Designing the New American University


Book Description

A radical blueprint for reinventing American higher education. America’s research universities consistently dominate global rankings but may be entrenched in a model that no longer accomplishes their purposes. With their multiple roles of discovery, teaching, and public service, these institutions represent the gold standard in American higher education, but their evolution since the nineteenth century has been only incremental. The need for a new and complementary model that offers broader accessibility to an academic platform underpinned by knowledge production is critical to our well-being and economic competitiveness. Michael M. Crow, president of Arizona State University and an outspoken advocate for reinventing the public research university, conceived the New American University model when he moved from Columbia University to Arizona State in 2002. Following a comprehensive reconceptualization spanning more than a decade, ASU has emerged as an international academic and research powerhouse that serves as the foundational prototype for the new model. Crow has led the transformation of ASU into an egalitarian institution committed to academic excellence, inclusiveness to a broad demographic, and maximum societal impact. In Designing the New American University, Crow and coauthor William B. Dabars—a historian whose research focus is the American research university—examine the emergence of this set of institutions and the imperative for the new model, the tenets of which may be adapted by colleges and universities, both public and private. Through institutional innovation, say Crow and Dabars, universities are apt to realize unique and differentiated identities, which maximize their potential to generate the ideas, products, and processes that impact quality of life, standard of living, and national economic competitiveness. Designing the New American University will ignite a national discussion about the future evolution of the American research university.




Improving Research-Based Knowledge of College Promise Programs


Book Description

Also known as “free tuition” and “free college” programs, college promise programs are an emerging approach for increasing higher education attainment of people in particular places. To maximize the effectiveness of their efforts and investments, program leaders and policymakers need research-based evidence to inform program design, implementation, and evaluation. With the goal of addressing this knowledge need, this volume presents a collection of research studies that examine several categories and variations of college promise programs. These theoretically grounded empirical investigations use varied data sources and analytic techniques to examine the effects of college promise programs that have different design features and operate in different places. Individually and collectively, the results of these studies have implications for the design and implementation of promise programs if these programs are to create meaningful improvements in attainment for people from underserved groups. The authors’ efforts also provide a useful foundation for the next generation of college promise research.




The American Research University from World War II to World Wide Web


Book Description

Forty years after Clark Kerr coined the term multiversity, the American research university has continued to evolve into a complex force for social and economic good. This volume provides a unique opportunity to explore the current state of the research university system. Charles M. Vest, one of the leading advocates for autonomy for American higher education, offers a multifaceted view of the university at the beginning of a new century. With a complex mission and funding structure, the university finds its international openness challenged by new security concerns and its ability to contribute to worldwide opportunity through sharing and collaboration dramatically expanded by the Internet. In particular, Vest addresses the need to nurture broad access to our universities and stay true to the fundamental mission of creating opportunity.




The College Solution


Book Description

“The College Solution helps readers look beyond over-hyped admission rankings to discover schools that offer a quality education at affordable prices. Taking the guesswork out of saving and finding money for college, this is a practical and insightful must-have guide for every parent!” —Jaye J. Fenderson, Seventeen’s College Columnist and Author, Seventeen’s Guide to Getting into College “This book is a must read in an era of rising tuition and falling admission rates. O’Shaughnessy offers good advice with blessed clarity and brevity.” —Jay Mathews, Washington Post Education Writer and Columnist “I would recommend any parent of a college-bound student read The College Solution.” —Kal Chany, Author, The Princeton Review’s Paying for College Without Going Broke “The College Solution goes beyond other guidebooks in providing an abundance of information about how to afford college, in addition to how to approach the selection process by putting the student first.” —Martha “Marty” O’Connell, Executive Director, Colleges That Change Lives “Lynn O’Shaughnessy always focuses on what’s in the consumer’s best interest, telling families how to save money and avoid making costly mistakes.” —Mark Kantrowitz, Publisher, FinAid.org and Author, FastWeb College Gold “An antidote to the hype and hysteria about getting in and paying for college! O’Shaughnessy has produced an excellent overview that demystifies the college planning process for students and families.” —Barmak Nassirian, American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers For millions of families, the college planning experience has become extremely stressful. And, unless your child is an elite student in the academic top 1%, most books on the subject won’t help you. Now, however, there’s a college guide for everyone. In The College Solution, top personal finance journalist Lynn O’Shaughnessy presents an easy-to-use roadmap to finding the right college program (not just the most hyped) and dramatically reducing the cost of college, too. Forget the rankings! Discover what really matters: the quality and value of the programs your child wants and deserves. O’Shaughnessy uncovers “industry secrets” on how colleges actually parcel out financial aid—and how even “average” students can maximize their share. Learn how to send your kids to expensive private schools for virtually the cost of an in-state public college...and how promising students can pay significantly less than the “sticker price” even at the best state universities. No other book offers this much practical guidance on choosing a college...and no other book will save you as much money! • Secrets your school’s guidance counselor doesn’t know yet The surprising ways colleges have changed how they do business • Get every dime of financial aid that’s out there for you Be a “fly on the wall” inside the college financial aid office • U.S. News & World Report: clueless about your child Beyond one-size-fits-all rankings: finding the right program for your teenager • The best bargains in higher education Overlooked academic choices that just might be perfect for you




To Advance Knowledge


Book Description

American research universities are part of the foundation for the supremacy of American science. Although they emerged as universities in the late nineteenth century, the incorporation of research as a distinct part of their mission largely occurred after 1900. To Advance Knowledge relates how these institutions, by 1940, advanced from provincial outposts in the world of knowledge to leaders in critical areas of science. This study is the first to systematically examine the preconditions for the development of a university research role. These include the formation of academic disciplines--communities that sponsored associations and journals, which defined and advanced fields of knowledge. Only a few universities were able to engage in these activities. Indeed, universities before World War I struggled to find the means to support their own research through endowments, research funds, and faculty time. To Advance Knowledge shows how these institutions developed the size and wealth to harbor a learned faculty. The book illustrates how arrangements for research changed markedly in the 1920s when the great foundations established from the Rockefeller and Carnegie fortunes embraced the advancement of knowledge as a goal. Universities emerged in this decade as the best-suited vessels to carry this mission. Foundation resources made possible the development of an American social science. In the natural sciences, this patronage allowed the United States to gain parity with Europe on scientific frontiers, of which the most important was undoubtedly nuclear physics. The research role of universities cannot be isolated from the institutions themselves. To Advance Knowledge focuses on sixteen universities that were significantly engaged with research during this era. It analyzes all facets of these institutions--collegiate life, sources of funding, treatment of faculty--since all were relevant to shaping the research role.




The Rise of American Research Universities


Book Description

In this important and timely work, Graham and Diamond reassess the success of American universities as research institutions and the role of public funding in their developmentfrom the expansionist golden yearsof the 1950s and '60s, through the austerity measures of the 1970s and the entrepreneurial ethos of the 1980s, to the budget crises universities face in the 1990s.




Colleges of Agriculture at the Land Grant Universities


Book Description

Although few Americans work as farmers these days, agriculture on the whole remains economically importantâ€"playing a key role in such contemporary issues as consumer health and nutrition, worker safety and animal welfare, and environmental protection. This publication provides a comprehensive picture of the primary education system for the nation's agriculture industry: the land grant colleges of agriculture. Colleges of Agriculture at the Land Grant Universities informs the public debate about the challenges that will shape the future of these colleges and serves as a foundation for a second volume, which will present recommendations for policy and institutional changes in the land grant system. This book reviews the legislative history of the land grant system from its establishment in 1862 to the 1994 act conferring land grant status on Native American colleges. It describes trends that have shaped agriculture and agricultural education over the decadesâ€"the shift of labor from farm to factory, reasons for and effects of increased productivity and specialization, the rise of the corporate farm, and more. The committee reviews the system's three-part missionâ€"education, research, and extension serviceâ€"and through this perspective documents the changing nature of funding and examines the unique structure of the U.S. agricultural research and education system. Demographic data on faculties, students, extension staff, commodity and funding clusters, and geographic specializations profile the system and identify similarities and differences among the colleges of agriculture, trends in funding, and a host of other issues. The tables in the appendix provide further itemization about general population distribution, student and educator demographics, types of degree programs, and funding allocations. Concise commentary and informative graphics augment the detailed statistical presentations. This book will be important to policymakers, administrators, educators, researchers, and students of agriculture.




Markets, Minds, and Money


Book Description

A colorful history of US research universities, and a market-based theory of their global success. American education has its share of problems, but it excels in at least one area: university-based research. That’s why American universities have produced more Nobel Prize winners than those of the next twenty-nine countries combined. Economist Miguel Urquiola argues that the principal source of this triumph is a free-market approach to higher education. Until the late nineteenth century, research at American universities was largely an afterthought, suffering for the same reason that it now prospers: the free market permits institutional self-rule. Most universities exploited that flexibility to provide what well-heeled families and church benefactors wanted. They taught denominationally appropriate materials and produced the next generation of regional elites, no matter the students’—or their instructors’—competence. These schools were nothing like the German universities that led the world in research and advanced training. The American system only began to shift when certain universities, free to change their business model, realized there was demand in the industrial economy for students who were taught by experts and sorted by talent rather than breeding. Cornell and Johns Hopkins led the way, followed by Harvard, Columbia, and a few dozen others that remain centers of research. By the 1920s the United States was well on its way to producing the best university research. Free markets are not the solution for all educational problems. Urquiola explains why they are less successful at the primary and secondary level, areas in which the United States often lags. But the entrepreneurial spirit has certainly been the key to American leadership in the research sector that is so crucial to economic success.




The Rise of the Research University


Book Description

The modern research university is a global institution with a rich history that stretches into an ivy-laden past, but for as much as we think we know about that past, most of the writings that have recorded it are scattered across many archives and, in many cases, have yet to be translated into English. With this book, Paul Reitter, Chad Wellmon, and Louis Menand bring a wealth of these important texts together, assembling a fascinating collection of primary sources—many translated into English for the first time—that outline what would become the university as we know it. The editors focus on the development of American universities such as Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and the Universities of Chicago, California, and Michigan. Looking to Germany, they translate a number of seminal sources that formulate the shape and purpose of the university and place them next to hard-to-find English-language texts that took the German university as their inspiration, one that they creatively adapted, often against stiff resistance. Enriching these texts with short but insightful essays that contextualize their importance, the editors offer an accessible portrait of the early research university, one that provides invaluable insights not only into the historical development of higher learning but also its role in modern society.