Abstract
The fundamental purpose of American higher education has changed and adapted as the needs of society have changed. The subsequent missions have reflected those societal needs and aspirations, yet for society at large and those within the profession of higher education the notion of “mission” has become an amorphous idea that doesn’t necessarily connect to the increasingly individualized career of college professors. The challenge for the college administrator in the twenty-first century is to refine, adapt and promulgate a mission that fulfills the needs of the students, the professors and the society at large. The lessons of the past are a powerful force in crafting that vision, one that takes into account the dynamic forces of society, economics, technology and intellectualism.
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Notes
- 1.
Philip Altbach, “Patterns in Higher Education Development” in American Education in the Twenty-First Century, 2nd Edition Edited by Philip Altbach, Robert Berdahl and Patricia Gumport (2005) Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 15.
- 2.
James Freeman in Valley News, Hanover, NH, June 6, 2003, p. C1
- 3.
Ibid, p. C8
- 4.
Note: this college is a fictitious creation of the author, it seeks to blend truth from many existing colleges and universities in the U.S. today
- 5.
Patrick Callan and John Immerwahr, “What Colleges Must Do to Keep the Public’s Good Will” in Chronicle of Higher Education, January 11, 2008, p. A56.
- 6.
Derek Bok, Beyond the Ivory Tower (1982) Cambridge: Harvard University Press, p. 3.
- 7.
Julie Reuben, The Making of the Modern University (1996) Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 17.
- 8.
Lawrence Cremin, American Education, (1980) New York: Harper and Row, p. 119.
- 9.
Joel Spring, The American School, (1986) New York: Longman, p. 31.
- 10.
Lawrence Cremin, American Education, (1980) New York: Harper and Row, p. 118.
- 11.
- 12.
Ibid.
- 13.
Jean Matthews, Toward a New Society (1991) Boston: Twayne Publishers, p. 3.
- 14.
Ibid., p. 4.
- 15.
Merle Curti, The Social Ideals of American Educators (1935) New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, p. 150.
- 16.
James Bess, Collegiality and Bureaucracy in the Modern University (1988) New York: Teachers College Press, p. 1.
- 17.
Lester Goodchild, “Higher Education as a Field of Study: Its Origins, Programs, and Purposes, 1893–1960” in Administration as a Profession Jonathan Fife and Lester Goodchild (Eds.) Number 76, Winter 1991, San Francisco: Josey Bass, p. 15.
- 18.
Ibid., p. 18.
- 19.
Roger Geiger, “The Ten Generations of Higher Education” in Phillip Altbach (Ed.) American Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century, 2nd edition (1999) Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 57.
- 20.
Rudolph Weingartner, The Moral Dimensions of Academic Administration (1999) Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, p. 33.
- 21.
Ibid, p. 33.
- 22.
Ibid, p. 39.
- 23.
Derrek Bok, Universities in the Marketplace (2003) Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 1.
- 24.
U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Educational Statistics. (2007). Digest of Educational Statistics, 2006 (NCES 2007-017), Table 219.
- 25.
- 26.
William Galston, “Civic Education in the Liberal State” in Liberalism and the Moral Life edited by Nancy Rosenblum (1989) Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
- 27.
Robert Sternberg, (2002) “It’s not what you know, but how you use it: teaching for wisdom” The Chronicle of Higher Education 48(42), B20.
- 28.
Rudolph Weingartner, The Moral Dimensions of Academic Administration (1999) Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, p. 98.
- 29.
Jose Ortega y Gasset, Mission of the University (1946) London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Truber and Company, p. 36.
- 30.
Edward LeRoy Long, Jr. Higher Education as a Moral Enterprise (1992) Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, p. 5.
- 31.
A. Bartlett Giamatti, The University and the Public Interest (1981) New York: Atheneum, pp. 8–11.
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Donovan, A. (2009). Mission and Academic Administration. In: Englehardt, E.E., Pritchard, M.S., Romesburg, K.D., Schrag, B.E. (eds) The Ethical Challenges of Academic Administration. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2841-9_7
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