Resources

One of my favorite cartoons depicts a bowling pin on a psychiatrist's coach. There is a diploma on the wall, a plant in the corner, and a therapist with notepad sitting behind the disconcerted bowling pin character. The caption has...

This book contains an introduction by the editors and eleven papers from the Consortium of Higher Education Researchers (CHER) conference in Lausanne in September, 2014. The first five papers address arguments over the rationales for public funding of higher education, especially in current political contexts: “How Do University, Higher Education and Research Contribute to Societal Well-being?” by Michèle Lamont, “A Persian Grandee in Lausanne” by Sheldon Rothblatt, “A New Social Contract for Higher Education?” by Peter Maassen, “Higher Education and Public Good: A Global Study” by Simon Marginson, and “Defending Knowledge as the Public Good of Higher Education” by Joanna Williams. The remaining six papers focus on regional or national developments: “Partisan Politics in Higher Education Policy: How Does the Left-Right Divide of Political Parties Matter in Higher Education Policy in Western Europe?” by Jens Jungblut, “Access Equity and Regional Development: a Norwegian Tale” by Rómulo Pinheiro, “Shrinking Higher Education Systems: Portugal, Figures, and Policies” by Madalena Fonseca, Sara Encarnação, and Elsa Justino, “Pathways to Higher Education in France and Switzerland: Do Vocational Tracks Faciliate Access to Higher Education for Immigrant Students?” by Jake Murdoch, Christine Guégnard, Maarten Koomen, Christian Imdorf, and Sandra Hupka-Brunner, “The Development of the Québec Higher Education System: Why At-risk College Students Remain a Political Priority” by France Picard, Pierre Canisius Kamanzi, and Julie Labrosse, and “Engineering Access to Higher Education through Higher Education Fairs” by Agnès Van Zanten and Amélia Legavre. The editors ground the collection in social contract theory, specifically the claim that higher education should foster equality of opportunity (2). Many of the chapters discuss how that goal is being problematized and privatized by political pressure to emphasize education’s economic benefits to individuals and society in a knowledge-based economy in place of other kinds of personal and public goods, such as an informed citizenry. These political shifts have the effect of calling peer review into question as the standard for evaluating academic research because different generations of researchers may emphasize different standards and measures of performance, and because public managers impose their own criteria (13). These articles document some paradoxical developments, such as declining student demand for science and engineering courses in some countries (139). They also illustrate how the increasing internationalization of higher education standards, through processes internal to the European Union and also due to the rising prominence of international rankings, puts disproportionate pressure on humanistic disciplines that tend to emphasize national or regional topics (12). Higher Education in Societies provides an important reminder of the crucial role of national politics in formulating the goals and ideals, as well as the funding, of higher education. For this reader, it highlights by omission the unusual situation of American academics like myself who work for private colleges and universities, which disproportionately dominate the teaching of theology and religion in the U.S. (A complementary discussion of theology and religious studies in European universities appears now in Christoph Uehlinger’s “Is the Critical, Academic Study of the Bible Inextricably Bound to the Destinies of Theology,” in Open-Mindedness in the Bible and Beyond [Korpel and Grabbe: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2015], 287-302).

During a recent webinar on the topic of leadership I offered a list of important skills related to the topic at hand. The list included something along the lines of the need for a leader to be "politically astute." That...

During a recent conversation among deans they commiserated over how difficult it was to bring about changes in their schools. Despite their best efforts at communicating the need for change, cultivating support, and implementing strategies, change was happening too slow...

Topping’s book addresses implicitly his concern with contemporary misalignments in Catholic higher educational philosophy. He problematizes several trends that downplay truth-finding and inhibit the freedom of learning. It is his contention that education exists to guide students in learning to order their affections – ordo amoris – besides merely attending to the love of knowledge. For him, education should facilitate learners’ growth towards becoming whole persons. He claims that education is wrongheaded when its direct focus is only on developing skills and overcoming problems of incivility, toleration, and economic sustainability. His book makes clear a fear that in a highly de-Christianized western education, curricula can overestimate the value of the social sciences and overprize the importance of honing techniques, competencies, and self-esteem, and programs are ranked by what would benefit the economy and generate income for its graduates. He expresses this conviction in a variety of ways and contends that if these misaligned trends are not corrected, a crisis awaits the educational industry and even the progress of civilizations. Renewing the Mind is not a monograph devoted to defending an educational philosophy. Nonetheless, Topping invites rethinking current educational trends with a hope for substantive change. He introduces select humanist resources on education from classical antiquity, medieval and early modernity, along with papal writings by Leo XIII, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI. Excerpts include writings by Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Basil the Great, Bonaventure, Hugo of St. Victor, Aquinas, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Michael de Montaigne, Hyacinthe Sigismond Gerdil, John Henry Newman, Maria Montessori, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, and Christopher Dawson, among others. Readers will appreciate a bird’s-eye view of western educational ideology through the selected readings. These are organized in four parts: nine essays on aims of education, seven essays on matter of learning, nine essays on methods of teaching, and thirteen essays on renewing Christian orthodoxy, learning, curriculum, culture, and Catholic schooling in our milieu. Topping’s inclusion of Plato, Aristotle, Anglican Ronald Knox, and Protestant C. S. Lewis to represent “a philosophy of Catholic education” may puzzle some readers. Why did he not include other non-Catholic Christian thinkers in Catholic collection? Also, why did he collate a largely western, Eurocentric intellectual resource as a primer to the philosophy of Catholic education, when more Catholics today reside in Latin American and the Caribbean and only a quarter of Catholics live in Europe (Pew Research Study on Global Christianity, 2011)? There is no shortage of Catholic and non-Catholic thinkers from Latin America that are impacting Catholic higher education and the book could have benefited from their inclusion. If Topping hopes to reach an ecumenical readership and build bridges with non-Christian cultures, then the missing links of African, Asian, and Latin American Christian (and non-Christian) resources are necessary. If he would include pre-Christian Plato and Aristotle, why exclude Confucius and other schools of thought in other parts of the world on education, virtuous development, and ethics? Criticisms aside, the volume presents fine excerpts on pedagogy for parents, teachers, and administrators, and would be a good supplementary reader for an undergraduate course on the Catholic philosophy of education.

What is the unique value of higher education? What is effective instruction? Is there a cost crisis that is threatening the value and efficacy of higher education? Can technology offer a solution? These are a few of the questions posed by William Bowen and others in Higher Education in the Digital Age. This readable and thought-provoking book consists largely of lectures delivered by Bowen at Stanford University in 2012. The discussion of these issues is expanded to include other voices of leadership in higher education, all of whom contribute responses to Bowen’s original lectures. Bowen addresses the pressures facing university administrators who must balance all aspects of post-secondary education: cost to students, quality of education, financial support of research, and costs of personnel. The first two of three sections are lectures Bowen delivered at Stanford. The first lecture describes the economic issues facing institutions of higher education, including problems of affordability and the lack of productivity-increases in higher education compared to other industries. The second lecture implores leaders in higher education to address the dual issues of rising tuition and rising expenditures and to, at the very least, try to slow the rates of increase. His possible solutions look to technology (online or hybrid instruction) to increase productivity. In so doing, he opens up a larger discussion on what qualifies as actual learning and what costs (to quality of education and to funding for development and implementation) are acceptable. The discussion among higher education leaders and administrators in the third section of the book is its greatest value. The discussion hits on many of the economic and societal issues Bowen brings up: the flattening of family incomes, rising tuition rates, issues of completion rates, the pros and cons of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), and issues raised by the existence of for-profit degree-granting institutions. All of the authors come from top tier research institutions: Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, and Princeton. One wonders how different the conversation would be if more publicly-funded universities, smaller liberal arts colleges, or community colleges participated in the discussion. While some of the writers acknowledge this bias and seek to qualify it by examining data from other types of institutions, their solutions (that require a large amount of funding) seem removed from the reality at other institutions. In spite of this limitation, the authors of Higher Education ask questions that invite reflection and conversation, given the financial situation in which many institutions find themselves. What value do we offer our students? Will the drive to increase productivity take that value away? Does technology offer opportunities to improve education while also increasing productivity? Can online learning maintain what is most valuable in a liberal arts education? The solutions offered are not a total fix (by the authors’ own admission), but the dialogue initiated in Higher Education presents administrators, faculty, and staff with an opportunity to rethink and innovate traditional teaching methods.

This volume of twenty-one essays comes from the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education (POD) and is directed to faculty and institutional development staff, department chairs, faculty, deans, student services staff, chief academic officers, and educational consultants. Commensurate with their agenda to facilitate creative exploration, the essays are organized after they are collected, and arranged loosely by topic with about three essays per topic. The topics include developing new paradigms for faculty and professional development, tailoring faculty development to diverse audiences and partners, refining faculty development programs for maximum impact, reflecting on and advancing what developers do, responding to different graduate teaching assistants’ needs, enhancing student learning, and advancing new pedagogical concepts. The essays are written by educators and developers throughout the POD network and undergo a double-blind peer review system. As such, they do not deal with classroom teaching and application per se, but with ways to motivate, involve, measure, and prioritize self-reflective and critical development among educators. Several essays are of particular interest because they propose responses to changes emerging in higher education. Drawing on research into video games and their ability to attract and retain learners, for example, an essay by Kevin Yee encourages educators to apply game theory principles to course design (335-348). Even when instructors might not have the technical savvy to generate their own video game, they can apply the principles of successful gaming with low-tech options in their course design. For example, instructors might design learning opportunities that are narratives (such as a case study or an urgent problem that needs to be solved), have calibrated difficulty and rapid feedback response (such as online quizzes that can be taken until they reach 100 percent), employ diversions (such as add-on TED talks), and generate competition. Another essay, by Al Rudnitsky et al., describes a college-wide multiyear professional development effort that addressed the need for instructors to adapt their expertise to changing needs of students (127-143). It examines how instructors at Smith College formed a process-oriented (rather than skill-based approach) faculty learning community that explored recent research on how people learn, applying it both in their classrooms and in their learning community. They applied such principles as these: ultimately learning depends on what learners do, not what teachers do; existing knowledge has a profound effect on learners’ current thinking and learning; effective learners are metacognitive in that they set goals, self-monitor, and self-regulate; and learning is socially situated and mediated; the instructor’s task is to design complex learning environments and motivate students through evaluation. They contend,  “understanding and deep learning that allow for better knowledge transfer and preparation for future learning are privileged educational outcomes” (133). The goal of the process, they found, was to build knowledge through discourse, idea improvement, and collective cognitive responsibility (135). In a third essay worth noting, Michael J. Zeig and Roger G. Baldwin describe concrete recommendations to help senior faculty (sixty-plus years, about 33 percent of professors in the U.S.) develop new meaning and purpose in this phase of their academic life. They suggest that senior faculty reflect on the priorities of their career and identify what resources they need, reconsider what success means in late career, seek out co-mentoring opportunities (in which younger faculty members share their expertise with their mentors, especially in technology), and plan their own professional development. Administrators, deans, and chairs need to see senior faculty members as individuals, maintain reasonable expectations, provide relevant development opportunities, and recognize and appreciate achievement (83-86). This volume is a valuable resource, with a rich bounty of essays geared to building, sustaining, evaluating, and promoting faculty development programs.

David Watson wades deeply into the various discourses on the state of higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UK (he also examines HEIs in the US and elsewhere), their problems and their prospects, to examine what HEIs say that they do for and to their most important members, award-seeking students. This self-critical look at what he calls “my trade” is for Watson a matter of the “question of conscience” or higher education’s role in shaping students’ moral and civic character. This relatively short book consists of eight dense chapters on Watson’s evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the best research literature on what higher education seeks to do through at least five lenses: the “evolutionary” stages of modern university history; the sense participants and observers try to make of them in terms of institutional narratives; the types of “capital” generated by their activities; the chosen pedagogical approaches; and a declared set of “purposes” or intended personal transformations. Titled, “What Does Higher Education Do? A Historical and Philosophical Overview,” the first chapter uses geography as a metaphor to demonstrate that the claims made by the modern universities (post-thirteenth-century) for their existence are previously laid geographical layers, some closer to the surface than others (1). Watson explores one of the earliest layers of university purposes: “that of maintaining, enhancing, and subjecting to supportive criticism the goal of ethical – especially doctrinal instruction” in Chapter 2 where the book gets its title (22). This chapter is arguably the one most relevant for teaching theology and religion. He traces how the university went from being a place for teaching doctrinal allegiances to being a secular place for personal and collective virtue. With the exception of some seminaries, HEIs today have largely eschewed doctrinal allegiances for a more inclusive ethos that embraces those from many faiths or no faiths at all. This does not mean that universities have become completely secular; to the contrary, the former university Chaplain has now become the Student Life Officer (26-27). Watson argues that “wariness about moral education” was replaced with a concern that there had been a decline in ethical behavior in business, professional, and political life (32). Therefore, HEIs evolved to teaching for “character.” The remaining chapters explore the other claims made by HEIs for what they do, including preparing students for vocation (43), rounded or “soft” citizenship (58), capability, and lifelong learning (65). The final chapter, “Higher Education and Personal Responsibility,” is Watson’s theory for what higher education should do: prepare students to exercise personal judgment in difficult circumstances, or “cultivate humanity” (100, 108). If taking this book to heart, it would bode well for those faculty members in theological and religious studies in the liberal arts to look critically at what our institutions exist to do and how we participate in that mission.

Henry Giroux’s well-researched Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education is an unapologetic reminder of what is at stake for institutions of higher education and the academy: “Privatization, commodification, militarization, and deregulation are the new guiding categories through which schools, teachers, pedagogy, and students are defined” (36). Giroux reminds us that education is not politically neutral and that neoliberal ideas are driving how and what professors are allowed to teach. According to Giroux, “This pedagogy of market-driven illiteracy has eviscerated the notion of freedom, turning it largely into the desire to consume and invest exclusively in relationships that serve only one’s individual interests. Losing one’s individuality is now tantamount to losing one’s ability to consume. . . Shallow consumerism coupled with an indifference to the needs and suffering of others has produced a politics of disengagement and a culture of moral irresponsibility”(6). Giroux’s concern is that institutions of higher education have moved away from being places of intellectual and civic development and instead have become market-driven businesses. Students and professors are no longer allowed to engage in the art of democracy and ideas, rather students have come to be seen as consumers and professors as cheap labor. According to Giroux, “What is particularly troubling in US society is the absence of the vital formative cultures necessary to construct questioning persons who are capable of seeing through the consumer come-ons, who can dissent and act collectively in an increasingly imperiled democracy” (70). This book should be read by anyone dedicated to higher education, but it is especially useful for those teaching in the humanities. Many faculty in the humanities have been forced to sell themselves and their programs in business language to deans and presidents who are under constant stress to find funding, some going as far as finding corporate or wealthy sponsors to fund departments. In such an environment, disciplines such as philosophy, religious studies, and theological studies can be seen as irrelevant and unnecessary. Giroux’s response is to develop critical pedagogies and to encourage faculty to reclaim their roles as public intellectuals. “[A]cademics have an ethical and pedagogical responsibility not only to unsettle and oppose all orthodoxies, to make problematic the commonsense assumptions that often shape students’ lives and their understanding of the world, but also to energize them to come to terms with their own power as individual and social agents” (99). Faculty must model this behavior in their teaching and intellectual endeavors and become “border-crossers”(101). For those teaching in religion, theology, and philosophy, Giroux’s book is important because contemporary higher education classes are where students ask critical questions. Many of their questions are moral and ethical and have political implications. Contemporary humanities classrooms may be one of the only places on campus where students are not told what to memorize or the regulations needed to become better pre-professionals. Giroux forces teachers to think about how they teach and why they teach. For him, teachers have the responsibility to ask students to think and act differently for shaping the world. Giroux’s hope is that teachers will raise up a generation of democratically-minded and justice-oriented citizens. Henry Giroux’s Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education is a welcome resource for faculty facing retrenchment, a loss of democratic value-based curricula, or who want to better understand how policies, politics, and the economy are connected to the future of higher education. The author provides examples of how faculty and students have responded to neoliberalism and a corporate model of higher education.