Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This book is problematic because it gives a sharply slanted view of the university. In Cole's hands, it is "great" because it serves, with inventions, technology, and patents, the commercial life-blood of the US. That is why Stanford is great (Silicon Valley) and MIT is great (Rte. 128) and why Columbia could not be great under Jacques Barzun because THAT provost did not relish the connections between the campus and the business/governmental/medical interests of NYC. For Cole, universities in this country deserve our respect because they have learned how to couple inventive thinkers with commercial off-campus entities (computer companies, hospitals, the military) that develop practical uses for on-campus innovations. Owing to this servo-mechanistic function of the university, Cole displays no interest in the following: undergraduate education, disciplines such as history, the fine arts, philosophy, and literature; that is because they serve no interests other than themselves. Nor is he interested in why universities cost the consumer (students and parents) so much. Nor does he treat the ballooning growth of administrative salaries; the various scandals of inter-collegiate sports; the dramatic decline of tenured or tenurable professors and their replacement with part-time instructors; the complexities of affirmative action; nor the curriculum nor the ways in which some students are admitted and others rejected. For Cole's eye is on the prize: the "use" of the university, the fusion of mind with technology, the instrumentality of education. He champions one special aspect of higher education in this country; he neglects everything else; what he ignores is immense.
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