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E-book
Author London, Herbert Ira

Title Decline and revival in higher education / Herbert I. London
Published New Brunswick, NJ : Transaction, ©2010

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Description 1 online resource (vii, 329 pages)
Contents The tenured left -- College life from 1968 to the present (the Barzun perspective) -- Decline and revival -- Experiments in the academy -- Off track at specific institutions -- Sports and educational standards -- The student perspective -- Heroes in the halls of ivy -- Scholarship and the curriculum
Summary "How should universities balance the requirements of teaching with those of scholarship? The consensus that scholarship counts first and teaching comes second has lost its hold, for in an academic world in which few publish insisting on the priority of scholarship rings hollow. The American college and university today must assess what difference scholarship makes to teaching and what teaching means to scholarship. In this intelligent and insightful volume the authors outline reform and renewal for both the institutional and personal dimensions of higher learning that would encompass the ideal of the academic ethic
This work maintains that the fact that almost everyone now goes to college need not be seen as an obstacle to excellence in education. Some critics have insisted that college is not for everyone, but William E. Allen and Carol M. Allen assert that the college diploma has rightly become as much the norm in this century as the high school diploma was during the twentieth century. Accordingly, it is essential that higher education remains true to its deepest purpose: the cultivation of proficient humanity. The authors see the key to this goal as the development of judgment, or "habits of mind." Habits of mind are by far the most influential determinants of human conduct, and nowhere are they more profoundly shaped than in institutions of higher education
In this collection of interviews, presidents and chancellors of some of America's most respected universities candidly reflect on their experiences during the decade leading up to the twenty-first century and immediately following it. This was a time of change and uncertainty, when opportunities for achievement and potential for failure made their role uncommonly challenging, and success called for considerable determination, integrity, foresight, skill, and courage
This is an analysis of higher education in the past half century, a period of dramatic change and democratization. But it is more than that. The author has been a participant in the struggle to stem the decline in higher education, as it moved from an emphasis on classical liberal values toward relativism and ideological extremism. This volume reflects an awareness of what has been lost, but sees hope for a revival of traditional values as technological change and awareness of failure forces institutions to examine their premise. Herbert I. London has provided here fuel for fundamental redirection in American college and university affairs. Decline and Revival in Higher Education is uncompromising in its concerns, but points the way toward a future linked to the best of the past
The work follows the personal evolution of the author, while at the same time, describes the devolution of university standards in such institutions as Columbia, Duke, the University of California at Berkeley, and New York University. While seeing optimistic trends in oases of traditional programming that can serve as a counterweight to campus orthodoxies, London argues that the dramatic transformation of the academy cannot be denied. The social sciences and humanities in particular have become isolated from mainstream requirements in the nation
London deals with concrete concerns, such as the collapse of classic book programs in the contemporary curriculum, the decline and even vigilante raids on opposition in campus publications, the collapse of moral judgment in favor of pure relativism, the transformation of many museums into a storage houses of debris, and the confusion of coarse language with democratization. These developments lead the author to write this book, for if the culture wars are over, the American people may be the losers. "--Book jacket
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Subject Education, Higher -- United States -- History
Universities and colleges -- Standards -- United States
Educational change -- United States
Educational innovations -- United States
EDUCATION -- Higher.
Education, Higher
Educational change
Educational innovations
International relations
Universities and colleges -- Standards
SUBJECT United States -- Relations. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85140497
Subject United States
Genre/Form Electronic books
History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781412843348
1412843340