Description
Book SynopsisA remarkable indictment of how misguided business policies have undermined the American higher education system. Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRLHigher education in America, still thought to be the world leader, is in crisis. University students are falling behind their international peers in attainment, while suffering from unprecedented student debt. For over a decade, the realm of American higher education has been wracked with self-doubt and mutual recrimination, with no clear solutions on the horizon. How did this happen? In this stunning new book, Christopher Newfield offers readers an in-depth analysis of the great mistake that led to the cycle of decline and dissolution, a mistake that impacts every public college and university in America. What might occur, he asserts, is no less than locked-in economic inequality and the fall of the middle class. In The Great Mistake, Newfield asks how we can fix higher education, given the damage done by p
Trade ReviewA well-written and readable work in the area of critical university studies, this book will be of interest to academics and general readers wanting more information on the causes of current issues in today's public educational institutions.
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Library Journal[S]traightforward and compelling
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Times Higher EducationIt’s a compelling case and an important vision.
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ScatterplotNewfield creates a way to think of the entire landscape for the complex situation institutions face when trying to educate students with the highest quality, best learning outcomes, and fewer resources than ever before.
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Education ReviewThis book is a major addition to the Critical University Studies corpus, and should be required reading for anyone concerned about the fate of public education in the United States . . . Newfield’s writing is clear and accessible enough for beginning college students even as his larger argument is sophisticated enough for graduate-level study.
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Radical TeacherAnyone who seeks a trenchant, nuanced grasp of the situation in US public universities today, and of how we got here, should read this book. They will find themselves grateful for the insight, seriousness, and virtuosity with which Newfield has conducted his investigation.
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Public BooksChristopher Newfield’s
The Great Mistake is probably the most important, and certainly one of the best, books published on higher education in this century. It should be essential reading for everyone—faculty members, administrators, trustees, philanthropists, and politicians—looking to rescue our floundering public higher education system from the pitiful morass into which it has descended.
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AcademeThe book’s prose is lively and accessible, incorporating parents’ and students’ perspectives as well as research by prominent scholars . . . This is an important, timely book. Highly recommended.
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ChoiceIt’s well-written, passionately argued, and, for the most part, a lively read.
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Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning ISIS ReviewsThe Great Mistake is his third book on the subject and provides an incisive, convincing, and terrifying picture of the current condition of state universities, along with an analysis of how we got here and how we might repair all the damage that has been done.
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symplokeAmid much hand-wringing over the corporatization of the university and much chatter about the impending digital disruption of higher education, Newfield’s contribution stands out. He mounts a deeply informed and impassioned defense of the idea that our economic, cultural, and political progress depends to a large degree on quality higher education—or more specifically, on quality higher education that has a liberal arts component, that affords equal access, and that is guaranteed by the 'public provision.'
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Los Angeles Review of BooksTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Part I
Holding Back Public Colleges
The Price of Privatization
The Devolutionary Cycle
Part II
Stage 1 The University Retreat from Public Goods
Stage 2 Subsidizing the Outside Sponsors
Stage 3 Large, Regular Tuition Hikes
Stage 4 The States Cut Public Funding
Stage 5 The States Cut Public Funding
Stage 6 Private Vendors Leverage Public Funds
Stage 7 Unequal Funding Cuts Attainment
Stage 8 Universities Build the Post– Middle Class
Part III
Reconstructing the Public University
Notes
Index
