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Lowering Higher Education

Author: James Cote

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2011-01-15

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1442660031

What happens to the liberal arts and science education when universities attempt to sell it as a form of job training? In Lowering Higher Education, a follow-up to their provocative 2007 book Ivory Tower Blues, James E. Côté and Anton L. Allahar explore the subverted 'idea of the university' and the forces that have set adrift the mission of these institutions. Côté and Allahar connect the corporatization of universities to a range of contentious issues within higher education, from lowered standards and inflated grades to the overall decline of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Natural Sciences instruction. Lowering Higher Education points to a fundamental disconnect between policymakers, who may rarely set foot in contemporary classrooms, and the teachers who must implement their educational policies—which the authors argue are poorly informed—on a daily basis. Côté and Allahar expose stakeholder misconceptions surrounding the current culture of academic disengagement and supposed power of new technologies to motivate students. While outlining what makes the status quo dysfunctional, Lowering Higher Education also offers recommendations that have the potential to reinvigorate liberal education.

Lowering Higher Education

Author: James E. Côté

Publisher:

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 9781442693456

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What happens to the liberal arts and science education when universities attempt to sell it as a form of job training? In Lowering Higher Education, a follow-up to their provocative 2007 book Ivory Tower Blues, James E. Côté and Anton L. Allahar explore the subverted 'idea of the university' and the forces that have set adrift the mission of these institutions. Côté and Allahar connect the corporatization of universities to a range of contentious issues within higher education, from lowered standards and inflated grades to the overall decline of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Natural Sciences instruction. Lowering Higher Education points to a fundamental disconnect between policymakers, who may rarely set foot in contemporary classrooms, and the teachers who must implement their educational policies--which the authors argue are poorly informed--on a daily basis. Côté and Allahar expose stakeholder misconceptions surrounding the current culture of academic disengagement and supposed power of new technologies to motivate students. While outlining what makes the status quo dysfunctional, Lowering Higher Education also offers recommendations that have the potential to reinvigorate liberal education.

Why Public Higher Education Should Be Free

Author: Robert Samuels

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2013-08-15

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0813561256

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Universities tend to be judged by the test scores of their incoming students and not on what students actually learn once they attend these institutions. While shared tests and surveys have been developed, most schools refuse to publish the results. Instead, they allow such publications as U.S. News & World Report to define educational quality. In order to raise their status in these rankings, institutions pour money into new facilities and extracurricular activities while underfunding their educational programs. In Why Public Higher Education Should Be Free, Robert Samuels argues that many institutions of higher education squander funds and mislead the public about such things as average class size, faculty-to-student ratios, number of faculty with PhDs, and other indicators of educational quality. Parents and students seem to have little knowledge of how colleges and universities have been restructured over the past thirty years. Samuels shows how research universities have begun to function as giant investment banks or hedge funds that spend money on athletics and administration while increasing tuition costs and actually lowering the quality of undergraduate education. In order to fight higher costs and lower quality, Samuels suggests, universities must reallocate these misused funds and concentrate on their core mission of instruction and related research. Throughout the book, Samuels argues that the future of our economy and democracy rests on our ability to train students to be thoughtful participants in the production and analysis of knowledge. If leading universities serve only to grant credentials and prestige, our society will suffer irrevocable harm. Presenting the problem of how universities make and spend money, Samuels provides solutions to make these important institutions less expensive and more vital. By using current resources in a more effective manner, we could even, he contends, make all public higher education free.

The Lowering of Higher Education in America

Author: Jackson Toby

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 1351479881

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Few in the United States will dispute the assumption that every high school graduate should be entitled to go to college regardless of financial need. But should everyone be able to go regardless of academic preparedness? Jackson Toby explores the idea that federal financial aid programs, all of which peg student aid to need alone and not to academic performance, are dragging down college admissions and academic standards to the point where America's schools, students, and economy will no longer be globally competitive. After a half-century of teaching, distinguished educator Jackson Toby concludes that our current system all too often gives both high school and college students the impression that college is an entitlement and not a challenge. The Lowering of Higher Education: Why Student Loans Should Be Based on Credit Worthiness is Toby's unflinching look at this broken system and the ways it can be fixed. This volume documents just how far college admission standards have fallen and measures the cost of remedial programs designed to get underprepared high school students to the level they should have been at in the first place. Toby is both pointed and frank in his discussion on the issue of grade inflation, which rewards laziness while demoralizing hard-working students. To reverse the national decline of academic standards in American colleges, Toby proposes a radical solution: Let federal student aid be tied to academic performance as well as financial need, incentivizing students to develop serious attitudes and study habits in high school and keep them up in college.

The Rise of Women

Author: Thomas A. DiPrete

Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation

Published: 2013-01-01

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1610448006

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While powerful gender inequalities remain in American society, women have made substantial gains and now largely surpass men in one crucial arena: education. Women now outperform men academically at all levels of school, and are more likely to obtain college degrees and enroll in graduate school. What accounts for this enormous reversal in the gender education gap? In The Rise of Women: The Growing Gender Gap in Education and What It Means for American Schools, Thomas DiPrete and Claudia Buchmann provide a detailed and accessible account of women’s educational advantage and suggest new strategies to improve schooling outcomes for both boys and girls. The Rise of Women opens with a masterful overview of the broader societal changes that accompanied the change in gender trends in higher education. The rise of egalitarian gender norms and a growing demand for college-educated workers allowed more women to enroll in colleges and universities nationwide. As this shift occurred, women quickly reversed the historical male advantage in education. By 2010, young women in their mid-twenties surpassed their male counterparts in earning college degrees by more than eight percentage points. The authors, however, reveal an important exception: While women have achieved parity in fields such as medicine and the law, they lag far behind men in engineering and physical science degrees. To explain these trends, The Rise of Women charts the performance of boys and girls over the course of their schooling. At each stage in the education process, they consider the gender-specific impact of factors such as families, schools, peers, race and class. Important differences emerge as early as kindergarten, where girls show higher levels of essential learning skills such as persistence and self-control. Girls also derive more intrinsic gratification from performing well on a day-to-day basis, a crucial advantage in the learning process. By contrast, boys must often navigate a conflict between their emerging masculine identity and a strong attachment to school. Families and peers play a crucial role at this juncture. The authors show the gender gap in educational attainment between children in the same families tends to be lower when the father is present and more highly educated. A strong academic climate, both among friends and at home, also tends to erode stereotypes that disconnect academic prowess and a healthy, masculine identity. Similarly, high schools with strong science curricula reduce the power of gender stereotypes concerning science and technology and encourage girls to major in scientific fields. As the value of a highly skilled workforce continues to grow, The Rise of Women argues that understanding the source and extent of the gender gap in higher education is essential to improving our schools and the economy. With its rigorous data and clear recommendations, this volume illuminates new ground for future education policies and research.

The Lowering of Higher Education in America

Author: Jackson Toby

Publisher: Praeger

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 0313378983

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A top educator looks at the causes and national costs of the lowering of college admission and academic standards in the United States, then proposes confronting the problem by tying federal student grants and loans to academic performance as well as to financial need. After a half-century of teaching, distinguished educator Jackson Toby concludes that all too often, our current system gives high school students the impression that college is an entitlement and not a challenge. The Lowering of Higher Education: Why Financial Aid Should be Based on Student Performance is Toby's unflinching look at this broken system and the ways it can be fixed. The Lowering of Higher Education documents just how far college admission standards have fallen, then measures the cost of remedial programs for underprepared high school students just to get them to where they should have been in the first place. Toby also pulls no punches on the issue of grade inflation, which rewards laziness while demoralizing hard-working students. In conclusion, Toby proposes an innovative solution: base financial aid solely on academic performance, creating a compelling incentive for students to develop serious attitudes and study approaches in high school.

Ivory Tower Blues

Author: James E. Côté*1953-

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2007-01-01

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 0802091822

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The present state of the university is a difficult issue to comprehend for anyone outside of the education system. If we are to believe common government reports that changes in policy are somehow making life easier for university graduates, we cannot help but believe that things are going right and are getting better in our universities. Ivory Tower Blues gives a decidedly different picture, examining this optimistic attitude as it impacts upon professors, students, and administrators in charge of the education system. Ivory Tower Blues is a frank account of the contemporary university, drawing on the authors' own research and personal experiences, as well as on input from students, colleagues, and administrators. James E. Côté and Anton L. Allahar offer an insider's account of the university system, an accurate, alternative view to that overwhelmingly presented to the general public. Throughout, the authors argue that fewer and fewer students are experiencing their university education in ways expected by their parents and the public. The majority of students are hampered by insufficient preparation at the secondary school level, lack of personal motivation, and disillusionment. Contrary to popular opinion, there is no administrative or governmental procedure in place to maintain standards of education. Ivory Tower Blues is an in-depth look at the crisis facing Canadian and American universities, the factors that are precipitating the situation, and the long-term impact this crisis will have on the quality of higher education.

Lowering Higher Education

Author: James E. Côté

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2011-01-01

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1442611219

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A history of a mission adrift : the idea of the university subverted -- Stakeholder relations : the educational forum -- Standards : schools without scholarship? -- Universities : crisis, what crisis? -- Students : is disengagement inevitable? -- Technologies : will they save the day? -- Recommendations and conclusions : our stewardship of the system.

Higher Education at Risk

Author: Sandra Featherman

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-07-03

Total Pages: 155

ISBN-13: 1000978818

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Sandra Featherman believes that colleges are in denial about the severity of the threats to the current model of higher education.Based on her own experience as a president, as a trustee, and as a board member who has worked in private and public universities – and on interviews with the presidents of major institutions – she offers both a trenchant analysis of those threats and clear prescriptions about the painful but necessary decisions that colleges need to make to ensure they remain viable, accessible and affordable, and deliver a high-quality education.Sandra Featherman considers higher education to be at a game-changing moment. When markets don’t function well – as is the case with today’s college marketplace with offerings that cost too much and return too little – it opens the door to new types of suppliers, who offer new ways of providing what students are looking for, particularly the increasing cohort of mature, working students. In the face of new competitors – for-profit education companies, technology start-ups, and foreign universities vying for international students – trustees and senior level administrators are generally stuck in a traditional ethos and with decision-making processes unsuited to these times. They know what used to work, and find it easier to follow old ways than to make the difficult transition to new ways of delivering education.She lays out a strategy: that emphasizes the centrality of students and how to provide them with the most effective learning environment; that is clear-eyed about focusing on the core missions, and abandoning practices that constrain or impede them; and that requires constant self-monitoring to learn from and act upon what works. She offers a blueprint for redesigning institutions, for paring away what is unnecessary and cost ineffective, and for adopting the best technologies, all in the service of developing meaningful degree programs at an affordable price, and widening access for under-represented groups. She ranges over the implications of budget decisions, accreditation, and MOOCs; addresses government regulation and tuition costs; presents promising new models; and concludes with 11 key recommendations that should be heeded by all higher education administrators and trustees.

Higher Education in America

Author: Derek Bok

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2015-03-22

Total Pages: 494

ISBN-13: 140086612X

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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.