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Books > Social sciences > Education > Higher & further education > Universities / polytechnics
Traditionally, our society has broadly agreed that the "good university" should teach the intellectual skills students need to become citizens who are intelligently critical of their own beliefs and of the narratives presented politicians, society, the media, and, indeed, universities themselves. The freedom to debate is essential to the development of critical thought, but on university campuses today free speech is increasingly restricted for fear of causing "offense." In this daring and intrepid book, which was originally withdrawn from publication by another publisher but is now proudly presented by Academica Press, the famous intelligence researcher James R. Flynn presents the underlying factors that have circumscribed the range of ideas now tolerated in our institutions of learning. Flynn studiously examines how universities effectively censor teaching, how social and political activism effectively censors its opponents, and how academics censor themselves and each other. A Book Too Risky To Publish concludes that few universities are now living up to their original mission to promote free inquiry and unfettered critical thought. In an age marred by fake news and ever increasing social and political polarization, this book makes an impassioned argument for a return to critical thought in our institutions of higher education.
By the end of this decade, the U.S. economy will annually create hundreds of thousands of new jobs requiring a bachelor's degree in STEM fields, particularly computer science. This increasing need for computer scientists, coupled with an inconsistent agenda for managing dramatic shifts in the demographic landscape of higher education, compromises our competitiveness in scientific discovery and innovation. As higher education seeks to address this issue, the need for more culturally responsive approaches to undergraduate STEM teaching also increases.This book uses the power of reflection, storytelling, and data to holistically demonstrate the effectiveness of a novel professional development intervention for STEM faculty - Teaching to Increase Diversity and Equity in STEM, or TIDES - that significantly increased faculty self-efficacy in implementing culturally responsive pedagogies. In it, the editors combine the authentic voices of authors from multiple institutional contexts and individual worldviews to assimilate and synthesize broad theoretical concepts into practice in usable ways, while also offering concrete applicable examples of strategies and solutions that serve as an important comprehensive reference for all undergraduate educators and administrators. This practical guide provides a durable platform for building capacity in understanding of the cultural complexities and institutional realities of recruiting and retaining diverse students in STEM, particularly the computer sciences.
Brings together essays by tenure-track faculty, adjuncts, and graduate employees from a variety of disciplines and geographical regions in an analysis of the changing identity of academic labor. The essays included suggest alternatives for responding to the ongoing erosion of tenure and academic freedom and reshaping the academic workplace. Contributors discuss the impact of today's casualized academic job market on faculty's self-perception, political action, and responses to the changing nature of higher education. The essays included in this collection address a number of topics, including: today's academic labor situation from an educational history perspective, the development of an academic worker identity via the build-up to a strike, the graduate-employee union movement, unionization as a social justice movement, faculty unionization and workplace solidarity, the potential culture clash between professional and blue-collar unions, the faculty's complicity in the creation of a two-tiered job system, and the othering of adjunct and non-tenure-track faculty. By focusing on the state of the academic job system on their campuses, the contributors to this volume suggest some alternatives for responding to the ongoing erosion of tenure and academic freedom in higher education and reshaping the academic workplace.
Volume XXIX/2 of History of Universities contains the customary mix of learned articles and book reviews which makes this publication such an indispensable tool for the historian of higher education. This special issue, guest edited by Alexander Broadie, particularly focuses on Seventeenth-Century Scottish Philosophers and their Philosophy. The volume is, as always, a lively combination of original research and invaluable reference material.
*An engaging, practical guide written by leading experts in Indigenous higher education, Martin and Vicky Nakata *Provides guidance on the planning and implementation of an improved approach to supporting Indigenous students in higher education. *Presents a strengths-based approach to empowering Indigenous students to succeed in higher education.
This book develops a progressive program of engagement with issues, problems and critical thinking which helps universities and students understand and engage with some of the key issues of our time. It focuses on curriculum concerns, and presents a sustained and critical analysis and dialogue about knowledge, culture and ways of seeing important issues. This book provides critical and analytical insights into the importance of the emergence of mass higher education into public awareness. It explores what is termed 'contested knowledge' as part of modern students' experiences and expectations. By broadcasting some of the future prospects for a democratic university, especially in relation to its communities, it highlights the need to grasp the significance of global change and instability in teaching and learning, and how an adequate curriculum in higher education can be constructed to address the issues that arise.
In recent years, the federal government and private industry have entrusted universities to manage a considerable portion of their research portfolio. Many, but certainly not all, university research administrators come from the faculty ranks, and many have little or no formal training in this role. More often than not, they learn the profession "on the job." Some facets of research administration simply require either "common sense" or personal experience as a research-active faculty member. However, there are many other aspects that benefit from formal training. These include the historical and legal background behind many institutional and federal policies and regulations. Managing the Research University aims to fill that void by providing a comprehensive background and discussion of the issues and challenges of managing a university's research enterprise. It provides a thorough background to research administration, covering all of the main issues confronting academic research administrators.
Although both school-university transitions and cross-border transitions have been widely explored, comparatively little research has been conducted on those students who undergo both transitions at the same time. This book reports on a longitudinal qualitative study investigating the major issues faced by nine Mainland Chinese students during their first year at a Hong Kong university from the perspective of learner autonomy. It argues that the school-university transition is especially challenging for students going through a cross-border transition at the same time, which usually involves a linguistic and cultural adjustment, and challenges their autonomy in three domains: managing their personal lives; academic learning; and English learning. Adopting the perspective of autonomy enables us to better understand student transitions so that more appropriate support can be provided for this group. Given its scope, the book offers a valuable asset for educators at both the secondary and post-secondary levels, and underscores the need to help students bridge the gap between school and university, and thus advance along the continuum of autonomy more smoothly. It also has practical implications for students who are studying or intend to study abroad.
This book provides a unique study of the role of universities, as organisation systems, in the pursuit of the Europe 2020 strategy. While Europe 2020 focuses on creating the basis for the advancement and cohesion of the EU's member states, it also has an important role in influencing the development strategies for potential candidate states. In this regard, the book examines two new member states - Slovenia and Croatia - and two potential EU candidate states - Serbia and Kosovo - in the Western Balkans. Based on these cases, the author argues that the operationalization of the Europe 2020 strategy depends to a great extent of the role and contribution of tertiary organisations such as educational institutions, i.e. public and private universities, and therefore requires the formulation of an economic development strategy at the national level that is capable of duly allocating the available financial resources. The study suggests that the paradigm shift represented by Europe 2020 has helped to forge a new academic identity, adding to the relevance of university organisations as fundamental agents for the promotion of economic development; in addition, it shows that an intensive learning process involving major structural changes is underway in the four countries discussed, as well as many other EU member states.
In order to yield the expected benefits, sustainability initiatives need to be undertaken by means of a close cooperation between universities on the one hand, and societal partners on the others. The principle of co-creation and co-execution of sustainability initiatives increases the value for all by mutual learning, and the sharing of expertise and resources. But pursuing sustainability initiatives with a community and societal involvement is not simple. There is a perceived need for a better understanding of how universities can interact with society, in order to support the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This book is an attempt to address this need, by a novel approach which focuses on current potentials and challenges, across a wide range of fields and expertise. The book focuses on how the theory and practice of sustainable development interact and shows the need for a continuation of the dialogue among sustainability academics and practitioners, so as to address the issues, matters and problems at hand. The spectrum of themes addressed on this book also entails how environmental values and ethics are applied and the relationship between social, biological and cultural diversity. It also includes a broad disciplinary approach to sustainability, including education, research and case studies, and the links with human-environment relations in a sustainable development context.
Volume XXIX/1 of History of Universities contains the customary mix of learned articles and book reviews which makes this publication such an indispensable tool for the historian of higher education. The volume is, as always, a lively combination of original research and invaluable reference material.
In a modern Europe, even with 900 years of history and learning behind it, the European Research University faces major challenges on multiple fronts. This book maps out both the present and the long-term issues that the European Research University must now tackle.
Inter-university cooperation across the world has shown several positive outcomes in terms of knowledge exchange as well as R&D benefits. This book portrays best practices of inter-university cooperation between Italian and American universities, while featuring agreements of Sapienza University of Rome. This book presents conceptual and implementation specifics of cooperation, policy perspectives, as well as a selection of framework agreements of current cooperation initiatives. Aimed at university professors, education and R&D policy makers, this book shall prove worthy as a guideline to initiate and implement inter-university cooperation globally.
The South African higher education system has historically been characterized by racial and gender inequities inherited from the discriminatory policies of the apartheid era. From the ascent to power of the National Party in 1948, tertiary institutions were divided along ethno-linguistic lines in accordance with the segregationist policies of the apartheid system. The 1990s ushered in a new political era characterized by the un-banning of political parties, the release of political prisoners, and the shift of political power from the Nationalist party to the government of national unity led by the African National Congress. Since the change of government in 1994 there has been a concerted effort to transform the system of higher education from one in which race, gender, and class determine access and success, to a more equitable one. The demise of apartheid in South Africa requires that educational institutions transform in order to reflect the changing nature of the country. This volume includes case studies on South African tertiary institutions immersed in the process of transformation, examining the issue of language policy at Afrikaans-medium institutions, the challenges that the historically white, English-medium institutions face when including a previously excluded group, the experiences of Black South African students enrolled at such institutions, and the challenges faced by historically disadvantaged institutions.
This open access book focuses on the dimensions of the discourse of 'The World Class University', its alleged characteristics, and its policy expressions. It offers a broad overview of the historical background and current trajectory of the world-class-university construct. It also deepens the theoretical discussion, and points a way forward out of present impasses resulting from the pervasive use and abuse of the notion of "world-class" and related terms in the discourse of quality assessment. The book includes approaches and results from fields of inquiry not otherwise prominent in Higher Education studies, including philosophy and media studies, as well as sociology, anthropology, educational theory. The growing impact of global rankings and their strategic use in the restructuring of higher education systems to increase global competitiveness has led to a 'reputation race' and the emergence of the global discourse of world class universities. The discourse of world class universities has rapid uptake in East Asian countries, with China recently refining its strategy. This book provides insights into this process and its future development.
For over six centuries, the University of Oxford had been an exclusively male bastion of privilege and opportunity. Few dreamed this could change. Yet, in 1879, twenty-one pioneering women quietly entered two recently established residence halls in Oxford in the hope of attending lectures and pursuing a course of study. More women soon followed and, by 1893, there were five women's societies, each with its own principal, staff, and identity. Only eighty years after women first appeared in Oxford, the five residential societies were granted full status as colleges of the University-self-governing entities with all the rights and obligations of the men's colleges-and women students constituted 16 percent of the undergraduate population. Though still a distinct minority, women had gained full access to the rich resources, opportunities, and challenges of the University. "Her Oxford" looks at the people and the political and social forces that produced this dramatic transformation. Drawing on a vast array of biographies, histories, obituaries, and archives, Batson traces not only the institutional struggles over privileges and disciplinary rules for women, but also the rich texture of everyday life-women's amateur theatricals, debating societies, sports, and college escapades (Dorothy Sayers is the subject of quite a few). She tells the stories of women's active roles in two war efforts and in the suffrage movement. An unusual feature of the book is the set of 120 biographical profiles of women who attended Oxford between 1879 and 1960. They constitute a Who's Who of women scientists, anthropologists, psychotherapists, educators, novelists, and social reformers in the English-speaking world.
John Wright's Alma Mater was the first book-length student memoir to be published in Britain. Yet this trailblazing and revealing work has never been reprinted since its appearance in 1827. Full of fascinating detail about college life, it discusses teaching, examinations and student socialising, including sport, hunting and recourse to prostitutes. A remarkable story of success and failure, it often resembles a picaresque novel: after an eventful undergraduate career, Wright became a hack writer and tutor in London. His marriage failed, his wife left him, his children went to the workhouse, and ultimately he was transported for theft to Tasmania, where he died a premature death. This autobiographical memoir has often been referred to or quoted by studies of Cambridge University and the history of mathematics, but the life of its author has never been satisfactorily explored. This new edition makes an important source and a vivid historical document available for the first time. It includes an in-depth exploration of university and college archives, while Wright's life is also investigated through outside sources, such as the records of the Royal Literary Fund and those of court, prison and transportation authorities. Wright's account, along with the commentary and notes presented here, offers extraordinary reading for anyone interested in the history of the University of Cambridge, the teaching of mathematics in the nineteenth century and the life of Grub Street, the London literary underworld in the 1820s and 1830s. The more general reader will also be surprised and entertained by this topsy-turvy tale recounted with candour and verve.
This book is the result of years of research following a realization of the mismatch of engineering skills produced by universities and those that industry required, based on the situation in Sub-Saharan Africa, equally applicable to other regions in Africa and indeed worldwide. The book is meant to assist engineering academics and engineers in industry to build capacity and cope with the dynamic trends in technology brought on by the 4th Industrial Revolution and to prepare for the 5th Industrial Revolution, an era predicted to be dominated by critical and system thinkers with creative and innovative skills as basic necessities. The book is also useful for policy-making researchers in academia, industrial and public sector researchers, and implementers in governments that provide required funding for the development of human resources and skills. The book primarily consists of the novel research and innovation approaches of modelling and building systems thinking sub-models which were ultimately integrated into the Universal Systems Thinking (UST) model aimed at improving the quality of engineers and engineering practice. The initiatives in this book include strategies for bridging the gap between industry and academia through systems thinking research. The book provides information on how to model, simulate, adjust and implement integrated systems thinking approaches to engineering education and training for capacity building and sustainability. The book also covers approaches to address research gaps and mismatch of skills while capitalizing on the successes of several projects carried out and supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering over the years.
Traditionally academia has been seen as an elite profession, for those with an academic background and from the middle/upper classes. This is what makes the life of a working class academic all the more interesting, rich and powerful. How have they become who they are in an industry steeped in elitism? How have they navigated their way, and what has the journey been like? Do they continue to identify as working class or has their social positioning and/or identities shifted? Iona Burnell Reilly presents a collection of autoethnographies, written by working class academics in higher education - how they got there, what their journeys were like, what their experiences were, if they faced any struggles, conflicts, prejudice and discrimination, and if they had to, or still do, negotiate their identities. Told in their own words the academics chart their journeys and explore their experiences of becoming an academic while also coming from a working class background. Although a working class heritage under-pins the autoethnography of each of the writers, the interlocking sections between class, race, gender and sexuality will also be relevant.
This book investigates how excellence and reputability are formed, performed, and perceived at well renowned international higher education institutions. Along six detailed ethnographic case descriptions - including University of Warwick, Goldsmiths, New York University, School of the Art Institute Chicago, Ohio State University, and HEC Montreal - it asks how master's programs in arts management and cultural policy achieved reputability and how this affects the everyday academic live. A cross-case analysis revealed a set of overall drivers that seem to have a great impact on the reputation of the studied programs. By focusing on the design and content of the teaching environments as well as on motivational, emotional, and social aspects of the learning situation at these six higher education institutions, the book offers a holistic understanding of reputability and excellence.
Talking about Leaving Revisited discusses findings from a five-year study that explores the extent, nature, and contributory causes of field-switching both from and among "STEM" majors, and what enables persistence to graduation. The book reflects on what has and has not changed since publication of Talking about Leaving: Why Undergraduates Leave the Sciences (Elaine Seymour & Nancy M. Hewitt, Westview Press, 1997). With the editors' guidance, the authors of each chapter collaborate to address key questions, drawing on findings from each related study source: national and institutional data, interviews with faculty and students, structured observations and student assessments of teaching methods in STEM gateway courses. Pitched to a wide audience, engaging in style, and richly illustrated in the interviewees' own words, this book affords the most comprehensive explanatory account to date of persistence, relocation and loss in undergraduate sciences. Comprehensively addresses the causes of loss from undergraduate STEM majors-an issue of ongoing national concern. Presents critical research relevant for nationwide STEM education reform efforts. Explores the reasons why talented undergraduates abandon STEM majors. Dispels popular causal myths about why students choose to leave STEM majors. This volume is based upon work supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Award No. 2012-6-05 and the National Science Foundation Award No. DUE 1224637.
Forging a Discipline analyses the growth of the academic discipline of politics and international relations at Oxford University over the last hundred years. This century marked the maturation and professionalization of social science disciplines such as political science, economics, and sociology in the world's leading universities. The Oxford story of teaching and research in politics provides one case study of this transformation, and the contributors aim to use its specifics better to understand this general process. In their introductory and concluding chapters the Editors argue that Oxford is a critical case to consider because several aspects of the university and its organization seem, at first glance, to militate against disciplinary development and growth. Oxford's institutional structure in which colleges enjoyed autonomy from the central university until quite recently, its proximity to the practice of government and politics through the supply of a steady stream of senior administrators, politicians and prime ministers, and its emphasis on undergraduate teaching through intensive small group tutorials all distinguish the development of teaching and research on politics in the university from such competitors as Manchester or the LSE as explained in one of the contributions. These themes inform the book's chapters in which the contributors examine the founding of the first dedicated position in political science in the university, the study of the British Constitution and the development of electoral studies, the introduction and consolidation of international relations into the Oxford social science curriculum in contrast to the way in which war studies emerged, the commitment to research and teaching in political theory, the careful harvesting of area studies, particularly of Latin America and Eastern Europe including Russia, and the distinctive role of Oxford's two social science graduate colleges, Nuffield and St Antony's, in fostering a graduate programme of study and research. What emerges from these historically researched and analytical accounts is the surprising capacity of members of the politics discipline at Oxford to forge a leading place for their scholarly perspectives and research in such core parts of the discipline as political theory, the study of comparative politics as a subject rather than as an area, ideas about order in international relations and the scientific study of elections in Britain and comparatively. That these achievements occurred in a university lacking the formal system of hierarchy and, until the last decade, departmentalization makes this volume a valuable addition to studies of the professionalization of social science research and teaching in modern universities.
Transforming Universities in South Africa: Pathways to Higher Education Reform responds to the pressing need to comprehensively review the post-apartheid experience and assess where South Africa's higher education stands across the continent and globally, particularly within the country's efforts to overcome decades of socio-economic imbalances. |
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