Making reform work : the case for transforming American higher education / Robert Zemsky.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Zemsky, Robert, 1940-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Education, Higher--United States.

Education, Higher.

Educational change--United States.

Educational change.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (254 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Case for transforming American higher education

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, c2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Making Reform Work is a practical narrative of ideas that begins by describing who is saying what about American higher educationùwho's angry, who's disappointed, and why. Most of the pleas for changing American colleges and universities that originate outside the academy are lamentations on a small number of too often repeated themes. The critique from within the academy focuses on issues principally involving money and the power of the market to change colleges and universities. Sandwiched between these perspectives is a public that still has faith in an enterprise that it really doesn't understand. Robert Zemsky, one of a select group of scholars who participated in Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings's 2005 Commission on the Future of Higher Education, signed off on the commission's report with reluctance. In Making Reform Work he presents the ideas he believes should have come from that group to forge a practical agenda for change. Zemsky argues that improving higher education will require enlisting faculty leadership, on the one hand, and, on the other, a strategy for changing the higher education system writ large. Directing his attention from what can't be done to what can be done, Zemsky provides numerous suggestions. These include a renewed effort to help students' performance in high schools and a stronger focus on the science of active learning, not just teaching methods. He concludes by suggesting a series of dislodging eventsùfor example, making a three-year baccalaureate the standard undergraduate degree, congressional rethinking of student aid in the wake of the loan scandal, and a change in the rules governing endowmentsùthat could break the gridlock that today holds higher education reform captive. Making Reform Work offers three rules for successful college and university transformation: don't vilify, don't play games, and come to the table with a well-thought-out strategy rather than a sharply worded lamentation.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Prologue

1. Prelude to Reform

2. The Wine of Our Discontent

3. Commodification and Other Sins

4. The Way We Are

5. The Rain Man Cometh-Again

6. Scandals Waiting to Happen

7. The Four Horsemen of Academic Reform

8. Flat-World Contrarians

9. The Wrong-Way Web

10. Were Learning to Matter

11. Building Blocks

12. Changing Strategies

Notes

Index

About the Author

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-8135-4846-2

OCLC:

593320275