Crisis In Higher Education

In 2005 Adrian College was home to 840 enrolled students and had a tuition income of $8.54 million. By fall of 2011, enrollment had soared to 1,688, and tuition income had increased to $20.45 million. For the first time in years, the small liberal arts college was financially viable. Adrian College experienced this remarkable growth during the worst American economy in seventy years and in a state ravaged by the decline of the big three auto companies. How, exactly, did this turnaround happen? Crisis in Higher Education: A Plan to Save Small Liberal Arts Colleges in America was written to facilitate replication and generalization of Adrian College’s tremendous enrollment growth and retention success since 2005. This book directly addresses the economic competitiveness of small four-year institutions of higher education and presents an evidence-based solution to the enrollment and economic crises faced by many small liberal arts colleges throughout the country.

Disinvestment by states has driven up tuition prices, and student debt has reached an all-time high. Americans are questioning the worth of a college education, even as studies show how important it is to economic and social mobility

There was a time when crises on college and university campuses were relatively rare and episodic. Much has changed, and it has changed quite rapidly. Drawing upon original research, Crisis Leadership in Higher Education presents a theory-informed framework for academic and administrative leaders who must navigate the institutional and environmental crises that are most germane to institutions of higher education.

This book calls into question the colonial and neoliberal university, presenting alternative models of higher education that can more effectively respond to today’s intersecting social, economic, environmental and political crises. The authors argue that universities should be driven by a different set of core values – one that promotes the common good over private or commercial interests, individualism and market fundamentalism. Presenting a broad range of educational initiatives from around the world that reflect life-affirming regenerative and relational practices, Indigenous intellectual sovereignty, and principles of social and ecological justice, the authors contend that pathways toward transforming higher education already exist within and without the university. This task, say the authors, is urgent and necessary if universities and other institutions are to hold relevance in a rapidly changing global environment. This book makes a unique contribution to critiques of the modern, neoliberal university by looking for alternatives within and beyond traditional institutions of higher education. In doing so, the authors dismantle the longstanding 'ivory tower' image of the university, instead resituating education within broader social and ecological communities. Transforming Universities in the Midst of Global Crisis is aimed at all those who have a direct or indirect interest and stake in universities, from the general reader to futurists, ecologists as well as students, academics, administrators, managers, policy makers and politicians.

Originally published in 1984, The Crisis of the University looks at the way in which changes to intellectual life relate to the development of the different institutions that make up higher education. It examines the evolution of the liberal university that flourished in the 19th and early 20th centuries into the modern university that has grown up since 1945. It also looks at the more detailed experience of British higher education, with separate chapters on what the Robbins expansion meant for the universities and why it was thought necessary to construct an alternative in the shape of the polytechnics. Looking to the future, the book argues first that the present structure of British higher education needs reform and speculates on the future intellectual and social demands that may be made of higher education.

Not since student turmoil and unrest wreaked havoc on the nation's campuses three decades ago has American higher education been the subject of so much controversy and popular criticism. Countless indictments compete for the public's attention as critics explore vital issues confronting today's institutions of higher learning: curricular fragmentation, declining academic standards, the apparent erosion of liberal learning within academe, widespread neglect of undergraduate education in favour of academic research and unprecedented financial woes. Confusion over fundamental priorities and purposes, the author argues, lies at the heart of the dilemma facing end-of-the-century higher education. Thoughtful and timely, Crisis in the Academy offers a wide-ranging analysis of contemporary higher education while making an important contribution to the ongoing public debate over the future of America's beleaguered and diverse institutions of higher learning.

The Academy in Crisis is a provocative contribution to an important debate....The costs of goverment support for American universities are not negligible. They include stress on some of the core values of universities and of science-vaules like openness, collaboration, and collegiality-and pressure, too, on other central institutional responsibilities, such as the education of undergradutes. Robert M. Rosenzweig, former president, Association of American Universities.

Since New York is a leader in the nation's higher education arena, most of the issues and concerns faced in New York have direct implications throughout the entire United States. Financing college, access, quality, time-to-degree, and demographic changes in student and faculty populations are a sampling of the concerns raised in this volume. These are issues that transcend local and state boundaries and offer a challenge to higher education at the end of the 20th century.