Newman’s “The Idea of a University”

Have you heard of  John Henry Newman’s 1854 classic “The Idea of a University?” Here is a link to the Newman Reader where you can find the full-text document. A controversial religious figure of the 19th century, Newman authored several influential books, both before and after joining the Catholic church.

Newman shares his view of liberal education when he advocates a “general culture of mind” as the “best aid to professional and scientific study.” He goes on to argue that the man “who has learned to and reason and to compare and to discriminate and to analyze, who has refined his taste, and formed his judgment, and sharpened his mental vision, will not indeed at once be a lawyer, or a pleader, or an orator, or a statesman, or a physician, or a good landlord, or a man of business, or a soldier, or an engineer, or a chemist, or a geologist, or an antiquarian, but he will be placed in that state of intellect in which he can take up any one of the sciences or callings I have referred to, or any other for which he has a special taste or talent, with an ease, a grace, a versatility, and a success, to which another is a stranger.” (pp. 165-166).

Here is a link to the abbreviated text and a link to the result on Google Books.

Rosovsky: Post 1

Currently re-reading Henry Rosovsky’s book The University: An Owner’s Manual for class. This is one of the best. Even better the second time around. Click here to order it on Amazon.com

Rosovsky spent eleven years as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard. His writing style is superb. He is engaging, entertaining, and insightful. And a William and Mary alumnus!

Geiger’s “Ten Generations” of Higher Education

Yale Law Library

In Chapter 2 of American Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century, chapter author Roger L. Geiger categorizes four centuries of the development higher education in America into “The Ten Generations of American Higher Education” (Altbach, Berdahl, & Gumport, 1999). They are as follows:

1: Reformation Beginnings, 1636-1740s

2: Colonial Colleges, 1745-1775

3: Republican Education, 1776-1800

4: The Passing of Republican Education, 1800-1820s

5: The Classical, Denominational Colleges, 1820s-1850s

6: New Departures, 1850s-1890

7: Growth and Standardization, 1890-WWI

8: Hierarchical Differentiation between the Wars

9: The Academic Revolution, 1945-1975

10: Regulation, Relevance, and the Steady State

 

Source citation:

Altbach, P., Berdahl, R.& Gumport, P. (Eds.). (1999). American higher education in the twenty-first century: Social, political, and economic challenges. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Book Review: Higher Education in Transition (Eds. Losco and Fife) – Post 1 – The Introduction

Losco, J., & Fife, Brian. (Eds.). (2000). Higher education in transition: The challenges of a new millenium. Westport: Bergin & Garvey.

Book Title: Higher Education in Transition: The Challenges of the New Millenium

Book Editors: Joseph Losco, Brian L. Fife

Page Count: 222

Questia Link to Book, Click Here

Google Reader Link to Book, Click Here

Introduction: Alexander W. Astin writes the introduction to this book. He begins with a quote from Henry Seidel Canby (H.S. Canby), dated year 1915, which gives us an illustration of Seidel’s view of the typical American college student from the early 20th century. Seidel, an English teacher at Yale, commented that for most of his students, college was not a path to supporting themselves; most had positions waiting for them in their family business. In the selected text, Seidel argues that these students do not need “narrow training” leading to a particular profession. Instead, they needed a broader training in “how to utilize living” and to have their interests and mental powers stimulated, developed, and disciplined.

Astin notes that another text from Seidel dated 1919 shows him lamenting the “growing pressure for vocational training” and advocating the benefits of a liberal arts education. The captured quote is as follows: “[The college student] needs an honest knowledge of the great principles that underlie human thought and action, the principles that have been crystallized in the modern humanities – history, literature, social and natural science, art, and the rest.”