Download or read book Why Public Higher Education Should Be Free written by Robert Samuels and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-15 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Universities tend to be judged by the test scores of their incoming students and not on what students actually learn once they attend these institutions. While shared tests and surveys have been developed, most schools refuse to publish the results. Instead, they allow such publications as U.S. News & World Report to define educational quality. In order to raise their status in these rankings, institutions pour money into new facilities and extracurricular activities while underfunding their educational programs. In Why Public Higher Education Should Be Free, Robert Samuels argues that many institutions of higher education squander funds and mislead the public about such things as average class size, faculty-to-student ratios, number of faculty with PhDs, and other indicators of educational quality. Parents and students seem to have little knowledge of how colleges and universities have been restructured over the past thirty years. Samuels shows how research universities have begun to function as giant investment banks or hedge funds that spend money on athletics and administration while increasing tuition costs and actually lowering the quality of undergraduate education. In order to fight higher costs and lower quality, Samuels suggests, universities must reallocate these misused funds and concentrate on their core mission of instruction and related research. Throughout the book, Samuels argues that the future of our economy and democracy rests on our ability to train students to be thoughtful participants in the production and analysis of knowledge. If leading universities serve only to grant credentials and prestige, our society will suffer irrevocable harm. Presenting the problem of how universities make and spend money, Samuels provides solutions to make these important institutions less expensive and more vital. By using current resources in a more effective manner, we could even, he contends, make all public higher education free.

Download or read book What s Happening to Public Higher Education written by Ronald G. Ehrenberg and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2008-01-02 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: State preferences for higher education spending : a panel data analysis, 1977-2001 / Michael J. Rizzo -- Do tenured and tenure-track faculty matter? / Ronald G. Ehrenberg and Liang Zhang -- The increasing use of adjunct instructors at public institutions : Are we hurting students? / Eric P. Bettinger and Bridget Terry Long -- The effect of institutional funding cuts on baccalaureate graduation rates in public higher education / Gary L. Blose, John D. Porter, and Edward C. Kokkelenberg -- The effects of a changing financial context on the University of California / Gerald R. Kissler and Ellen Switkes -- Assessing public higher education in Georgia at the start of the twenty-first century / Christopher Cornwell and David B. Mustard -- Changing priorities and the evolution of public higher education finance in Illinois / F. King Alexander and Daniel Layzell -- Michigan public higher education : recent trends and policy considerations for the coming decade / Stephen L. DesJardins, Allison Bell, and Iria Puyosa -- North Carolina's commitment to higher education : access and affordability / Betsy E. Brown and Robert L. Clark -- State support for public higher education in Pennsylvania / Donald E. Heller -- The changing accessibility, affordability, and quality of higher education in Texas / Lisa M. Dickson -- Higher tuition, higher aid, and the quest to improve opportunities for low-income students : the case of Virginia / Sarah Turner -- Public higher education in Washington State : aspirations are misaligned with fiscal structure and politics / William Zumeta -- Consequences of a legacy of state disinvestment : plunging state support reduces access and threatens quality at University of Wisconsin system institutions / David W. Olien -- Why we won't see any public universities "going private" / John D. Wiley -- Concluding remarks / F. King Alexander.

Download or read book Higher Education Accountability written by Robert Kelchen and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2018-02-27 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with the earliest efforts to regulate schools, the author reveals the rationale behind accountability and outlines the historical development of how US federal and state policies, accreditation practices, private-sector interests, and internal requirements have become so important to institutional success and survival

Download or read book Death of the Public University written by Susan Wright and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2017-05-01 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Universities have been subjected to continuous government reforms since the 1980s, to make them ‘entrepreneurial’, ‘efficient’ and aligned to the predicted needs and challenges of a global knowledge economy. Under increasing pressure to pursue ‘excellence’ and ‘innovation’, many universities are struggling to maintain their traditional mission to be inclusive, improve social mobility and equality and act as the ‘critic and conscience’ of society. Drawing on a multi-disciplinary research project, University Reform, Globalisation and Europeanisation (URGE), this collection analyses the new landscapes of public universities emerging across Europe and the Asia-Pacific, and the different ways that academics are engaging with them.

Download or read book The States and Public Higher Education Policy written by Donald E. Heller and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Affordability, access, and accountability have long been among the central challenges facing higher education—and they remain so today. Here, Donald E. Heller and other higher education scholars and practitioners explore the current debates surrounding these key issues. As students and their families struggle to meet rising tuition prices, and as state funding for higher education dwindles, policymakers confront issues of affordability within state and institutional budgets. Changing demographics and challenges to affirmative action complicate the admissions process even as colleges and universities seek to diversify enrollments. And issues of institutional accountability have forced the restructuring of higher education governing boards and a reexamination of the role of public trustees in governance. This collection analyzes how issues of affordability, access, and accountability influence the way in which state governments approach, monitor, and set public higher education policy. The contributors examine the latest research on pressing challenges, explore how states are coping with these challenges, and consider what the future holds for public postsecondary education in the United States.

Download or read book Sustainable Resilient Free The Future of Higher Education written by John Warner and published by . This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1983, U.S. News and World Report started to rank colleges and universities, throwing them into competition with each other for students and precious resources. Over the course of the next thirty or so years, everything fell apart. A Reagan-era ethos of privatization and competition has turned students into consumers and colleges into businesses. Tuition is unaffordable. Student loan debt is more than $1.6 trillion, and a majority of college faculty work in adjunct positions for low pay and with no security. Colleges exist to enroll students, collect tuition, and hold classes. When learning happens, it is in spite of the system, not because of it. The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare what we already know: the current system is unsustainable. We have forgotten that education is infrastructure, and are paying a high price for this wrong turn thirty-plus years ago. In Sustainable. Resilient. Free., author and educator John Warner maps out a way forward, one by which our public colleges and universities are reoriented around enhancing the intellectual, social, and economic potentials of students while providing broad-based benefits to the community at large. As Warner explains, it's not even complicated. It's no more costly than the current system. We just have to choose to live the values we claim to hold dear.

Download or read book Land Grant Universities for the Future written by Stephen M. Gavazzi and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book should be of great interest to faculty members and students, as well as those parents, legislators, policymakers, and other area stakeholders who have a vested interest in the well-being of America’s original public universities.

Download or read book Who Should Pay written by Natasha Quadlin and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2022-01-14 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans now obtain college degrees at a higher rate than at any time in recent decades in the hopes of improving their career prospects. At the same time, the rising costs of an undergraduate education have increased dramatically, forcing students and families to take out often unmanageable levels of student debt. The cumulative amount of student debt reached nearly $1.5 trillion in 2017, and calls for student loan forgiveness have gained momentum. Yet public policy to address college affordability has been mixed. While some policymakers support more public funding to broaden educational access, others oppose this expansion. Noting that public opinion often shapes public policy, sociologists Natasha Quadlin and Brian Powell examine public opinion on who should shoulder the increasing costs of higher education and why. Who Should Pay? draws on a decade’s worth of public opinion surveys analyzing public attitudes about whether parents, students, or the government should be primarily responsible for funding higher education. Quadlin and Powell find that between 2010 and 2019, public opinion has shifted dramatically in favor of more government funding. In 2010, Americans overwhelming believed that parents and students were responsible for the costs of higher education. Less than a decade later, the percentage of Americans who believed that federal or state/local government should be the primary financial contributor has more than doubled. The authors contend that the rapidity of this change may be due to the effects of the 2008 financial crisis and the growing awareness of the social and economic costs of high levels of student debt. Quadlin and Powell also find increased public endorsement of shared responsibility between individuals and the government in paying for higher education. The authors additionally examine attitudes on the accessibility of college for all, whether higher education at public universities should be free, and whether college is worth the costs. Quadlin and Powell also explore why Americans hold these beliefs. They identify individualistic and collectivist world views that shape public perspectives on the questions of funding, accessibility, and worthiness of college. Those with more individualistic orientations believed parents and students should pay for college, and that if students want to attend college, then they should work hard and find ways to achieve their goals. Those with collectivist orientations believed in a model of shared responsibility – one in which the government takes a greater level of responsibility for funding education while acknowledging the social and economic barriers to obtaining a college degree for many students. The authors find that these belief systems differ among socio-demographic groups and that bias – sometimes unconscious and sometimes deliberate – regarding race and class affects responses from both individualistic and collectivist-oriented participants. Public opinion is typically very slow to change. Yet Who Should Pay? provides an illuminating account of just how quickly public opinion has shifted regarding the responsibility of paying for a college education and its implications for future generations of students.

Download or read book Creating a New Public University and Reviving Democracy written by Morten Levin and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public universities are in crisis, waning in their role as central institutions within democratic societies. Denunciations are abundant, but analyses of the causes and proposals to re-create public universities are not. Based on extensive experience with Action Research-based organizational change in universities and private sector organizations, Levin and Greenwood analyze the wreckage created by neoliberal academic administrators and policymakers. The authors argue that public universities must be democratically organized to perform their educational and societal functions. The book closes by laying out Action Research processes that can transform public universities back into institutions that promote academic freedom, integrity, and democracy.

Download or read book Public Universities Managerialism and the Value of Higher Education written by Rob Watts and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-12-19 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a rigorous examination into the realities of the current university system in Britain, America and Australia. The radical makeover of the higher education system which began in the 1980s has conventionally been understood as universities being transformed into businesses which sell education and research in a competitive market. This engaging and provocative book argues that this is not actually the case. Drawing on lived experience, Watts asserts that the reality is actually a consequence of contradictory government policy and new public management whose exponents talk and act ‘as-if’ universities have become businesses. The result of which is ‘market crazed governance’, whereby universities are subjected to expensive rebranding and advertising campaigns and the spread of a toxic culture of customer satisfaction surveys which ask students to evaluate their teachers and what they have learned, based on government ‘metrics’ of research ‘quality’. This has led to a situation where not only the normal teacher-student relationship is inverted, academic professional autonomy is eroded and many students are short-changed, but where universities are becoming places whose leaders are no longer prepared to tell the truth and too few academics are prepared to insist they do. An impassioned and methodical study, this book will be of great interest to academics and scholars in the field of higher education and education policy.

Download or read book Unmaking the Public University written by Christopher Newfield and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-30 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential American dream—equal access to higher education—was becoming a reality with the GI Bill and civil rights movements after World War II. But this vital American promise has been broken. Christopher Newfield argues that the financial and political crises of public universities are not the result of economic downturns or of ultimately valuable restructuring, but of a conservative campaign to end public education’s democratizing influence on American society. Unmaking the Public University is the story of how conservatives have maligned and restructured public universities, deceiving the public to serve their own ends. It is a deep and revealing analysis that is long overdue. Newfield carefully describes how this campaign operated, using extensive research into public university archives. He launches the story with the expansive vision of an equitable and creative America that emerged from the post-war boom in college access, and traces the gradual emergence of the anti-egalitarian “corporate university,” practices that ranged from racial policies to research budgeting. Newfield shows that the culture wars have actually been an economic war that a conservative coalition in business, government, and academia have waged on that economically necessary but often independent group, the college-educated middle class. Newfield’s research exposes the crucial fact that the culture wars have functioned as a kind of neutron bomb, one that pulverizes the social and culture claims of college grads while leaving their technical expertise untouched. Unmaking the Public University incisively sets the record straight, describing a forty-year economic war waged on the college-educated public, and awakening us to a vision of social development shared by scientists and humanists alike.

Download or read book Public Policy and Higher Education written by Edward P. St. John and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amid changing economic and social contexts, radical changes have occurred in public higher education policies over the past three decades. Public Policy and Higher Educationprovides readers with new ways to analyze these complex state policies and offers the tools to examine how policies affect students’ access and success in college. Rather than arguing for a single approach, the authors examine how policymakers and higher education administrators can work to inform and influence change within systems of higher education using research-based evidence along with consideration of political and historical values and beliefs. Special Features: Case Studies—allow readers to examine strategies used by different types of colleges to improve access and retention. Reflective Exercises—encourage readers to discuss state and campus context for policy decisions and to think about the strategies used in a state or institution. Approachable Explanations—unpack complex public policies and financial strategies for readers who seek understanding of public policy in higher education. Research-Based Recommendations—explore how policymakers, higher education administrators and faculty can work together to improve quality, diversity, and financial stewardship. This textbook is an invaluable resource for graduate students, administrators, policymakers, and researchers who seek to learn more about the crucial contexts underlying policy decisions and college access.

Download or read book Public Funding of Higher Education written by Edward P. St. John and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2005-09-23 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much of the twentieth century saw broad political support for public funding of American higher education. Liberals supported public investment because it encouraged social equity, conservatives because it promoted economic development. Recently, however, the politics of higher education have become more contentious. Conservatives advocate deep cuts in public financing; liberals want to expand enrollment and increase diversity. Some public universities have embraced privatization, while federal aid for students increasingly emphasizes middle-class affordability over universal access. In Public Funding of Higher Education, scholars and practitioners address the complexities of this new climate and its impact on policy and political advocacy at the federal, state, and institutional levels. Rethinking traditional rationales for public financing, contributors to this volume offer alternatives for policymakers, administrators, faculty, students, and researchers struggling with this difficult practical dynamic. Contributors: M. Christopher Brown II, Pennsylvania State University; Jason L. Butler, University of Illinois; Choong-Geun Ching, Indiana University; Clifton F. Conrad, University of Wisconsin–Madison; Saran Donahoo, University of Illinois; James Farmer, JA-SIG uPortal; James C. Hearn, Vanderbilt University; Janet M. Holdsworth, University of Minnesota; Don Hossler, Indiana University; John R. Thelin, University of Kentucky; Mary Louise Trammell, University of Arizona; David J. Weerts, University of Wisconsin–Madison; William Zumeta, University of Washington

Download or read book The California Idea and American Higher Education written by John Aubrey Douglass and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-03 with total page 618 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the twentieth century, public universities were established across the United States at a dizzying pace, transforming the scope and purpose of American higher education. Leading the way was California, with its internationally renowned network of public colleges and universities. This book is the first comprehensive history of California's pioneering efforts to create an expansive and high-quality system of public higher education. The author traces the social, political, and economic forces that established and funded an innovative, uniquely tiered, and geographically dispersed network of public campuses in California. This influential model for higher education, "The California Idea," created an organizational structure that combined the promise of broad access to public higher education with a desire to develop institutions of high academic quality. Following the story from early statehood through to the politics and economic forces that eventually resulted in the 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education, The California Idea and American Higher Education offers a carefully crafted history of public higher education.

Download or read book Public Policy and Higher Education written by Edward P. St. John and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-04 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public Policy and Higher Education provides readers with new ways to analyze complex state policies and offers the tools to examine how policies affect students’ access and success in college. Rather than arguing for a single approach, the authors examine how policymakers and higher education administrators can work to inform and influence change within systems of higher education using research-based evidence along with consideration of political and historical values and beliefs. Raising new questions and examining recent developments, this updated edition is an invaluable resource for graduate students, administrators, policymakers, and researchers who seek to learn more about the crucial contexts underlying policy decisions and college access. Special Features: Case Studies—allow readers to examine strategies used by different types of colleges to improve access and retention. Reflective Exercises—encourage readers to discuss state and campus context for policy decisions and to think about the strategies used in a state or institution. Approachable Explanations—unpack complex public policies and financial strategies for readers who seek understanding of public policy in higher education. Research-Based Recommendations—explore how policymakers, higher education administrators, and faculty can work together to improve quality, diversity, and financial stewardship. New epilogues and a revised Part III—reexamine themes and encourage critical thinking about inequality and policy change

Download or read book Pedagogy of the Depressed written by Christopher Schaberg and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-12-16 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is one English professor's assessment of university life in the early 21st century. From rising mental health concerns and trigger warnings to learning management systems and the COVID pandemic, Christopher Schaberg reflects on the rapidly evolving landscape of higher education. Adopting an interdisciplinary public humanities approach, Schaberg considers the frequently exhausting and depressing realities of college today. Yet in these meditations he also finds hope: collaboration, mentoring, less grading, surface reading, and other pedagogical strategies open up opportunities to reinvigorate teaching and learning in the current turbulent decade.

Download or read book Remaking College written by Mitchell Stevens and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-07 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1945 and 1990 the United States built the largest and most productive higher education system in world history. Over the last two decades, however, dramatic budget cuts to public academic services and skyrocketing tuition have made college completion more difficult for many. Nevertheless, the democratic promise of education and the global competition for educated workers mean ever growing demand. Remaking College considers this changing context, arguing that a growing accountability revolution, the push for greater efficiency and productivity, and the explosion of online learning are changing the character of higher education. Writing from a range of disciplines and professional backgrounds, the contributors each bring a unique perspective to the fate and future of U.S. higher education. By directing their focus to schools doing the lion's share of undergraduate instruction—community colleges, comprehensive public universities, and for-profit institutions—they imagine a future unencumbered by dominant notions of "traditional" students, linear models of achievement, and college as a four-year residential experience. The result is a collection rich with new tools for helping people make more informed decisions about college—for themselves, for their children, and for American society as a whole.