A provocative expose+a7 of the decaying moral and intellectual state of American colleges and universities links problems in higher education to university faculties, trustees, and administrations, and explains how to enhance quality education. 15,000 first printing.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Although he seems to be afflicted with a chronic sneer and often sounds as if he is addressing high school students, Anderson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, scores points as he takes on the administrations of American universities. He implies that there is a conspiracy afoot amongst faculty and trustees to grab power, prestige and tax dollars. His discussion is interesting and convincing when he talks about how many professors scorn teaching and pass on the responsibility to their graduate students, as well as making them do uncredited research. He also sensibly calls for shortening the time students take to earn Ph.Ds. For readers who want to take a position on higher education, Anderson provides the names and phone numbers of the governing board members of Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford and six other universities. Conservative Book Club main selection.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
After 35 years in academia, Anderson (Senior Fellow/Hoover Institution) gives a cri de coeur about what's gone so dreadfully wrong with the American university: Academic intellectuals, he says, have ``betrayed their profession'' and, within the halls of academe, ``integrity is dead.'' Strong charges, but Anderson does nothing if not back them up with facts, figures, and plenty of common-sense observation. Part of the problem is simply in quality-control: Between 1960 and 1975, the number of those attending college ``almost tripled, an increase of some 8 million students,'' and in the rapid hiring of faculty to teach these hoards of new students, ``there has been a slow but significant decline in the average quality of academic intellectuals.'' Add to this what Anderson calls ``hubris'' (the ``unchecked intellectual arrogance'' that leads academics to believe themselves above the rules that govern other people); and add to that the transformation of universities from what were ``rather small, quiet, dignified institutions of rarefied scholarly pursuits and the teaching of a select few'' into huge and ``sophisticated megabusiness machines''--and the stage is set for deterioration and trouble. Like bound apprentices of medieval times, graduate students ``teach'' (Anderson calls it ``children teaching children'') so that professors can produce still more research for their own institutional gain--most of it ``inconsequential and trifling''--while real education lags. Academics, says Anderson, ``begin by lying to others, and end up lying to themselves.'' Empty research, padded budgets, poor teaching, tenure-protected faculty who claim academic impartiality but in fact judge politically, corporate-style image management-- all of this, overseen by boards of trustees who know little about education, makes for ``a recipe for disaster, a witch's brew of incompetence, timidity, and neglect.'' There may be bones to pick here, but few will be unimpressed by a veteran insider's faithful-oppositionist view of the intellectual shambles our universities seem to have become. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Impostors in the Temple,
This review is from: Impostors in the Temple: The Decline of the American University (Hardcover)
Some of Allan Bloom's concerns (in The Closing of the American Mind) are updated by Martin Anderson's Impostors in the Temple: American Intellectuals are Destroying Our Universities and Cheating Our Students of Their Future (New York: Simon & Schuster, c. 1992). Anderson is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and served as an adviser to both presidents Nixon and Reagan.
One of Anderson's contentions is that two groups of intellectuals exist in America, but they rarely interact. One the one hand there are "academic intellectuals," unanimously "liberal" on most issues, protected by tenure and accountable to virtually no one. Their only constituency is fellow professors, who largely share their worldview. For example, at the University of Colorado, less than 7% of the professors in the College of Arts and Sciences are Republicans; no Republicans have been hired in the past decade, and the English department, with 57 professors, has no Republican at all! So much for the vaunted "pluralism" of today's university! On the other hand are "professional intellectuals," working in various media, government agencies, private think tanks, etc., far more equitably balanced between liberal and conservative. Primarily, Anderson argues, academicians should teach. In fact, they don't! Ernest Boyer's 1990 Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching report, "Scholarship Reconsidered," indicts professors for failing to profess, failing to give students what they should get, scholarly instruction. Teaching, counseling, grading papers all take time. Time invested in such is time wasted for academic intellectuals tracking tenure via "scholarly" publications--virtually none of which are read, even by others "scholars" in the same discipline. Taking the professors' place in the classrooms are graduate students who serve as "teaching assistants." In elite schools such as U.C. Berkeley, such "assistants" teach upwards of 75% of all clas¬ses. The same graduate students frequently must do the research their professors use to advance their own careers. Thus the Ph.D. degree, which should take three or four years to obtain, now takes many graduate students five to ten years. Anderson urges the universities to radically revise their priorities and programs. "The main business of higher education should be teaching and learning" (p. 121). Teaching, not research, should be lauded and rewarded. To this end he urges the abolition of both teaching assistants and tenure, plus serious action to curtail such things as sexual harassment, political discrimination, and corruption in athletics and finances.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bravo Mr. Anderson!,
By
This review is from: Impostors in the Temple: The Decline of the American University (Hardcover)
Martin Anderson serves up a long-overdue, superbly written account on how today's elite universities have gone astray from their originally intended ideals. Hidden amid all of their self-congratulatory statements of embracing diversity, Anderson asserts that today's leading academic institutions have become extremely un-diverse and downright intolerant when it comes to diversity of opinion regarding the vast majority of political and social issues of today. After an articulate and compelling description of the problem, the author proposes a variety of steps that need to be taken to improve the situation. A must-read for anyone who cares about resuscitating the hallowed notion of a truly liberal education.
4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting but internally inconsistent,
By A Customer
This review is from: Impostors in the Temple: The Decline of the American University (Hardcover)
Anderson's Imposter in the Temple raises a number of very interesting points about the problems facing higher education. In many ways, his comments are correct and document issues that need to be faced. The problem, however, is one of consistency. In one section, Anderson slams higher education for paying corporate like salaries to the presidents of the multibillion dollar academic corporations. In the conclusions and recommendations section, he recommends that higher education follow the mold of corporations and pay the trustees. Which model should higher education follow - corporate or non-corporate? The corporate example is only one of many items where Anderson appears to contradict himself. The book is an interesting read, but one has to read it with a critical eye.
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