As If Learning Mattered: Reforming Higher Education

by Richard E. Miller

Although the culture wars have preoccupied the nation for the past two decades, these impassioned debates about the function of education have produced few lasting institutional changes. Writing with wit and precision, Richard E. Miller shows why the system of higher education has been particularly resistant to reform. Unraveling stereotypes about conservative, liberal, and radical reform efforts, Miller looks at what has actually happened when theories about education have been put into practice.

264 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1998

Reviews

[Jamey · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Of course, for those in the academy who have never enjoyed the now-disappearing privileges and for those who never fully bought into the logic of the game of the academy's monopoly of the circulation of cultural capital, the call from on high to band together to defend the institution against the 'sudden' encroachment of arbitrary methods for managing human capital is bound to produce a range of conflicting responses." (37)

An important point, couched in imperfect prose. I expected to dislike this book. Instead, I liked it. It calleth bullshit upon a lot of bullshit.