A college education has long been acknowledged as essential for both personal success and economic growth. But the measurable value of its nonmonetary benefits has until now been poorly understood. Walter W. McMahon, a leading education economist, carefully describes these benefits and suggests that higher education accrues significant social and private benefits. McMahon's research uncovers a major skill deficit in the United States and other OECD countries owing to technical change and globalization. Yet a college degree brings better job opportunities, higher earnings, and even improved health. Higher education also promotes democracy and sustainable growth and contributes to reduced crime and lower state welfare and prison costs. These social benefits are substantial in relation to the costs of a college education. Offering a human capital perspective on these and other higher education policy issues, McMahon suggests that poor understanding of the value of nonmarket benefits leads to private underinvestment. He offers policy options that can enable state and federal governments to increase investment in higher education.

This book presents 39 innovative assessment practices from a range of disciplines and located in a clearly articulated theoretical framework, it also concludes with suggestions for responding to challenges at the interface between assessment and learning.

The role played by the humanities in reconciling American diversity—a diversity of both ideas and peoples—is not always appreciated. This volume of essays, commissioned by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, examines that role in the half century after World War II, when exceptional prosperity and population growth, coupled with America's expanded political interaction with the world abroad, presented American higher education with unprecedented challenges and opportunities. The humanities proved to be the site for important efforts to incorporate groups and doctrines that had once been excluded from the American cultural conversation. Edited and introduced by David Hollinger, this volume explores the interaction between the humanities and demographic changes in the university, including the link between external changes and the rise of new academic specializations in area and other interdisciplinary studies. This volume analyzes the evolution of humanities disciplines and institutions, examines the conditions and intellectual climate in which they operate, and assesses the role and value of the humanities in society. Contents: John Guillory, "Who's Afraid of Marcel Proust? The Failure of General Education in the American University" Roger L. Geiger, "Demography and Curriculum: The Humanities in American Higher Education from the 1950s through the 1980s" Joan Shelley Rubin, "The Scholar and the World: Academic Humanists and General Readers" Martin Jay, "The Ambivalent Virtues of Mendacity: How Europeans Taught (Some of Us) to Learn to Love the Lies of Politics" James T. Kloppenberg, "The Place of Value in a Culture of Facts: Truth and Historicism" Bruce Kuklick, "Philosophy and Inclusion in the United States, 1929–2001" John T. McGreevy, "Catholics, Catholicism, and the Humanities, 1945–1985" Jonathan Scott Holloway, "The Black Scholar, the Humanities, and the Politics of Racial Knowledge Since 1945" Rosalind Rosenberg, "Women in the Humanities: Taking Their Place" Leila Zenderland, "American Studies and the Expansion of the Humanities" David C. Engerman, "The Ironies of the Iron Curtain: The Cold War and the Rise of Russian Studies" Andrew E. Barshay, "What is Japan to Us"? Rolena Adorno, "Havana and Macondo: The Humanities Side of U.S. Latin American Studies, 1940–2000"

What is it really like to be a college professor in an American classroom today? An award-winning teacher with over twenty years of experience answers this question by offering an enlightening and entertaining behind-the-scenes view of a typical semester in his American history course. The unique result—part diary, part sustained reflection—recreates both the unstudied realities and intensely satisfying challenges that teachers encounter in university lecture halls.

From the initial selection of reading materials through the assignment of final grades to each student, Patrick Allitt reports with keen insight and humor on the rewards and frustrations of teaching students who often are unable to draw a distinction between the words "novel" and "book." Readers get to know members of the class, many of whom thrive while others struggle with assignments, plead for better grades, and weep over failures. Although Allitt finds much to admire in today's students, he laments their frequent lack of preparedness—students who arrive in his classroom without basic writing skills, unpracticed with reading assignments.

With sharp wit, a critical eye, and steady sympathy for both educators and students, I'm the Teacher, You're the Student examines issues both large and small, from the ethics of student-teacher relationships to how best to evaluate class participation and grade writing assignments. It offers invaluable guidance to those concerned with the state of higher education today, to young faculty facing the classroom for the first time, and to parents whose children are heading off to college.

At a time when college enrollment rates for low income and under-represented students are far below those of non-minority students, policies and practices designed to increase access should be a priority for colleges, universities, high schools, and community agencies. Increasing Access to College examines pre-college enrichment programs that offer a specific and immediate remedy.

Independent learning is not a new concept for language educators but while teachers, curriculum designers and policy makers have embraced it as underpinning modern notions of education, it remains a dynamic and vibrant field for researchers and academics who aim to broaden its scope and deepen our understanding of how it may be applied most effectively both inside and outside the classroom. The book’s authors use their experience of applying the concepts related to independent learning in various geographical, cultural and pedagogical tertiary level learning contexts to present new perspectives on how independent learning can inform and support policy, teaching methodology, curriculum development and the nurturing of successful learners. While the first section of the book provides a view of the field from three broad curriculum development viewpoints, the remaining chapters primarily focus on the experience of learners, teachers and curriculum developers in applying principles of learner autonomy, self-regulation and self-direction with various types of learner – each with their own identities, motivations, expectations and goals. These learner and teacher stories provide insights that are important for an understanding of some of the impacts an independent learning approach to language learning have on learners in various educational contexts. This book will be of value to pre-service and in-service teachers, curriculum developers and teacher educators working in diverse educational contexts in more fully appreciating the contribution an independent learning focus can make to successful learning.

Through a dizzying array of references to subjects ranging from engineering to poetry, on-the-job experiences in academia and industry, conflicts between working-class and intellectual labor, the privatization of universities, and the contradictions of the modern environment, Joe Amato’s Industrial Poetics mounts a boisterous call for poetry communities to be less invested in artistic self-absorption and more concerned about social responsibility. s Amato focuses on the challenges faced by American poets in creating a poetry that speaks to a public engineered into complacency by those industrial technologies, practices, and patterns of thought that we cannot seem to do without, he brings readers face to face with the conflicting realities of U.S. intellectual, academic, and poetic culture.Formally adventurous and rhetorically lively, Industrial Poetics is best compared with the intellectually exploratory, speculative, risky, polemical work of other contemporary poet-critics including Kathleen Fraser, Joan Retallack, Bruce Andrews, Susan Howe, and Allen Grossman. Amato uses an exhilarating range of structural and rhetorical strategies: conventionally developed argument, abruptly juxtaposed aphorisms, personal narrative, manifesto-like polemic, and documentary reportage. With a critic’s sharply analytical mind, a poet’s verve, and a working-class intellectual’s sense of social justice, Amato addresses the many nonliterary institutions and environments in which poetry is inextricably embedded. By connecting poetry to industry in a lively demonstration against the platitudes and habitudes of the twentieth century, Amato argues for a reenergized and socially forceful poetics---an industrial poetics, rough edges and all. Jed Rasula writes, “I can’t say I pay much attention to talk radio, but this is what I imagine it might be like if the deejay were really smart, enviably well read, yet somehow retained the snarling moxie of the am format.”

Popular culture portrays college Greek organizations as a training ground for malevolent young aristocrats. Films such as Animal House, Revenge of the Nerds, Old School, and Legally Blonde reinforce this stereotype, but they fail to depict the enduring influence of these organizations on their members. Inside Greek U. provides an in-depth investigation of how fraternities and sororities bolster traditional, and potentially damaging, definitions of gender and sexuality. Using evidence gathered in hundreds of focus group sessions and personal interviews, as well as his years of experience as a faculty advisor to Greek organizations, Alan D. DeSantis offers unprecedented access to the world of fraternities and sororities. DeSantis, himself once a member of a fraternity, shows the profoundly limited gender roles available to Greeks: “real men” are taught to be unemotional, sexually promiscuous, and violent; “nice girls,” to be nurturing, domestic, and pure. These rigid formulations often lead to destructive attitudes and behaviors, such as eating disorders, date rape, sexual misconduct, and homophobia. Inside Greek U. shows that the Greek experience does not end on graduation day, but that these narrow definitions of gender and sexuality impede students’ intellectual and emotional development and limit their range of choices long after graduation. Ten percent of all college students join a Greek organization, and many of the nation’s business and political leaders are former members. DeSantis acknowledges that thousands of students join Greek organizations each year in search of meaning, acceptance, friendship, and engagement, and he illuminates the pressures and challenges that contemporary college students face. Inside Greek U. demonstrates how deeply Greek organizations influence their members and suggests how, with reform the worst excesses of the system, fraternities and sororities could serve as a positive influence on individuals and campus life.

Landing a job in today’s academic job market is no easy feat. Is graduate school the answer? This informed and candid book provides anyone thinking about pursuing an advanced degree—and those who support them—with the inside scoop on what to expect in graduate school. Amanda I. Seligman helps potential students navigate graduate study—not just how to get in but how to succeed once you are there and what to expect when you leave. She weighs the pros and cons of attending graduate school against achieving a sustainable work-life balance and explains the application process, the culture of graduate school, and employment prospects for academics. This book guides readers through the ins and outs of graduate school, and no topic is off limits, including • qualifications and admission guidelines • financial aid and graduate stipends • meeting expectations and residency requirements • coursework, theses, and dissertations • degrees, jobs, and academic careers • tenure, research, and peer review • social life (will you still have one?) Written in a question-and-answer format, Is Graduate School Really for You? eliminates the guesswork. Whether you are considering applying to graduate school, already enrolled, or would simply like to know more about continuing your education, this is the book for you.