Daniel Little
There are many, many voices offering observations and criticisms of universities in face of rising costs and tuitions. But none is more qualified than Bill Bowen to address these issues. He is the preeminent economist and analyst of the institutions of American universities, and he was a long-serving president of Princeton University. So it is …
Continue reading "Are there online solutions to rising college costs?"
France has 83 state-supported universities and well over a million undergraduate students in university. After visits over several years to one of these universities and conversations with faculty and students, however, I have come away with some troubling impressions, especially in the humanities. The crux of the apparent problem is a pervasive lack of concern …
Universities are large, complex organizations that have multiple goals -- educating undergraduates, training graduate students, facilitating and expanding research activities, serving various communities. Each of these activities depends on complex contributions by very smart faculty and administrators, often in a highly decentralized way, and each can be more or less successful. The individuals involved are …
One of the most fundamental and distinctive aspects of the American approach to undergraduate education is the priority given to making sure that students receive a broad “liberal education.” What this phrase means has nothing to do with “liberal politics”; instead, it is a theory of education that holds that the undergraduate student needs to …
Martha Nussbaum is one of the most exceptional voices in philosophy and public policy we have today, and she has contributed to a wide range of topics. Her work on the ethics of development has proven to be a very important contribution (for example, Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach), through which she has significantly deepened …
Continue reading "What is the good of a university education?"
Many universities have significant international relationships with educational institutions in other countries. In some instances these are intended to support students who are interested in study abroad; in other instances they establish the foundation of faculty-to-faculty research collaboration; and in yet other cases they involve the coordination of specific academic programs for the benefit of …
Academic freedom is a core value in American higher education. At certain times in our history it is a value that has been severely challenged, including especially during the McCarthy period of the 1950s. But what, precisely, does it entail? One way of starting on this topic is to consider Richard Hofstadter's writings on the …
Continue reading "Academic freedom from Hofstadter to Dworkin"
There have been several efforts recently by partisan groups in Michigan and Wisconsin to gain access to faculty email messages on subjects that fall within the scope of the faculty member's research or personal political opinions. These groups have made use of state Freedom of Information laws, on the basis that faculty members are "state …
What is it that we expect students to learn when we teach philosophy? Is philosophy an arcane and charmingly useless vestige of a nineteenth-century university education? Or does it have something crucial to add to the liberal education of the twenty-first century -- whether in the arts and sciences or in pre-professional schools? Philosophers would …
Source: Bowen, Chingos, and McPherson, Crossing the Finish Line For quite a long time the United States had a global advantage in its educated population. No more. The US now ranks low among OECD nations for percentage of adults with a baccalaureate degree. And the increases in this percentage witnessed in the United States in …
Understanding Society 