College and University Books

This book is a must-have for anyone involved with assessment in higher education. It is not only a clear introduction to assessment for the beginner but also a concise guidebook for the more experienced. Dr. Nichols explains in plain words the assessment of both student-learning at all three levels as well as that of institutional effectiveness. In addition, he enhances his already exceptional explanations with understandable and solid examples from a variety of academic programs and support units.

If my institution had funds for only one book on assessment, this would be it; it is clearly written, simple, and practical.

Back and forth - back and forth. One year it's OU, the next it is Texas. This football series is fantastic and this title really lays it all out there. If you love UT or OU, get this book. You may also want to check out: UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA FOOTBALL: An Interactive Guide to the World of Sports (Sports By the Numbers). If you love OU football, you will love both these books.

Being a student at Rutgers, I have found this book to be an excellent link to the past. Filled with historical anecdotes of our college, The Rutgers Picture Book is a great fun time, and would make a fantastic present to anyone interested in Rutgers history or in general college history and trivia. The founders of Rutgers are illustriously portrayed and the insight that is given to the history of the college is invaluable for Rutgers students, and alumni. The Rutgers Picture Book is a link to the past of this prestigious could-have-been-ivy school, so often overlooked and taken for granted.

If only all universities were run the way Cahn advocates! He has thought deeply about what a university is supposed to be, and the role of faculty in it. Administrators, students, and, especially, professors will benefit from this book.

A great insider to the university. All truth no hoax. Much better than princeton review. buy now!!!

The last three presidential elections show almost 50/50 partisan voting splits. For many academics, this is a sign that schools are failing. That George Bush won twice and John McCain garnered 46 percent of the vote is an indictment of our school system. If only educators would teach social justice; if only teachers would take the progressive pedagogy they learn from their education professors and bring it into public school classrooms, we could usher in a new enlightened age.

Famed Milton scholar and public intellectual Stanley Fish has a more academic take on the role of education. In response to Fish's online New York Times column, "Buttons and Bows (Oct. 12, 2008)," commenter `Barbara, the retired English Prof' smugly states:

"I am proud...to become liberal in my outlook, voting record, and behavior, and to have taught my students the meaning of `liberal'...if not from me and my teaching, from whom will [my students] learn about the liberal point of view when all around them this view is being demonized , especially in this red state where I live?"

If only more teachers brought their politics into the classroom like Professor Barbara, we could propel an entire generation to think and vote exactly like her!

Unfortunately, not enough teachers are trying to change the world. They busy themselves with trite tasks like teaching reading, writing, math, science, and history. Stanley Fish encourages this petty academic outlook with his new book, "Save the World on Your Own Time." Fish begins by noting that colleges fill their mission statements with lofty goals, urging students to fight poverty, war, racism, sexism, capitalism, American imperialism, and, yes, "the hegemony of Wal-Mart," while simultaneously "respecting" diverse beliefs, lifestyles, and ideologies. Fish grants that many of these may be worthy goals. But they are not academic goals. A university professor should not, for example, promote democracy, but rather teach the philosophical and historical roots of democracy as a political system. "Respect" for diverse beliefs and opinions should only come after the academic task of evaluation has taken place.

Professors should be busy enough planning lessons, grading papers, providing students feedback, and publishing in academic journals. They have specific training, and should limit themselves to two tasks: "(1) introducing students to bodies of knowledge and traditions of inquiry...and (2) equipping those same students with the analytical skills...that will enable them to move confidently within those traditions and engage in independent research after a course is over." When teachers try to offer "more" than this by bringing in their political agendas, students actually end up learning less. And to conservatives who complain about the lack of intellectual diversity on college campuses dominated by liberal professors, Fish says this is no more relevant than the lack of left-handed professors or the lack of, say, Yankee fan professors. As long as professors stick to their job requirement--teach, don't preach--political leanings are irrelevant.

If Professor Barbara and teachers like her want to buy locally grown organic food, protest capitalism, and boycott Wal-Mart, that is fantastic, provided it is done on nights and weekends. If her agenda is that important, she can switch careers and work for a PAC or think-tank. But when she steps in the classroom, she should do her job. She can save the world on her own time.

*Save the World on Your Own Time* is an incisive, engaging, and I daresay inspiring polemic on major issues in higher education today. Stanley Fish does not mince words; the argument he repeats throughout this book is that academics should stick to "doing their jobs": "introduce students to disciplinary materials and equip them with the necessary analytic skills" to engage in disciplinary methods of research (p. 153). Yet proceeding from this modest thesis, Fish outlines a series of logical consequences which expose the folly of the way partisans of the left and the right tackle issues ranging from academic freedom and faculty hiring to deconstruction and Intelligent Design.

How does the humble work of academic inquiry manage to take on these diverse hot-button issues? For starters, Fish pulls the rug out from under all those who see the university classroom as a site to do something other than teach disciplinary methods of research and analysis. Despite the lofty rhetoric of professors who aim to teach their students "civic responsibility" and "tolerance for others," it is Fish's contention that doing something other than engaging in academic study in the university is dangerous. Politics, Fish surmises, has no place in the classroom unless it's the object of academic inquiry in a political science seminar. That is, politics should be something professors analyze, not something they demand allegiance to.

Fish's position may strike many in the academy as deeply conservative, but what emerges from *Save the World* is a deeply committed defense of the academic enterprise itself. The contextual playing out of Fish's logic is persuasive: if the university classroom is the proper site for disinterested academic study, the teaching and learning of disciplinary methods, indeed the pursuit of "truth" through reason and judgment ("truth" for Fish being not some ungrounded universal truth but a historically worked-over, disciplinarily agreed-upon "truth" of human inquiry), then neither liberal nor conservative ideologues have a leg to stand on in claiming a space in academe. Thus, Fish shows, just as the desire to denounce the Bush administration in the classroom (i.e., the act of performing a political statement rather than analyzing it) must be deemed misguided and quashed, so must David Horowitz and others' desire that the university faculty body reflect a "more balanced" political outlook (i.e., a 50/50 liberal-conservative or Democrat-Republican split) be deemed misguided and quashed. Because academics shouldn't "do" politics (that's the prescription, at least, of *Save the World*), then politicians, policy wonks, and partisans shouldn't "do" academics either.

The bulk of Fish's book offers example after example of how the modest proposal of teaching discipline-specific knowledge requires all participants to subject themselves to sound judgment and reasoned argument. Leaving one's political commitments at the door gives everyone the opportunity to engage in academic study not as a project of stupefying (and dull) opinion-sharing but as one of carefully honed argument-making.

Most inspiring, though, is how Fish's call for academics to "do their jobs" and other folks, by implication, to do *their* jobs leads him to conclude that the divesting of public funds from higher education in recent years by private sector-rallying politicians is one of the most dastardly (and woefully misunderstood) cases of one group claiming to know how to do another group's job better. Reading the penultimate chapter is breathtaking not only because you realize that Fish's thesis has come to its logical conclusion but also, more specifically, because you realize that the university culture wars have in many ways distracted us from the actual gutting of public higher education by corporate neoliberal policies and their political spokesmen.

As a high school student applying to very selective colleges, I have read through every "how to get into college" that I could get my hands on. This one is simply the most comprehensive and the best. Many of these types of books talk down to the reader, trying to sweeten the application process. This one does not over-simplify. It gave me a really good sense of the "big picture"--how what you do in high school affects your admissions chances at the big-name schools. I only wish I had read it when I was in ninth grade!

I bought this book because i live in the south, and all the schools i applied to are in the south as well.

This book goes into depth about each one; it doesn't go REALLY in-depth, but it gives more information than any other book . It has about 20 pages of information on every college, which is more than most books- that usually don't have more than 3/4 pages on a single college. It talks about all the colleges on about 15 different aspects, a few that some books dont even mention, which is quite helpful.

The book is also extremely well organized. It's easy to look up any of the colleges in different aspects easily.

I recommend this book as it gives you good information on all the colleges it includes, both negative and positive feedback. It judges colleges not only on an overall basis, but also on many different aspects, which helps one see the specific strengths and weaknesses of each college.

I first heard Natalia Singer read aloud from her book at a conference a few years back and was both elated and moved. Here was someone writing about the deeply personal struggle involved in dealing with her mother's mental illness, and yet weaving the story against the background of a relatively unmined, under-appreciated decade in our nation's history. We've had the 60's done to death, with almost as much (mis)information and rant having been written about the 70's. But what to make of coming of age in the 80's?

In Singer's capable hands, we experience both her own personal turmoil and growth, as well as that of the nation. Written with a combination of clarity, honesty and true empathy for those close to her during her journey, Singer's book provides a deeply satisfying, entertaining read. Highly recommended.

This book is an exceptional resource for researching enrollment at Seattle University because it includes all of the tidbits and details one might never think to ask about the school until classes have already started and it is too late. One question might be "will there be 12 a.m. singing trios in the bathrooms"? Another might be "who will help me plan my four years at the university?" These questions and more are addressed in this guidebook about the school.
In other words, the book contains more that just the mere factoids and statistics one is confronted with in every pamphlet or online site about SU. It is written by a student in full swing of college life there and includes the opinions of a number of current students both praising and criticising the university. This helps present an accurate picture of what life is really like on the SU campus.
The book contains unusual sections including --but not limited to-- the attractiveness of the campus population, the best night life in the city and the traditions at the school. These are things that might take months or years to find on one's own, but with this book, they are all neatly categorized and explained. The editorials are succinct, but well-researched. The student quotes present the myriad of attitudes toward the school and allow the reader to decide for himself what to believe. In short, this book is a valuable aid to understanding the real SU college experience. It is the only book which will give you such a matter-of-fact explanation of what students think about the Seattle University.