SUNY series, frontiers in education

Clark Kerr, one of the nation's foremost educators and commentators on the educational scene, examines emerging problems that he predicts will influence the near future of higher education. These include the quality of undergraduate education; ethics, both as a subject and as practiced by the professoriate; the racial crisis, including the dilemma of how to provide access to underserved minority groups; and competition for recognition and resources among the nation's research universities. Also included is a thought-provoking section on the dominant connection between higher education and the economy that evaluates how well the test of service to the labor market has been met and counters the charge that our educational system is to blame for the nation's decline in economic productivity and lack of international competitiveness. The author outlines contours of the future for American higher education as it settles into a mature system, and offers choices facing the nation and its colleges in the first-approaching new century: how to stay dynamic in a period of economic statis or decline; and how to handle internal conflicts and improve the educational decision-making process. Finally, Kerr emphasizes the important role of leadership in guiding our choices and actions as we navigate through troubled times and strive to maintain leadership in the intellectual world.

As we approach the end of the twentieth century and enter the twenty-first, the nation's system of colleges and universities, as well as higher education around the world, will face some enduring conflicts and contradictions - the basic challenges that must be confronted and solved again and again in every generation. These include nationalization versus internationalization in higher education, merit in academic pursuits versus equality of treatment, the preservation of the past versus improvement of the present or changes in the future, differentiation of functions among higher education institutions versus their homogenization in a world of mass access, and commitment to ethical conduct in the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge versus exploitation of flee process for individual gain. This book outlines possible solutions to these dilemmas that will enable higher education to continue to serve its own imperatives as well as contribute to the quality of life wound the world in the coming years and decades.