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Believing that current educational policies and practices in American institutions of higher learning contribute to an incoherent, disjunctive, and wasteful four-year experience for many undergraduates, the author provides a sense of new direction to aid in the restructuring and reform of undergraduate education in America. The primary question of the work is: How can the years of undergraduate education empower the student with the knowledge and integrated set of skills needed for a lifetime of learning and productive work? Boudreau focuses on the primary responsibility of all institutions of higher learning to provide a superior undergraduate education. All other functions of a university should be secondary to this commitment. Unfortunately, this basic premise seems lost today. This work argues that universities must undergo significant reform and renewal, especially at the undergraduate level, if they are to prepare students successfully for the future.
List of contents
Preface: A Young Man's Death in the Desert
Foreword by John M. Carfora
Introduction: Educational Agnostics: The America Campus in Crisis
The Search for First PrinciplesBack to Basics: Revisiting Plato's Republic
The Languaged Life of Learning: The Intersubjective Imperative
Reconceiving the University: The Great Books versus the Great Debate
Rediscovering Atlantis: A Navigator's Guide to Western Civilization
Restructuring Higher Education in AmericaSlaying the Sacred Cows: The Restructuring of the University
Returning Home: The Odyssey of Learning
The Coming Global Campus: The Intercultural Imperative
The Groves of Akademos: The Campus as Community
A Vision of the UniversityA Vision of the University: The Importance of Leadership on Campus
"The Illimitable Freedom of the Mind": Jefferson's University and the Federalist League
Conclusion: Universitas: Restoring the Whole
Postscript
Select Bibliography
Index
About the author
THOMAS E. BOUDREAU is an Assistant Professor at The School for Social and Systemic Studies at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He is the author of Sheathing the Sword (Greenwood, 1991).
