Thomas Jefferson’s Role in Transforming Higher Education Curriculum in the United States

Public Voices ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Stephanie Newbold
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Public Institution ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Institutional Legitimacy ◽  
Higher Education Curriculum

For decades, public administrative scholars and historians have maintained that while Thomas Jefferson had an extraordinary substantive mind, he was not a formative figure within the intellectual, institutional, and constitutional development of public administration theory and practice. Thoroughly investigating Jefferson’s early political career does reveal that he was not interested in the daily operations of government, but as time progressed his lengthy career in public service began to transform his opinions on the relationship between good government and good administration and how sound administrative practice complemented many of the republican values espoused in The Federalist. Upon a careful examination of Jefferson’s retirement years, when he dedicated the remainder of his life to establishing the University of Virginia, the administrative genius of his mind takes center stage. In this role, Jefferson not only created Virginia’s first public institution for higher education but also dramatically reformed liberal arts curriculum standards for colleges and universities across the nation. Twenty-first century public administration scholars and practitioners should welcome this exceptional contribution to the intellectual history of American public administration with openness and with a renewed commitment to the institutional legitimacy of our field.

scholarly journals LIFELONG LEARNING AS A PRIORITY OF DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEAN EDUCATIONAL PARTNERSHIP

10.23856/4322 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (6) ◽  
pp. 172-179
Author(s):  
Dmytro Dzvinchuk ◽  
Oleksandra Kachmar
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Lifelong Learning ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Social Stability ◽  
Investment Efficiency ◽  
University Staff ◽  
The Third ◽  
Educational Partnership ◽  
Key Competencies

The article explores the phenomenon of lifelong learning as one of the key priorities for the development of a European educational partnership. The importance of lifelong learning as a recognized theory and practice of the concept, which is the benchmark of broad modernization processes in the European Higher Education Area, is demonstrated. The main interrelated areas of action (defining strategic priorities for development, outlining key competencies of lifelong learning, identifying forms of lifelong learning, funding and investment efficiency) are considered.The potential of lifelong learning a mechanism for promoting social stability and cultural convergence at the beginning of the third millennium is conceptualized. Productive links between lifelong learning and the processes of building a knowledge economy have been demonstrated. The methodological basis of the study was the analysis of the European Commission’s educational policy (conceptual, regulatory and programmatic documents) in the field of lifelong learning. The results obtained in the study may be useful to both domestic researchers and practitioners in the field of public administration of higher education, university staff, involved in international cooperation.

A Historical and Global Perspective on Liberal Arts Education

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kara A. Godwin ◽  
Philip G. Altbach
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
Future Development ◽  
Liberal Education ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Arts Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
General Knowledge ◽  
Liberal Arts Education

Debates about higher education’s purpose have long been polarized between specialized preparation for specific vocations and a broad, general knowledge foundation known as liberal education. Excluding the United States, specialized curricula have been the dominant global norm. Yet, quite surprisingly given this enduring trend, liberal education has new salience in higher education worldwide. This discussion presents liberal education’s non-Western, Western, and u.s. historical roots as a backdrop for discussing its contemporary global resurgence. Analysis from the Global Liberal Education Inventory provides an overview of liberal education’s renewed presence in each of the regions and speculation about its future development.

Engagement in College and University Applied Learning Experiences and Students’ Academic Motivation

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-335
Author(s):  
Teniell L. Trolian ◽  
Elizabeth A. Jach
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Academic Motivation ◽  
Learning Experiences ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Study ◽  
Learning Approaches ◽  
Applied Learning ◽  
Course Content ◽  
College And University

Background: Applied learning approaches that require students to enact learning continue to be expanded to various contexts within higher education. Researchers have demonstrated an association between applied learning and positive outcomes for students. Purpose: This study examines the relationship between engagement in applied learning experiences during college and students’ fourth-year academic motivation. Methodology/Approach: This study uses data from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education, a multi-institutional, longitudinal study of college experiences and outcomes in the United States. The dependent variable was fourth-year academic motivation, and independent variables were applied learning experiences that students frequently encounter during college. Findings/Conclusions: Several applied learning experiences were associated with increased academic motivation. These included the following: applying concepts to practical problems or in new situations, engaging in exams or assignments that require use of course content to address a problem, engaging in research with a faculty member, and out-of-class experiences that help to translate knowledge from the classroom into action. Implications: As academic motivation tends to decline during college, applied learning approaches may help to improve students’ motivation. Institutions of higher education should consider methods and strategies for developing and implementing applied learning experiences both in the classroom and in students’ out-of-class experiences.

Henry Carter Adams: A Case Study in the Emergence of the Social Sciences in the United States, 1850–1900

1968 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. W. Coats
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Academic Profession ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
European Counterpart

Few scholars would nowadays question the importance of the United States in the world of learning; but the process whereby that nation attained its present eminence still remains obscure. Among the cognoscenti, it is generally acknowledged that American scholarship had come of age by the early 1900s, whereas fifty years earlier there had been only a handful of American scholars and scientists of international repute, and the country's higher education lagged far behind its European counterpart. Yet despite the recent popularity of intellectual history and research in higher education, which has produced a veritable flood of publications touching on various aspects of this theme, the heart of the process—the emergence of the academic profession—is still inadequately documented and imperfectly understood.

Structure and Governance in American Higher Education: Historical and Comparative Analysis in State Policy

1989 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh Davis Graham
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Baby Boom ◽  
National Level ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
State Level ◽  
Manhattan Project ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
American Higher Education

Historians of public policy, who typically share a conviction that historical analysis can clarify the options available to policymakers, have witnessed this decade's quickening debate over the role and control of American higher education with, in one of Yogi Berra's immortal phrases, a sense of “déjà vu all over again.” Political leaders have continued, in a near vacuum of historical knowledge, to manipulate present variables and project them into the future with little awareness, beyond current political memory, of their past consequences, or of a legacy of political and cultural tradition that would constrain their manipulation. At the national level of debate, which is not where educational policy in the United States historically has been made, the level of historical awareness generally has been greater than at the state level. In the flurry of national commissions and foundation reports that probed the deficiencies of American higher education in 1984–85, the historical evolution of the college curriculum was addressed in reasonably informed historical terms.1 Even though the urgency of debate in the 1980s was fueled by the common pain of recession and post-baby-boom retrenchment, and also by fears of increasing vulnerability to oil boycotts and Japanese economic competition, the national elites who wrote the reports were mindful of the roots of Big Science in the Manhattan Project. Their ties to the academic establishment were intimate, and their historical memories embraced the wisdom of the liberal arts as well as the efficacy of land-grant agriculture and Silicon Valley.

The Beida-Tsinghua Connection: Yenching in the World of Beijing’s Elite Universities

2007 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 61-77
Author(s):  
John Israel
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Eastern China ◽  
The United States ◽  
Teachers Colleges ◽  
Liberal Arts University ◽  
The World ◽  
Higher Educational ◽  
Higher Education In China ◽  
Diploma Mills

AbstractYenching University did not exist in isolation but was part of several overlapping educational networks, international, national, sectarian, and local. Internationally, it was a modern Christian liberal arts university, comparable to Christian higher educational institutions in the United States and elsewhere in the world. Nationally, it was one of the colleges under the aegis of the United Board for Christian Higher Education in China and, more broadly, part of a modern higher educational network, centered in the large cities of eastern China. Locally, it was a component of a super-elite North China complex of higher education located in Beijing and Tianjin. This complex, as Yeh Wen-hsin has pointed out in her taxonomy of Republican-era higher education, stood in contrast with Guomindang universities such as National Central and Sun Yat-sen, as well as with teachers colleges, provincial universities, diploma mills, and other less renowned institutions.

Higher Education Curriculum in the United States

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Rury ◽  
Susan Twombly
Keyword(s):  
General Education ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Professional Education ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
The United States ◽  
College Majors ◽  
Higher Education Curriculum ◽  
Core Curricula ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Instructional Modalities

The American collegiate curriculum has undergone significant change in the past two centuries. From its beginning through much of the 19th century a classical curricular approach prevailed, focusing on ancient languages and the liberal arts, while favoring recitation and debate as instructional modalities. The rise of “land-grant” institutions with a focus on practical instruction in agriculture, engineering, and military sciences in the later 19th century was a harbinger of change. It was followed by the rise of research institutions and comprehensive universities that further emphasized the importance of practical and professional education. The adoption of an elective approach to course-taking and the development of college majors led to debates about core curricula and the need for general education. Following publication of the famous Harvard Red Book in 1948, a broad consensus regarding the need for a liberal arts core emerged in the postwar era and has broadly persisted. Since the 1980s, new debates have emerged about the content of the core and curricular innovations intended to augment student learning. Older content representing a “canon” of received knowledge or wisdom has been challenged by proponents of non-Western, feminist, or oppressed minority perspectives, not always successfully. New instructional modalities, including online and “flipped” courses, have also impacted longstanding curricular practices. New models for assessing and planning collegiate curricula also have emerged. But if a particular theme has predominated in such changes, it is that student and societal demands for more practical and marketable learning outcomes have continued to exert an outsized influence on the ever evolving American collegiate curriculum.

The American Review of Public Administration: A Biography

2021 ◽  
pp. 027507402110182
Author(s):  
Laurie N. DiPadova-Stocks ◽  
H. George Frederickson ◽  
John Clayton Thomas
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Kansas City ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
American Review ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Manuscript Review ◽  
National Governments

This article is an intellectual history of the noble endeavors and challenges involved in the creation and evolution of the American Review of Public Administration. It traces the journal’s development from its beginning as the Midwest Review of Public Administration ( MRPA) under the leadership of Park College professor Jerzy Hauptmann, a Polish intellectual who entered the United States at the end of World War II. Hauptmann launched MRPA with a regional focus, welcoming contributions from a variety of voices in public service–related occupations. A political scientist suspicious of the power of national governments, Hauptmann favored a less top-down regional approach. The article provides insights from the late 1960s into the growing field of public administration. Behind the scenes, the article chronicles the financial challenges, details of manuscript review processes, and more in an initially low-technology world. This history is also multi-institutional, detailing the journal’s transfer from a small college to a team of scholars, including coauthor John Clayton Thomas, at the three public administration programs of the University of Missouri—in Columbia, Kansas City, and St. Louis. We are indebted to our now-departed colleague and coauthor, George Frederickson, for the idea of writing this article.

Reconsidering Academic Rigor: Posing and Supporting Rigorous Course Practices at Two Research Institutions

2018 ◽  
Vol 120 (5) ◽  
pp. 1-42
Author(s):  
Corbin M. Campbell ◽  
Deniece Dortch
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Active Learning ◽  
Cognitive Complexity ◽  
Teaching Practices ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Institution ◽  
Academic Rigor ◽  
Responsive Teaching ◽  
Research Institutions ◽  
Urban Institution

Background/Context U.S. institutions of higher education have been criticized for providing limited learning gains and lacking rigor. Most understandings of academic rigor in higher education focus on how rigor manifests in students in terms of amount of work or approach to learning. Purpose/Objective This study examines rigor as posed by course practices. We define rigorous course practices as teaching practices and coursework that challenge learners to sustain a deep connection to the subject matter and to think in increasingly complex ways about the course content and its applications. The study sought to further the discourse on college academic rigor by describing rigor in coursework at two selective research institutions and examining which course contexts and teaching practices were associated with higher levels of rigor. Setting We studied two highly ranked, highly residential, selective, very highly research-oriented institutions on the East Coast of the United States: a mid-sized (< 5,000 undergraduates) private, urban institution and a large (∼15,000 undergraduates) public institution. Population/Participants We sampled 400 courses at each institution. Of the faculty who taught these courses, 31.4% agreed to participate. We conducted 150 class observations: 99 at Site 1 and 51 at Site 2. Research Design This study used a quantitative observational protocol. Data Collection and Analysis Data were collected during a week-long site visit, with observers using a structured rubric. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and OLS regression in blocks, partitioning the variance in academic rigor that can be explained by course characteristics (e.g., class size and discipline) and teaching practices (active learning, cognitively responsive teaching). Findings/Results Most courses in our sample focused on applying, and 85% of the courses achieved a higher-order level of cognitive complexity (analyzing, evaluating, or creating) at some point during the class session. Active learning and cognitively responsive teaching practices were associated with higher cognitive complexity and greater standards and expectations in the courses. Conclusions/Recommendations The discourse on academic rigor in higher education warrants further scrutiny and, could be balanced by studies that provide greater depth in the educational practices in classrooms. This study suggests that institutions and faculty may have a significant role in scaffolding rigor. Academic rigor is not simply about having bright, dedicated, and hard-working students but is also determined by classroom environments and processes that can be cultivated.

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