For the Common Good

Abstract

Are colleges and universities in a period of unprecedented disruption? Is a bachelor's degree still worth the investment? What, exactly, is higher education good for? This book challenges the rhetoric of America's so-called crisis in higher education by investigating two centuries of college and university history. From the community college to the elite research university—in states from California to Maine—the book engages a fundamental question confronted by higher education institutions ever since the nation's founding: Do colleges and universities contribute to the common good? Tracking changes in the prevailing social ethos between the late eighteenth and early twenty-first centuries, the book illustrates the ways in which civic-mindedness, practicality, commercialism, and affluence influenced higher education's dedication to the public good. Each ethos, long a part of American history and tradition, came to predominate over the others during one of the four chronological periods examined in the book, informing the character of institutional debates and telling the definitive story of its time. The book demonstrates how two hundred years of political, economic, and social change prompted transformation among colleges and universities—including the establishment of entirely new kinds of institutions—and refashioned higher education in the United States over time in essential and often vibrant ways.

Why Does the U.S. Have the Best Research Universities? Incentives, Resources, and Virtuous Circles

“…This irritated Jane Stanford, whose fortune partially derived from her late husband's investment into railroads built using Chinese labor. She accused Ross of aiding the vilest elements of socialism, and pressured President David Jordan to terminate Ross (Dorn, 2017). Jordan obtained Ross's resignation (1900), but at the cost of bad press and eight additional faculty departures.…”

“…which features a base wage and bonuses paid as a function of the individual and the relative performance measures. 16 Let p = { w, b i , b f } summarize the contract oered by the university.…”

“…It would be possible to add an additional subscript t to γ, exploring over-time variation. We leave that for future work 16. We have assumed that measures are normally distributed, and hence this equation can be viewed as a measure of log wages.…”

Supporting Students on the (Academic) Margins: An Equity-Driven Framework

“…American higher education institutions are "obsessed with smartness" (Astin, 2017), yet fail to support educational attainment in an equitable manner. Educational inequality has its roots in PK-12 education (Dorn, 2017;Ladson-Billings, 2007) particularly as it relates to deficit ideology. The manifestations of deficit ideology in higher education are most starkly seen in how students on academic warning (also intersection of communication and education, specifically through the lens of equity and social justice.…”

Modelo conceptual dirigido a docentes para explorar el bien común en las instituciones de educación superior

“…transformación de la enseñanza superior en África (Jeynes, 2007). Puede ser una parte fundamental del plan de estudios de las IES, sobre todo en asignaturas como enfermería, educación y algunas asignaturas de ciencias sociales que proporcionan formación profesional para el ejercicio profesional que implica el compromiso con la comunidad, o puede ser una opción única dentro de un programa modular (Dorn, 2017).…”