Reconstructing the Uni-versity: From the Ashes of the Mega- and Multi-versity [Hardcover]

Slogans, myths, and isolated anecdotes are inadequate substitutes for documented history and contextual understanding.

Literature on the history of higher education is dominated by ahistorical and contextually ignorant slogans. Seldom acknowledged, in discussions of the decline or failure of the modern university, is 1) how long it has been going on (at least since the 1960s); and 2) universities' own complicity in this long, complicated, and contradictory process. Myths intertwine inseparably with slogans to echo yet another lost cause. Our collective, as well as individual, pasts provide essential lessons if we know how to read and learn from them. More complicated is imagining a plausible better future for universities. InReconstructing the Uni-versity: From the Ashes of the Mega- and Multi-versity to the Futures of Higher Education, Harvey J. Graff, bringing experience from over 50 years as a professor, provides an accurate history of higher education, redefining the issues and terms to establish a new agenda.

This book offers an accurate history of higher education and, in the process, counters endlessly repeated, ahistorical, and contradictory myths. The author builds on a foundational understanding of the past to propose a reconstruction of the uni-versity for a new era.Harvey J. Graff is Professor Emeritus of English and History, inaugural Ohio Eminent Scholar in Literacy Studies, and Academy Professor at The Ohio State University.

Harvey J. Graff maintains that we will not be able to see the future possibilities of colleges and universities clearly without a sense of the history of higher education. He argues passionately against reform initiatives which seem to be more firmly rooted in meaningless marketing slogans than concrete policies. His vision of a dynamic and humane university, and the reforms needed to make that vision a reality, are at once common sense and a marked departure from current practices. Jerrlã7