Bücher der Reihe Foundations of Higher Education

Based on three years of detailed anthropological observation, this account of undergraduate culture portrays students' academic relations to faculty and administration as one of subjection

Perhaps the pivotal book in the reform of higher education in the United States, Robert M. Hutchins' classic is once again available, with a brilliant personal and professional appreciation by Harry S. Ashmore. When it was published in 1936 The Higher Learning in America brought into focus the root causes of the controversies that still beset the nation's educational system. Hutchins began tenure as a university president by declaring that the learning available in even the most prestigious universities was grossly defi cient. The curricular reforms and administrative reorganization he undertook at Chicago are set forth in this volume, along with the philosophical arguments he worked out to explicate and defend his views.

Scientific Elite is about Nobel prize winners and the well-defined stratification system in twentieth-century science

Here is a light, pithy book on the familiar theme: "The humanities are in deep trouble." Walter Kaufmann, Professor of Philosophy at Princeton and advocate of humanism in his writings on philosophy, literature, religion, as well as through his own poetry and translations, is vexed that so many of his fellow academicians are indifferent to the nature, purpose, and fate of the humanities. He calls these professors "scholastics" because they pursue arcane knowledge and treat learning as "a kind of 'sport,' if not a game, or a racket." He accuses them, along with the "journalists," who purvey superficial and erroneous information, of undermining the stature of the humanities, but he believes that stature can be restored by making the goals and methods of the humanities explicit and demanding. The principal goal is "to teach vision," which is a sense of values and the meaning of experience, and this can be achieved only by scrutinizing language and ideas, developing critical thought, and constructing intellectual syntheses. Kaufmann does not offer these convictions as mere generalizations but embodies them in concrete pedagogical and scholarly proposals (with examples from his own teaching). He has also "leaned over backwards not to be gentle" to his enemies, so he is more specific, direct, and argumentative than educational writers usually are. Readers will not sleep through Kaufmann's pages, and even if they reject his ideas, they will lay the book aside wondering, as Kaufmann wants them to do: "What kind of future would we like to build?" (Kirkus Reviews)

When it was originally published, The Academic Man was the first full-scale social science-based study on the American academic profession

When this classic volume first appeared, academic freedom was a crucially important issue. It is equally so today. Hofstadter approaches the topic historically, showing how events from various historical epochs expose the degree of freedom in academic institutions. The volume exemplifies Richard Hofstader's qualities as a historian as well as his characteristic narrative ability. Hofstadter first describes the medieval university and how its political independence evolved from its status as a corporate body, establishing a precedent for intellectual freedom that has been a measuring rod ever since. He shows how all intellectual discourse became polarized with the onset of the Reformation. The gradual spread of the Moderate Enlightenment in the colonies led to a major advance for intellectual freedom. But with the beginning of the nineteenth century the rise of denominationalism in both new and established colleges reversed the progress, and the secularization of learning became engulfed by a tidal wave of intensifying piety. Roger L. Geiger's extensive new introduction evaluates Hofstadter's career as a historian and political theorist, his interest in academic freedom, and the continuing significance of Academic Freedom in the Age of the College. While most works about higher education treat the subject only as an agent of social economic mobility, Academic Freedom in the Age of the College is an enduring counterweight to such histories as it examines a more pressing issue: the fact that colleges and universities, at their best, should foster ideas at the frontiers of knowledge and understanding. This classic text will be invaluable to educators, university administrators, sociologist, and historians.

This is one of the most important books ever published about the American university

A revised edition of this chronicle of the history of student political activism in America dealing with periods of dramatic involvement including the anti-slavery movement, the Civil War, the depression and the 1960s; and also focusing on less active periods.

Reprint of the Oxford University Press edition of 1930, with a long new introduction by Clark Kerr