Failing the Future: A Dean Looks at Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century

Teacher, scholar, and university administrator Annette Kolodny entered academia with dreams of stimulating conversation, exciting research, and the chance to make a difference in educating young people--how frustrating to end up stuck in a quagmire of shrinking budgets, increasing enrollments, and petty politics. In Failing the Future, she takes on the daunting task of outlining the present state of higher education and what lies ahead. Kolodny clearly identifies the problems. Campus administrators make all the decisions about how to allocate budget cuts, without ever spending time in the departmental trenches to find out how the cuts will affect educational practice. Add to this antifeminist (and anti- intellectual) harassment, turf wars, and changing student and faculty needs. Her solutions are simple and sensible, if surprisingly idealistic coming from someone who has fought the budget beast herself: break down faculty-administration barriers, safeguard intellectual freedom, accommodate older students with children. Kolodny realizes how much this will cost. "If we will put off further tax cuts for the rich, we can begin the reinvestment in higher education that will allow colleges and universities to accommodate increasing numbers of students from a radically different demographic base...." An insider's view of the economic and intellectual future of higher education.