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Agile Faculty is a faculty development book that introduces strategies to help faculty improve their goal-setting, productivity, vitality, and career satisfaction. To do so, the book adapts the Scrum project management framework popular in software development. Scrum is a framework for dividing large projects into smaller pieces that can be accomplished in a short amount of time. The Scrum roles, meetings, strategies, and terminology can easily be adapted to faculty work in research, service, and teaching, and this work can be individual or collaborative. Faculty often juggle multiple projects and responsibilities including completing research, serving on committees, designing and teaching classes, and mentoring students and peers. Faculty can experience stress when these responsibilities compete for their time. Faculty can benefit from a set of flexible and adaptable strategies to achieve meaningful personal and professional goals. Scrum is considered an Agile framework. Agile is an umbrella term for a set of human-centered project management values and principles. The Agile values of focus, commitment, openness, courage, and respect align with faculty values. Agile Faculty introduces everything faculty readers need to know about the basics of Agile and Scrum and includes chapters with advice and specific strategies to improve how faculty approach different aspects of their research, service, and teaching priorities. The goal of Agile Faculty is to help faculty readers determine their most meaningful personal and professional goals and to use the Agile and Scrum strategies outlined in the book to make regular incremental progress toward their highest priorities for career satisfaction.

The book is a collection of essays about ethical issues arising in selective higher education. The chapters, all by distinguished scholars, including one eminent university president, address the following issues: what are the proper aims of the university and what role do the liberal arts play in fulfilling those aims?: what is the justification of the humanities; how should we conceive of critical reflection, and how should we teach it to our students?; how should professors approach their intellectual relationship with their students?; how should academics approach the problems raised by social epistemology (like the novice-expert problem) in their curriculum design and pedagogical practices?; what obligations do elite institutions have to correct for the contribution they have made, over time, to racial inequality?; and how can the university serve as a model of justice for its students? It concludes with a brief essay suggesting further avenues for research.

Frustrated with the flood of news articles and opinion pieces that were skeptical of minority students' “imagined” campus microaggressions, the author of this book set out to provide a detailed account of how racial-ethnic identity structures Black and Latinx students' college transition experiences. Tracking a cohort of more than five hundred Black and Latinx students since they enrolled at five historically white colleges and universities in the fall of 2013, the book finds that these students were not asking to be protected from new ideas. Instead, they relished exposure to new ideas, wanted to be intellectually challenged, and wanted to grow. However, the book argues, they were asking for access to counterspaces—safe spaces that enable radical growth. They wanted counterspaces where they could go beyond basic conversations about whether racism and discrimination still exist. They wanted time in counterspaces with likeminded others where they could simultaneously validate and challenge stereotypical representations of their marginalized identities and develop new counter narratives of those identities. This critique of how universities have responded to the challenges these students face offers a way forward that goes beyond making diversity statements to taking diversity actions.

Offering a critical examination of the nature of co-produced research, this important new book draws on materials and case studies from the ESRC funded project ‘Imagine – connecting communities through research’. Outlining a community development approach to co-production, which privileges community agency, the editors link with wider debates about the role of universities within communities. With policy makers in mind, contributors discuss in clear and accessible language what co-production between community groups and academics can achieve. The book will be valuable for practitioners within community contexts, and researchers interested in working with communities, activists, and artists.

Aspiring college students and their families have many options. A student can attend an in-state or an out-of-state school, a public or private college, a two-year community college program or a four-year university program. Students can attend full time and have a bachelor of arts degree by the age of twenty-three or mix college and work, progressing toward a degree more slowly. To make matters more complicated, the array of financial aid available is more complex than ever. Students and their families must weigh federal grants, state merit scholarships, college tax credits, and college savings accounts, to name just a few. This book shows how students and their families really make college decisions—how they respond to financial aid options, how peer relationships figure in the decision-making process, and even whether they need mentoring to get through the admissions process. Students of all sorts are considered—from poor students, who may struggle with applications and with deciding whether to continue on to college, to high-aptitude students who are offered “free rides” at elite schools. The book utilizes the best methods and latest data to analyze the college decision-making process, while explaining how changes in aid and admissions practices inform those decisions as well.

What types of friendship networks do students form? Who forms which type? What academic and social outcomes are attached to them? And how they impact students after college? These are some of the issues this book considers as it follows Alberto, Mary, Martin, and their peers over a five-year period from their undergraduate years at MU into life after college. By investigating the connections among students’ friends, this book identifies three types of friendship networks—tight-knitters, compartmentalizers, and samplers. Friendship networks positively and negatively impact students’ academic performance, social experiences, and life after college. And they do so differently across racial, gender, and class backgrounds. In brief, the benefits of friendship are not the same for all friends or for all students. Although friendships can drag down students’ academic success, friendships can also keep students in school, giving them a sense of belonging and enjoyment. This book challenges views of friendships as either helping or harming students by showing how and for whom friends help and hinder. Connecting rich descriptions of students’ experiences with detailed maps of their friendships over time provides a uniquely deep and nuanced lens on the lasting academic and social benefits of friends. This book advances and reorients both conceptualization and empirical investigation by showing how college friendships matter academically and socially, and how they matter differently across social categories. The book also provides suggestions for students, parents, faculty and administrators who seek to help students thrive academically and socially.

This close investigation of student protests represents the first comparative review of the subject. Setting the wave of demonstrations within the contexts of student activism, social issues, and political movements, the book casts new light on their impact on higher education and on the broader society. The book begins with an overview of the analysis of transformation in higher education (HE) policies and student politics, linking them to research on the policy outcomes of social movements. HE policies have been shaped by various waves of student mobilization. Students have often been important actors in contentious politics, mobilizing on all main cleavages in society and often stimulating spin-off movements, as well as affecting institutional politics at large. Student protests are therefore affected by public policies at least as much as they affect them. The book focuses on these complex interactions, aiming at understanding the development of student protests within neoliberal universities. It explores four episodes of student contestation over HE reforms, which have recently taken place in Chile, Quebec, England, and Italy. In light of the findings, the book reflects on the impacts of neoliberal policies in contentious politics and point at the relevance of coalitions for a sustained impact of mobilization campaigns. The discussion also points toward the student movements' effects in terms of empowerment, the triggering of spill-over movements, and transformations in electoral and party politics. Offering sophisticated new theoretical arguments based on fascinating empirical work, the insights and conclusions revealed in this study are of value to anyone with an interest in social, political, and related studies.

This book, a history of Cornell University since 1940, examines the institution in the context of the emergence of the modern research university. It examines Cornell during the Cold War, the civil rights movement, Vietnam, antiapartheid protests, the ups and downs of varsity athletics, the women's movement, the opening of relations with China, and the creation of Cornell NYC Tech. It relates profound, fascinating, and little-known incidents involving the faculty, administration, and student life, connecting them to the “Cornell idea” of freedom and responsibility. With access to all existing papers of the presidents of Cornell, the book is a respectful but unvarnished portrait of the university. The history of Cornell since World War II, the book suggests, is in large part a set of variations on the narrative of freedom and its partner, responsibility, the obligation to others and to one's self to do what is right and useful, with a principled commitment to the Cornell community—and to the world outside the Eddy Street gate.

Young people are told that college is a place where they will “make friendships that will last a lifetime.” What happens when students arrive on campus and enter a new social world? The Cost of Inclusion delves into this rich moment to explore the ways young people seek out inclusion and its emotive counterpart, a sense of belonging. To illuminate the college social scene, Blake R. Silver spent a year immersed in student life at a large public university. Silver paired ethnographic observation with in-depth interviews with first-year college students in order to understand how individuals searched for and frequently failed to find inclusion in the social realm of higher education. Students sought diverse extracurricular groups where they could connect with others from a variety of backgrounds. However, as many soon realized, finding a sense of belonging in these settings often came at a cost. To be included, students encountered pressure to conform to racist and sexist stereotypes. This book examines how culture shapes identity and self-presentation, generating inequality at the intersections of race and gender. Silver argues that a laissez faire approach to the extracurriculum is undermining student success and marginalizing women and racial/ethnic minority students on campus. Opportunities for colleges and universities to address these disparities are explored.

The college classroom is a place where students have the opportunity to be transformed and inspired through learning—but teachers need to understand how students actually learn. This book provides an accessible, hands-on guide to the craft of college teaching, giving instructors the practical tools they need to help students achieve not only academic success but also meaningful learning to last a lifetime. The book explains what to teach—emphasizing concepts and their relationships, not just isolated facts—as well as how to teach using active learning strategies that engage students through problems, case studies and scenarios, and practice reinforced by constructive feedback. The book tells how to motivate students, run productive discussions, create engaging lectures, use technology effectively, and much more. Interludes between chapters illustrate common challenges, including what to do on the first and last days of class and how to deal with student embarrassment, manage group work, and mentor students effectively. There are also plenty of questions and activities at the end of each chapter. This book is an essential resource for new instructors and seasoned pros alike.

American universities today serve as economic engines, performing the scientific research that will create new industries, drive economic growth, and keep the United States globally competitive. But only a few decades ago, these same universities self-consciously held themselves apart from the world of commerce. This is the first book to systematically examine why academic science made such a dramatic move toward the market. Drawing on extensive historical research, the book shows how the government—influenced by the argument that innovation drives the economy—brought about this transformation. Americans have a long tradition of making heroes out of their inventors. But before the 1960s and 1970s neither policymakers nor economists paid much attention to the critical economic role played by innovation. However, during the late 1970s, a confluence of events—industry concern with the perceived deterioration of innovation in the United States, a growing body of economic research on innovation's importance, and the stagnation of the larger economy—led to a broad political interest in fostering invention. The policy decisions shaped by this change were diverse, influencing arenas from patents and taxes to pensions and science policy, and encouraged practices that would focus specifically on the economic value of academic science. By the early 1980s, universities were nurturing the rapid growth of areas such as biotech entrepreneurship, patenting, and university–industry research centers. Contributing to debates about the relationship between universities, government, and industry, the book sheds light on how knowledge and politics intersect to structure the economy.

How can higher education contribute to tackling today's complex challenges? In this wide-ranging book, the author argues that, in order to inspire and equip students to generate better responses to global challenges, we need a pedagogy that develops their imagination, creativity, emotional sensibilities and practical capabilities. The author proposes a critical-creative pedagogy that incorporates design-based activities, experiential teaching, serious play and future-oriented practices. Crucially, the book demonstrates the importance of moving beyond analysing limitations to working towards alternatives for more equitable, just and sustainable futures. Presenting concrete ideas for the reimagination of higher education, this book is an essential read for both educators and students in any field studying global challenges.

Until very recently, American universities were led mainly by their faculties, which viewed intellectual production and pedagogy as the core missions of higher education. Today, as Benjamin Ginsberg warns in this eye-opening, controversial book, "deanlets"--administrators and staffers often without serious academic backgrounds or experience--are setting the educational agenda. The Fall of the Faculty examines the fallout of rampant administrative blight that now plagues the nation's universities. In the past decade, universities have added layers of administrators and staffers to their payrolls every year even while laying off full-time faculty in increasing numbers--ostensibly because of budget cuts. In a further irony, many of the newly minted--and non-academic--administrators are career managers who downplay the importance of teaching and research, as evidenced by their tireless advocacy for a banal "life skills" curriculum. Consequently, students are denied a more enriching educational experience--one defined by intellectual rigor. Ginsberg also reveals how the legitimate grievances of minority groups and liberal activists, which were traditionally championed by faculty members, have, in the hands of administrators, been reduced to chess pieces in a game of power politics. By embracing initiatives such as affirmative action, the administration gained favor with these groups and legitimized a thinly cloaked gambit to bolster their power over the faculty. As troubling as this trend has become, there are ways to reverse it. The Fall of the Faculty outlines how we can revamp the system so that real educators can regain their voice in curriculum policy.

The 21st century has witnessed significant changes to the structures and policies framing Higher Education. But how do these changes in norms, values, and purpose shape the generation now coming of age? Employing a generational analysis, this book offers an original approach to the study of education. Drawing on a British Academy-funded study, comprising a policy review, semi-structured interviews and focus groups with students and with academics of different generations, and an analysis of responses to the Mass Observation Study, the book explores the qualitative dimensions of the relationship between academics and students, and examines wider issues of culture and socialisation, from tuition fees and student mental health, to social mobility and employment. The book begins with a discussion of the emergence of a ‘graduate generation’, in a context where 50 per cent of young people are encouraged to go to University, on the basis that this is a personal investment in their future careers. Subsequent chapters review the policy changes that have led to this framing of Higher Education as an increasingly individualised experience, where ‘student choice’ is operationalised as the means by which Universities are funded and held to account; historical differences in the experience of Higher Education; and the impact of these changes on the role and status of academic staff and the experience of current and prospective students.

This book examines the impact of devolution on Scottish and UK higher education systems, including institutional governance, approaches to tuition fees and student support, cross-border student flows, widening access, internationalisation and research policy. Throughout the book, higher education is used as a lens through which to interrogate critically the Scottish Government’s claim that, alone in the UK, Scotland remains a bastion of collectivism and social democracy. The authors point out that Scottish universities have flourished since devolution, attracting growing numbers of international students and expanding their research income. However, elite institutions in particular have failed to increase the proportion of students from poorer backgrounds, thus reproducing rather than challenging wider social inequality. The abolition of tuition fees in Scotland has made no difference to unequal patterns of participation. This policy favours those from more advantaged backgrounds who continue to claim the lion’s share of university places in Scotland.

As international interest in promoting and assessing the impact of research grows, this book examines the ensuing controversies, consequences and challenges. It places a particular emphasis on learning from experiences in the UK, since this is the country at the forefront of a range of new approaches to incentivising, monitoring and rewarding research impact achievements. The book aims to understand the origins and rationale for these changes and to critically assess their consequences for academic practice. Combining a review of existing literature with a range of new qualitative data (from interviews, focus groups and documentary analysis), The Impact Agenda is unique in providing a comprehensive, cross-disciplinary empirical examination of the ways in which various forms of research impact assessment are shaping academic practices. Although the primary focus of the book is on the UK, the book also considers the different approaches that other countries with an interest in research impact are taking (notably Australia, Canada and the Netherlands). While noting the benefits that the increasing emphasis on outward facing work is bringing, the book draws attention to a wide range of challenges and controversies associated with research impact assessment and, in particular, with the UK’s chosen approach. It concludes by using the insights in the book to propose an alternative, more theoretically robust approach to incentivising and rewarding efforts to undertake and use academic research for societal benefit.

Jacobs raises questions about the increasing popularity of concept of interdisciplinarity, which is becoming a powerful force in American higher education. Reformers assert that blurring the boundaries between traditional disciplines would promote more rapid advances in research, more useful solutions to complex public problems, and more effective teaching and learning. Jacobs maintains that the critiques of established disciplines, such as history, economics and biology, are often over-stated and misplaced. He shows that disciplines are remarkably porous and continually incorporate new methods and ideas from other fields. Drawing on diverse sources of data, Jacobs considers many case studies, including the diffusion of ideas between fields, with a special focus on education research; the creation of interdisciplinary scholarly journals; the rise of new fields from existing ones; American studies programs; cross-listed courses, team teaching and specialized undergraduate degrees. Jacobs broadens the inquiry, looking beyond individual research collaborations to the system of disciplines and the long-term trajectories of research frontiers. Over time, successful interdisciplinary breakthroughs recreate many of the key features of established disciplines. He questions whether efforts to integrate knowledge across domains are likely to succeed, since interdisciplinary research itself is often quite specialized. Finally, these efforts may produce unintended consequences, since an interdisciplinary university would likely promote greater centralization of academic decision making in the offices of deans and presidents. Over the course of the book, Jacobs turns many of the criticisms of disciplines on their heads while making a powerful defense of the enduring value of liberal arts disciplines.

Colleges and universities stand to benefit greatly when businesspeople engage with them, whether through governing boards, alumni associations, consulting arrangements, philanthropy, or other channels. But many businesspeople are frustrated by the way institutions of higher education work--or rather, how they don't work. Why do decisions in universities take so long and involve so many people? Why aren't profit and growth top priorities for colleges? Why can't the faculty be managed like any other employees? Shouldn't alumni have a greater say as they continue to invest in their alma mater? As leaders in higher education, James W. Dean Jr. and Deborah Y. Clarke have years of experience addressing these questions for a wide range of professionals outside the academy. This book draws on their expertise to offer real-world guidance for businesspeople who work with and seek to improve colleges and universities. Dean and Clarke differentiate and clarify the motivations and structures that make universities unique among American enterprises. And while they acknowledge the challenges that businesspeople often face when working with academic institutions, they explain that understanding the distinct mission of higher education is essential to being able to effect change within these organizations. Presenting insights from interviews with a wide range of stakeholders, Dean and Clarke give succinct and practical advice for working with universities.

Gerald J. Beyer’s Just Universities discusses ways that U.S. Catholic institutions of higher education have embodied or failed to embody Catholic social teaching in their campus policies and practices. Beyer argues that the corporatization of the university has infected U.S. higher education with hyper-individualistic models and practices, which hinder the ability of Catholic institutions to create an environment imbued with bedrock values and principles of CST such as respect for human rights, solidarity, and justice. Beyer problematizes corporatized higher education and shows how it has adversely impacted efforts on Catholic campuses to promote worker justice on campus, equitable admissions, financial aid, and retention policies, diversity and inclusion policies that treat people of color, women, and LGBTQ persons as full community members, just investment, and stewardship of resources and the environment. JustUniversities represents a unique contribution to the discussion of mission and identity in Catholic higher education, which almost exclusively focuses on issues such as curriculum, philosophy of education, and religious rituals on campus, while overlooking the obligation to promote justice and human dignity both beyond and within the institution’s walls. By critiquing failures to embody Catholic social teaching on campuses, commending already existent promising practices, and proposing ways in which Catholic colleges can foster stronger commitment to CST, Just Universities illustrates how Catholic social teaching can undergird a just model of higher education in the age of the corporatized university.

The Advanced Placement (AP) program stands as the foremost source of college-level academics for millions of high school students in the United States and beyond. More than 22,000 schools now participate in it, across nearly forty subjects, from Latin and art to calculus and computer science. Yet remarkably little has been known about how this nongovernmental program became one of the greatest success stories in K–12 education—until now. This book offers an account of one of the most important educational initiatives of our time. The book traces the story of AP from its mid-twentieth-century origins as a niche benefit for privileged students to its emergence as a springboard to college for high schoolers nationwide, including hundreds of thousands of disadvantaged youth. Today, AP not only opens new intellectual horizons for smart teenagers, but also strengthens school ratings, attracts topflight teachers, and draws support from philanthropists, reformers, and policymakers. At the same time, it faces numerous challenges, including rival programs, curriculum wars, charges of elitism, the misgivings of influential universities, and the difficulty of infusing rigor into schools that lack it. In today's polarized climate, can AP maintain its lofty standards and surmount the problems that have sunk so many other bold education ventures?