In their new book, The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be (MIT Press), Wendy Fischman and Howard Gardner, researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, argue that higher education has become a largely “transactional” endeavor, focused entirely too much on jobs and bogged down in well-intentioned institutes, centers and programs that distract from its main purpose: “to get the mind to work better,” as Gardner put it. The authors spent 10 years conducting and analyzing more than 2,000 in-depth interviews with students, parents, faculty, administrators, trustees, alumni and others at 10 disparate liberal arts and science institutions. They spoke with Inside Higher Ed via Zoom. Excerpts of the conversation follow, edited for length and clarity.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/03/08/authors-discuss-how-higher-education-has-lost-its-way
