Curriculum, Accreditation and Coming of Age of Higher Education


Book Description

This latest volume in Roger Geiger's distinguished series on the history of higher education begins with a rare glimpse into the minds of mid-nineteenth century collegians. Timothy J. Williams mines the diaries of students at the University of North Carolina to unearth a not unexpected preoccupation with sex, but also a complex psychological context for those feelings. Marc A. VanOverbeke continues the topic in an essay shedding new light on a fundamental change ushering in the university era: the transition from high schools to college.The secularization of the curriculum is a fundamental feature of the emergence of the modern university. Katherine V. Sedgwick explores a distinctive manifestation by questioning why the curriculum of Bryn Mawr College did not refl ect the religious intentions of its Quaker founder and trustees. Secularization is examined more broadly by W. Bruce Leslie, who shows how denominational faith ceded its ascendancy to "Pan-Protestantism."Where does the record of contemporary events end and the study of history begin? A new collection of documents from World War II to the present invites Roger Geiger's refl ection on this question, as well as consideration of the most signifi cant trends of the postwar era. Educators chafi ng under current attacks on higher education may take solace or dismay from the essay "Shaping a Century of Criticism" in which Katherine Reynolds Chaddock and James M. Wallace explore H. L. Mencken's writings, which address enduring issues and debates on the meaning and means of American higher education.




Conceding Composition


Book Description

First-year composition became the most common course in American higher education not because it could “fix” underprepared student writers, but because it has historically served significant institutional interests. That is, it can be “conceded” in multiple ways to help institutions solve political, promotional, and financial problems. Conceding Composition is a wide-ranging historical examination of composition’s evolving institutional value in American higher education over the course of nearly a century. Based on extensive archival research conducted at six American universities and using the specific cases of institutional mission, regional accreditation, and federal funding, this study demonstrates that administrators and faculty have introduced, reformed, maintained, threatened, or eliminated composition as part of negotiations related to nondisciplinary institutional exigencies. Viewing composition from this perspective, author Ryan Skinnell raises new questions about why composition exists in the university, how it exists, and how teachers and scholars might productively reconceive first-year composition in light of its institutional functions. The book considers the rhetorical, political, organizational, institutional, and promotional options conceding composition opened up for institutions of higher education and considers what the first-year course and the discipline might look like with composition’s transience reimagined not as a barrier but as a consummate institutional value.







Research in Education


Book Description




Private Sectors in Higher Education


Book Description

The first scholarly treatment of private education outside the United States.







Powering a Learning Society During an Age of Disruption


Book Description

This open access book presents contemporary perspectives on the role of a learning society from the lens of leading practitioners, experts from universities, governments, and industry leaders. The think pieces argue for a learning society as a major driver of change with far-reaching influence on learning to serve the needs of economies and societies. The book is a testimonial to the importance of ‘learning communities.’ It highlights the pivotal role that can be played by non-traditional actors such as city and urban planners, citizens, transport professionals, and technology companies. This collection seeks to contribute to the discourse on strengthening the fabric of a learning society crucial for future economic and social development, particularly in the aftermath of the coronavirus disease.




A Parallel Postsecondary Universe


Book Description

This report describes a new system of credentialing that has arisen in the information technology and telecommunications industries over the past decade. It compares this system to traditional higher education, identifying both similarities and dissimilarities, and points to some cases in which the two interact.... The summary section of this report emphasizes the major themes of the certification system and its relationship to higher education: 1. The system is global and operates in many languages. 2. The student, not the institution, is at the center of the system. 3. The system has brought competency-based education and performance assessment to a status they have never enjoyed within traditional higher education. 4. Certification replace neither experience nor degrees, and the IT system does not pretend to be higher education. the summary also indicates the critical need for more information on certification candidates and providers of course work, since the new system is now large enough to play a role in state and national planning for postsecondary education. (HoF/text adopted).




American Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century


Book Description

This new edition explores current issues of central importance to the academy: leadership, accountability, access, finance, technology, academic freedom, the canon, governance, and race. Chapters also deal with key constituencies -- students and faculty -- in the context of a changing academic environment.




Higher Education in the United States [2 volumes]


Book Description

Surveys the changing landscape of American higher education, from academic freedom to virtual universities, from campus crime to Pell Grants, from the Student Privacy Act to student diversity.