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dadof4kids's review
3.0
This book contains a provocative set of essays calling the American college to embrace its liberal arts calling and reject the utilitarian temptations or the current call for new paradigms. While I appreciated many of the author’s arguments, I see no way for actual universities to do what he says (e.g., eliminate all professional programs and the emphasis on job preparation). I love learning for its own sake, but we also have a sacred task of preparing students for effective professional lives.
wafflesaregreat's review
4.0
I bought this book last year after reading an excerpt in the Chronicle of Higher Education. It sat untouched on my shelf for months until I picked it up while sheltering in place.
It is an interesting time to read this book, given the uncertainty that higher education is facing. Many of the issues brought up here are being exacerbated by the pandemic, so it is good to read something that anchors us back to the way things should be. Would recommend.
It is an interesting time to read this book, given the uncertainty that higher education is facing. Many of the issues brought up here are being exacerbated by the pandemic, so it is good to read something that anchors us back to the way things should be. Would recommend.
benrogerswpg's review against another edition
3.0
Very interesting viewpoints
Great read for some alternative ideas to market to.
3/5
Great read for some alternative ideas to market to.
3/5
leaton01's review
4.0
Neem's concise and insightful book guides readers into the complex elements that make up higher education in the early 21st century. He provides historical context to many of the internal challenges of collegues and universities as the issues that confuse the general public about the nature of higher education. For instance, he provides a rich discussion of understanding the difference about a college education as the battle between enrichment of the individual and seeking for the preparation of a career. He convincingly makes an argument in favor of the former given that the latter does not have the proven track record that people tend to think it does. In other places, he draws out the challenges among tenure track faculty and other institutional members and how this creates of challenges, and disconnects in higher education. His work is highly accessible to the lay reader and can help anyone who is going to be engaging with higher education (as a student, a parent of a student, a staff member, a new faculty member) to get a solid 30,000 foot view. My only caveat with his assessment is his underselling, underdefining, and misrepresenting online education, which is something he largely criticizes without geniunely looking at many of the important and successful examples and models.
theyoungveronica's review
5.0
"Students must come to think of intellectual inquiry as an end in itself, something that they cannot, and would not, avoid. They should seek not credits, grades, or competencies, but understanding."
"The quality of intellectual experiences—not just the mastery of competencies—is at the heart of a serious college education. 'College education,' philosopher Gary Gutting writes, 'is a proliferation of such possibilities: the beauty of mathematical discovery, the thrill of scientific understanding, the fascination of historical narrative, the mystery of theological speculation. We should judge teaching not by the amount of knowledge it passes on, but by the enduring excitement it generates."
"Tal Brewer has written that the very notion of business school is an 'oxymoron.' The word scholar derives from the Greek word for leisure. Schools are places where people step aside from the world of need—from the world of business—to engage in reflection."
"Students taking courses in the arts and sciences produce significantly greater gains in critical thinking than do business majors...the result [attributed] to the fact that students in the sciences study the most hours an students in the humanities read and write the most."
(Bill Destler) "measuring colleges by graduates' salaries 'falsely equates quality education with gainful employment upon graduation." Or, as a writer in Forbes observed, the devaluation of the humanities relative to vocational and technical programs 'presage[s[ a dismal, corporatization of education, where 'work' is the only goal for every student and 'productivity' is the only measure of worth."
"The STEM rubric undermines the unity between the humanities and the natural sciences."
(Jill Lepore) "disruptive innovation is 'not a law of nature. It's an artifact of history, an idea, forged in time; it's the manufacture of a moment of upsetting and edgy uncertainty. Transfixed by change, it's blind to continuity."
"The best colleges sustain ways of thinking and doing that are threatened in a society dominated by utilitarian and pragmatic modes of thought."
"I have had many privileged students, too, who approach their education instrumentally, seeking good grades, perhaps, but not an education."
"The academy is not the university; the university has simply been a home for academics. College and university education in our country is increasingly not academic: it is vocational; it is commercial; it is becoming anti-intellectual; and, more and more, it is offering standardized products that seek to train and certify rather than to educate people. In turn, an increasing proportion of academics, especially in the humanities, have become adjuncts, marginalized by colleges' and universities' growing emphasis on producing technical workers."
[The defense of critical thinking reflects a] "capitulation of academics to utilitarian and pragmatic pressures."
"Critical thinking...isolated from meaningful subject matter is unimportant." (I don't think I can fully agree with this strong assertion.)
"One has to know things to answer things."
(!!!) This seemingly tautology is, unfortunately, not true—many people answer things without attendant knowledge—just not correctly.
"The quality of intellectual experiences—not just the mastery of competencies—is at the heart of a serious college education. 'College education,' philosopher Gary Gutting writes, 'is a proliferation of such possibilities: the beauty of mathematical discovery, the thrill of scientific understanding, the fascination of historical narrative, the mystery of theological speculation. We should judge teaching not by the amount of knowledge it passes on, but by the enduring excitement it generates."
"Tal Brewer has written that the very notion of business school is an 'oxymoron.' The word scholar derives from the Greek word for leisure. Schools are places where people step aside from the world of need—from the world of business—to engage in reflection."
"Students taking courses in the arts and sciences produce significantly greater gains in critical thinking than do business majors...the result [attributed] to the fact that students in the sciences study the most hours an students in the humanities read and write the most."
(Bill Destler) "measuring colleges by graduates' salaries 'falsely equates quality education with gainful employment upon graduation." Or, as a writer in Forbes observed, the devaluation of the humanities relative to vocational and technical programs 'presage[s[ a dismal, corporatization of education, where 'work' is the only goal for every student and 'productivity' is the only measure of worth."
"The STEM rubric undermines the unity between the humanities and the natural sciences."
(Jill Lepore) "disruptive innovation is 'not a law of nature. It's an artifact of history, an idea, forged in time; it's the manufacture of a moment of upsetting and edgy uncertainty. Transfixed by change, it's blind to continuity."
"The best colleges sustain ways of thinking and doing that are threatened in a society dominated by utilitarian and pragmatic modes of thought."
"I have had many privileged students, too, who approach their education instrumentally, seeking good grades, perhaps, but not an education."
"The academy is not the university; the university has simply been a home for academics. College and university education in our country is increasingly not academic: it is vocational; it is commercial; it is becoming anti-intellectual; and, more and more, it is offering standardized products that seek to train and certify rather than to educate people. In turn, an increasing proportion of academics, especially in the humanities, have become adjuncts, marginalized by colleges' and universities' growing emphasis on producing technical workers."
[The defense of critical thinking reflects a] "capitulation of academics to utilitarian and pragmatic pressures."
"Critical thinking...isolated from meaningful subject matter is unimportant." (I don't think I can fully agree with this strong assertion.)
"One has to know things to answer things."
(!!!) This seemingly tautology is, unfortunately, not true—many people answer things without attendant knowledge—just not correctly.