Selected Titles on
Higher Education
Making Scientists: Six Principles for Effective College Teaching
“This insightful work argues for reform of collegiate science teaching methods in clear, well-reasoned points. Light and Micari, director and associate director, respectively, of Northwestern University’s Searle Center for Teaching Excellence, share the history, motivation, and successes of their Gateway Science Workshop (GSW) and Science Research Workshop (SRW) approach to teaching undergraduate science courses. Their method relies on leaving behind the lecture-style teaching methods that have been leaving students behind—especially those already underrepresented in the sciences—for years, and instead bringing students together in mentored, small groups to solve meaningful problems.”—Publishers Weekly
Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care?
“Neil Gross’s Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care? enters the ongoing debate about the position and role of the academy in American life at a high-stakes moment… Until now, the characterization of a staunchly liberal professoriate has annoyed progressives and disturbed conservatives, while remaining a curiously underexamined trope in American political life. As Gross’s study shows, it is a product of long-standing misguided assumptions and overdrawn conclusions about American academics’ politics. Gross offers an impressive range of hard social scientific data to soften the hyperbole and help set straight the terms of our debate.”
—Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, The American Prospect
Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality
“Focusing on female students, the authors find from campus observations and interviews ample evidence that four years on the party pathway will open doors of power for the elite while stranding the wannabes with mountains of student-loan debt and few employment options for paying off that debt… A provocative exposé of socially polarizing trends in higher education—certain to spark debate.”
—Bryce Christensen, Booklist
What the Best College Students Do
“Some very good books are worth reading for a few splendid pages alone. Ken Bain’s What the Best College Students Do is one such book… [It] combines interviews with a review of academic research on university learning… The ‘best’ students are curious risk-takers who make connections across disciplines. By following those instincts—rather than simply chasing ‘success’—the best students achieved it. Bain’s new book is a wonderful exploration of excellence.”
—David A. Kaplan, Fortune
Teaching What You Don’t Know
“When top-down support and open communication become the norm, teaching outside one’s expertise can cease to be the nightmarish experience many feel it to be and become the illuminating and rewarding experience that Huston describes. While this is undoubtedly important, Huston’s consistently optimistic treatment of this subject and her clear suggestions for struggling teachers remain the book’s greatest strengths. Teaching What You Don’t Know is a pleasure to read and should be required reading in graduate pedagogy classes across disciplines.”
—Adam Pacton, Pedagogy
How Economics Shapes Science
“How Economics Shapes Science should be required reading for all scientists and students of science, who are increasingly called upon to adopt the language and logic of economics and engage in policy discussions… The book [argues] that private industry alone will not invest in the socially optimal level of research, which will ultimately decrease the rate of innovation and lower economic growth. The logic is worth repeating at a time when there are calls for limiting government support for research and researchers face pressures to engage in lower-risk projects. Stephan convincingly argues that monetary incentives increasingly determine the behavior of researchers at the expense of scientists’ desire to participate in the joy of solving problems, receive recognition, and obtain a good reputation.”
—Maryann Feldman, Science
Stylish Academic Writing
“Occasionally the tedium of reading an unending supply of poorly written manuscripts is upended by a cogent, well-written, piece. Helen Sword details why this is so prevalent and offers sage advice to beginning—and even senior—researchers on how to avoid dulling academic prose. I take her advice to heart. I hope to change my numerous bad habits and I dearly wish those submitting manuscripts would read this book.”
—Rick K. Wilson, Editor, The American Journal of Political Science
The Harvard Sampler: Liberal Education for the Twenty-First Century
From Harvard University, one of the world’s preeminent institutions of liberal education, comes a collection of essays sampling topics at the forefront of academia in the twenty-first century. Written by faculty members at the cutting edge of their fields, including such luminaries as Steven Pinker, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, and Harry R. Lewis, these essays offer a clear and accessible overview of disciplines that are shaping the culture, and even the world. The authors invite readers to explore subjects as diverse as religious literacy and Islam, liberty and security in cyberspace, medical science and epidemiology, energy resources, evolution, morality, human rights, global history, the dark side of the American Revolution, American literature and the environment, interracial literature, and the human mind.
Unmaking the Public University: The Forty-Year Assault on the Middle Class
“Seriously researched, rich in data… [Unmaking the Public University] excavates a world of ugly facts and unsatisfactory practices that has the gritty look and feel of reality—a reality that has little to do with the glossy hype of world university ratings.”
—Anthony Grafton, The New York Review of Books
