on the future of education in general, universities in particular

…time enough for the present tomorrow…for now, a range of views on the future of education. Like it or not, the present will still be here when we wake up: Union County College in NJ stalling for over a year on negotiations with adjuncts; Northern NM College, still behaving badly (worse actually); adjuncts organizing but not everywhere; contracts approved, for better or for worse; the AFT Contingent Faculty Caucus, a welcome reality; in California, AB 2705 moves to the Senate and contingent faculty closer to being renamed, losing the problematic part-time designation. Maybe the DoL will take the and follow suit.

Association of Professional Futurists Compass Report:

• Introduction, 1
• New learning models: From ‘the sage on the stage’ to ‘the guide on the side’. Hardin Tibbs on the end of the industrial university and the rise of new models of learning. 2-4
• The changing shape of higher education: Overhauling higher education by Sara Robinson; Re-shaping the university by Bryan Alexander. 5-11
• The end of the badge: David Birch on the degree in the age of the social hack. And Katie King on Student Needs 2025 12-14 
• The university in time and space: Andrew Curry looks at the the time horizons of the university, and Cindy Frewen the future of the campus. 15-20
• Using theories of change to learn about learning: Wendy Schultz and Richard Lum on a unique experiment—embedding theories of change at the heart of scenarios about the future of learning. 21-25
• Parenting in the computer age: Anne Boysen reviews a book about teaching children on how to live with computers. 26-28 

2014 SE APF Compass: Education Issue

Reading the University Classics, Part 2

This is either an admittedly indirect follow up or counterpoint to yesterday's October 7th actions kicking off a "global wave of action for education." I haven't decided which yet. Perhaps I'll have a clearer notion after post-7 rss feed reader skimming. Until then... history. Student actions are part of the history of the institution's history. Long preceding last century's 60s student actions, there was another set student and youth actions the century before.

Ortega y Gasset was the previous and 1st entry in this series. Did you know that Thorstein Veblen wrote about the university too?

"From the distance of more than half a century, Karl Jaspers's 1946 treatise, The Idea of the University, reads both like a farewell to the 19th-century German university and a lucid anticipation of several of today's academic problems.

Jaspers wrote his book at the end of World War II. The Nazis had suspended him from his position as professor of philosophy. One of his reasons for writing this treatise was to lay the groundwork for a thoroughly democratic restructuring of higher education in Germany. However, Jaspers also insists that the university is a genuinely transnational institution and that his elaborations concern higher education everywhere."

Read the rest of Reading the University Classics, Part 2 - Advice - The Chronicle of Higher Education by Kai Hammermeister

CHE Editor's Note: This is the second in a monthly series intended to introduce new generations of faculty members and administrators to a core set of classic books about higher education and its institutions.

The Reading Room: What are universities for?

From Polygraph, Nina Power on Jacques Ranciere and the politics of contemporary education; and a review of Marc Bousquet's How the University Works (and a roundtable). Why rank doctoral departments? The E-Book Sector: In for-profit higher education, traditional textbooks are disappearing. A review of Seeing the Light: Religious Colleges in Twenty-First-Century America by Samuel Schuman. More and more on Ben Wildavsky's The Great Brain Race. The World’s Honors College: NYU Abu Dhabi admits a standout first class, as unprecedented experiment in student and faculty mobility gets underway (and more). FromStandpoint, what are universities for? Humanities scholars should celebrate and preserve the lack of a clear hierarchy for journals in their disciplines. A look at the temporal rhythm of academic life in a globalizing era. A review of Campus Hate Speech on Trial by Timothy C. Shiell. We must stop the avalanche of low-quality research: A national effort is needed to eliminate the vast volume of worthless findings generated by academe. The rise of the global university: For the first time, a single world society is within reach — and higher education is a central driver. Revolutionary U: Edu-factory is a new group trying to revolutionize higher education. Curing Socratophobia: Thaddeus J. Kozinski on teaching the Great Books. FromThe Chronicle, Gary Y. Okihiro on the future of ethnic studies: The discipline is under assault from within as well as from without; and who gets to define ethnic studies? Here's one way to sober the debate: Ask if white studies violates Arizona's new law. What happened to studying? You won’t hear this from the admissions office, but college students are cracking the books less and less. Tenure, RIP: What the vanishing status means for the future of education.

"What are universities for?" is a collection of higher ed links from around the world collated/annotated by and reposted from Omnivore, the Book Forum blog, both glorious feasts for the reading and book addicted.