The New Flagship University


Book Description

The New Flagship University is an expansive vision for leading national universities and an alternative narrative to global rankings and World Class Universities. The Flagship model explores pathways for universities to re-shape their missions and operational features to expand their relevancy in the societies that gave them life and purpose.







Globalization's Muse


Book Description

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Neo-nationalism and Universities


Book Description

The rise of neo-nationalism is having a profound and troubling impact on leading national universities and the societies they serve. This is the first comparative study of how today's right-wing populist movements and authoritarian governments are threatening higher education. Universities have long been at the forefront of both national development and global integration. But the political and policy world in which they operate is undergoing a transition, one that is reflective of a significant change in domestic politics and international relations: a populist turn inward among a key group of nation-states, often led by demagogues, that includes China and Hong Kong, Turkey, Hungary, Russia, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In many parts of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity for populists and autocrats to further consolidate their power. Within right-wing political ecosystems, universities, in effect, offer the proverbial canary in the coal mine—a clear window into the extent of civil liberties and the political environment and trajectory of nation-states. In Neo-nationalism and Universities, John Aubrey Douglass provides the first significant examination of the rise of neo-nationalism and its impact on the missions, activities, behaviors, and productivity of leading national universities. Douglass presents a major comparative exploration of the role of national politics and norms in shaping the role of universities in nation-states—and vice versa. He also explores when universities are societal leaders or followers: When they are agents of social and economic change, or simply agents reinforcing and supporting an existing social and political order. In a series of case studies, Douglass and contributors examine troubling trends that threaten the societal role of universities, including attacks on civil liberties, free speech, and the validity of science; the firing and jailing of academics; anti-immigrant rhetoric; and restrictions on visas with consequences for the mobility of academic talent. The book also offers recommendations to preserve the autonomy and academic freedom of universities and their constituents. Neo-nationalism and Universities is written for a broad public readership interested and concerned about the rise of nationalist movements, illiberal democracies, and autocratic leaders. Contributors: José Augusto Guilhon Albuquerque, Elizabeth Balbachevsky, Thomas Brunotte, Igor Chirikov, Igor Fedyukin, Karin Fischer, Wilhelm Krull, Brendan O'Malley, Bryan E. Penprase, Marijk van der Wende




The Evolution of Flagship Universities


Book Description

In the face of the dominant World Class University rhetoric and ranking paradigm, most academic leaders and their academic communities have had difficulty conceptualizing and articulating their grander purpose and multiple engagements with society. Some seem to wait for the next ministerial edict to help or push them toward greater societal relevancy--often limited to improved global rankings. This essay discusses the evolving idea of the Flagship University, its past and future, and the need to develop and articulate a more holistic and modern narrative regarding the role of these important institutions. "The New Flagship University" is an institution grounded in its historical purpose, but remarkably different in its devotion to access and equity, to the quality of its teaching, research and public services mission, and to meeting national and regional socioeconomic needs. This essay briefly discusses some of the central themes in the book, "The New Flagship University," and includes observations in recent articles by scholars and researchers on their relevancy in various parts of the world. Leading national or "Flagship Universities" are now more important for socioeconomic mobility, for knowledge production, for generating economic and civic leaders, and for pushing innovation and societal self-reflection than in any other time in their history.




The State Must Provide


Book Description

“A book that both taught me so much and also kept me on the edge of my seat. It is an invaluable text from a supremely talented writer.” —Clint Smith, author of How the Word is Passed The definitive history of the pervasiveness of racial inequality in American higher education America’s colleges and universities have a shameful secret: they have never given Black people a fair chance to succeed. From its inception, our higher education system was not built on equality or accessibility, but on educating—and prioritizing—white students. Black students have always been an afterthought. While governments and private donors funnel money into majority white schools, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), and other institutions that have high enrollments of Black students, are struggling to survive, with state legislatures siphoning away federal funds that are legally owed to these schools. In The State Must Provide, Adam Harris reckons with the history of a higher education system that has systematically excluded Black people from its benefits. Harris weaves through the legal, social, and political obstacles erected to block equitable education in the United States, studying the Black Americans who fought their way to an education, pivotal Supreme Court cases like Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, and the government’s role in creating and upholding a segregated education system. He explores the role that Civil War–era legislation intended to bring agricultural education to the masses had in creating the HBCUs that have played such a major part in educating Black students when other state and private institutions refused to accept them. The State Must Provide is the definitive chronicle of higher education’s failed attempts at equality and the long road still in front of us to remedy centuries of racial discrimination—and poses a daring solution to help solve the underfunding of HBCUs. Told through a vivid cast of characters, The State Must Provide examines what happened before and after schools were supposedly integrated in the twentieth century, and why higher education remains broken to this day.




Neo-nationalism and Universities


Book Description

"This book offers the first significant examination of the rise of neo-nationalism and its impact on the missions, activities, behaviors, and productivity of leading national universities. This book also presents the first major comparative exploration of the role of national politics and norms in shaping the role of universities in nation-states, and vice versa, and discusses when universities are societal leaders or followers-in promoting a civil society, facilitating talent mobility, in researching challenging social problems, or in reinforcing and supporting an existing social and political order"--




STEM Education for the 21st Century


Book Description

This book chronicles the revolution in STEM teaching and learning that has arisen from a convergence of educational research, emerging technologies, and innovative ways of structuring both the physical space and classroom activities in STEM higher education. Beginning with a historical overview of US higher education and an overview of diversity in STEM in the US, the book sets a context in which our present-day innovation in science and technology urgently needs to provide more diversity and inclusion within STEM fields. Research-validated pedagogies using active learning and new types of research-based curriculum is transforming how physics, biology and other fields are taught in leading universities, and the book gives profiles of leading innovators in science education and examples of exciting new research-based courses taking root in US institutions. The book includes interviews with leading scientists and educators, case studies of new courses and new institutions, and descriptions of site visits where new trends in 21st STEM education are being developed. The book also takes the reader into innovative learning environments in engineering where students are empowered by emerging technologies to develop new creative capacity in their STEM education, through new centers for design thinking and liberal arts-based engineering. Equally innovative are new conceptual frameworks for course design and learning, and the book explores the concepts of Scientific Teaching, Backward Course Design, Threshold Concepts and Learning Taxonomies in a systematic way with examples from diverse scientific fields. Finally, the book takes the reader inside the leading centers for online education, including Udacity, Coursera and EdX, interviews the leaders and founders of MOOC technology, and gives a sense of how online education is evolving and what this means for STEM education. This book provides a broad and deep exploration into the historical context of science education and into some of the cutting-edge innovations that are reshaping how leading universities teach science and engineering. The emergence of exponentially advancing technologies such as synthetic biology, artificial intelligence and materials sciences has been described as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and the book explores how these technologies will shape our future will bring a transformation of STEM curriculum that can help students solve many the most urgent problems facing our world and society.




Revisiting Africa’s Flagship Universities Local, National and International Dynamics


Book Description

Revisiting Africa's Flagship Universities: National, International, and Local Dynamics offers a compelling exploration of Africa's large, public higher education institutions. The book delves into the evolving roles of these universities, examining how they navigate their responsibilities at national, international and local levels. The book uncovers the tensions between global aspirations, national relevance and local realities. In doing so, this insightful work sheds light on the unique challenges and opportunities faced by African flagship universities, revealing their potential as forces for local, national and international collaboration and development. Revisiting Africa's Flagship Universities provides rigorous evidence on the relevance of higher education at the local and national level, and the interrelation between these and the burgeoning international roles of universities. This book makes for important reading for university staff, policymakers, and anyone interested in the future of higher education in Africa.




University of Nike


Book Description

The dramatic expose of how the University of Oregon sold its soul to Nike, and what that means for the future of our public institutions and our society. **A New York Post Best Book of the Year** In the mid-1990s, facing severe cuts to its public funding, the University of Oregon—like so many colleges across the country—was desperate for cash. Luckily, the Oregon Ducks’ 1995 Rose Bowl berth caught the attention of the school’s wealthiest alumnus: Nike founder Phil Knight, who was seeking new marketing angles at the collegiate level. And so the University of Nike was born: Knight has so far donated more than half a billion dollars to the school in exchange for high-visibility branding opportunities. But as journalist Joshua Hunt shows in University of Nike, Oregon has paid dearly for the veneer of financial prosperity and athletic success that has come with this brand partnering. Hunt uncovers efforts to conceal university records, buried sexual assault allegations against university athletes, and cases of corporate overreach into academics and campus life—all revealing a university being run like a business, with America’s favorite “Shoe Dog” calling the shots. Nike money has shaped everything from Pac-10 television deals to the way the game is played, from the landscape of the campus to the type of student the university hopes to attract. More alarming still, Hunt finds other schools taking a page from Oregon’s playbook. Never before have our public institutions for research and higher learning been so thoroughly and openly under the sway of private interests, and never before has the blueprint for funding American higher education been more fraught with ethical, legal, and academic dilemmas. Encompassing more than just sports and the academy, University of Nike is a riveting story of our times.