What Ought to Be Toward a More Perfect University, by Jonathan R. Cole. New York: Public Affairs, 2016, 432 pp., $29.99 hardbound

• Published in: Academic Questions Vol. 30; no. 1; pp. 103 - 107
• Main Author: Arum, Richard
• Format: Journal Article Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.03.2017; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Anxiety; College campuses; College students; Cost recovery; Education; Education policy; Educational Change; Educational Philosophy; Higher Education; Learning; Learning outcomes; Reviews; Schools; Student participation; Universities; New York; United States > US; Student Engagement; High Education Institution; High Education Leader; High Education; Elite Setting
• ISSN: 0895-4852; 1936-4709
• DOI: 10.1007/s12129-016-9606-4

Like other scholarship in this genrei.e., ruminations about higher education reform from accomplished senior, elite university administratorsthe larger problems facing higher education are not always fully addressed. Because most of their professional lives have been in elite settings, they often have had less direct contact with problems facing institutions catering to a broader and more diverse set of students. Challenges around the state of undergraduate learning are thus briefly acknowledged then set aside by asserting that the situation in broad-access institutions differs appreciably from what goes on at perhaps 120 or so private and public colleges and universities in the United States that are highly selective and that have their choice of students from a huge pool of applicants. Cole provides no evidence supporting the contention that such a large number of higher education institutions are exempt from pedagogical concerns over inadequately structured curriculum, ill-defined learning outcomes, ineffective instructional practices, and lack of student engagement and academic rigor. [...]when one inspects empirical results of the National Survey of Student Engagement for a representative flagshippublicresearchuniversitysuch astheUniversity of Texas at Austin (UT), which was required to release results to the publicthe available evidence does not corroborate such a far-reaching, Pollyannaish claim.1 For example, 31 percent of seniors at UT in 2010 reported studying ten or fewer hours per week (8 percent higher than freshmen reports that year); 54 percent of seniors and 86 percent of freshmen reported not writing a single paper of twenty or more pages that year.