During the past several decades, several “highly-resourced, accelerated research universities” have been established around the world to pursue—and achieve—academic and research excellence. These institutions are entirely new, not existing universities that were reconfigured. Accelerated Universities provides case studies of eight such universities and highlights the lessons to be learned from these examples. Each of the cases is written by someone involved with leadership at the early developmental stages of each university, and provides insights that only senior executives can illustrate. Accelerated Universities shows that visionary leadership and generous funding combined with innovative ideas can yield impressive results in a short time. Universities aspiring to recognition among the top tier of global institutions will find this book indispensable.

Accelerated Universities provides a unique perspective on the success of eight young, generously-funded universities.

Brad Voeller earned his four-year, fully accredited college degree in six months, for less than $5,000, by applying the revolutionary techniques of accelerated distance learning. Now, he shares with you this amazing new approach to learning that will allow you to earn the credential you need in less than half the time for a fraction of the cost. --from publisher description.

The single best book on higher education as a global phenomenon. Over the past half-century, globalization has had a profound impact on postsecondary education. The twin forces of mass higher education and the global knowledge economy have driven an unprecedented transformation. These fundamental changes have pulled in opposite directions: one pushes for wider access and accompanying challenges of quality, the other toward exclusive, “world class” research-oriented universities. In Global Perspectives on Higher Education, renowned higher education scholar Philip G. Altbach offers a wide-ranging perspective on the implications of these key forces and explores how they influence academe everywhere. Altbach begins with a discussion of the global trends that increasingly affect higher education, including the implications of mass enrollments, the logic of mass higher education systems around the world, and specific challenges facing Brazil, Russia, India, and China. He considers the numerous implications of globalization, including the worldwide use of the English language, university cross-border initiatives, the role of research universities in developing countries, the impact of the West on Asian universities, and the expansion of private higher education. Provocative and wide-ranging, Global Perspectives on Higher Education considers how the international exchange of ideas, students, and scholars has fundamentally altered higher education.

Hartmut Rosa advances an account of the temporal structure of society from the perspective of critical theory. He identifies in particular three categories of change in the tempo of modern social life: technological acceleration, evident in transportation, communication, and production; the acceleration of social change, reflected in cultural knowledge, social institutions, and personal relationships; and acceleration in the pace of life, which happens despite the expectation that technological change should increase an individual's free time. According to Rosa, both the structural and cultural aspects of our institutions and practices are marked by the "shrinking of the present," a decreasing time period during which expectations based on past experience reliably match future results and events. When this phenomenon combines with technological acceleration and the increasing pace of life, time seems to flow ever faster, making our relationships to each other and the world fluid and problematic. It is as if we are standing on "slipping slopes," a steep social terrain that is itself in motion and in turn demands faster lives and technology. As Rosa deftly shows, this self-reinforcing feedback loop fundamentally determines the character of modern life.

Accelerated Schools: The Background; Henry M. Levin 2.

Accelerated learning, isn't that just for gifted students? Accelerating the Learning of All Students: Cultivating Culture Change in Schools, Classrooms, and Individuals answers that question while providing a vivid description of what happens at the school, classroom, and individual levels when people attempt to extend efforts to accelerate learning to all students. The book begins with a definition of accelerated learning and provides a vivid description of efforts to accelerate the learning of three populations of students: those identified as gifted, those identified as low-achieving, and all students. The book then examines the assumptions shaping school, classroom, and individual efforts to accelerate the learning of all students. Written by a pair of educators, one trained in gifted and talented education and the other in cultura anthropology, this book provides teachers, parents, administrators, and researchers with insight into why we continue to fail so many students and how we can cultivate change in schools, classrooms, and individuals so that all students receive the enriched, challenging learning experiences typically reserved only for students identified as gifted.