Higher Learning

Bok concludes that the competition for the best students, the most advanced scholarship, the most successful scientific research, the best facilities--has helped to produce venturesome, adaptable, and varied universities. But because the process of learning itself is imperfectly understood, it is difficult to achieve sustained progress in the quality of education or even to determine which educational innovations actually enhance learning.

Higher education has become a worldwide phenomenon where students now travel internationally to pursue courses and careers, not simply as a global enterprise, but as a network of worldwide interconnections. The Origins of Higher Learning: Knowledge networks and the early development of universities is an account of the first globalisation that has led us to this point, telling of how humankind first developed centres of higher learning across the vast landmass from the Atlantic to the China Sea. This book opens a much-needed debate on the origins of higher learning, exploring how, why and where humankind first began to take a sustained interest in questions that went beyond daily survival. Showing how these concerns became institutionalised and how knowledge came to be transferred from place to place, this book explores important aspects of the forerunners of globalisation. It is a narrative which covers much of Asia, North Africa and Europe, many parts of which were little known beyond their own boundaries. Spanning from the earliest civilisations to the end of the European Middle Ages, around 700 years ago, here the authors set out crucial findings for future research and investigation. This book shows how interconnections across continents are nothing new and that in reality, humankind has been interdependent for a much longer period than is widely recognised. It is a book which challenges existing accounts of the origins of higher learning in Europe and will be of interest to all those who wish to know more about the world of academia.

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.

Thorstein Veblen was an American economist and sociologist. He is well known as a witty critic of capitalism. Veblen is famous for the idea of "conspicuous consumption." Conspicuous consumption, along with "conspicuous leisure," is performed to demonstrate wealth or mark social status. Veblen explains the concept in his best-known book, The Theory of the Leisure Class. Within the history of economic thought, Veblen is considered the leader of the institutional economics movement. Veblen's distinction between "institutions" and "technology" is still called the Veblenian dichotomy by contemporary economists. In the beginning of his academic career Veblen had difficulties obtaining a university position, whether because he was discriminated for being Norwegian, or openly identified as an agnostic. These difficulties later inspired him to write The Higher Learning in America. In this book he claimed that true academic values were sacrificed by universities in favor of their own self-interest and profitability._x000D_

In this critical new work, Slaughter investigates how university involvement in high technology influences higher education policy. By conducting a case study of the Business-Higher Education Forum, a liaison organization consisting of Fortune 500 Chief Executive Officers and presidents of well-known research universities, the author explores the policy agenda of the Forum, the historical and structural antecedents of that agenda, and its organizational implications for various post-secondary sectors and their faculty.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1955.

Is it possible to bring university research and student education into a more connected, more symbiotic relationship? If so, can we develop programmes of study that enable faculty, students and ‘real world’ communities to connect in new ways? In this accessible book, Dilly Fung argues that it is not only possible but also potentially transformational to develop new forms of research-based education. Presenting the Connected Curriculum framework already adopted by UCL, she opens windows onto new initiatives related to, for example, research-based education, internationalisation, the global classroom, interdisciplinarity and public engagement. A Connected Curriculum for Higher Education is, however, not just about developing engaging programmes of study. Drawing on the field of philosophical hermeneutics, Fung argues how the Connected Curriculum framework can help to create spaces for critical dialogue about educational values, both within and across existing research groups, teaching departments and learning communities. Drawing on vignettes of practice from around the world, she argues that developing the synergies between research and education can empower faculty members and students from all backgrounds to contribute to the global common good.

A series of near-riots on campuses aimed at silencing guest speakers has exposed the fact that our universities are no longer devoted to the free exchange of ideas in pursuit of truth. But this hostility to free speech is only a symptom of a deeper problem, writes John Ellis. Having watched the deterioration of academia up close for the past fifty years, Ellis locates the core of the problem in a change in the composition of the faculty during this time, from mildly left-leaning to almost exclusively leftist. He explains how astonishing historical luck led to the success of a plan first devised by a small group of activists to use college campuses to promote radical politics, and why laws and regulations designed to prevent the politicizing of higher education proved insufficient. Ellis shows that political motivation is always destructive of higher learning. Even science and technology departments are not immune. The corruption of universities by radical politics also does wider damage: to primary and secondary education, to race relations, to preparation for the workplace, and to the political and social fabric of the nation. Commonly suggested remedies—new free-speech rules, or enforced right-of-center appointments—will fail because they don’t touch the core problem, a controlling faculty majority of political activists with no real interest in scholarship. This book proposes more drastic and effective reform measures. The first step is for Americans to recognize that vast sums of public money intended for education are being diverted to a political agenda, and to demand that this fraud be stopped.