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  • A Review Forum
  • Organized by Todd C. Ream

    Introduction by David W. Wright, Provost, Indiana Wesleyan University.

    Reviews by Edward P. St. John, Algo D. Henderson Collegiate Professor, University of Michigan, and Fiona Linn, Compliance Program Manager and Research Scholar, University of Michigan Law School; Jennifer Grant Haworth, Associate Professor and Faculty Scholar, Loyola University Chicago, and Virginia Koch, Doctoral Student, Department of Leadership, Foundations and Counseling Psychology, Loyola University Chicago; George D. Kuh, Director, National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment, Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus, Indiana University; and Todd C. Ream; Senior Scholar for Faith and Scholarship, Associate Professor of Humanities, John Wesley Honors College, Indiana Wesleyan University.

    Response by Mark C. Taylor, Department Chair and Professor of Religion, Columbia University.
Mark C. Taylor . Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. 256 pp. Paper: $24.00. ISBN 978-0-30759-329-0.

"With the conviction of a reformer and the lament of a believer," by David W. Wright, Provost, Indiana Wesleyan University.

Appearances to the contrary, no systemic orthodoxy exists in American higher education. No single institutional form, curricular conception, professorial role, structure of regulatory oversight, system of external funding, or student [End Page 685] demographic has defined American higher education from its beginning to the present. Instead, American higher education has periodically adopted new institutional forms as it has adapted to the changing needs of American society (Brubacher & Rudy, 2004; Rudolph, 1990; Veysey, 1970).

These changes have been concentrated at moments of social disjuncture when the received systemic orthodoxies of American higher education no longer matched emerging social realities. Frederick Rudolph (1990) captured this sense of disjuncture when discussing the changes in American higher education from the late 1800s through the twentieth century:

Hidden in the absurdity of [overabundant course] offerings [of emerging 20th century universities] and in all of the impulse to growth was the fact that between 1890 and 1925 enrollment in institutions of higher education grew 4.7 times as fast as the population. . . . The road from the Yale Report of 1828 to the University of Nebraska course offerings of 1931 was paved with the bodies of friends of the old-time colleges who tried to hold them true to intellectual and social ideals that could not adequately serve a democratic society.

(pp. 442-443)

Periods of social change in a democracy can be confusing and conflict filled. Democracy is not centrally managed. As a popular and widely valued social institution, American higher education is not shielded from this reality. American higher education is not centrally managed. At the same time, no one and everyone speaks for American higher education.

Mark C. Taylor's Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities is one of a steady stream of voices documenting the current period of disjuncture. More than most, Taylor has succeeded in gaining the attention of both his peers and the reading public. His loudest public declamation came in an op-ed contribution published in The New York Times on April 9, 2009, when he pled for us to "end the university as we know it."

Taylor is an engaging discussion partner both in print and in person. He is incisive and well informed. Most importantly, and initial impressions to the contrary, Taylor is a deep and loyal friend of academe. Regardless, he is still a reformer.

Taylor has put his money where his mouth is over the course of his career. Besides giving up his own tenured status, he has attempted his own innovations and paid the innovator's price for running afoul of accepted orthodoxies. Some of the pungency of Taylor's critiques comes, no doubt, from these experiences.

The reviews that follow will address several major elements of Taylor's analysis and recommendations. These reviewers were chosen because of the variety of their research perspectives. For example, Edward P. St. John and Fiona Linn possess deep interests in public policy. Jennifer Grant Haworth and Virginia Koch chart considerable explorations into the nature of the curriculum. [End Page 686] George Kuh has amassed a wealth of research concerning students. Finally, Todd C. Ream utilizes the disciplines of history...

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