The ongoing digital revolution has created a complex and interconnected ecosystem that is fundamentally reshaping how we learn and communicate. Yet, despite its transformative potential, this digital ecosystem has so far had less of an impact on formal education than on other sectors of our society. Authors Randy Bass and Bret Eynon explore the…

Calls for closer connections among disciplines can be heard throughout the world of scholarly research, from major universities to the National Institutes of Health. "In Defense of Disciplines" presents a fresh and daring analysis of the argument surrounding interdisciplinarity. Challenging the belief that blurring the boundaries between…

Business is the largest undergraduate major in the United States and still growing. This reality, along with the immense power of the business sector and its significance for national and global well-being, makes quality education critical not only for the students themselves but also for the public good. The Carnegie Foundation for the…

Comparative research on higher education in developing and transitional countries is often focused on such issues as access, finance, student mobility and the impact of globalization, but there has been little attention to curriculum and the forces that shape it. Confronting Challenges to the Liberal Arts Curriculum fills an important gap in the…

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…

Over the coming decades, every academic discipline will have to respond to the paradigm of more sustainable life practices because students will be living in a world challenged by competition for resources and climate change, and will demand that every academic discipline demonstrate substantial and corresponding relevance. This book takes as its…

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…

In response to some educators' advocacy of a return to a "core curriculum" (a specific set of courses required by all degree-bound college students), this book maintains that the simple acquisition of broad-based knowledge is not the solution to the complex and difficult problems in higher education today. It presents views of the "educated…

The results of several studies of the humanities and social sciences in undergraduate engineering education are presented and discussed. The first chapter explains the value of humanities and social sciences coursework and describes briefly some of the obstacles confronting efforts to improve it. The second chapter summarizes the findings of two…

Starting from Newman's concept of the university as a place of liberal education, this book examines how today's university functions, what its aims should be and what its strengths and deficiencies are, and presents some proposals for reform. It is argued that liberal education remains the core of university studies, although it is advocated that…

This book provides a collection of 19 essays that discuss curricular change in higher education regarding ethnic and women's studies, and presents the theoretical and practical bases for accomplishing this restyling. The papers and authors are as follows: "The Difficult Dialogue of Curriculum Transformation: Ethnic Studies and Women's Studies"…

Factors that distinguish the United States higher education system and its performance are considered, with attention to new developments, propsects for change, undergraduate education, and professional schools (especially law, business, and medicine). The way universities change the methods and content of their teaching in response to new…