Universitas: The Social Restructuring of American Undergraduate Education

Believing that current educational policies and practices in American institutions of higher learning contribute to an incoherent, disjunctive, and wasteful four-year experience for many undergraduates, the author provides a sense of new direction to aid in the restructuring and reform of undergraduate education in America. The primary question of the work is: How can the years of undergraduate education empower the student with the knowledge and integrated set of skills needed for a lifetime of learning and productive work? Boudreau focuses on the primary responsibility of all institutions of higher learning to provide a superior undergraduate education. All other functions of a university should be secondary to this commitment. Unfortunately, this basic premise seems lost today. This work argues that universities must undergo significant reform and renewal, especially at the undergraduate level, if they are to prepare students successfully for the future.