A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities
by Mark C. Taylor
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Readers' rating:
Published Aug 2010
256 pages
Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion
Publication Information
A provocative look at the troubled present state of American higher education and a passionately argued and learned manifesto for its future.
In Crisis on Campus, Mark C. Taylor—chair of the Department of Religion at Columbia University and a former professor at Williams College—expands on and refines the ideas presented in his widely read and hugely controversial 2009 New York Times op-ed. His suggestions for the ivory tower are both thought-provoking and rigorous: End tenure. Restructure departments to encourage greater cooperation among existing disciplines. Emphasize teaching rather than increasingly rarefied research. And bring that teaching to new domains, using emergent online networks to connect students worldwide.
As a nation, he argues, we fail to make such necessary and sweeping changes at our peril. Taylor shows us the already-rampant consequences of decades of organizational neglect. We see promising graduate students in a distinctly unpromising job market, relegated—if they’re lucky—to positions that take little advantage of their training and talent. We see recent undergraduates with massive burdens of debt, and anxious parents anticipating the inflated tuitions we will see in ten or twenty years. We also see students at all levels chafing under the restrictions of traditional higher education, from the structures of assignments to limits on courses of study. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Accommodating the students of today and anticipating those of tomorrow, attuned to schools’ financial woes and the skyrocketing cost of education, Taylor imagines a new system—one as improvisational, as responsive to new technologies and as innovative as are the young members of the iPod and Facebook generation.
In Crisis on Campus, we have an iconoclastic, necessary catalyst for a national debate long overdue.
"Taylor's tone is neither whimsical nor utopian ... He writes with urgency and conviction ... Highly provocative and certain to stimulate." - Kirkus Reviews
"His radical proposals notwithstanding, Taylor's dedication to scholarship and his concern for students is profound." - Publishers Weekly
"Sure to provoke heated debate, this book convincingly tells us what we don’t want to hear: our colleges and universities are no longer sustainable—either financially or programmatically. Mark Taylor provocatively calls for big changes, both in how we use technology to help deliver educational services and in the role of professors. We should pay attention, or we will pay an enormous price." - Joel Klein, Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education
"This is a book that needed to be written and one that must be read. Mark Taylor not only reveals an unclothed emperor; he also provides guidance to those of us who would properly serve as weavers. The only thing better than reading this book would be to have written it." - E. Gordon Gee, President of the Ohio State University
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Mark C. Taylor is chair of the Department of Religion at Columbia University, Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Union Theological Seminary and Professor Emeritus of Humanities at Williams College. His many awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Carnegie Foundation National Professor of the Year award. He is a frequent contributor to the op-ed page of The New York Times and has also written for the Los Angeles Times. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and New York City.
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