Degrees of Failure

University Education in Decline

Randle W. Nelsen

• Publisher: Between the Lines
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781771133357
• Subtopic: Higher Education
• Index: Social Sciences

In Degrees of Failure, Randle Nelsen brings together such diverse topics as campus parking, college sports, helicopter parents, edu-business as edu-tainment, and technology in teaching to show how continuing inequities, grounded in large part upon social class differences, are maintained and reproduced in our universities.

Paying special attention to the role played by professors in solidifying status quo arrangements, Nelsen makes the strange familiar for those outside the university bureaucracy and the familiar strange for those whose participation in university settings is a routine part of everyday life.

Index

9/11 attacks, 56–7

The Academic Revolution (Jencks & Riesman), 44–5

administrative staff, 121

administrators: funding/grants, 2, 54–5, 120–1; online education preference, 84, 91–2; parking and, 13; vs. students, 51–2; thought and, 81–2

alcohol, 77

Alone Together (Turkle), 88–9, 90

amateurism, 16, 18, 46, 102, 110

American Council on Education (ACE), 44

American Political Science Association (APSA), 40–2

American Sociological Association (ASA), 40, 41–3

anxiety, 24, 90

Apotex, 57–8

Archibald, Jo-ann, 111–12

Armstrong, Elizabeth, 77–8, 79–80

authenticity, 22–3

authority: of bureaucracy, 39; of colleagues, 37; vs. domination, 23; professionalism, 43–5; vs. user-friendly learning, 100, 102, 103

autoethnography, 5

autonomy, 45, 46, 47–8, 49, 60

Baby and Child Care (Spock), 22

behaviourist psychology, 22

Bell, Daniel, 41

Berdahl, Jennifer, 58–9

Blackford, Holly, 27

board of governors, 53, 58–9, 120

book methodology, 5–6, 7, 8

boredom, 77

Bowerman, Bill, 68

Brix, Donald, 119

Bronfman, Samuel, 52

Brown, Carol, 43–4

bureaucracy, 4, 39, 48, 109–10, 120–1

business principles. See edubusiness

Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), 59–60

capitalism: cars and, 16; expansion through higher education, 61; knowledge industry and, 49; selec...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• ONE The University from the Inside-Out
• TWO Campus Parking and the Car as a Third Place
• THREE Parents and Pedagogy
• FOUR Professionals and Professionalism
• FIVE Edubusiness and Edutainment
• SIX Educators and Education at a Distance
• SEVEN Classroom Practice and Student-Friendly Suggestions
• EIGHT Cleaning up the Mess
• Notes
• Index
• Back Cover