"Resolving the Crisis in Higher Education: The Key Role of Business Continuity Planning" asks and answers probing questions affecting higher education in the post-COVID-19 educational landscape. The book examines whether private universities, particularly liberal arts colleges, have viable business models and discusses the risk posed by…

Every year, millions of students take Advanced Placement (AP) exams hoping to score enough points to earn college credit and save on their tuition bill. But are they getting a real college education? The College Board says that AP classes and exams make the AP program more accessible and represent a step forward for educational justice. But the…

"Honors Colleges in the 21st Century" contains the work of 56 authors representing 45 different institutions, which makes this the largest and most comprehensive group of honors leaders ever to appear in print together discussing honors colleges. Particularly notable is the fact that eleven of the chapters are co-authored by individuals…

In the United States, colleges and universities have traditionally undertaken the important task of preparing citizens to participate fully and effectively in the civic, political, and economic spheres of the republican system. They have done so by joining a general education curriculum--common to all students--to an area of specialized knowledge,…

Ten years ago, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) gathered data on 100 colleges from the U.S. News & World Report's annual list of "Best Colleges and Universities." ACTA questioned whether these elite institutions were requiring their students to take rigorous, college-level courses in the core areas crucial for…

Inquiry-driven learners anticipate, embrace, and adapt to disruptive change. Clifton Conrad and Laura Dunek advance a transformative purpose of a college education. They invite stakeholders from across higher education to engage in vigorous dialogue about the aims of a college education--and how to realize those aims. Increasingly influenced by…

Mark Van Doren, the noted literary scholar, once remarked, "The college is meaningless without a curriculum, but it is more so when it has one that is meaningless." Many current critics of undergraduate curricula in America assent to the crucial need for programmatic renewal in our colleges and universities. They bemoan the cookie-cutter…

This book presents four major articles and 10 brief book reviews concerning the liberal arts in higher education. An introduction by the editors, "Liberal Education: Initiating the Conversation," precedes the articles. The articles are: (1) "The Classical Liberal Arts Tradition" (Christopher Flannery and Rae Wineland Newstad); (2) "Modern and…

This book provides a study of the historical evolution of the idea of liberal education. The volume portrays this evolution as a struggle between two contending points of view--one oratorical and the other philosophical--that have interacted, often controversially, from antiquity to present. The study attempts to shed light on the meaning of the…

The general question of what an undergraduate education is and how it should be related, if at all, to society as a whole, is discussed. Particular reference is given to the issue of liberal education and its relationship with career education. The thesis is that, although career education and liberal education may be incompatible in a specific…

This book argues that if we lose our knowledge of the Greek classics, we lose our understanding of Western culture and who we are. Familiarity with the literature, art, and philosophy of the classical world has been synonymous with "education" in the West for over two millennia. The Greek tenets of democracy, capitalism, materialism, personal…

The development of a national database describing the real undergraduate curriculum, the courses that college and university students actually take, is reported. Based on analyses of student transcripts from 30 public and private institutions of varying sizes, this report provides a rationale for the database; analyzes student choices across the…

This book examines the American experience in liberal education and demonstrates that there has been a "crisis" surrounding the curriculum of the modern U.S. university for the past two centuries. It points out where and how contemporary critics of the curriculum are wrong, historically speaking, and shows how American ideals of "liberal…

In the early twentieth century, Alexander Meiklejohn believed the undergraduate college must teach students how to think. He aspired to make students into thinking, caring, active citizens with the intellectual skills to participate in a democratic society. In 1927, with the founding of the Experimental College at the University of Wisconsin, he…

"The Experimental College" tells the story of a 4-year academic experiment at the University of Wisconsin established by Alexander Meiklejohn. Aimed at finding a method of teaching that would help students develop "intelligence in the conduct of their own lives," the Experimental College discarded major requirements,…