Saving Alma Mater

Download or read book Saving Alma Mater written by James C. Garland and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-10-15 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America’s public universities educate 80% of our nation’s college students. But in the wake of rising demands on state treasuries, changing demographics, growing income inequality, and legislative indifference, many of these institutions have fallen into decline. Tuition costs have skyrocketed, class sizes have gone up, the number of courses offered has gone down, and the overall quality of education has decreased significantly. Here James C. Garland draws on more than thirty years of experience as a professor, administrator, and university president to argue that a new compact between state government and public universities is needed to make these schools more affordable and financially secure. Saving Alma Mater challenges a change-resistant culture in academia that places too low a premium on efficiency and productivity. Seeing a crisis of campus leadership, Garland takes state legislators to task for perpetuating the decay of their public university systems and calls for reforms in the way university presidents and governing boards are selected. He concludes that the era is long past when state appropriations can enable public universities to keep their fees low and affordable. Saving Alma Mater thus calls for the partial deregulation of public universities and a phase-out of their state appropriations. Garland’s plan would tie university revenues to their performance and exploit the competitive pressures of the academic marketplace to control costs, rein in tuition, and make schools more responsive to student needs. A much-needed blueprint for reform based on Garland’s real-life successes as the head of Miami University of Ohio, Saving Alma Mater will be essential for anyone concerned with the costs and quality of higher education in America today.

Download or read book Savings and Loans News written by and published by . This book was released on 1921 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Liberal Arts at the Brink written by Victor E. Ferrall Jr. and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liberal arts colleges represent a tiny portion of the higher education market—no more than 2 percent of enrollees. Yet they produce a stunningly large percentage of America’s leaders in virtually every field of endeavor. The educational experience they offer—small classes led by professors devoted to teaching and mentoring, in a community dedicated to learning—has been a uniquely American higher education ideal. Liberal Arts at the Brink is a wake-up call for everyone who values liberal arts education. A former college president trained in law and economics, Ferrall shows how a spiraling demand for career-related education has pressured liberal arts colleges to become vocational, distorting their mission and core values. The relentless competition among them to attract the “best” students has driven down tuition revenues while driving up operating expenses to levels the colleges cannot cover. The weakest are being forced to sell out to vocational for-profit universities or close their doors. The handful of wealthy elite colleges risk becoming mere dispensers of employment and professional school credentials. The rest face the prospect of moving away from liberal arts and toward vocational education in order to survive. Writing in a personable, witty style, Ferrall tackles the host of threats and challenges liberal arts colleges now confront. Despite these daunting realities, he makes a spirited case for the unique benefits of the education they offer—to students and the nation. He urges liberal arts colleges to stop going it alone and instead band together to promote their mission and ensure their future.

Download or read book The Great Mistake written by Christopher Newfield and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-01 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A remarkable indictment of how misguided business policies have undermined the American higher education system. Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL Higher education in America, still thought to be the world leader, is in crisis. University students are falling behind their international peers in attainment, while suffering from unprecedented student debt. For over a decade, the realm of American higher education has been wracked with self-doubt and mutual recrimination, with no clear solutions on the horizon. How did this happen? In this stunning new book, Christopher Newfield offers readers an in-depth analysis of the “great mistake” that led to the cycle of decline and dissolution, a mistake that impacts every public college and university in America. What might occur, he asserts, is no less than locked-in economic inequality and the fall of the middle class. In The Great Mistake, Newfield asks how we can fix higher education, given the damage done by private-sector models. The current accepted wisdom—that to succeed, universities should be more like businesses—is dead wrong. Newfield combines firsthand experience with expert analysis to show that private funding and private-sector methods cannot replace public funding or improve efficiency, arguing that business-minded practices have increased costs and gravely damaged the university’s value to society. It is imperative that universities move beyond the destructive policies that have led them to destabilize their finances, raise tuition, overbuild facilities, create a national student debt crisis, and lower educational quality. Laying out an interconnected cycle of mistakes, from subsidizing the private sector to “the poor get poorer” funding policies, Newfield clearly demonstrates how decisions made in government, in the corporate world, and at colleges themselves contribute to the dismantling of once-great public higher education. A powerful, hopeful critique of the unnecessary death spiral of higher education, The Great Mistake is essential reading for those who wonder why students have been paying more to get less and for everyone who cares about the role the higher education system plays in improving the lives of average Americans.

Download or read book Two Cheers for Higher Education written by Steven Brint and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crusing student debt, rapidly eroding state funding, faculty embroiled in speech controversies, a higher-education market disrupted by online competition--today's headlines suggest that universities' power to advance knowledge and shape American society is rapidly declining. But after a recent period that witnessed soaring student enrollement and ample research funding, author Steven Brint argues that universities are in a better position than ever before. Focusing on the years 1980-2015, Brint details the trajectory of American universities, which was influenced by evolving standards of disciplinary professionalism, market-driven partnerships, and the goal of social inclusion. Today, knowledge-driven industries generate almost half of U.S. GDP, but students flock increasingly to fields connected to power centers of American life and steer away from the liberal arts. And opportunities for economic mobility are expanding even as academic expectations decline. In describing how universities can meet such challenges head on, especially in improving classroom learning, Brint offers not only a clear-eyed perspective on the current state of American higher education but also a pragmatically optimistic vision for the future. -- From publisher's description.

Download or read book Continuing Education in Colleges and Universities: Challenges and Opportunities written by Ronald White and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-12-11 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These are times of great opportunity and challenge for continuing education (CE) programs in colleges and universities. While lifelong learning remains central to CE's mission, means of promoting and delivering adult education programs through distance and online learning are undergoing tremendous technological transformation. Within institutions, CE units are increasingly collaborating with academic departments. In addition, demographic shifts have resulted in new audiences and types of programs offered, both credit and noncredit. School are pressured to increase their participation in economic development. All these changes carry administrative considerations. This volume suggests perspective and solutions for the challenges that must be successfully confronted by today's CE programs and the professionals who develop them. This is the 140th volume of this Jossey-Bass series. Noted for its depth of coverage, it explores issues of common interest to instructors, administrators, counselors, and policymakers in a broad range of adult and continuing education settings, such as colleges and universities, extension programs, businesses, libraries, and museums.

Download or read book An Insider's Guide to University Administration written by Daniel Grassian and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's not the "dark side" if you approach it with insight, wit, and compassion. Most new college and university administrators, especially if they come directly from the faculty ranks or from outside academia, receive little if any training. Rather, they try to succeed mostly by stumbling through the (semi-)dark with a combination of their own knowledge and experience as well as on-the-job learning. This can lead to costly (for the administrator and the institution) mistakes as well as professional failures and campus-wide miseries. In An Insider's Guide to University Administration, Daniel Grassian helps those currently in faculty positions or outside academia determine whether a career in college and university administration is right for them—and, if so, how to best position themselves for success. Applying theory to real, practical examples of university administration, Grassian provides both prospective and current administrators with an in-depth critical analysis of areas pertinent to college and university administration, including leadership, management, vision, diversity, ethics, and fund-raising. Drawing on his varied, extensive teaching and administrative career, Grassian leaves readers with a better understanding of what those in college and university administration do and the important practical, political, and ethical issues with which they engage.