Making Reform Work: The Case for Transforming American Higher Education

255 Pages·2009·0.73 MB·English

by  Robert Zemsky

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Making Reform Work
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Making Reform
Work
The Case for
Transforming
American Higher
Education
ROBERT ZEMSKY
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS
New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zemsky, Robert, 1940–
Making reform work: the case for transforming American higher education /
Robert Zemsky.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–8135–4591–2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Education, Higher—United States. 2. Educational change—United
States. I. Title. II. Title: Case for transforming American higher education.
LA227.4.Z45 2009
378.73—dc22
2008048062
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the
British Library.
Copyright © 2009 by Robert Zemsky
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval
system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact
Rutgers University Press, 100 Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ
08854–8099. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined
by U.S. copyright law.
Visit our Web site: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu
Manufactured in the United States of America
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For the TLA Gang—
Ann, Barbara, Bill, Greg, Jim, Joan,
Pam, Rick, Susan, Virginia
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Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
Prologue 1
1 Prelude to Reform 7
2 The Wine of Our Discontent 22
3 Commodification and Other Sins 38
4 The Way We Are 57
5 The Rain Man Cometh—Again 72
6 Scandals Waiting to Happen 90
7 The Four Horsemen of Academic Reform 107
8 Flat-World Contrarians 126
9 The Wrong-Way Web 143
10 Were Learning to Matter 160
11 Building Blocks 182
12 Changing Strategies 203
NOTES 221
INDEX 229
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Acknowledgments
This is the first book in more than thirty years that I have not written
with a coauthor. It remains the case, however, that in casting and then
recasting my sense of how and why American higher education needs
to change I have benefited greatly from that extraordinary team that
works at the core of The Learning Alliance (now in proper alphabetical
order): Virginia Branch, Ann Duffield, Pamela Erney, James Galbally,
Barbara Gelhard, Joan Girgus, William Massy, Richard Morgan, Susan
Shaman, and Gregory Wegner. Together they were more than the “gang
that shot straight”—they are friends, colleagues, critics, and, above all,
fellow troopers.
I am also indebted to Jim Duderstadt and David Ward who read key
parts of this manuscript as did Bill Massy, Joel Smith, and Bill Tyson.
Jody DeMatteo was the editor responsible for cleaning up my prose—
no mean achievement given my penchant for dropping words and mis-
spelling those I do include. As before, key chapters appeared first as
extended essays. An early version of the chapter on globalization was
first published in Luc E. Weber and James J. Duderstadt, eds., The
Globalization of Higher Education, Economica (London, 2008), under
the title “Has Our Reach Exceeded Our Grasp? Taking a Second Look at
Higher Education as a Global Enterprise.” An early version of the chap-
ter describing some of my experiences as a member of the Spellings
Commission first appeared in The Chronicle Review (January 26, 2007)
under the title of “The Rise and Fall of the Spellings Commission.”
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