Our country is faced with a financial crisis of mammoth proportions: a crisis rooted in ethics, or rather, the lack of ethics. Critics are increasingly complaining that business schools focus too much teaching effort on maximizing shareholder value, with only a limited understanding of ethical and social aspects of business leadership. Business…

A typology of the vocational intent of various college courses, or the stated objectives and curricula of courses as they relate to specific occupational fields is proposed that makes distinctions about vocational specificity, selection for employment, and training for employment. (MSE)

Cornell University (New York) was among the first to remove normative religious instruction and mandatory religious practice from their previous pervasiveness in higher education. This has removed from the university the responsibility for safeguarding the cultural authority of religion and allowed religion to enter the realm of ideas to be…

Theology deserves a place in the life of a university, as a subject of inquiry and as an area of scholarly interest in many disciplines, alongside more technical areas of study. Maintenance of democratic values requires the broad understanding that study of religion can help develop. (MSE)

Discusses Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind" and its implications for higher education. Examines Bloom's analysis of historical changes that involved universities in societal pressures, thereby weakening them. Supports Bloom's mandate that universities delineate their function and measure achievement against the fundamental…

Steps in making a higher education institution a multicultural place of learning include expressing mission in terms of human cultures, developing faculty for excellence in multiculturalism, evaluating curricula with regard to different ways human cultures have focused on issues, ensuring that perspectives offered are not monocultural, and…

It is argued that ethics should be taught in general and subject-specific curricula in Australian universities and that recent developments in Australia give ethics-enhanced priority. Current initiatives and specific administrative and instructional issues are discussed. An interdisciplinary approach to applied ethics instruction is advocated over…

The loss of balance among the functions of the research university (instruction, basic and applied research, and professional training and service) produces a crisis of values. Many of the university's problems can be traced to this disequilibrium. Without increasing the value placed on teaching, curricular reform will be ineffectual. (MSE)

A model for a more student-centered research university is proposed, a central feature of which is the student-centered course, designed to be less faculty-focused and to have more impact on student learning. Ten key actions needed to create this institutional form are outlined. Common faculty objections to the model are also discussed. (MSE)

This paper argues that the current interest in service learning provides universities with a unique opportunity to engage their students in community service, expand their educational agenda, and build reciprocal partnerships with the community. Specific activities for implementation of such a program are delineated for the four constituencies of…

This book includes a selection of essays, narratives, and syllabi from the New Jersey Project, which, since 1986, has been pioneering the statewide transformation of the college curriculum away from the androcentric and Eurocentric canon toward an inclusive, nonsexist, nonracist, and multicultural curriculum. Part 1 describes the genesis and…

Historical trends in American postsecondary education and policy issues for the 1980s are discussed. It is noted that at the same time that access to higher education has been increased, there has been a commitment to diversity in colleges. Along with increased numbers of college-aged persons in the 1960s, the U.S. Government, illustrating a…