Reconstructing Alma Mater: The Coming Crisis in Higher Education, a Blueprint for Reform Book

Higher education is in the early stages of a major transformation. Rapid changes in finance, demographics, technology, the marketplace, and the political environment are driving the need for new forms of lifelong and distance learning, new forms of institutional management, and new understandings of even the way we best learn individually. The author, an educator, business executive and consultant, analyzes the challenges facing educational institutions including accreditation, admissions, finance, pedagogy, tenure, technology, ethics, leadership, management and branding. The book briefly summarizes the evolution of the modern college/university system since the establishment of Harvard College in 1636. This leads to a discussion of the mission and cultures of the modern university. In ensuing chapters the author outlines the critical challenges and needs ahead for American colleges and universities: their missions, cost structures, vulnerabilities, and how they dispense education. The book examines the cultural, economic and technologic dimensions that are driving substantial changes in the educational experience for students of all ages and how it is being reinterpreted for the years ahead. The basic educational foundations of academic freedom, the pros and cons of tenure and collective bargaining, the implications of technological advances for new kinds of education programs and the advent of for-profit institutions are discussed. This re-examination of the higher educational system sets the scene for a vision of what higher education will look like in the years ahead. * Philip H. Francis, PhD, MBA, was a professor and department chair at the Illinois Institute of Technology and hasserved as an executive of three Fortune 100 companies. He has served on the advisory boards of eight major colleges and universities. He now works, along with his wife Diana, as a consultant both to academia and to industry. Phil also has written books on R&D Management and on New Product Development for industrial practitioners.