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The American University under Pressure: Home

By Jerry Herbel

Issue

This essay first appeared in the July 2024 issue of Choice (volume 61 | issue 11)

Introduction

This essay summarizes recent books on the state of higher education. In some cases, these books have achieved broad public notice, generating considerable interest and some controversy. The topic of higher education has taken a central place in wide-ranging discussions of cultural, economic, political, and social phenomena. Public opinions about the purpose of universities and their place in society have changed markedly; sizeable pluralities now express doubts about the value students get from attending college. Some argue that universities have adapted well to the many changes affecting nearly every aspect of life in the past fifty years, slowly transforming themselves into flexible and responsive institutions. These changes have affected students and faculties at all institutions and have even become drivers of curricular change. Others argue that academic institutions pursue an ideological agenda and push for specific policy goals that are at odds with prevailing norms, placing higher education outside the mainstream.

Thoughtful assessments of higher education’s status and place in society must include the facts and interpretations included in the books reviewed here. Fair-minded readers will reach different conclusions. However, readers will not be able to escape a broader appreciation of the immense transformation of higher education, which has been a cause and an effect of social transformation more generally. The looming financial crisis, for both institutions and students, serves as the backdrop for any discussion of higher education’s future. Nearly all the authors of these books comment on a number of elements of the great transformation in higher education, including reduced financial support from the state, rising managerialism, centralized control of the academic enterprise, demand for vocational training, and ever-mounting pressure on academics to act as the change agents for all these reforms. A careful reading of these books will inform anyone interested in higher education and seem to be a requirement for those planning to become or currently serving as professional academics.

This essay illustrates the various tensions facing higher education today by examining six different pressure points. It begins by looking at books that address the changes affecting higher education and emphasize the fluctuations in cultural context and social life driving reform. The next section highlights how universities have adapted to the tumultuous changes of the past several decades. This section focuses on books that view universities as dynamic and adaptable and as having already instituted significant reforms. The remaining sections take on narrower issues: the cost of a university education and the student debt crisis; changes in the nature and role of faculty; student and institutional contentions over curricula; and debates over diversity and university admissions, especially in light of the Supreme Court decision in SFFA v. Harvard (2023). Taken together, the books covered in this essay offer a dynamic portrait of higher education as an institution alive to change, resistance, and imagination.


Jerry Herbel is Professor of Public Administration at Kennesaw State University. He holds a PhD in political science and an MA in public administration from the University of Oklahoma and a BS in public affairs from Emporia State University. He teaches courses in human resource management, organizational theory, and public sector budgeting. His primary research focuses on administrative theory and decision-making.