Based on the authors’ experiences in academe over seventy-five years, The Higher Education Scene in America: Some Observations discusses a number of issues that confront America’s higher education scene today. Those issue embrace such problems as: (1) the missions(s) of our colleges and universities and the development of critical thinking and/or employability; (2) the role of for-profit academic institutions; (3) the impact of online technology; (4) diffusion of power and achievement of consensus between administrators and faculty; (5) the importance of financial matters, embracing budgets, fundraising, and endowments; (6) the insidious problem of conflicts of interest; (7) the scandalous impact of big-time, big-money Division 1 sports on academe; (8) the growth of non-academic functions; and (9) the importance of leadership in consensual institutions and how leaders are chosen.

Clark Kerr, one of the nation's foremost educators and commentators on the educational scene, examines emerging problems that he predicts will influence the near future of higher education. These include the quality of undergraduate education; ethics, both as a subject and as practiced by the professoriate; the racial crisis, including the dilemma of how to provide access to underserved minority groups; and competition for recognition and resources among the nation's research universities. Also included is a thought-provoking section on the dominant connection between higher education and the economy that evaluates how well the test of service to the labor market has been met and counters the charge that our educational system is to blame for the nation's decline in economic productivity and lack of international competitiveness. The author outlines contours of the future for American higher education as it settles into a mature system, and offers choices facing the nation and its colleges in the fast-approaching new century: how to stay dynamic in a period of economic statis or decline; and how to handle internal conflicts and improve the educational decision-making process. Finally, Kerr emphasizes the important role of leadership in guiding our choices and actions as we navigate through troubled times and strive to maintain leadership in the intellectual world.

This book provides a comprehensive description of the federal government's relationship with higher education and how that relationship became so expansive and indispensable over time. Drawing from constitutional law, social science research, federal policy documents, and original interviews with key policy insiders, the author explores the U.S. government's role in regulating, financing, and otherwise influencing higher education. Natow analyzes how the government's role has evolved over time, the activities of specific governmental branches and agencies that affect higher education, the nature of the government's influence today, and prospects for the future of federal involvement in higher education. Chapters examine the politics and practices that shape policies affecting nondiscrimination and civil rights, student financial aid, educational quality and student success, campus crime, research and development, intellectual property, student privacy, and more. Book Features: Provides a contemporary and thorough understanding of how federal higher education policies are created, implemented, and influenced by federal and nonfederal policy actors. Situates higher education policy within the constitutional, political, and historical contexts of the federal government. Offers nuanced perspectives informed by insider information about what occurs behind the scenes in the federal higher education policy arena. Includes case studies illustrating the profound effects federal policy processes have on the everyday lives of college students, their families, institutions, and other higher education stakeholders.

A report from the front lines of higher education and technology that chronicles efforts to transform teaching, learning, and opportunity. Colleges and universities have become increasingly costly, and, except for a handful of highly selective, elite institutions, unresponsive to twenty-first-century needs. But for the past few years, technology-fueled innovation has begun to transform higher education, introducing new ways to disseminate knowledge and better ways to learn—all at lower cost. In this impassioned account, Richard DeMillo tells the behind-the-scenes story of these pioneering efforts and offers a roadmap for transforming higher education. Building on his earlier book, Abelard to Apple, DeMillo argues that the current system of higher education is clearly unsustainable. Colleges and universities are in financial crisis. Tuition rises inexorably. Graduates of reputable schools often fail to learn basic skills, and many cannot find suitable jobs. Meanwhile, student-loan default rates have soared while the elite Ivy and near-Ivy schools seem remote and irrelevant. Where are the revolutionaries who can save higher education? DeMillo's heroes are a small band of innovators who are bringing the revolution in technology to colleges and universities. DeMillo chronicles, among other things, the invention of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) by professors at Stanford and MIT; Salman Khan's Khan Academy; the use of technology by struggling historically black colleges and universities to make learning more accessible; and the latest research on learning and the brain. He describes the revolution's goals and the entrenched hierarchical system it aims to overthrow; and he reframes the nature of the contract between society and its universities. The new institutions of a transformed higher education promise to demonstrate not only that education has value but also that it has values—virtues for the common good.

The US higher education system is on the verge of a revolution, so some observers claim. Archibald and Feldman, leading analysts, provide an incisive overview of the challenges facing and possibilities for America's universities and colleges in their training future generations. And they demonstrate that our higher education system is resilient and adaptable enough to weather the internal, external, and technological threats without changing campuses beyond recognition. The Road Ahead for America's Colleges and Universities examines the threats posed to the current health of higher education by rising tuition and falling government support, as well as from new digital technologies rippling through the entire economy. Some predict disaster, pointing to high costs, exploding debt, and a digital tsunami that supposedly will combine to disrupt and sweep away many of the nation's higher education institutions, or change them beyond recognition. Archibald and Feldman provide a more nuanced view. They argue that the bundle of services that four-year colleges and universities provide will retain its value for the traditional age range of college students. Less certain, Archibald and Feldman argue, is whether the system will continue to be a force for social and economic opportunity. The threats are most dire at schools that disproportionately serve America's most underprivileged students. At the same time, growing income inequality reduces the ability of many students and their families to pay for higher education. Archibald and Feldman suggest a range of policy options at the state and federal level that will help America's higher education system continue to fulfill its promise.

Cohen organizes the book around a unique matrix of trends, topics, and eras that enables the reader either to proceed chapter by chapter through a chronological sequence of the entire history, or to easily follow a preferred topic, such as faculty or curriculum, by reading only that specific section in each era.