All the essential half-truths about higher education

George Dennis O'Brien offers an engagingly written, cogent analysis of higher education in America. O'Brien argues that to debate intelligently about the future of education, we must stop focusing on its ideals and look instead at its institutions.

O'Brien shows how the institution of American higher education changed fundamentally during this century when the administration-led, religious or denominational college was replaced by the faculty-dominated research university. Since then, the scientific assumptions of the research model have clashed with what O'Brien terms the "historical 'hangover' of moral mission" still expected of the university.

How will ambiguously governed institutions respond intelligently to the financial, technological, and cultural changes just now beginning to affect higher education? Who will decide, for example, how many physicists are enough? Or which departments should be shut down? O'Brien illuminates such issues by looking at them in their institutional setting. Valid goals and ideas are significantly altered once they are incorporated into practical form: What may have been "truths" become "half-truths.".

O'Brien's proposals on what might be done to help colleges survive in the next century range from changing the nature of tenure to rethinking the logic of financial aid to developing distinctive institutional missions. This book is deceptive. O'Brien's witty and relaxed style disguises a serious, well-structured, historically informed argument on the present challenges and future prospects of American higher education.