Higher Education and the New Society

Book excerpt: While he celebrated higher education as the engine of progress in every aspect of American life, George Keller also challenged academia’s sacred cows and entrenched practices with provocative ideas designed to induce “creative discomfort.” Completed shortly before his death in 2007, Higher Education and the New Society caps the career of one of higher education’s exceptional minds. Refining and expanding ideas Keller developed over his fifty-year career, this book is a clarion call for change. In the face of a transformed American society marked by population shifts, technological upheavals, and a volatile economic landscape, Keller urges leaders in higher education to see and confront their own serious problems. With characteristic forthrightness and inimitable wit, Keller targets critical areas where bold thinking is especially important, taking on such explosive issues as the configuration of academic disciplines, the runaway problem of big-time sports, the decline of the liberal arts, and the urgent problems of finances and costs. Keller expected this book to ignite discussion and controversy within academic circles, and he hoped fervently that it would also lead to real thinking, real analysis, and urgently needed transformation.