Higher Education For Good

The chronic underinvestment in higher education has serious ramifications for both individuals and society. Winner, Best Book in Education, 2009 PROSE Awards, Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division, Association of American Publishers Winner, Best Book in Education, PROSE Awards, Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division, Association of American Publishers A college education has long been acknowledged as essential for both personal success and economic growth. But the measurable value of its nonmonetary benefits has until now been poorly understood. In Higher Learning, Greater Good, leading education economist Walter W. McMahon carefully describes these benefits and suggests that higher education accrues significant social and private benefits. McMahon's research uncovers a major skill deficit and college premium in the United States and other OECD countries due to technical change and globalization, which, according to a new preface to the 2017 edition, continues unabated. A college degree brings better job opportunities, higher earnings, and even improved health and longevity. Higher education also promotes democracy and sustainable growth and contributes to reduced crime and lower state welfare and prison costs. These social benefits are substantial in relation to the costs of a college education. Offering a human capital perspective on these and other higher education policy issues, McMahon suggests that poor understanding of the value of nonmarket benefits leads to private underinvestment. He offers policy options that can enable state and federal governments to increase investment in higher education.

This important book explores the various ways that higher education contributes to the realization of significant public ends and examines how leaders can promote and enhance their contribution to the social charter through new policies and best practices. It also shows how other sectors of society, government agencies, foundations, and individuals can partner with institutions of higher education to promote the public good. Higher Education for the Public Good includes contributions from leaders in the field—many of whom participated in dialogues hosted by the National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good. These leaders are responsible for creating successful strategies, programs, and efforts that foster the public’s role in higher education.

In the last half century higher education has moved from the fringe to the centre of society and accumulated a long list of social functions. In the English-speaking world, Europe and much of East Asia more than two thirds of all school students enter tertiary education. Bulging at the seams, universities are fountains of new knowledge, engines of prosperity and innovation, drivers of regional growth, skilled migration and global competitiveness, and makers of equality of opportunity. Yet they can do little to stop growing income inequality, and in the English-speaking countries, government rhetoric and policy economics have narrowed their purpose to that of sorting careers for the middle class, partly to justify the rise in tuition fees. Higher education systems have become more competitive and stratified, with value more concentrated at the top, and the collective public benefits of universities are underplayed and underfunded. In short, governments expect both too much and too little of higher education, and its contribution to the common good is being eroded. Yet universities are much much more than factories for graduate earnings. Higher Education and the Common Good argues that this sector has a key role in rebuilding social solidarity and mobility in fractured societies.

After decades of turbulence and acute crises in recent years, how can we build a better future for Higher Education? Thoughtfully edited by Laura Czerniewicz and Catherine Cronin, this rich and diverse collection by academics and professionals from across 17 countries and many disciplines offers a variety of answers to this question. It addresses the need to set new values for universities, trapped today in narratives dominated by financial incentives and performance indicators, and examines those "wicked" problems which need multiple solutions, resolutions, experiments, and imaginaries. This mix of new and well-established voices provides hopeful new ways of thinking about Higher Education across a range of contexts, and how to concretise initiatives to deal with local and global challenges. In an unusual and refreshing way, the contributors provide insights about resilience tactics and collective actions across different levels of higher education using an array of styles and formats including essays, poetry, and speculative fiction. With its interdisciplinary appeal, this book presents itself as a provocative and inspiring resource for universities, students, and scholars. Higher Education for Good courageously offers critique, hope, and purpose for the practice and the trajectory of Higher Education.

Leading Higher Education As and For Public Good asserts that the purpose of higher education is twofold: for public good and as public good. Acknowledging that the notion of public good increasingly cannot be taken for granted, the book argues that leading, teaching and learning must be directly connected to its pursuit. It avers and demonstrates how this may be accomplished, articulating specific approaches and dispositions that require cultivation within university communities. This volume argues that leading higher education occurs within competing and sometimes conflicting webs of commitments, necessitating a capacity to negotiate legitimate compromises. Its empirical chapters expand on this, providing examples of academic developers who use deliberate communication as a method in cultivating leading and teaching praxis. What emerges is the potential of deliberative leadership to be transformative in building sustainable leadership in higher education, while simultaneously renewing commitments to education and contributing to public good. Leading Higher Education As and For Public Good is essential reading for policy-makers, university leaders and administrators, academics, students and all those interested in building a sustainable future for higher education that also contributes to public good.

Are colleges and universities in a period of unprecedented disruption? Is a bachelor's degree still worth the investment? Are the humanities coming to an end? What, exactly, is higher education good for? In For the Common Good, Charles Dorn challenges the rhetoric of America's so-called crisis in higher education by investigating two centuries of college and university history. From the community college to the elite research university—in states from California to Maine—Dorn engages a fundamental question confronted by higher education institutions ever since the nation's founding: Do colleges and universities contribute to the common good? Tracking changes in the prevailing social ethos between the late eighteenth and early twenty-first centuries, Dorn illustrates the ways in which civic-mindedness, practicality, commercialism, and affluence influenced higher education's dedication to the public good. Each ethos, long a part of American history and tradition, came to predominate over the others during one of the four chronological periods examined in the book, informing the character of institutional debates and telling the definitive story of its time. For the Common Good demonstrates how two hundred years of political, economic, and social change prompted transformation among colleges and universities—including the establishment of entirely new kinds of institutions—and refashioned higher education in the United States over time in essential and often vibrant ways.

Nothing Less than Great addresses the current challenges faced by Canada's university system and offers solutions to help improve the academic experience of students.

After decades of turbulence and acute crises in recent years, how can we build a better future for Higher Education? Thoughtfully edited by Laura Czerniewicz and Catherine Cronin, this rich and diverse collection by academics and professionals from across 17 countries and many disciplines offers a variety of answers to this question. It addresses the need to set new values for universities, trapped today in narratives dominated by financial incentives and performance indicators, and examines those “wicked” problems which need multiple solutions, resolutions, experiments, and imaginaries. This mix of new and well-established voices provides hopeful new ways of thinking about Higher Education across a range of contexts, and how to concretise initiatives to deal with local and global challenges. In an unusual and refreshing way, the contributors provide insights about resilience tactics and collective actions across different levels of higher education using an array of styles and formats including essays, poetry, and speculative fiction. With its interdisciplinary appeal, this book presents itself as a provocative and inspiring resource for universities, students, and scholars. Higher Education for Good courageously offers critique, hope, and purpose for the practice and the trajectory of Higher Education.