Recommended Books

The Future of Higher Education by Dan Clawson and Max Page analyzes the crisis in higher education, describing how a dominant neo-liberal political ideology has significantly changed the U.S. system of higher education. The book examines the contemporary landscape of higher education institutions and asks and answers these questions: Who is able to attend college? Who pays for our system of higher education? Who works at and who governs colleges and universities? The book concludes with a plan for radically revitalizing higher education in the United States.

Saving State U  by Nancy Folbre looks at major national questions through the lens of teaching and learning at major state universities whose budgets have repeatedly been slashed, restored, and then slashed again.  With a lot of examples drawn from Massachusetts, this is a brilliant firsthand account of the stakes the politics, and the key debates raging through public campuses today, together with a sobering vision of the many possible futures of public higher education and their links to the fate of our democracy.