UNDECLARED [Paperback]

An imaginative tour of the contemporary university as it could be: a place to discover self-knowledge, meaning, and purpose.

What if college were not just a means of acquiring credentials, but a place to pursue our formation as whole persons striving to lead lives of meaning and purpose? In Undeclared, Chris Higgins confronts the contemporary university in a bid to reclaim a formative mission for higher education. In a series of searching essays and pointed interludes, Higgins challenges us to acknowledge how far our practices have drifted from our ideals, asking: What would it look like to build a college from the ground up to support self-discovery and personal integration?  What does it mean to be a public university, and are there any left? How can the humanities help the job-ified university begin to take vocation seriously?

Cutting through the underbrush of received ideas, Higgins follows the insight where it leads, clearing a path from the corporate multiversity to the renaissance in higher education that was Black Mountain College and back again. Along the way, we tour a campus bent on becoming a shopping mall, accompany John Dewey through a midlife crisis, and witness the first happening.” Through diverse and grounded philosophical engagements, Undeclared assembles the resources to expand the contemporary educational imagination.Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Prologue xvii

Campus Tour 1
SOUL ACTION: THE SEARCH FOR INTEGRITY IN GENERAL EDUCATION 13
The Formidable Task of Formation 13
Roots and Branches 27
Scattering Requirements 46
A Skeleton Faculty 60
Chest Knowledge 71
Coda 88

New Student Orientation 93
WIDElS8