be brought about under the stimulus of online learning and other technological advances. Toward the end of the decade, the president of the United States declared that America would regain its historic lead in the education of its workforce within the next ten years through a huge increase in the number of students earning “quality” college degrees. Several years have elapsed since these pronouncements were made, yet the rate of progress has increased very little, if at all, in the number of college graduates or the nature and quality of the education they receive. In The Struggle to Reform Our Colleges, Derek Bok seeks to explain why so little change has occurred by analyzing the response of America’s colleges; the influence of students, employers, foundations, accrediting organizations, and government officials; and the impact of market forces and technological innovation. In the last part of the book, Bok identifies a number of initiatives that could improve the performance of colleges and universities. The final chapter examines the process of change itself and describes the strategy best calculated to quicken the pace of reform and enable colleges to meet the challenges that confront them.

The Struggle to Reform Our Colleges

The Struggle to Reform Our Colleges PDF Author: Derek Bok
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691177473
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book

Book Description
Why efforts to improve American higher educational attainment haven't worked, and where to go from here During the first decade of this century, many commentators predicted that American higher education was about to undergo major changes that would be brought about under the stimulus of online learning and other technological advances. Toward the end of the decade, the president of the United States declared that America would regain its historic lead in the education of its workforce within the next ten years through a huge increase in the number of students earning “quality” college degrees. Several years have elapsed since these pronouncements were made, yet the rate of progress has increased very little, if at all, in the number of college graduates or the nature and quality of the education they receive. In The Struggle to Reform Our Colleges, Derek Bok seeks to explain why so little change has occurred by analyzing the response of America’s colleges; the influence of students, employers, foundations, accrediting organizations, and government officials; and the impact of market forces and technological innovation. In the last part of the book, Bok identifies a number of initiatives that could improve the performance of colleges and universities. The final chapter examines the process of change itself and describes the strategy best calculated to quicken the pace of reform and enable colleges to meet the challenges that confront them.

Reforming Our Universities

Reforming Our Universities PDF Author: David Horowitz
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1596981571
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
It’s no secret that our universities have become hotbeds of radical leftist thought. While professors and administrators pay lip-service to concepts like open-mindedness and robust debate, they try to squash any opinion that doesn’t match their radical left world view. World-renowned campus activist David Horowitz wants to bring diversity back to the college campus. Horowitz describes his decades-long campaign against intellectual bigotry, grade discrimination, and the denial of basic rights to any and all whose opinions diverge from the extreme liberal orthodoxy.

Other People's Colleges

Other People's Colleges PDF Author: Ethan W. Ris
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226820238
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
An illuminating history of the reform agenda in higher education. For well over one hundred years, people have been attempting to make American colleges and universities more efficient and more accountable. Indeed, Ethan Ris argues in Other People’s Colleges, the reform impulse is baked into American higher education, the result of generations of elite reformers who have called for sweeping changes in the sector and raised existential questions about its sustainability. When that reform is beneficial, offering major rewards for minor changes, colleges and universities know how to assimilate it. When it is hostile, attacking autonomy or values, they know how to resist it. The result is a sector that has learned to accept top-down reform as part of its existence. In the early twentieth century, the “academic engineers,” a cadre of elite, external reformers from foundations, businesses, and government, worked to reshape and reorganize the vast base of the higher education pyramid. Their reform efforts were largely directed at the lower tiers of higher education, but those efforts fell short, despite the wealth and power of their backers, leaving a legacy of successful resistance that affects every college and university in the United States. Today, another coalition of business leaders, philanthropists, and politicians is again demanding efficiency, accountability, and utility from American higher education. But, as Ris argues, top-down design is not destiny. Drawing on extensive and original archival research, Other People’s Colleges offers an account of higher education that sheds light on today’s reform agenda.

Native Presence and Sovereignty in College

Native Presence and Sovereignty in College PDF Author: Amanda R. Tachine
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807779962
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
What is at stake when our young people attempt to belong to a college environment that reflects a world that does not want them for who they are? In this compelling book, Navajo scholar Amanda Tachine takes a personal look at 10 Navajo teenagers, following their experiences during their last year in high school and into their first year in college. It is common to think of this life transition as a time for creating new connections to a campus community, but what if there are systemic mechanisms lurking in that community that hurt Native students’ chances of earning a degree? Tachine describes these mechanisms as systemic monsters and shows how campus environments can be sites of harm for Indigenous students due to factors that she terms monsters’ sense of belonging, namely assimilating, diminishing, harming the worldviews of those not rooted in White supremacy, heteropatriarchy, capitalism, racism, and Indigenous erasure. This book addresses the nature of those monsters and details the Indigenous weapons that students use to defeat them. Rooted in love, life, sacredness, and sovereignty, these weapons reawaken students’ presence and power. Book Features: Introduces an Indigenous methodological approach called story rug that demonstrates how research can be expanded to encompass all our senses. Weaves together Navajo youths’ stories of struggle and hope in educational settings, making visible systemic monsters and Indigenous weaponry.Draws from Navajo knowledge systems as an analytic tool to connect history to present and future realities.Speaks to the contemporary situation of Native peoples, illuminating the challenges that Native students face in making the transition to college.Examines historical and contemporary realities of Navajo systemic monsters, such as the financial hardship monster, deficit (not enough) monster, failure monster, and (in)visibility monster.Offers insights for higher education institutions that are seeking ways to create belonging for diverse students.

Higher Education in America

Higher Education in America PDF Author: Derek Bok
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140086612X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 494

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Book Description
A sweeping assessment of the state of higher education today from former Harvard president Derek Bok Higher Education in America is a landmark work--a comprehensive and authoritative analysis of the current condition of our colleges and universities from former Harvard president Derek Bok, one of the nation's most respected education experts. Sweepingly ambitious in scope, this is a deeply informed and balanced assessment of the many strengths as well as the weaknesses of American higher education today. At a time when colleges and universities have never been more important to the lives and opportunities of students or to the progress and prosperity of the nation, Bok provides a thorough examination of the entire system, public and private, from community colleges and small liberal arts colleges to great universities with their research programs and their medical, law, and business schools. Drawing on the most reliable studies and data, he determines which criticisms of higher education are unfounded or exaggerated, which are issues of genuine concern, and what can be done to improve matters. Some of the subjects considered are long-standing, such as debates over the undergraduate curriculum and concerns over rising college costs. Others are more recent, such as the rise of for-profit institutions and massive open online courses (MOOCs). Additional topics include the quality of undergraduate education, the stagnating levels of college graduation, the problems of university governance, the strengths and weaknesses of graduate and professional education, the environment for research, and the benefits and drawbacks of the pervasive competition among American colleges and universities. Offering a rare survey and evaluation of American higher education as a whole, this book provides a solid basis for a fresh public discussion about what the system is doing right, what it needs to do better, and how the next quarter century could be made a period of progress rather than decline.

Free City!

Free City! PDF Author: Marcy Rein
Publisher: PM Press
ISBN: 1629638455
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
Free City! The Fight for San Francisco’s City College and Education for All tells the story of the five years of organizing that turned a seemingly hopeless defensive fight into a victory for the most progressive free college measure in the US. In 2012, the accreditor sanctioned City College of San Francisco, one of the biggest and best community colleges in the country, and a year later proposed terminating its accreditation, leading to a state takeover. Free City! follows the multipronged strategies of the campaign and the diverse characters that carried them out. Teachers, students, labor unions, community groups, public officials, and concerned individuals saved a treasured public institution as San Francisco’s working-class communities of color battled the gentrification that was forcing them out of the city. And they pushed back against the national “reform” agenda of corporate workforce training that drives students towards debt and sidelines lifelong learning and community service programs. Combining analysis with narrative, Free City! offers a case study in the power of positive vision and solution-oriented organizing and a reflection on what education can and should be.

Hope Against Hope

Hope Against Hope PDF Author: Sarah Carr
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608195139
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
A moving portrait of school reform in New Orleans through the eyes of the students and educators living it.

What's College For?

What's College For? PDF Author: Zachary Karabell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
A hard-hitting examination of the currentcrisis in higher education and an urgent call for major reform.

Jim Crow Campus

Jim Crow Campus PDF Author: Joy Ann Williamson-Lott
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807759120
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
"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 offers a deep understanding of the vital importance of independent institutions during times of national crisis" --

Higher Expectations

Higher Expectations PDF Author: Derek Bok
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691205809
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
"Over its long history, undergraduate education has gradually evolved from its early years when colleges offered an exacting study of classical texts to the tiny segment of America's young men destined for careers as ministers, teachers, and civic leaders. After the United States began to industrialize during the 19th century, the demand for graduates with practical skills led eventually to the demise of the classical curriculum to make way for more useful and contemporary subjects. As the Gross Domestic Product grew rapidly in the decades following World War II, the need for competent managers and professionals grew with it. In response, the size and variety of vocational programs exploded to accommodate an enormous growth in the number of young men and women seeking to enroll. Today, the undergraduate curriculum may be entering a new phase. The needs of an increasingly sophisticated economy coupled with advances in the cognitive sciences have given rise to intriguing possibilities for helping students to acquire additional competencies and qualities of mind that could enable them to live more successful, useful, and satisfying lives. This book asks a straightforward question: Do colleges and universities have the right curricula and pedagogy to prepare today's students for the future? Former Harvard president Derek Bok examines this question according to the following measures: Preparation for Citizenship; Preparing Students for an Interdependent World; Character; A Purposeful and Meaningful Life; Improving Interpersonal Skills; and Improving Intrapersonal Skills. He then explores Unconventional Methods of Teaching; Prospects for Change; and Reform; and concludes with Reflections on the Future"--