Higher Learning, Greater Good

Higher Learning, Greater Good PDF

Author: Walter W. McMahon

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2009-03-18

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 0801896789

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The chronic underinvestment in higher education has serious ramifications for both individuals and society. Winner, Best Book in Education, 2009 PROSE Awards, Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division, Association of American Publishers Winner, Best Book in Education, PROSE Awards, Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division, Association of American Publishers A college education has long been acknowledged as essential for both personal success and economic growth. But the measurable value of its nonmonetary benefits has until now been poorly understood. In Higher Learning, Greater Good, leading education economist Walter W. McMahon carefully describes these benefits and suggests that higher education accrues significant social and private benefits. McMahon's research uncovers a major skill deficit and college premium in the United States and other OECD countries due to technical change and globalization, which, according to a new preface to the 2017 edition, continues unabated. A college degree brings better job opportunities, higher earnings, and even improved health and longevity. Higher education also promotes democracy and sustainable growth and contributes to reduced crime and lower state welfare and prison costs. These social benefits are substantial in relation to the costs of a college education. Offering a human capital perspective on these and other higher education policy issues, McMahon suggests that poor understanding of the value of nonmarket benefits leads to private underinvestment. He offers policy options that can enable state and federal governments to increase investment in higher education.

Higher Learning, Greater Good

Higher Learning, Greater Good PDF

Author: Walter W. McMahon

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2009-03-18

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 0801890535

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The chronic underinvestment in higher education has serious ramifications for both individuals and society. Winner, Best Book in Education, 2009 PROSE Awards, Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division, Association of American Publishers Winner, Best Book in Education, PROSE Awards, Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division, Association of American Publishers A college education has long been acknowledged as essential for both personal success and economic growth. But the measurable value of its nonmonetary benefits has until now been poorly understood. In Higher Learning, Greater Good, leading education economist Walter W. McMahon carefully describes these benefits and suggests that higher education accrues significant social and private benefits. McMahon's research uncovers a major skill deficit and college premium in the United States and other OECD countries due to technical change and globalization, which, according to a new preface to the 2017 edition, continues unabated. A college degree brings better job opportunities, higher earnings, and even improved health and longevity. Higher education also promotes democracy and sustainable growth and contributes to reduced crime and lower state welfare and prison costs. These social benefits are substantial in relation to the costs of a college education. Offering a human capital perspective on these and other higher education policy issues, McMahon suggests that poor understanding of the value of nonmarket benefits leads to private underinvestment. He offers policy options that can enable state and federal governments to increase investment in higher education.

The Great Upheaval

The Great Upheaval PDF

Author: Arthur Levine

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2021-09-14

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 1421442582

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How will America's colleges and universities adapt to remarkable technological, economic, and demographic change? The United States is in the midst of a profound transformation the likes of which hasn't been seen since the Industrial Revolution, when America's classical colleges adapted to meet the needs of an emerging industrial economy. Today, as the world shifts to an increasingly interconnected knowledge economy, the intersecting forces of technological innovation, globalization, and demographic change create vast new challenges, opportunities, and uncertainties. In this great upheaval, the nation's most enduring social institutions are at a crossroads. In The Great Upheaval, Arthur Levine and Scott Van Pelt examine higher and postsecondary education to see how it has changed to become what it is today—and how it might be refitted for an uncertain future. Taking a unique historical, cross-industry perspective, Levine and Van Pelt perform a 360-degree survey of American higher education. Combining historical, trend, and comparative analyses of other business sectors, they ask • how much will colleges and universities change, what will change, and how will these changes occur? • will institutions of higher learning be able to adapt to the challenges they face, or will they be disrupted by them? • will the industrial model of higher education be repaired or replaced? • why is higher education more important than ever? The book is neither an attempt to advocate for a particular future direction nor a warning about that future. Rather, it looks objectively at the contexts in which higher education has operated—and will continue to operate. It also seeks to identify likely developments that will aid those involved in steering higher education forward, as well as the many millions of Americans who have a stake in its future. Concluding with a detailed agenda for action, The Great Upheaval is aimed at policy makers, college administrators, faculty, trustees, and students, as well as general readers and people who work for nonprofits facing the same big changes.

Nothing Less Than Great

Nothing Less Than Great PDF

Author: Harvey P. Weingarten

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1487509448

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Nothing Less than Great addresses the current challenges faced by Canada's university system and offers solutions to help improve the academic experience of students.

Land-Grant Universities for the Future

Land-Grant Universities for the Future PDF

Author: Stephen M. Gavazzi

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

Published: 2018-11-15

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1421426854

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This book should be of great interest to faculty members and students, as well as those parents, legislators, policymakers, and other area stakeholders who have a vested interest in the well-being of America’s original public universities.

Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life

Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life PDF

Author: Dacher Keltner

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2009-10-05

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0393073351

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“A landmark book in the science of emotions and its implications for ethics and human universals.”—Library Journal, starred review In this startling study of human emotion, Dacher Keltner investigates an unanswered question of human evolution: If humans are hardwired to lead lives that are “nasty, brutish, and short,” why have we evolved with positive emotions like gratitude, amusement, awe, and compassion that promote ethical action and cooperative societies? Illustrated with more than fifty photographs of human emotions, Born to Be Good takes us on a journey through scientific discovery, personal narrative, and Eastern philosophy. Positive emotions, Keltner finds, lie at the core of human nature and shape our everyday behavior—and they just may be the key to understanding how we can live our lives better. Some images in this ebook are not displayed owing to permissions issues.

How College Works

How College Works PDF

Author: Daniel F. Chambliss

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2014-02-17

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 067472609X

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Constrained by shrinking budgets, can colleges do more to improve the quality of education? And can students get more out of college without paying higher tuition? Daniel Chambliss and Christopher Takacs conclude that limited resources need not diminish the undergraduate experience. How College Works reveals the decisive role that personal relationships play in determining a student's success, and puts forward a set of small, inexpensive interventions that yield substantial improvements in educational outcomes. At a liberal arts college in New York, the authors followed nearly one hundred students over eight years. The curricular and technological innovations beloved by administrators mattered much less than did professors and peers, especially early on. At every turning point in undergraduate lives, it was the people, not the programs, that proved critical. Great teachers were more important than the topics studied, and just two or three good friendships made a significant difference academically as well as socially. For most students, college works best when it provides the daily motivation to learn, not just access to information. Improving higher education means focusing on the quality of relationships with mentors and classmates, for when students form the right bonds, they make the most of their education.

Convergent Teaching

Convergent Teaching PDF

Author: Aaron M. Pallas

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2019-12-10

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1421432943

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How what we know about K–12 education can revolutionize learning in college. Honorable Mention in the Foreword INDIES Award for Education by FOREWORD Reviews, Winner of the 2021 Bronze IPPY Award for Education II Amid the wide-ranging public debate about the future of higher education is a tension about the role of the faculty as instructors versus researchers and the role of teaching in the mission of a university. What is absent from that discourse is any clear understanding of what constitutes good teaching in college. In Convergent Teaching, masterful professors of education Aaron M. Pallas and Anna Neumann make the case that American higher education must hold fast to its core mission of fostering learning and growth for all people. Arguing that colleges and universities do this best through their teaching function, the book portrays teaching as a professional practice that teachers should actively hone. Drawing on rich research on K–12 classroom teaching, the authors develop the novel idea of convergent teaching, an approach that attends simultaneously to what students are learning and the personal, social, and cultural contexts shaping this process. Convergent teaching, they write, spurs teachers to join students' cognitions with the students' emotions and identities as they learn. Offering new ways to think about how college teachers can support and advance their students' learning of core disciplinary ideas, Pallas and Neumann outline targeted actions that campus administrators, public policy makers, and foundation leaders can take to propel such efforts. Vivid examples of instructors enacting three key principles—targeting, surfacing, and navigating—help bring the idea of convergent teaching to life. Full of research-based, practical ideas for better teaching and learning, Convergent Teaching presents numerous instances of successful campus-based initiatives. It also sets a bold agenda for disciplinary organizations, philanthropies, and the federal government to support teaching improvement. This book will challenge higher education students while motivating college administrators and faculty to enact change on their campuses.

Education and Development

Education and Development PDF

Author: Walter W. McMahon

Publisher: Clarendon Press

Published: 2000-01-27

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 019159119X

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This book develops a new approach to measuring the total returns to human resource development through investment in education. Drawing on microanalytic foundations, it uses regional and worldwide data to estimate the net marginal contributions of education and new knowledge both to economic growth and to wider effects on democratization, human rights, political stability, health, net population growth rates, reduction of poverty, inequality in income distribution, crime, drug use, and the environment. The total impact of education policy changes on endogenous development is then estimated using an interactive model. This new approach is important to industrialized and developing countries alike. The diffusion of knowledge and the adaptation of new techniques has been identified as crucial to the growth process in the new endogenmous growth models, and is of increasing strategic importance in current knowledge-based globalizing economies. Similarly, the non-monetary returns from education are important in improving human welfare. Measurement of these non-market returns is a crucial but much neglected subject. It has proved frustrating, and existing microanalytic measures have proved piecemeal. The new approach developed here offers some comprehensive estimates and simulation techniques for finding more cost-effective policies, and also suggests new hypotheses for further microanalytic testing.