Gone for Good: Tales of University Life after the Golden Age / Edition 1

by Stuart Rojstaczer

Overview

Amid the clamorous debates on political correctness, the Western canon, and alcohol abuse on campus, many observers have failed to notice the most radical change in the American University: the Golden Age of massive government funding is gone. And, as Stuart Rojstaczer points out in this incisive look at higher education, the consequences are affecting virtually every aspect of university life.
Laced with humorous and insightful anecdotes, Gone for Good is a highly personal tour of the university system as it has evolved from the glory days of phenomenal post-WWII growth to the financial stresses that now beset it. Stuart Rojstaczer, professor of Hydrology at Duke, shows how almost unlimited funding during the Cold War years encouraged universities to become unwieldy behemoths—with ever-enlarging faculties and administrative staffs, an explosion of new buildings that are proving costly to maintain, and a parade of programs designed largely to impress other universities. Rojstaczer asserts that despite the scarcity of new funding sources, universities continue to strive for unlimited growth—with disastrous results: skyrocketing tuition (well over $20,000 per year at top tier schools); desperate attempts to increase enrollments (lower standards, inflated grades, and new majors in some rather implausible areas of study); and increasing pressure on faculty who already spend more time researching than teaching to raise more money through research grants. The time has come, Rojstaczer argues, to abandon an outmoded idea of growth and create a leaner university system more beneficial to both students and society.
For parents, students, and anyone interested higher education, Gone for Good offers a vivid account of the crossroads where universities now stand—and a compelling argument about which path they should take.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195126822
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	09/02/1999
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	9.42(w) x 6.18(h) x 0.74(d)
Lexile:	1150L (what's this?)

About the Author

Stuart Rojstaczer is Associate Professor of Geology, Environment and Engineering, and Director, Center for Hydrologic Science at Duke University. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction, why no one seems to know, even my mother, what I do at workSection One: Undergraduate Life2. Lowering the Bar, why we have such low intellectual expectations for students even though they could easily do more3. The Prestige Business, what services the university provides students and why we charge so much for tuition4. Shortening the Yellow Brick Road, why we have made college easier, yet no one seems to mind or care5. The Sports Machine, how universities entertain their students and alumni and why and how we've crossed the line of good judgmentSection Two: Research and Graduate Education6. Heart & Soul, why graduate students are often more important than professors7. Grants or Goodbye, why we spend so much time writing grant proposals8. Why Research?, what professors do when they don't teach and why they do itSection Three: Campus Politics9. Matchmaking, how we hire and why we move to other universities10. The End of the Golden Age, why the era of exponential growth has ended and why it's a good thing that it's over11. Shaking the Tree, why universities are increasingly turning to alumni, foundations and corporations, and what they will and will not do in exchange for money12. You've Got to Believe, why we blindly follow the latest trends in academic fashion even though it makes us look ridiculous13. The Fifty Percent Solution, why there are so few female professors, and why there aren't likely to be more in the foreseeable future14. Making Adjustments, how to adapt to the life of a professor without getting too crazy15. Getting Tenure, what it takes to get tenure, why standards have risen, and why they will continue to rise16. Rolling the Dice, why the American university is still valuable even though it looks to be in such a mess

What People are Saying About This

Malcolm Gillis

All parents of prospective applicants to selective universities would benefit from reading this book; for that matter so would the applicants and the faculty who may teach them....You will enjoy the book, and you might even learn a thing or two.
— Malcolm Gillis, President, Rice University

David Goodstein

Donald Kennedy and Henry Rosovsky have recently given us views of the modern university from the top down. Rojstaczer tells us what the modern university looks like from the inside out. His description is usually entertaining, occasionally depressing, and always deadly accurate. If you care at all about academic life in America, you'll have trouble putting this book down.
— David Goodstein, Vice-Provost, Cal Tech

Herbert Wang

With verve and wit, Stuart Rojstaczer of Duke University unabashedly reveals his life at a research institution from naive assistant professor to the sinecure of tenured professor.... Stuart's examination of the university milieu penetrates to the core question of whether or not the research university has its priorities right....Every student, parent, administrator, trustee, professor, politician - indeed every citizen who wonders about the inner workings of the research university - will gain new insights.
— Herbert Wang, Associate Dean, University of Wisconsin

Editorial Reviews

A serious, although informal, introduction to the realities of the university world today. A scientist who writes about a university is about as rare as a duck in a tree. Most recent reflections on changes in the academic world have come from humanists and social scientists—and most of them have been disgruntled, many bitter. Rojstaczer, a geologist and environmental engineer (Duke), shares their concerns but, by contrast, is refreshingly balanced and calm. His chatty style never betrays anger or despair. He humanizes his subject where others have often parodied it. He recognizes that a brief postwar "golden age," perhaps a third of a century long, in universities' wealth, confidence, and freedom from accountability is forever gone. He doesn't like many qualities of today's research institutions: grade inflation, a reduction in course loads and requirements for the major, students who won't work hard, universities' failure to live within their means, the corruption of athletic programs, the dependence upon fund-raising, and the difficulties of attracting graduate students and getting research grants. But who does like them? If his concerns about intellectual fashions, faculty politics, and lazy students are scarcely unique, what is distinctive is Rojstaczer's refusal to succumb to nostalgia and his recognition that today's universities face realities that didn't exist in the 1960s. Yet his book would have been improved by more extended reflections about what has in fact improved in American higher education since the 1960s—its greater diversity of students, faculty members, and concerns, and its greater openness to ideas chief among them—even if these improvementshave exacted their costs. An anecdotal yet insightful tour of American universities by an insider.

Kirkus Reviews