Ideally, universities are centers of learning, in which great researchers dispassionately search for truth, no matter how unpopular those truths must be. The marketplace of ideas assures that truth wins out against bias and prejudice. Yet, many people worry that there's rot in the heart of thehigher education business.In Cracks in the Ivory Tower, libertarian scholars Jason Brennan and Philip Magness reveal the problems are even worse than anyone suspects. Marshalling an array of data, they systematically show how contemporary American universities fall short of these ideals and how bad incentives make faculty,administrators, and students act unethically. While universities may at times excel at identifying and calling out injustice outside their gates, Brennan and Magness contend that individuals are primarily guided by self-interest at every level. They find that the problems are deep and pervasive:most academic marketing and advertising is semi-fraudulent; colleges and individual departments regularly make promises they do not and cannot keep; and most students cheat a little, while many cheat a lot. Trenchant and wide-ranging, they elucidate the many ways in which faculty and students alikehave every incentive to make teaching and learning secondary.In this revealing expose, Brennan and Magness bring to light many of the ethical problems universities, faculties, and students currently face. In turn, they reshape our understanding of how such high-powered institutions run their business.

Sharp and witty observations of academic life that range from the local to the global, from PowerPoint to the halls of power. Is a university education still relevant? What are the forces that threaten it? Should academics ever be allowed near Twitter? In Academic Diary, Les Back has chronicled three decades of his academic career, turning his sharp and often satirical eye to the everyday aspects of life on campus and the larger forces that are reshaping it. Presented as a collection of entries from a single academic year, the diary moves from the local to the global, from PowerPoint to the halls of power. With entries like “Ivory Towers” and “The Library Angel,” these smart, humorous, and sometimes absurd campus tales not only demystify the opaque rituals of scholarship but also offer a personal perspective on the far-reaching issues of university life. Commenting on topics that range from the impact of commercialization and fee increases to measurement and auditing research, the diary offers a critical analysis of higher education today. At the same time, it is a passionate argument for the life of the mind, the importance of collaborative thinking, and the reasons that scholarship and writing are still vital for making sense of our troubled and divided world.

Two trends in the early twenty-first-century intersect to give this volume immediate relevance: 1) The emerging postmodern ethos in North America is calling into question many things we have taken for granted, including the purposes of the church; and 2) our time is increasingly fractious as groups with distinct worldviews become polarized and often antagonistic. Eleven noted contributors join a growing current that sees conversation as an image to refresh our thinking about the nature and purpose of the church, and as a process in which individuals and communities with different perspectives come together for real understanding. Under the Oak Tree employs the image of Sarah and Abraham greeting three visitors under the Oaks of Mamre as an image for the church as a community of conversation, a community that opens itself to the otherness of the Bible, voices in history and tradition, others in the contemporary social and ecological worlds. Furthermore, the book shows how conversation can lead the church to action. The book takes a practical approach by exploring how conversation can shape key parts of the church's life. Topics include preaching, worship, formation, evangelism, pastoral care, mission and ecumenism, social witness, and the relationship of Christianity to other religions. Foundational chapters consider God as conversational, the church as community of conversation, and the minister as conversation leader.