A readable, cogent explanation of how the U.S. can have the best system of higher education in the world, but also a system that seems to be coming apart at the seams.|Marvin Lazerson (professor at the Central European University and the University of Pennsylvania) considers the successes of higher education in the USA and how this has also bred discontent. He traces the development of higher education from the last half of the twentieth century, and considers why the expansion occurred, how it became an industry, and the increasing role of education in job attainment, as well as problems like rising costs, debates about the economic worth of higher education, and the decline in its civic, moral, and intellectual purposes. He also discusses changes in governance to a more business-like model, the managerial imperatives colleges face, changes to curriculum and research, and reform.
- Cover
- Title page
- Copyright page
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Houses, automobiles, and higher education
- Part I The Gospel of Getting Ahead
- Chapter 1 Building the dream (and worrying about it)
- 1.1 Building the dream
- 1.2 Why did they come?
- 1.3 A field unsettled
- Chapter 2 Higher education as vocational education
- 2.1 The education gospel and vocationalism
- 2.2 The U.S. approach to vocationalism
- 2.3 The conflicts of vocationalism
- 2.4 What’s right and what’s wrong
- Part II Governance and Managerial Dilemmas
- Chapter 3 Who governs higher education?
- 3.1 A journey of awareness
- 3.2 Changing locus of power
- 3.3 Return on investments really matters
- 3.4 Managing higher education’s mini-cities
- 3.5 Are business and higher education the same?
- 3.6 Leaping into the future
- 3.7 Resuscitating shared governance
- Chapter 4 Managerial imperatives
- 4.1 The challenge of curriculum and instructional
reforms
- 4.2 The challenge of serving students
- 4.3 The challenge of research management
- 4.4 The challenge of money
- 4.5 The challenge of educational quality
- 4.6 Managing information and communications
technology
- 4.7 Managing the managers
- Part III The Teaching and Learning Conundrum
- Chapter 5 Academic disciplines, research imperatives,
and undergraduate learning
- 5.1 Purposes and tensions
- 5.2 The neglect of learning
- 5.3 The separation of science and morality
- 5.4 Triumph of methodology
- 5.5 Economics: queen of the sciences
- 5.6 Philosophy: the analytic (non) conversation
- 5.7 Generating a learning conversation
- Chapter 6 A revolution in teaching and learning
- 6.1 American education at risk
- 6.2 Learning, assessment, and accountability
- 6.3 Voices of reform
- 6.4 The reformers’ dilemma
- Part IV Making Things Better
- Chapter 7 Why is higher education so hard to reform?
- 7.1 Money matters—if used correctly
- 7.2 Stop the loud music
- 7.3 There are no silver bullets
- 7.4 How about playing within your game
- 7.5 It is hard to be really good when conditions are
so unequal
- References
- Name Index
- Subject Index
- Back cover
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