Princeton University Press
Higher Education in America
Key Metrics
- Derek Bok
- Princeton University Press
- Hardcover
- 9780691159140
- 9.3 X 6.6 X 1.4 inches
- 1.85 pounds
- Education > Higher
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
A sweeping assessment of the state of higher education today from former Harvard president Derek Bok
Higher Education in America is a landmark work--a comprehensive and authoritative analysis of the current condition of our colleges and universities from former Harvard president Derek Bok, one of the nation's most respected education experts. Sweepingly ambitious in scope, this is a deeply informed and balanced assessment of the many strengths as well as the weaknesses of American higher education today. At a time when colleges and universities have never been more important to the lives and opportunities of students or to the progress and prosperity of the nation, Bok provides a thorough examination of the entire system, public and private, from community colleges and small liberal arts colleges to great universities with their research programs and their medical, law, and business schools. Drawing on the most reliable studies and data, he determines which criticisms of higher education are unfounded or exaggerated, which are issues of genuine concern, and what can be done to improve matters.
Some of the subjects considered are long-standing, such as debates over the undergraduate curriculum and concerns over rising college costs. Others are more recent, such as the rise of for-profit institutions and massive open online courses (MOOCs). Additional topics include the quality of undergraduate education, the stagnating levels of college graduation, the problems of university governance, the strengths and weaknesses of graduate and professional education, the environment for research, and the benefits and drawbacks of the pervasive competition among American colleges and universities.
Offering a rare survey and evaluation of American higher education as a whole, this book provides a solid basis for a fresh public discussion about what the system is doing right, what it needs to do better, and how the next quarter century could be made a period of progress rather than decline.
Author Bio
Derek Bok is the 300th Anniversary University Research Professor at Harvard University. He served as the twenty-fifth president of Harvard from 1971 to 1991, and as interim president from 2006 to 2007. His many books include The Struggle to Reform Our Colleges, Higher Education in America, Our Underachieving Colleges, and The Shape of the River (all Princeton).
Derek Curtis Bok (born March 22, 1930) is an American lawyer and educator, and the acting president of Harvard University. He was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Stanford University (B.A. 1951), Harvard Law School (LL.B. 1954), and George Washington University (A.M. 1958). He taught at Harvard from 1958, where he served as dean of the law school (1968-1971) and then as university president (1971-1991). Bok currently serves as the Faculty Chair at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard and continues to teach at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He reassumed the presidency of the university on an interim basis after Larry Summers’ resignation took effect on July 1, 2006. He expects to have the job for about a year.
His wife, the sociologist and philosopher Sissela Bok, née Myrdal (daughter of the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal and the politician and diplomat Alva Myrdal, both Nobel laureates), is also affiliated with Harvard, where she received her doctorate in 1970. His daughter, Hilary Bok, is a philosophy professor at Johns Hopkins University.
Source: Princeton University Press and wikipedia.org
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