The Abandoned Generation: Rethinking Higher Education

By William H. Willimon and Thomas H. Naylor

Book Overview

This is a print on demand book and is therefore non- returnable.

This critical yet constructive assessment of the current state of higher education in America exposes the disconcerting causes and effects of failed campus life while posing real solutions for reforming today's colleges and universities.

Convinced that America's institutions of higher learning now face a crisis -- that they are not meeting the educational needs of their students, that faculty members can do better -- William H. Willimon and Thomas H. Naylor here propose bold changes in the nation's undergraduate educational system. By looking at academic life from the students' point of view -- the text is filled with real-life situations, reflections from students, and poignant illustrations -- The Abandoned Generation evaluates American colleges and universities on the basis of the quality of the lives that they are now producing.

Willimon and Naylor take an honest look at three realities of student life -- substance abuse, indolence, and excessive careerism. They then evaluate the underlying causes -- the sense of meaninglessness in student life and the absence of community. Finally, they build a provocative four-tier strategy for change -- restructuring the academy, teachers who actually teach, curriculum reform, and the creation of learning communities.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802841198
• ISBN13: 9780802841193
• Release Date: July 1995
• Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
• Length: 183 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

An important, not faddish, book on university reform

Along with Kors and Silverglate's The Shadow University, this is one of the most important higher education books published in many years. Based on their studies of the Duke University campus, Willimon and Naylor correctly identify the real problem in American higher education as the poverty of student life, not the politicization of the curriculum.For more than a generation, student life has been under the control of a vacuous bureaucracy of "student affairs" and "residence life" workers who exist in a state of co-dependency with underprepared and delinquent students. Out-of-control dormitories, alcohol abuse and vandalism, institutionally-promoted segregation, and a complete disconnection between the classroom and life outside the classroom -- all these problems have been endemic for a generation in institutions that advertise themselves as "caring" and "student-centered."The solution to these problems, Willimon and Naylor show, is not left politics, nor right politics, nor politics of any kind: it is sustained, personal contact between students and faculty throughout the institution.It is unlikely that this book will have much effect on university administrators who profit from the existing problems, but it should be read by all students, parents, and (especially) legislators who want to improve the quality of higher education.