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  • Lesson Plan: An Agenda for Change in American Higher Education by William G. Bowen and Michael S. McPherson
  • Todd C. Ream
William G. Bowen and Michael S. McPherson. Lesson Plan: An Agenda for Change in American Higher Education. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016, xii + 163 pp. Cloth: $24.95. ISBN: 0691172102.

Although their opinions on higher education merit serious consideration, one has to wonder if the genre the late William G. Bowen and Michael S. McPherson chose for their most recent work voids that claim. That book, upon first glance, falls into an all-too tired set of rants detailing the ills of higher education and what, often in too few pages, are the needed solutions. Bowen was the president emeritus of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Princeton University and McPherson is the former president of the Spencer Foundation and Macalester College. In addition to their administrative service, both authored numerous books on topics such as the use of race in college admissions and college completion rates.

Their most recent title, however, avoids the usual battery of apocalyptic or simply melodramatic buzzwords dotting so many titles in that genre. While higher education undoubtedly faces serious challenges, pronouncing its death via a book title or subtitle proves to be more of a marketing strategy than a disciplined reflection upon reality. Bowen and McPherson thus wisely go with the more subtle Lesson Plan: An Agenda for Change in American Higher Education. That manner of nuance is then, in turn, fortunately woven into the pages that follow and thus, beyond the expertise they bring to this project, makes their ideas worthy of consideration. As a result, their work explicitly offers hope about higher education’s future while still curiously failing to raise questions concerning the larger context from which higher education draws its telos or purpose.

The argument or conviction driving their work is

that American higher education, for all of its accomplishments, needs to do much better than it is doing at present in meeting pressing national needs, especially achieving higher levels of educational attainment at the undergraduate level and reducing what are now marked disparities in outcomes related to socioeconomic status.

(p. vii)

Their previous administrative efforts and scholarly work rank their observations concerning increasing educational attainment and declining outcomes as defined by socioeconomic disparities to be among the most expert. In addition, they openly note that the foundation upon which such efforts can rest is a proud heritage of accomplishment.

Before exploring the assumed role that a singular nation-state has historically played and presently plays in higher education, a more formal overview of this otherwise impressive volume is needed. In contrast to several other works that fall into this genre, Bowen and McPherson are clear from the very beginning that part of their effort is to discern actual challenges from perceived ones. In particular, they note “that many of the so-called crises in higher education are overblown” such as “‘administrative bloat’ and ‘mountains’ of student debt” (p. viii). Part of what they then try to do is to draw upon their collective wisdom and the best data available in an effort to avoid the temptation that has befallen any number of their colleagues.

To Bowen and McPherson, “Exaggerating these concerns, if not misstating the facts entirely, only complicates and confuses discussions of how to make progress in confronting the all-too-real challenges facing higher education” (viii). While they find challenges exist, what they offer “is definitely not a narrative of despair” as a “realistic recognition of where we are today is [simply] a necessary precursor to real progress” (p. ix).

As a result, the first concern they highlight is “American higher education has lost its premier place in the league tables of educational attainment and lags behind other countries in moving ahead” (p. vii). Citing data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Bowen and McPherson frame much of what follows as a way for the United States to gain ground in relation to these two key indicators. Against the same contextual backdrop, the second concern Bowen and McPherson note is “higher education in America, once seen as the engine...

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