Reinventing Higher Education

The inspiration for this timely book is the pressing need for fresh ideas and innovations in U.S. higher education. At the heart of the volume is the realization that higher education must evolve in fundamental ways if it is to respond to changing professional, economic, and technological circumstances, and if it is to successfully reach and prepare a vast population of students—traditional and nontraditional alike—for success in the coming decades. This collection of provocative articles by leading scholars, writers, innovators, and university administrators examines the current higher education environment and its chronic resistance to change; the rise of for-profit universities; the potential future role of community colleges in a significantly revised higher education realm; and the emergence of online learning as a means to reshape teaching and learning and to reach new consumers of higher education. Combining trenchant critiques of current conditions with thought-provoking analyses of possible reforms and new directions, Reinventing Higher Education is an ambitious exploration of possible future directions for revitalized American colleges and universities.

Examines some of the dilemmas facing higher education today, and explores a number of innovations that are worthy of special attention.

The fourth Glion Colloquium, which was held in Glion above Montreux, Switzerland, in June 2003, drew together active university leaders (presidents, rectors, vice-chancellors), along with guests from industry with close ties to academe, to compare perspectives on the future of the research university in America and Europe, as reflected in its title, 'Reinventing the Research University'. Although there was considerable discussion about whether it would be more accurate to use other verbs such as 'reforming', 'renewing' or 'refocusing', there was general agreement that change would characterize the future of the research university, driven by powerful social, economic and technological forces driving change in our world. The papers contained in this book reflect both the consensus and differences in the perspectives of the participants on these issues. In Part I, papers set the stage by considering the forces that are likely to change the nature of the research university. In Part II, the authors discuss the changing nature of education and scholarship. Part III then continues with papers on the changing nature of the interaction between the research university and broader society. In Part IV, the authors discuss the challenges of financing and governing the contemporary research university. In the concluding chapter the editors endeavour to pull together these discussions to develop more specific suggestions concerning the issues and strategies that universities should consider as they approach a period of rapid change. [Publisher, ed].

Short-listed for the 2012 Speaker’s Award One hundred years ago, the City of Brantford advertised itself as the most important manufacturing centre in Canada. During the century that followed, its industrial economy boomed, faltered, and finally collapsed. By the end of the twentieth century, Brantford was known for unemployment, hard luck, and the infamy of having "the worst downtown in Canada." For twenty years the downtown was in steep decline. Significant attempts at urban revival had failed until Wilfrid Laurier University decided to locate a campus in the heart of Brantford’s crumbling city centre. Leo Groarke revisists the grandeur of the city’s past, explores the economic downfall, and tells the story of the arrival of the university, its early struggles, its commitment to historic restoration, and its ultimate success as a catalyst for urban renewal. The compelling story he recounts will engage anyone interested in the plight of the North-American city core and the role that universities and colleges can play in re-establishing downtowns as vibrant centres of historical and contemporary importance.

Based on twenty case studies of universities worldwide, and on a survey administered to leaders in 101 universities, this open access book shows that, amidst the significant challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, universities found ways to engage with schools to support them in sustaining educational opportunity. In doing so, they generated considerable innovation, which reinforced the integration of the research and outreach functions of the university. The evidence suggests that universities are indeed open systems, in interaction with their environment, able to discover changes that can influence them and to change in response to those changes. They are also able, in the success of their efforts to mitigate the educational impact of the pandemic, to create better futures, as the result of the innovations they can generate. This challenges the view of universities as "ivory towers" being isolated from the surrounding environment and detached from local problems. As they reached out to schools, universities not only generated clear and valuable innovations to sustain educational opportunity and to improve it, this process also contributed to transform internal university processes in ways that enhanced their own ability to deliver on the third mission of outreach

Reinventing Ourselves examines the experiences and lessons from over 20 different institutions pioneering new approaches for more effective teaching and learning. Many of the colleges included in this volume began as both educational and social experiments, representing new ways of thinking about educational goals, curricular organization, institutional governance, and faculty roles and rewards. With new calls for both rethinking our approaches to teaching and learning and for reviewing the traditional boundaries within institutions and between disciplines, Reinventing Ourselves offers a rich store of ideas from which to draw.

Planet U places the university at the forefront of the sustainability movement. Questioning the university's ability to equip society to deal with today's serious challenges such as economic growth, democratic citizenship and planetary survival, it calls for a new social movement to take a lead in reforming the university. The book reviews the university's 900-year history from medieval religious philosopher, to Renaissance nation-builder, to its modern function as training grounds for the world's managerial class and the world's largest industry. It examines diverse campus initiatives across North America and Europe and their traditional concerns of green buildings, renewable energy and transportation demand management. But it also demonstrates the promise for social and ecological progress open to the "planetary university" once the university takes its place seriously and discovers its new mission: to create diverse models of local and global innovation centered around tough new questions about what universities -- and their societies -- can achieve: * How might the university help move us to a post-automobile, energy-saving society? * How might universities help refashion the city to be sustainable? * How might universities be governed for sustainability? Lively, engaging and perfectly timed for the UN Decade for Sustainability in Education launched in 2005, Planet U will have wide appeal. Michael M'Gonigle, Professor and Eco-Research Chair of Environmental Law and Policy at the University of Victoria, is a co-founder of Greenpeace International and has published widely on sustainability issues. Justine Starke is a Research Associate in the POLIS Project on Ecological Governance at the University of Victoria.