Category: History Lesson

In the immediate post-war period, the Soviet Union, despite the immense destruction that had been wreaked across its territory by the Nazi invasion of 1941-44, shocked the world with its rapid acquisition of what was then high technology, in particular with respect to the nuclear and space sectors. It also rose quickly ot have the world’s second largest university system, just behind the United States. Its prowess in education and Science provoked huge investments in higher education in science. But

Last week I promised you we’d have Isak Froumin on to talk about post-Soviet higher education, but for technical reasons we’ve had to delay that broadcast until next week. Instead, today, we’re going to be taking a trip down memory lane – to 1926, and a rather remarkable educational experiment that originated at New York University. It was called – the Floating University. It was the brainchild of NYU’s James E. Lough—a professor and educational reformer with an entrepreneurial spirit.