Honoring the Trust: Quality and Cost Containment in Higher Education (JB - Anker) [Hardcover]

William F. Massy (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1882982568 | ISBN-13: 978-1882982561 | Publication Date: January 15, 2003 | Edition: 1

How does higher education honor (or dishonor) the trust that society places in it? While colleges and universities may perform an adequate job of educating students, this book argues that institutions might still improve their competency while reining costs.In Honoring the Trust, the author examines how the environment of higher education and institutional policies has led to shortfalls in education competency. Rather than simply list the flaws in higher education, this book presents a practical program for improving the quality of higher education without increasing spending or sacrificing other priorities. Based on research performed at the National Center for Postsecondary Improvement, it provides a description of the problems that are currently facing institutions of higher education, and envisions solutions to these problems.

The book identifies major challenges facing institutions and faculty as they work to assure education quality, including:

• The public's eroding trust in higher education
• Education quality processes
• Paradigm-changing technology
• Cost consciousness
• Core competency in education
• Building awareness and commitments to improvement

Written in engaging prose for readers ranging from seasoned academic leaders to concerned citizens outside of the academy, this book creates a venue for ongoing discussion and offers practical guidance to readers desirous of driving change in higher education.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

William Massy’s long-awaited analysis of higher education bears out his reputation as an international expert in the field. In his own words, “This book is no jeremiad. Instead of simply listing higher education’s flaws, it presents a practical program for improvement – what faculty, institutional leaders, trustees, and oversight bodies can do now to improve the quality of education without spending more or abandoning other priorities. The diagnosis could have been written five or ten years ago, but it took until now to identify and try out the interventions.”

Honoring the Trust achieves three major goals: 1) to describe and document the problems facing today’s colleges and universities, 2) to offer a vision of what the solutions to these problems will look like, and 3) to provide practical guidance for those who would be change agents or drivers or change.

Readers ranging from seasonal academic leaders and practitioners to concerned citizens outside of the academy will understand and learn from the information and ideas that Massy presents in readable, engaging prose.

Contents include:

• The erosion of trust
• Universities as economic enterprises
• Subsides and contribution margins
• Research, teaching, and the quality of education
• Technology’s misunderstood potential
• Education quality processes
• Core quality principles
• Education quality oversight
• Balancing cost and quality
• Performance-based resource allocation
• The action agenda

From the Back Cover

"This a book I’ve anticipated for years. Bill Massy’s research provides a roadmap that will have a profound influence on higher education."
—Dean Hubbard, President, Northwest Missouri State University

"This book is a ‘must read’ for those concerned about constraining the ever rising costs of higher education while sustaining the quality of our universities."
—James Duderstadt, former President, University of Michigan

"Massy's suggestions regarding academic quality management are elegant and effective. He offers us a conceptual framework that allows us to give quality assurance the priority it deserves in our universities."
—Frans van Vught, Rector Magnificus, University of Twente, Netherlands

"Bill massy has implemented quality principles internationally. He truly understands how quality processes lead to quality results. I have used Bill’s work to improve our practices at WASC."
—Ralph Wolff, Director, Senior College Commission of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges

"Bill massy has long international experience with the important but extremely difficult challenge of reconciling academic freedom with the need, for those who pay for higher education, to know about the quality of what is provided. He has both designed and implemented novel systems and is exceptionally well positioned to write on this topic."
—Lord Oxburgh, former rector of Imperial College, London

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 376 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (January 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1882982568
• ISBN-13: 978-1882982561
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,128,770 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How to reconcile aspirations outside and inside the academy, November 11, 2003

By 

Jonathan Brown (Fair Oaks,, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Honoring the Trust: Quality and Cost Containment in Higher Education (JB - Anker) (Hardcover)

There is a contrast today between those in the academy and those outside. Those inside believe they are under pressure as never before and underappreciated. Those outside increasingly believe that those inside are both greedy and careless with their finances and also with quality. Neither perception is right. But those of us inside higher education need to rethink how we describe our finances and how we think about them. We need to also rethink our notions about how to organize. What Massy offers us is a set of very thoughtful suggestions about how to do all of those things. To think about costs and quality; technology and lots of professor contact; and a number of other ideas that each person responsible for a college or university in the country could benefit from. There is no one best way - after all colleges and universities in the US are a rich blend of types - but Massy offers ideas and models that could work in all kinds of institutions. In the year of higher education reauthorization with cost controls and new ways to regulate - this is very timely.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must read for Higher Ed Execs, August 6, 2003

By 

Pamela Eveland - See all my reviews

This review is from: Honoring the Trust: Quality and Cost Containment in Higher Education (JB - Anker) (Hardcover)

Massy is right on the mark with this work. His depiction of the struggle between quality and funding, research and undergraduate instruction, external control and academic freedom, and many other very real, very current issues in Higher Education is not only insightful but backed up with research and references. He has very practical advice and tools. I was so impressed with this book that I ordered several copies... for our President, the Chairman of the Board of Control, the Provost, the Vice President for Research, the Dean of Graduate Studies, etc.. The book received overwhelming glowing praise from each of them. I've no doubt this book will be on the table as we resume both strategic planning and assessment this fall.

3.0 out of 5 stars he gets the problem, but not the solution..., December 7, 2005

By 

Wanda B. Red (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: Honoring the Trust: Quality and Cost Containment in Higher Education (JB - Anker) (Hardcover)

The first half of this book is bracing and exciting; the second half is self-serving and clogged with useless jargon. At the beginning, Massy's book offers a very helpful description of how the incentives at work today in higher education undermine efforts both at cost containment and also skew the work of the faculty within the academy toward research and away from teaching. Massy is also correct to perceive that only a new structure of incentives can address these imbalances. The problem he lays out is not an easy one to solve, but it deserves a better answer than he offers here. The laborious panoply of bureaucratic interventions that he suggests -- which creak along under an even more weighty and mind-numbing array of acronyms -- is a poor response to the urgent problem of accountability in higher education. Indeed, he would add to the problem he describes by creating a new set of incentives to stimulate more of the useless "service" that drags a university's attention away from its real mission, which is to create and extend knowledge (however much Massy loathes this aspect of the academy) and to teach students. It's too bad, really, that a smart person who has such a clear-eyed perception of the problem should be co-opted by Ed-school social science and his own jet-setting Jackson-Hole think-tank until the best he can offer is a set of useless graphs and flow-charts that will waste valuable time and money and alienate "stake-holders" even further from a dysfunctional process.