Dr.Barbara Tobolowsky
Presented to The University of Texas at Arlington Libraries on the occasion of Promotion to Associate Professor, Dr. Barbara Tobolowsky, Education: Leadership & Policy Studies, Fall 2015.
Item(s) added to the Libraries' collection:
Higher education in America
Bok, D. (2015). Higher education in America (First revised edition.). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
The first book I read when I began my UCLA Ph.D. program in 1997 was Higher Learning by Derek Bok (1986). This was a powerful book for me, because it introduced me to the challenges and strengths of the U.S. higher education system. More recently, Bok wrote Higher Education in America (2013), which is the book I am recommending to the library. It discusses the need to balance our ethical imperatives to educate our students and pursue new knowledge. However, it doesn’t shy from the challenges facing higher education today: rising college costs, “stagnant” graduation rates, and the effects of competition on higher education. Bok provides thoughtful analysis of the range of complaints leveled at academe never losing sight of the complexity of the enterprise and the benefits in that diversity. I believe this book has been and will continue to be important to students and faculty interested in understanding higher education.