Tag: Books

The Winter/Spring 2020 Reading List

All right, it’s nearly summer and even if going to the beach seems like a forlorn hope this year, I know you are all desperate for my higher education book picks.  So, here goes. Among the 35 higher education books I have read so far this year, there are a lot to forget.  I bought a ton of higher education books from Palgrave in December when they were running a ludicrous 90% off sale, and…let’s just say that a lot

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Merit

Universities are among the most elitist institutions in society.  I won’t say they are unabashed by this role: in fact, I’d say they are plenty bashful.  Certainly, there are many people who wish to be as democratic as possible about letting people enter higher education (though this commitment often drops as the institution becomes more elite and prestigious) but a major part of higher education’s purpose is to winnow; to separate the brightest from the merely bright and shuffle them

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The Higher Ed Reading List

It’s the next-to-last blog of the year, and so as usual it’s time to review the various higher ed-related books I have read over the course of 2019, just in case some of you are dying to spend the holidays boning up on higher ed history/policy.  I will spare you a potted description of all the 40-odd books, and just stick to the highlights. (For all you weirdos who for some strange reason prefer to read something other than higher education stuff over the

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The Making of the Modern University

I have spent a godawful amount of time on planes this week, going to Malawi and back for a meeting concerning the African Centres of Excellence project.  It’s given me a lot of time to catch up on reading (two recommendations for African fiction: The Grub Hunter by Amir Tag Elser is good, but Woman of the Ashes by Mia Couto is great).  But one book in particular I thought I should mention to y’all is The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the

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Light Weekend Reading

It’s Friday, so I thought I’d skip the heavy stuff and lay out some quick notes on my recent higher ed reads. I’ve been trying to read more about the history of Canadian institutions.  One very short pamphlet-like read is called Hatching the Cowbird’s Egg by David R. Murray, about the origin of the University of Guelph (the title vaguely make sense if you read the whole book; in context it’s a reference to the fact that Guelph is a weirdly

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