The Liberal Arts College Adapting to Change

The Liberal Arts College Adapting to Change
Author: Gary Bonvillian
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2014-02-04
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1135589267

Social, economic, and market conditions have posed a serious threat to the survival of small schools. This book focuses on the adaptation of small, private, and predominantly liberal arts colleges to the changing conditions and demands of higher education. The ability of small schools to remain a force in the American system of higher education is a compelling story and an example of the strategic management of academic organizations. The history and accomplishments of one school in particular, Keuka College in New York State, is profiled in detail, with emphasis on the role of the administration and the faculty in institutional decision-making. The study found that the increasing pressures to respond quickly to external conditions require a willingness to make decisions that often challenge traditional norms in the relationship between administration and faculty. The book also examines recent initiatives of other schools to competitively position themselves Accepting the reality that all colleges and universities compete for students, small schools have demonstrated an extraordinary ability to apply new and creative management practices, many of which are examined in the book. In addition to academic leaders, other audiences such as boards, faculty, historians and scholars of higher education will find the book a valuable reference.

The Liberal Arts College Adapting to Change

The Liberal Arts College Adapting to Change
Author: Gary Bonvillian
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 253
Release: 1996
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780815319467

First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs

The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs
Author: Richard A. Detweiler
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2021-11-23
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0262543109

Empirical evidence for the value of a liberal arts education: how and why it has a lasting impact on success, leadership, altruism, learning, and fulfillment. In ongoing debates over the value of a college education, the role of the liberal arts in higher education has been blamed by some for making college expensive, impractical, and even worthless. Defenders argue that liberal arts education makes society innovative, creative, and civic-minded. But these qualities are hard to quantify, and many critics of higher education call for courses of study to be strictly job-specific. In this groundbreaking book, Richard Detweiler, drawing on interviews with more than 1,000 college graduates aged 25 to 65, offers empirical evidence for the value of a liberal arts education. Detweiler finds that a liberal arts education has a lasting impact on success, leadership, altruism, learning, and fulfillment over a lifetime. Unlike other defenders of a liberal arts education, Detweiler doesn’t rely on philosophical arguments or anecdotes but on data. He developed a series of interview questions related to the content attributes of liberal arts (for example, course assignments and majors), the context attributes (out-of-class interaction with faculty and students, teaching methods, campus life), and the purpose attributes (adult life outcomes). Interview responses show that although both the content of study and the educational context are associated with significant life outcomes, the content of study has less relationship to positive adult life outcomes than the educational context. The implications of this research, Detweiler points out, range from the advantages of broadening areas of study to factors that could influence students’ decisions to attend certain colleges.

Colleges That Change Lives

Colleges That Change Lives
Author: Loren Pope
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2006-07-25
Genre: Study Aids
ISBN: 1101221348

Prospective college students and their parents have been relying on Loren Pope's expertise since 1995, when he published the first edition of this indispensable guide. This new edition profiles 41 colleges—all of which outdo the Ivies and research universities in producing performers, not only among A students but also among those who get Bs and Cs. Contents include: Evaluations of each school's program and "personality" Candid assessments by students, professors, and deans Information on the progress of graduates This new edition not only revisits schools listed in previous volumes to give readers a comprehensive assessment, it also addresses such issues as homeschooling, learning disabilities, and single-sex education.

The Post-Pandemic Liberal Arts College

The Post-Pandemic Liberal Arts College
Author: Steve Volk
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 108
Release: 2020-12-08
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1948742985

A succinct and impassioned call to reimagine the small liberal arts college, by two veteran educators. Private liberal arts colleges have struggled for decades; now, as the COVID-19 pandemic widens cracks latent in many American

In Defense of a Liberal Education

In Defense of a Liberal Education
Author: Fareed Zakaria
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 93
Release: 2015-03-30
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0393247694

CNN host and best-selling author Fareed Zakaria argues for a renewed commitment to the world’s most valuable educational tradition. The liberal arts are under attack. The governors of Florida, Texas, and North Carolina have all pledged that they will not spend taxpayer money subsidizing the liberal arts, and they seem to have an unlikely ally in President Obama. While at a General Electric plant in early 2014, Obama remarked, "I promise you, folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree." These messages are hitting home: majors like English and history, once very popular and highly respected, are in steep decline. "I get it," writes Fareed Zakaria, recalling the atmosphere in India where he grew up, which was even more obsessed with getting a skills-based education. However, the CNN host and best-selling author explains why this widely held view is mistaken and shortsighted. Zakaria eloquently expounds on the virtues of a liberal arts education—how to write clearly, how to express yourself convincingly, and how to think analytically. He turns our leaders' vocational argument on its head. American routine manufacturing jobs continue to get automated or outsourced, and specific vocational knowledge is often outdated within a few years. Engineering is a great profession, but key value-added skills you will also need are creativity, lateral thinking, design, communication, storytelling, and, more than anything, the ability to continually learn and enjoy learning—precisely the gifts of a liberal education. Zakaria argues that technology is transforming education, opening up access to the best courses and classes in a vast variety of subjects for millions around the world. We are at the dawn of the greatest expansion of the idea of a liberal education in human history.

Distinctively American

Distinctively American
Author: Stephen R. Graubard
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2017-07-05
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1351522078

There is much change underway in American higher education. New technologies are challenging the teaching practices of yesterday, distance learning is lauded, and private firms offer to certify the educational credentials that businesses and others will deem satisfactory. In this new environment, America's liberal arts colleges propound a quite different set of values. Their continuing faith in the liberal arts--not as the nineteenth century chose to define them but as the twenty-first century will be obliged to reconsider them--is being tested.Distinctively American examines the American liberal arts college as an institution, from its role in the lives of students, to its value as a form of education. It explores the threats faced by liberal arts colleges as well as the transformative role, both positive and negative, information technology will play in their future development and survival. In the preface introducing the volume, Stephen Graubard examines the history of the American liberal arts colleges, from their early disdained reputations in comparison to European schools, to their slow rise to becoming "world-class universities."This important volume explores the triumphs and challenges of one segment of the American higher educational universe. It also addresses a larger question: What ought this country be teaching its young, the many millions who now throng its colleges and universities? Distinctively American is essential reading for all concerned with the future of higher education.

America Goes to College

America Goes to College
Author: John E. Seery
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0791487520

A rallying cry on behalf of a distinctly American institution of higher learning—the small liberal arts college—America Goes to College combines broad-based scholarship with personal narrative and reflection. In a highly entertaining manner, John E. Seery showcases the precarious successes of a well-rounded liberal arts college education, while at the same time signaling some of the dangers that loom on the horizon. Seery contends that the liberal arts are best pursued within the face-to-face interactive setting, characteristic of the small college classroom, as opposed to the large university lecture hall. Moreover and more provocatively, he identifies political theorists as the proper custodians and practitioners of the liberal arts tradition as it unfolds today. It is the unfettered freedom of the small liberal arts college, where vision and practice can actually coincide, that makes it the embodiment of the advantages of the American higher education system—a national treasure deserving of support.

Writing Program Administration at Small Liberal Arts Colleges

Writing Program Administration at Small Liberal Arts Colleges
Author: Jill M. Gladstein
Publisher: Parlor Press LLC
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2012-03-19
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1602353069

WRITING PROGRAM ADMINISTRATION AT SMALL LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES presents an empirical study of the writing programs at one hundred small, private liberal arts colleges. Jill M. Gladstein and Dara Rossman Regaignon provide detailed information about a type of writing program not often highlighted in the scholarly record and offer a model for such national, multi-institutional research.