Customer Reviews

The Abandoned Generation

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Along with Kors and Silverglate's The Shadow University, this is one of the most important higher education books published in many years. Based on their studies of the Duke University campus, Willimon and Naylor correctly identify the real problem in American higher education as the poverty of student life, not the politicization of the curriculum.

For more than a generation, student life has been under the control of a vacuous bureaucracy of "student affairs" and "residence life" workers who exist in a state of co-dependency with underprepared and delinquent students. Out-of-control dormitories, alcohol abuse and vandalism, institutionally-promoted segregation, and a complete disconnection between the classroom and life outside the classroom -- all these problems have been endemic for a generation in institutions that advertise themselves as "caring" and "student-centered."

The solution to these problems, Willimon and Naylor show, is not left politics, nor right politics, nor politics of any kind: it is sustained, personal contact between students and faculty throughout the institution.

It is unlikely that this book will have much effect on university administrators who profit from the existing problems, but it should be read by all students, parents, and (especially) legislators who want to improve the quality of higher education.

Both authors wrote mainly and expensively about lack of moral education at Duke and other higher education institutions. They also touch on the purposeful abhorrence of the faculty toward the undergraduates and their neglect in teaching undergraduates. The best part of the book is in Chapter 7, where the authors recommend decoupling the undergraduate education from the university. This is one of the recommendations I have read so far in saving and improving the undergraduate education. But then, this is not a new idea, because we have it already in hundreds and hundreds of small liberal arts colleges, where there are no graduate schools of any sort or research institutes. This is why I give this book 3 stars because the solution is good, but someone else has had it for a long, long time.

For a more critical look at American higher education and better recommendations for improvement, read "The Great Rip-off in American Education."