The Higher Learning in America PDF Download

Author: Thorstein Veblen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education, Higher
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Author: Thorstein Veblen
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421416786
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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"Veblen's insights into the American university system at the outset of the twentieth century are as provocative today as they were when first published. Insisting that institutions of higher learning should be dedicated solely to the disinterested pursuit of knowledge, he urged American universities to abandon commitments to extraneous pursuits such as athletics, community service, and vocational education. He also believed that the corporate model of governance--with university boards of trustees dominated by well-to-do businessmen and university presidents who functioned essentially as businessmen in academic dress--mandated unsavory techniques of salesmanship and self-promotion that threatened to reduce institutions of higher learning to the status of competitive business enterprises."--Publisher's Web site.

Author: Thorstein Veblen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education, Higher
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Author: Thorstein Veblen
Publisher: Cosimo, Inc.
ISBN: 1602067473
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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At the time of its initial publication in 1904, The Higher Learning in America was known in educated circles as the most reflective study ever made of the university system in America. Veblen's evaluation of the misleading notions and erroneous beliefs were inherent in "the higher learning" was received as fair by most academics. As a result, many believed he paved the way to an improved age in college education. Just as applicable today as they were decades ago, his sophisticated style remains deprecatingly amusing; his biting critique just as disquieting as it was at the turn of the 19th century. The Higher Learning in America remains a penetrating book by one of America's greatest social critics. American economist and sociologist THORSTEIN BUNDE VEBLEN (1857-1929) was educated at Carleton College, Johns Hopkins University and Yale University. He coined the phrase "conspicuous consumption." Among his most famous works are The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904), and Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution (1915).

Author: John R. Thelin
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 1421428830
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 555

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Anyone studying the history of this institution in America must read Thelin's classic text, which has distinguished itself as the most wide-ranging and engaging account of the origins and evolution of America's institutions of higher learning.

Author: Derek Curtis Bok
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674391765
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Bok concludes that the competition for the best students, the most advanced scholarship, the most successful scientific research, the best facilities--has helped to produce venturesome, adaptable, and varied universities. But because the process of learning itself is imperfectly understood, it is difficult to achieve sustained progress in the quality of education or even to determine which educational innovations actually enhance learning.

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

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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.

Author: Robert Maynard Hutchins
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351481517
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 141

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Perhaps the pivotal book in the reform of higher education in the United States, Robert M. Hutchins' classic is once again available, with a brilliant personal and professional appreciation by Harry S. Ashmore. When it was published in 1936The Higher Learning in Americabrought into focus the root causes of the controversies that still beset the nation's educational system. Taking office in 1929 as president of the University of Chicago, Hutchins began his tenure by declaring the learning available in even the most prestigious universities grossly deficient.He cited himself as case in point. At Yale he had graduated at the top of his college class and set a record in the law school that led to appointment as professor and, at 26, promotion to dean. But he had acquired only "some knowledge of the Bible, of Shakespeare, andFaust,of one dialogue of Plato, and of the opinions of many semi-literate and a few literate judges, and that was about all."The curricular reforms and administrative reorganization he undertook at Chicago are set forth in this volume, along with the philosophical arguments he worked out to explicate and defend his views. His goal was to reestablish the liberal arts and humanities as the basis for undergraduate education, consigning specialization and research to graduate and professional schools. Hutchins envisioned the university as a community of scholars who, in addition to teaching and research, provided independent thought and criticism of a society being rapidly transformed by science and technology. Challenging the educational establishment at every pertinent level, he became the most celebrated and most controversial intellectual of his era.After twenty-two years at Chicago, Hutchins became associate director of the newly enriched Ford Foundation, where he was primarily responsible for the bold reforms sponsored by its Fund for the Advancement of Education and Fund for Adult Education. In 1960 he est

Author: Ben Wildavsky
Publisher: Harvard Education Press
ISBN: 1612504272
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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The inspiration for this timely book is the pressing need for fresh ideas and innovations in U.S. higher education. At the heart of the volume is the realization that higher education must evolve in fundamental ways if it is to respond to changing professional, economic, and technological circumstances, and if it is to successfully reach and prepare a vast population of students—traditional and nontraditional alike—for success in the coming decades. This collection of provocative articles by leading scholars, writers, innovators, and university administrators examines the current higher education environment and its chronic resistance to change; the rise of for-profit universities; the potential future role of community colleges in a significantly revised higher education realm; and the emergence of online learning as a means to reshape teaching and learning and to reach new consumers of higher education. Combining trenchant critiques of current conditions with thought-provoking analyses of possible reforms and new directions, Reinventing Higher Education is an ambitious exploration of possible future directions for revitalized American colleges and universities.

Author: Charles Dorn
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501712608
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 478

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Are colleges and universities in a period of unprecedented disruption? Is a bachelor's degree still worth the investment? Are the humanities coming to an end? What, exactly, is higher education good for? In For the Common Good, Charles Dorn challenges the rhetoric of America's so-called crisis in higher education by investigating two centuries of college and university history. From the community college to the elite research university—in states from California to Maine—Dorn engages a fundamental question confronted by higher education institutions ever since the nation's founding: Do colleges and universities contribute to the common good? Tracking changes in the prevailing social ethos between the late eighteenth and early twenty-first centuries, Dorn illustrates the ways in which civic-mindedness, practicality, commercialism, and affluence influenced higher education's dedication to the public good. Each ethos, long a part of American history and tradition, came to predominate over the others during one of the four chronological periods examined in the book, informing the character of institutional debates and telling the definitive story of its time. For the Common Good demonstrates how two hundred years of political, economic, and social change prompted transformation among colleges and universities—including the establishment of entirely new kinds of institutions—and refashioned higher education in the United States over time in essential and often vibrant ways.