Engaging undergraduate students in research and creative activities has been advocated as an innovative strategy to promote student learning in higher education. This monograph systematically synthesizes the literature to provide both conceptual and empirical evidence to demonstrate the effects of such engagement on student learning and development from higher education. Student engagement in research and creative activities during the college years is associated with a variety of outcomes in both the cognitive and affective domains. The evidence also points out that colleges and universities can make a difference in undergraduate engagement in research and creative activities. The authors provided various examples of how different types of institutions integrate inquiry-oriented activities in the curriculum, institutionalize research-supportive programs, and foster a campus culture that values inquiry-based undergraduate education. This is the fourth issue in the 33rd volume of the Jossey-Bass series ASHE Higher Education Report. Each monograph in the series is the definitive analysis of a tough higher education problem, based on thorough research of pertinent literature and institutional experiences. Topics are identified by a national survey. Noted practitioners and scholars are then commissioned to write the reports, with experts providing critical reviews of each manuscript before publication.

The inspiration for this timely book is the pressing need for fresh ideas and innovations in U.S. higher education. At the heart of the volume is the realization that higher education must evolve in fundamental ways if it is to respond to changing professional, economic, and technological circumstances, and if it is to successfully reach and prepare a vast population of students—traditional and nontraditional alike—for success in the coming decades. This collection of provocative articles by leading scholars, writers, innovators, and university administrators examines the current higher education environment and its chronic resistance to change; the rise of for-profit universities; the potential future role of community colleges in a significantly revised higher education realm; and the emergence of online learning as a means to reshape teaching and learning and to reach new consumers of higher education. Combining trenchant critiques of current conditions with thought-provoking analyses of possible reforms and new directions, Reinventing Higher Education is an ambitious exploration of possible future directions for revitalized American colleges and universities.

"In this book, Jay Jordan draws from WAC/WID, second language writing, rhetoric and composition, and scholarship on English teaching and learning in South Korea to describe the ways writing as a privileged literate activity shapes and is shaped by the development of one university's transnational campuses. Through grounded analysis of three years of student and faculty surveys and interviews, writing samples, observations, and through personal narrative about the author's experience at both campuses, Grounded Literacies in a Transnational WAC/WID Ecology closely describes and theorizes the intellectual, social, and material complexities of cross-border educational efforts. Despite the smoothly marketable promise of many U.S.-based international educational experiments, the mutual embeddedness of campus, university, host city, student and faculty experiences, differing expectations, national aspirations, and individual and collective goals and anxieties richly nuances the argument that literacies can never be reduced to classroom or curricular plans"--

Based on twenty case studies of universities worldwide, and on a survey administered to leaders in 101 universities, this open access book shows that, amidst the significant challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, universities found ways to engage with schools to support them in sustaining educational opportunity. In doing so, they generated considerable innovation, which reinforced the integration of the research and outreach functions of the university. The evidence suggests that universities are indeed open systems, in interaction with their environment, able to discover changes that can influence them and to change in response to those changes. They are also able, in the success of their efforts to mitigate the educational impact of the pandemic, to create better futures, as the result of the innovations they can generate. This challenges the view of universities as "ivory towers" being isolated from the surrounding environment and detached from local problems. As they reached out to schools, universities not only generated clear and valuable innovations to sustain educational opportunity and to improve it, this process also contributed to transform internal university processes in ways that enhanced their own ability to deliver on the third mission of outreach

"Given the intensity of interest regarding the 'problems in higher education,' Harward notes how the systemic sources of those problems are infrequently addressed and even rarer is the offering of solutions or suggestions for positive actions. Harward and his colleagues see the achievement of this book as doing both - understanding the problems and offering solutions.

A heated debate is raging over our nation’s public schools and how they should be reformed, with proposals ranging from imposing national standards to replacing public education altogether with a voucher system for private schools. Combining decades of experience in education, the authors propose an innovative approach to solving the problems of our school system and find a middle ground between these extremes. Reinventing Public Education shows how contracting would radically change the way we operate our schools, while keeping them public and accessible to all, and making them better able to meet standards of achievement and equity. Using public funds, local school boards would select private providers to operate individual schools under formal contracts specifying the type and quality of instruction. In a hands-on, concrete fashion, the authors provide a thorough explanation of the pros and cons of school contracting and how it would work in practice. They show how contracting would free local school boards from operating schools so they can focus on improving educational policy; how it would allow parents to choose the best school for their children; and, finally, how it would ensure that schools are held accountable and academic standards are met. While retaining a strong public role in education, contracting enables schools to be more imaginative, adaptable, and suited to the needs of children and families. In presenting an alternative vision for America’s schools, Reinventing Public Education is too important to be ignored.