Great Books Menu ---------- General Information Guidelines- GQEHE The Ten Great Books Qual Resources Sample Questions ----------

Directions & Sample Qual Questions (Adobe PDF) -- August 2005

Times and Dates: Spring Semester:  Available after 9:00 a.m., Tues., January 10; to be returned no later than 4:00 p.m. January 17, 2006. Post-Commencement:  Available after 9:00 a.m. Mon., May 15; to be returned no later than 4:00 p.m. May 22, 2006. Pre-Fall Semester:  Available after 9:00 a.m. Mon., August 21; to be return no later than 4:00 p.m. on August 28, 2006. (Dates are tentative)

A.K.A. The General Qualifying Examination in Higher Education (GQEHE):

Below is the description of the Great Books Qual produced by the Education Office in January 2000, including general information, guidelines, and the 2000 list of books. Other pages hold the sample questions provided by Drs. Schuster and Smith for 200 and resources prepared on the books by previous study groups.

General Information:

1. The General Qualifying Examinations in Higher Education (GQEHE) will be offered three times during the academic year:  (a) just prior to Spring Semester, (b) immediately following commencement May, and (c) just prior to Fall

2.  Study Groups. Students planning to take the GQEHE should advise Barbara Jefferson as soon as possible so she can let you know of other such students. This will help to facilitate the formation of study groups (optional, of course) which we have observed over the years, turn out to be quite beneficial to participants.

3. Students seeking to take this exam should indicate their plans to do so to either Dr. Schuster or Dr. Smith; whichever one you ask to take responsibility for your exam will, by virtue of that fact, become a member of your Program Supervisory Committee.

4. The examination ordinarily will be based on ten books. Note well that the list of "Great Books" continues to undergo changes as some formerly Great Books have been relegated to the ranks of the Nearly Great Books and have been replaced by Newly Great Books. C'est la vie. The complete list, dated January 1999, with library call numbers, is attached.

5. We anticipate that Huntley Bookstore will stock small quantities of these books. We also are acquiring several copies of each book to be available for loans out of Barbara's office. Note, however, that these books have been deemed classics (by us!), and you may well want to add them to your personal library.

Guidelines for the GQEHE:

1. The examination will be open book. You may refer to any published materials or class notes in preparing your response.

2. You are to complete the examination without assistance from others; you are not to consult with others in completing the examination.

3.  The examination should be typed, double-spaced.

4. There are no maximum or minimum limits regarding length. However, the completed exam should reflect a comprehensive and detailed grasp of the relevant materials and should be comparable to a good seminar paper. For these purposes, we envision a completed examination of, say, 15 to 20 pages.

5. The exam ordinarily will consist of five or six questions, from which you must select four to complete. Two or three of the five questions will be drawn from the sample questions provided.

6. No one method of footnoting is required, but do use one style consistently.

7. You may draw upon material other than the ten "designated readings" if you like, although the focus of the examination is on mastery of those readings. At the same time, do not hesitate to express your own views.

The ten Great Books below were established in the Spring of 2000. The call number is given for those who wish to find and check them out from the library. If you want to purchase them--which is definitely worthwhile for studying for the qual and for your own future reference--the links below go directly to the books' descriptions and costs on some online booksellers. You may wish to check other online bookseller sites on our Education book finding webpage.

The Ten Great Books:

Bok, Derek. 1990. Universities and the Future of America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

DuBois, W.E.B. 1973. The Education of Black People: Ten Critiques, 1906-1960. Edited by Herbert Aptheker. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Palmer, Parker. 1998. The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Hooks, Bell. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.

Study Groups:

During Summer 1999, a group composed of Laurie Adrian, Emma Daugherty, Mandana Hashemzadeh, Mandy Liu, Dina Maramba, Jennifer Rachford, and Danny Thompson met to prepare for the August 1999 administration of the GBQ. We met weekly for ten weeks for two hours, with a final meeting reserved for a last minute review.

We divided the books up among us. Each week a different person would prepare an outline of a book and present it to the group for the first half of the session. During the second half of the time, we would discuss the book in the context of the other books and how it could be incorporated into the sample questions for the exam.  Mandana handled the corralling of folks and their duties over email.

Another study group of around ten people is reportedly gathering for work this summer. For more information contact Mari Luna de la Rosa.

A Review of Great Books of Higher Education

In the summer of 1998, Guy Gerbick assembled a number of comments and resources for the GBQ Study groups.  Below is a summary of those comments and resources.

An article just came out on great books in higher education in ASHE's Review of Higher Education, the Spring 1999 edition. It's a "review essay" by George Keller and gives his perspective on some books that may be considered classic. You can find the article, full-text, here: Is America Assembling a Set of Higher Education Classics?.

The books that he reviews are those recently reprinted as part of Transaction Publishers' Foundations of Higher Education series. You can get at Transactions' webpage here. Here are the current titles in the series, which means they are available to purchase and you don't have to hunt through used bookstores for them.

ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN THE AGE OF THE COLLEGE, Hofstadter (see below)
ACADEMIC MAN, THE, Wilson
ACADEMIC SYSTEM IN AMERICAN SOCIETY, THE, Touraine
CENTERS OF LEARNING, Ben-David
DEGRADATION OF THE ACADEMIC DOGMA, THE, Nisbet
DISTINCTIVE COLLEGE, THE, Clark (see below)
FUTURE OF THE HUMANITIES, THE, Kaufmann
GREAT CANON CONTROVERSY, THE, Casement
HIGHER EDUCATION IN TRANSITION, Brubacher and Rudy (see below)
HIGHER LEARNING IN AMERICA, THE, Hutchins ("Great Book")
IDEAL OF THE UNIVERSITY, THE, Wolff
IMPACT OF COLLEGE ON STUDENTS, THE, Feldman and Newcomb
INVESTMENT IN LEARNING, Bowen  (Howard Bowen was a professor of higher education at CGU and its president)
MAKING THE GRADE, Becker, Geer, and Hughes
MISSION OF THE UNIVERSITY, Ortega y Gasset
ORDER OF LEARNING, THE, Shils
ORGANIZATION OF ACADEMIC WORK, THE, Blau
REBELLION IN THE UNIVERSITY, Lipset (see below)
REFORMING OF GENERAL EDUCATION, Bell
RISE OF THE MERITOCRACY, THE, Young
SCALING THE IVORY TOWER, Lewis
SCIENTIFIC ELITE, Zuckerman
STUDENT POLITICS IN AMERICA, Altbach (see below)
UNIVERSITIES, Flexner

Resources for the GBQ:

Here are some books that, while they are not on the Great Books list, have useful insights on the questions in the exam. This is by no means a comprehensive listing of other Great Books of higher education. They are only ones that I've seen as useful for the exam. (Jack also puts together a killer list of supplemental readings on American higher education history that is a part of his ED 459: History of American Higher Education syllabus.) These books make a good addition to your growing library of the canon of higher education history. And yes, you don't really have to include dozens of other references for the exam--the concentration remains on the ten Great Books.

Altbach, P. G. (1997). Student politics in America: A historical analysis. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. (Original work published 1974)

Altbach traces student activism from 1900 to the early 1970s. This can be useful for the question on student influence.

Altbach, P. G., Berdahl, R. O., & Gumport, P. J. (Eds.). (1999). American higher education in the twenty-first century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

This hot-off-the-press collection of essays may provide material for questions dealing with contemporary and future trends in higher education.

Brubacher, J. S., & Rudy, W. (1997). Higher education in transition: A history of American colleges and universities (4th ed.). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Keller, in his review of higher education classics, provides a context for this book. The insightful evaluation is quoted here in full. "John Brubacher and Willis Rudy's book, Higher Education in Transition, was first published in 1958, when there were no other satisfactory comprehensive histories of U.S. higher education available. It has been called by one reviewer, Sol Cohen, "the best history extant of the American college and university" (qtd. on cover of 4th ed.). It is. But strangely, when Frederick Rudolph published his abundantly detailed and colorfully written The American College and University: A History (1962), he listed many dozens of historical works but did not mention Brubacher and Rudy's book at all! Three years later, Laurence Veysey published The Emergence of the American University, and Veysey also did not mention Brubacher and Rudy's history in his bibliography. Why the snubs? One can only guess.

Perhaps it may have something to do with Brubacher and Rudy's overweening desire to write about all of U.S. higher education from colonial colleges, preparatory academies, and junior colleges to the modern-day research universities with their foreign graduate students and programs abroad, and to explain also campus governance, fraternities, curricula, finances, student activism, academic freedom, and much more, in under 400 pages. Or it may be because Brubacher and Rudy's book contains little analysis and criticism, and no interpretive themes, as say, does Lawrence Cremin's tour de force, the three-volume history American Education. Higher Education in Transition is rather a careful chronicle, a diligent compilation from thousands of sources--there are 98 pages of endnotes--that attempts to give readers a sweeping sense of the major American developments over three centuries.

I think the book has returned to print largely because it collects between two covers most of the events, data, and innovations of the nation's growing investment in higher education. The two authors have done prodigious bibliographical research. One value of the book is the citation of hundreds of sources from 1844, 1907, or 1932 that few of today's scholars of higher education know about. The writing is clear but lackluster, and the commentary is muffled. But they left few areas uncovered and ideologically colored. Brubacher (now deceased) and Rudy (now emeritus) have labored hard to be as objective and blandly descriptive as possible.

The volume published by Transaction is the fourth edition, with two new chapters by Willis Rudy about the past 25 years in academe. So the history has been scrubbed several times, although Higher Education in Transition still provides readers with regrettably little information about higher education for women and blacks. Further, the narrative scarcely mentions religious colleges, adult education, community colleges, campus architecture, and higher education in the South and Rocky Mountain states. But it is a common fault of American higher education scholarship that it concentrates heavily on the major state and private universities and elite colleges, neglecting smaller institutions, two-year institutions, and deviant institutions such as Alverno, Berea, DeVry Institutes, Hampton University, and Mississippi University for Women (Pascarella & Terenzini, 1998). Scholars tend to work at the larger, more prestigious campuses, and many of the written sources they employ as references are from or about the research-oriented places.

Still, Higher Education in Transition is full of delicious and important reminders about higher education as it really was--always in large part vocational since its earliest days, although it then trained clergy and lawyers rather than electrical engineers and accountants, and often less than excellent: "As late as 1907 over half of the freshmen matriculating at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia had failed to meet their entrance requirements in one particular or another" (p. 244)." (Pardon the misuse of quotation marks--I wasn't about to change them all.)

On page 378 of this book is a useful chart of numbers and percentage of students in college from 1889-1890 to 1969-1970.

Clark, B. R. (1992). The distinctive college. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. (Original work published 1970)

This book on Swarthmore, Reed, and Antioch sparked many later investigations of colleges as culture-laden institutions. The study provides instructive examples of curricular innovations.

Cohen, A. M. (1998). The shaping of American higher education: Emergence and growth of the contemprary system. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Here's a recent book that concentrates on contemporary higher education history, something acutely lacking in the other Great Books' histories.

Cremin, L. A. (1989). College. In L.S. Goodchild & H. S. Wechsler (Eds.), ASHE reader on the history of higher education (pp. 28-41). Needham Heights, MA: Simon & Schuster. (Original work published 1970)

Cremin provides a detailed history of the beginnings of English colleges and their importation to America, including a chart of the occupations of Harvard alumni from its first 45 years. The ASHE Reader itself is also a valuable resource for your library.

Du Bois, W. E. B. (1989). The talented tenth. In L.S. Goodchild & H. S. Wechsler (Eds.), ASHE reader on the history of higher education (pp. 478-487). Needham Heights, MA: Simon & Schuster. (Original work published 1903)

This DuBois classic gives context to The Education of Black People and has several charts of data comparing Black and White colleges and their graduates during the later half of the 1800s.

Du Bois, W. E. B. (1989). The souls of black folk. New York: Bantam. (Original work published 1903)

This is another of DuBois' major works.

Goodchild, L. F., & Wechsler, H. S. (Eds.). (1997). The history of higher education (2nd ed.). ASHE reader series. Needham Heights, MA: Simon & Schuster.

This newer ASHE Reader includes much more new material compared to the 1989 edition. It also includes several of the core, primary documents of higher education.

Graham, P. A. (1989). Expansion and exclusion: A history of women in American higher education. In L.S. Goodchild & H. S. Wechsler (Eds.), ASHE reader on the history of higher education (pp. 413-424). Needham Heights, MA: Simon & Schuster. (Original work published 1978)

Graham has gathered statistics on women college students from 1870 to 1976 which can be useful.

Grant, G., & Reisman, D. (1978). The perpetual dream: Reform and experiement in the American College. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

This qualitative study of colleges with unique curricula (e.g. St. Johns, Kresge at Santa Cruz, and New College in Florida) used to be on the Great Books list. It was probably taken off based on our complaints of its often ponderous accounting of site visits. Yet, it's a good study of experimental models of educational reform. Check Joy Rosenzweig Kliewer's book for an update of these kinds of colleges.

Haskins, C. H. (1957). The rise of universities. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (Original work published 1923)

This a compact history of the Medieval universities in Europe. It's also assigned as a text in Jack's history of higher education class.

Hofstadter, R. (1996). Academic freedom in the age of the college. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. (Original work published 1955)

Hofstadter paints the history of colleges in America from their English roots to the Civil War. This could be instructive for the curriculum questions.

Horowitz, H. L. (1984). Alma mater: Design and experience in the women's colleges from their nineteenth-century beginnings to the 1930s. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

Horowitz's other book centers only on women's colleges.

Kliewer, J. R. (1999). The innovative campus: Nurturing the distinctive learning environment. Phoenix: American Council on Education and Oryx Press.

Joy's 1997 dissertation from our program was turned into this book. She investigated experimental colleges begun during the 1960s and 70s-- specifically Pitzer, New College of the University of South Florida, Hampshire, the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, UC Santa Cruz, and Evergreen State--and evaluated their present adherence to their original idealistic principles.

Lipset, S. M. (1993). Rebellion in the university. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. (Original work published 1971)

Again, here's Keller's description, in full: "Seymour Martin Lipset's 1971 Rebellion in the University. It is mostly about the student protests and rioting of 1964 to 1971, and might seem too time-bound to be considered useful reading 25 or 30 years later. But I think it is not only a fine disquisition on the history of America's student rebellions--and specifically the 1964-1971 uprisings--but also a probing, wide-ranging scholarly analysis of the roots of the continuing, widespread, militantly liberal, and sometimes Marxist character of much of university life since the 1930s (Hofstadter, 1963, p. 39). Though Lipset admits in the book that he had been a member of and later adviser to the Young People's Socialist League, Rebellion in the University is an extraordinary effort to look objectively at the several origins of and explanations for the sit-ins and revolutionary actions of the late 1960s. Unlike other professors who saw the upheavals principally as a protest against university regulations, the Vietnam War, the lack of civil liberties for blacks, or the results of permissive or Communist parenting, Lipset sees the student rebellions in their fullness of rage, idealism, psychedelic liberation, revolutionary romanticism ŕ la Che Guevara, and anarchic joyful violence. (See, for example, Rubin, 1970).

Using a bounty of poll and survey data, radical documents, other scholars' analyses, and personal interviews and discussions (Lipset taught at Berkeley until 1965, then at Harvard), he constructs a masterful description of the most explosive student political activity in this century. Chapter 6, "Faculty and Students: Allied and in Conflict," is a perennially precious essay on the inevitable tension between students and faculty at most campuses. A plus for contemporary readers is Lipset's introduction to the 1993 Transaction reprint because he spells out the connections between today's growing "political correctness," which he calls "this new wave of repressive moralism," and the earlier new-left and aggrieved activism (pp. xxiv-xxxii)."

Lucas, C. (1994). American higher education: A history. New York: St. Martin's Press.

While not as comprehensive or insightful as other higher education histories, Lucas does do a decent job of covering the origins of minorities entering colleges.

Marsden, G. M. (1994). The soul of the American university: From Protestant establishment to established nonbelief. New York: Oxford University Press.

There's some good stuff on Hutchins in here.

Morison, S. E. (1964). Three centuries of Harvard. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Original work published 1936)
Morison, S. E. (1995). The founding of Harvard College. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Original work published 1935)

These two works are the definitive histories of Harvard. They have tons of specific, original documents reprinted in them.

Newman, J. H. (1982). The idea of a university: Defined and illustrated. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. (Original work published 1852 and 1873)

Cardinal Newman's outline for the university model serves as the starting point of nearly every examination of universities. Check the first pages of Kerr.

Reisman, D. (1998). On higher education: The academic enterprise in an era of rising student consumerism. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. (Original work published 1980)

This book should come in handy on that question about student influence.

Rudolph, F. (1977). Curriculum: A history of the American undergraduate course of study since 1636. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

This other Rudolph classic is used in Jack's history class and is central for the curriculum questions.

Silliman, B. (Ed.). (1961). The Yale Report of 1828. In R. Hofstadter & W. Smith (Eds.), American higher education: A documentary history (Vol. 1, pp. 275-291). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1829)

Much of American higher education history flowed from the Yale Report. The Hofstadter and Smith two volume collection of documents hasn't been in print for years. I scored when I found a set in the used bookstore in the Village. Again, Jack copies this Report for folks in his history class.

Thwing, C. F. (1878). American colleges: Their students and work. New York: Putnam.

This is an old, obscure little book that acted as an 1870s U.S.News and World Report comparison of colleges, seemingly for parents of prospective students. It has a killer appendix of colleges in existence at the time, their location, their years of charter, religious affiliation, number of students, number of faculty, number of volumes in their libraries, and whether they are all-male, all-female, or coed. Ya can't get better historical data.

Veblen, T. (1993). The higher learning in America. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. (Original work published 1918)

Thorsten Veblen, a prominent professor at the University of Chicago, published this book in 1918 after the death of William Rainey Harper (so that his observations would not be connected to the very personal operation of the University by Harper). He railed against the involvement of rich financiers, as did Hutchins. Obviously, there is connection made by Hutchins in the name and content of the books.

Veysey, L. R. (1965). The emergence of the American university. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Veysey's study is considered the definitive one on universities (see Keller above). The appendix includes a "Chronology of Principal University Administrations," or a listing of the "Great Men" of the higher education from 1865 to 1910 and their tenure at their institutions.

Woodson, C. G. (1990). The mis-education of the Negro. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. (Original work published 1933)

While Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois sparred, Woodson produced this classic. It should provide insight for issues raised in The Education of Black People.

Notes on Hutchins

This interesting excerpt from the Keller article above concerns Hutchins' The Higher Learning in America:

"Robert Maynard Hutchins's ill-natured lectures of 1936, The Higher Learning in America, deride alumni, trustees, athletics, student social life, political concerns, vocational and even professional studies, Americans' "love of money," and much else, coupled with a sermon to universities to concentrate on the Great Books and pure intellectual inquiries (a theme renewed by one of his disciples, Allan Bloom). In my opinion, this book might have been left undisturbed in its angry sleep. Imbued with Thomistic logic and inclined toward simplemindedness, Hutchins mainly delivers such dicta as, "Teaching implies knowledge. Knowledge is truth. The truth is everywhere the same. Hence education should be everywhere the same" (p. 66).

Here are some additional background notes on Hutchins and Higher Learning that I found:

In 1907, Hutchins' father became a professor in the School of Theology at Oberlin. Hutchins attended Oberlin for two years before joining the Army Ambulance Corps in World War I. "Oberlin at the time [after the transition from revivalist evangelicalism to socially concerned liberalism, GG] must have been at a seemingly idyllic (though transitory) stage at which a college has dropped many of the restrictive aspects of evangelical theology and piety yet retains an ethos in which it is still widely assumed that education involves relating eternal truths to contemporary concerns. Although Hutchins completed his college work at Yale after the War, he seemed to retain an assumption that true education should be something like what went on at prewar Oberlin" (Marsden, 1994, p. 376).

Hutchins followed nearly the same path as Harper. Harper grew up in Ohio, attended small, liberal arts Denison in Ohio, found success at Yale, and ascended to the presidency of Chicago at a young age (Marsden, 1994, p. 375).

The Higher Learning in America became the most widely discussed book in higher education for the decade after its publication in 1936 (Marsden, 1994, p. 378).

References are above.

Miscellaneous Notes:

The Dartmouth Case and Jeffersonianism

In 1815, the trustees of Dartmouth removed the son of the College's first president, who they believed was moving too far from his father's conservative religious views. They replaced him with a Congregational minister. In retaliation, the Democratic legislature voted to revoke Dartmouth's charter and make it a public university on the Jeffersonian plan. Jefferson himself wrote a congratulatory letter to the governor. After Daniel Webster ('01) argued Dartmouth's case before the Supreme Court, federalist John Marshall's decision for Dartmouth's private status, "was a major step in establishing the immunity of charitable corporations from state control and struck a blow in an ongoing contest for sectarian versus state higher education" (Marsden, 1994, pp. 71-72).

Harvard

"It may seem at first blush a startling paradox that Harvard College, founded in a community so dedicated to the enforcement of religious unity, should have become the university that for three centuries held the leading position for liberality of thought in American higher education . . . the seeds of Harvard liberalism were actually planted with Puritanism itself . . . Unquestionably Harvard was meant to be the orthodox instrument of the community and its faith . . . Probably in greater measure than any other Protestant group the Puritans inherited the scholastic impulse to rationalize faith and the belief that learning has a high and vital place in religion . . . All but 5 percent of the colonial clergymen of the New England Congregational churches were degree holders" (Hofstadter, 1996/1955, pp. 81-82).

"The Reverend Benjamin Colman, who had resided at Oxford and Cambridge, thought [in 1749] that 'no Place of Education can well boast a more free Air than our little College may'" (Hofstadter, 1996/1955, p. 107).

Classical Curriculum:

In 1687 Isaac Newton published Principia which dispelled any remaining doubts about the validity of the Copernican view and "illustrated how a mathematical method of investigation could be applied to a whole range of empirical questions and thereby generate laws or rules of enormous predictive validity. The Principia, in other words, laid out for all to see how science worked: deriving principles from an [sic] careful analysis of observed facts, deducing probable or likely consequences following from the principles, and experimenting to validate those deductions, such that the initial hypotheses were either confirmed or invalidated" (Lucas, 1994, p. 92).

"The concept of 'science' itself underwent a transformation and constriction of meaning, to exact and certain knowledge apprehended by the mind (Descartes), measured mathematically (Newton), and demonstrated by experimentation (Galileo). As the meaning of the term changed, scientific distrust of unproven hypotheses had the further effect of emphasizing the importance of the utility [emphasis in original] of knowledge. 'The end of knowledge,' insisted Thomas Hobbes, 'is power, and the scope of all speculation is the performance of some action, or thing to be done'" (Lucas, 1994, 93).

University

"The only reform movement of any consequence of the period took place in Germany, symbolized by the founding of the University of Halle in 1694, which justifiably has been termed 'the first modern university.' Halle's distinction in this regard proceeded from the fact that it was the earliest institution of record to authorize vernacular instruction in mathematics and some of the sciences. Göttingen (founded in 1737) and later Erlangen were the only other major academic institutions to follow Halle's lead" (Lucas, 1994, p. 94).

References are above.

These are the 1999 sample questions provided by Jack Schuster and Daryl Smith.

Most of the questions below have been included in previous qualifying examinations. Some are likely to be included in future exams.

1.

Several of the books pertain to the historical development of American higher education, some to long-term evolution and some to recent developments. On the basis of these books, supplemented by your general knowledge, trace the evolution of American higher education with special reference to three aspects of your choosing. (For example, you might choose three from among the following five themes: access, governance, leadership, mission, student life.)

2.

The decades of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s witnessed a number of significant developments in the governance of American colleges and universities; the next century will see further significant changes. Making appropriate references to the assigned readings:

A.
Describe succinctly the major shifts in the governance of American higher education from the 1970s to the 1990s.

B.
Indicate what further changes, if any, you believe will take place in the next decade. Give reasons.

C.
Describe the probable consequences of these changes for the quality of American higher education.

D.
What realistic measures, if any, would you advocate for adoption by colleges and universities at the outset of this decade in order to prevent significant erosion in the quality of higher education?

3.

A.
Which of the designated readings did you find most helpful, most stimulating? Why?

B.
Which of the designated readings did you find least helpful, least stimulating? Why?

4. 

As you reflect on the books included in the reading list, do you find significant philosophical differences among them, or do you find that there is a common philosophical thread running through all or most of them? Please describe the differences and similarities. Be specific.

5. 

To what extent do you find the issues of curriculum congruent between Hutchins, Bok, Rudolph, and Palmer?

6. 

You are a junior (but oh so talented) member of the editorial staff of a major metropolitan newspaper. The editor, for reasons not entirely clear to you, wants to feature a lead editorial in next Sunday's paper dealing with the current state of American higher education. "I want," he tells you crisply, "a solid, succinct statement, not a lot of hysterics and overkill."

A.
Assume he has asked you to provide him with "a 500-word piece attacking the condition of American higher education." Do it.

B.
Assume that the editor has instructed you, instead, to prepare "a 500-word piece applauding the condition of American higher education." Do it.

7. 

As best you can discern from evidence found in the "Great Books," how would you describe the condition of the American professoriate in (a) the 1920s, (b) the 1960s, and (c) the past five years. Which of these three time periods would you argue was or is best for the professoriate? Why?

8. 

Drawing on the "Great Books," discuss the extent to which the authors do or do not share common attitudes about the purposes and efficacy of American higher education. Toward the end of your essay, indicate in a short paragraph which one author appears to be most pleased with the condition of American higher education. Give reasons. Similarly, indicate which one author strikes you as most critical. Give reasons.

9. 

A distinguished visitor from another country is meeting with you. "I have been pondering a great deal about the system of education beyond high school in your great country," she tells you. "It is so rich, so diverse, but so, so very unsystematic! My, it is difficult for someone not terribly familiar with higher education in America to comprehend it. Tell me, if you can, what would you say are the three or four or five most important philosophical underpinnings or tenets that shape higher education in the United States?"

10.

A.
Discuss the role of liberal education as described or implied in the "Great Books."

B.
Many fear that liberal education is declining rapidly because of (among other reasons) student preoccupation with career-oriented studies. To what extent is liberal education likely to prosper or decline further in the decade ahead? Give reasons.

11.

American higher education has struggled over the centuries, particularly during the post-World War II era, with attempts to find an appropriate balance between quality and equality. As you view the tension between those dual objectives, indicate whether in your view the American system of higher education has erred too much in one direction or another. Taking into account the "Great Books," defend your position.

12.

Clark Kerr in the postscript to the 1982 edition of The Uses of the University argues that research universities have not changed in recent years despite other significant changes in higher education. Expert on such matters that you are widely acknowledged to be, you have been invited to write a "point of view" essay (e.g. for the back page of the Chronicle) showing why Kerr is wrong. Do it.

13. 

Colleges and universities today are under increasing pressure, in view of demographic projections, to recruit and retain students. Despite such pressures, many colleges in recent years have taken steps to reform the undergraduate curriculum (for example, by rehabilitating general education and raising entrance requirements).

A.
How do you explain this apparently paradoxical situation?

B.
Compare and contrast the overall situation in which American
higher education finds itself today with the situation in:

                (1)    the 1820s to 1830s
                (2)    the post-Civil War period to 1900
                (3)    the 1930s.

14.

In the 19th century, American scientific research came to find its primary home in American higher education. By way of contrast, in many nations such research was, and is, performed primarily outside the universities, that is, within relatively autonomous research institutes.

A.
Based on what you know about American higher education in the 19th century, was is inevitable that scientific research would be carried out mainly within higher education settings?

B.
To what extent has this development been a positive one? What are the major advantages and disadvantages to American higher education and to society in general?

15.

As an authority on American higher education, you have been summoned to meet with Ooglixx, High Commissioner of Education from the planet Xox and a member of the Fourth Anthropological Expedition to Earth. He (she?) is very puzzled about America's system of higher education, which he says he has been observing for some time. "Tell me," he/she asks, "does higher education in the United States in fact comprise 'a system?' In what ways is it a system, and in what ways not?" "Oh," he adds, "I'm very busy so be brief and precise in your answer--or I shall be obligated to liquidate both you and New Jersey." Don't mess with Ooglixx! Comply!

16. 

Many American colleges and universities in recent years have been struggling to reform their undergraduate curricula by restoring more "integrity" or "cohesion" to the curriculum and by raising academic standards. Interestingly, this movement toward curricular reform comes at a time when students are, generally speaking, in short supply; thus would-be applicants are potentially deflected to other campuses.

As you reflect on the evolution of the college curriculum in American history, what do you see as the principal causes associated with curricular reform? Does the current zeal for reform strike you as being more similar or similar to previous episodes of reform?

17.

The year is 2041. Your assignment: write a short essay (about 1,500 words, i.e. 5-7 pages) providing an overview of the major developments in American higher education from 1960 to 1999. (You obviously will need to be selective in the number of themes you develop.)

18.

The history of American higher education is sprinkled with the names of presidents who are credited with having great and lasting impacts on their respective institutions and on American higher education. Such names as Andrew White, Daniel Coit Gilman, Charles W. Eliot, Nicholas Murray Butler, Robert Hutchins, and Alexander Meiklejohn spring readily to mind. Arguably, the past three decades have produced no comparable giants; in any event, it is safe to say that few contemporary college or university presidents are widely known outside their own campuses.

Are today's higher education leaders perhaps made of The Wrong Stuff? Be that as it may, to what do you attribute this difference (if, indeed, it is a real difference)?

19.

As the doctrine of affirmative action, a force in higher education for a quarter century, comes under sustained attack, related questions arise about higher education's role: what it has been and should be in promoting (or not promoting) diversity. So, (a) Drawing primarily on the "Great Books," describe how has American higher education dealt with diversity over its history? (b) To the extent that those authors address diversity as a value, what do they have to say about that value? (c) What are your views about the relationship between diversity and affirmative action?

20.

Assume: A new nation was recently created out of the national realignments that are still ongoing in Europe (or Africa). The newly designated Minister for Education asks the U.S. State Department for help in designing a new higher education system, one that will enable the neophyte nation to better prepare for the future. An Assistant Secretary at State, knowing of your expertise about American higher education, seeks your help. How can you refuse? He asks you to prepare a brief memo, identifying the five (no more, no less) principal strengths of American higher education that can be recommended to another nation and five principal weaknesses. No more than one paragraph for each of the ten.

21.

Student influence over their own education--curricular, co-curricular, extracurricular--has ebbed and flowed over the years. (a) As you reflect on the history of U.S. higher education, in what era would you say that student influence was at its highest? (b) At its lowest? (c) Where on this continuum would you place student interest in the late 1990s? (d) What would you speculate, on the basis of various trends in higher education you perceive, is likely to be the magnitude of student influence, say, eight or ten years from now?"