There has been a growing public concern that the nation's colleges and universities are not preparing individuals adequately for the demanding challenges of tomorrow's workplace. Legislators, bombarded by taxpayer complaints about the rising costs of higher education, are pressuring colleges and universities to become more accountable through quality control and program review mandates. And declining financial support for higher education is forcing many institutions to look critically at programs to decide which merit continued funding. To be sure, post-secondary educators have always been concerned about the quality of their programs. But "quality" has often been defined in terms of faculty research or student test scores - measures that do not meet today's educational needs. This book challenges educators to reexamine their assumptions and beliefs about program quality. It offers a comprehensive theory of quality in higher education, organized around one central idea: that student learning is the focal point of a high-quality undergraduate or graduate program, and consequently that program quality is a result of student, faculty, and administrative engagement in mutually supportive teaching and learning. To ascertain the components of an academic program that is seen as successful by all those who have a stake in it, the authors examined the literature and analyzed interviews with 781 students, faculty, administrators, alumni, and employers of program graduates in a broad range of disciplines at a wide variety of colleges and universities. They identified seventeen specific factors, which they grouped into five clusters of attributes: diverse and engaged participants, a participatory culture, interactive teaching and learning, connected program requirements, and adequate resources. Supporting excerpts from the interviews illuminate the authors' detailed examination of these factors.

Emblems of Quality in Higher Education: Developing and Sustaining High-Quality Programs

Education & Teaching

Conrad, Clifton

Haworth, Jennifer Grant

Schools & Teaching

Allyn&Bacon

Curriculum in Transition: Perspectives on the Undergraduate Experience

Business & Money

Ginn Pr

In an increasingly diverse United States, minority and low-income students of all ages struggle to fit into mainstream colleges and universities that cater predominantly to middle-income and affluent white students fresh out of high school. Anchored in a study conducted at twelve minority-serving institutions (MSIs), Educating a Diverse Nation turns a spotlight on the challenges facing nontraditional college students and highlights innovative programs and practices that are advancing students’ persistence and learning.
Clifton Conrad and Marybeth Gasman offer an on-the-ground perspective of life at MSIs. Speaking for themselves, some students describe the stress of balancing tuition with the need to support families. Others express their concerns about not being adequately prepared for college-level work. And more than a few reveal doubts about the relevance of college for their future. The authors visited the four main types of MSIs―historically black colleges and universities, tribal colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander–serving institutions―to identify strategies for empowering nontraditional students to succeed in college despite these obstacles.
Educating a Diverse Nation illuminates such initiatives as collaborative learning, culturally relevant educational programs, blurring the roles of faculty, staff, and students, peer-led team learning, and real-world problem solving. It shows how these innovations engage students and foster the knowledge, skills, and habits they need to become self-sustaining in college and beyond, as well as valuable contributors to society.

Educating a Diverse Nation: Lessons from Minority-Serving Institutions

Gasman, Marybeth

Higher & Continuing Education

Harvard University Press

Inquiry-driven learners anticipate, embrace, and adapt to disruptive change. Clifton Conrad and Laura Dunek advance a transformative purpose of a college education. They invite stakeholders from across higher education to engage in vigorous dialogue about the aims of a college education―and how to realize those aims. Increasingly influenced by market forces, many universities employ a default purpose of a college education: preparing students for entry into the workforce. As a result, students remain unprepared for a world in which much of the knowledge they acquire will have a shelf life of only a few years.Cultivating Inquiry-Driven Learners charts a new way forward. It proposes that a college education prepare students to be innovative and adaptable by developing four signature capabilities: core qualities of mind, critical thinking skills, expertise in divergent modes of inquiry, and the capacity to express and communicate ideas. In concert, these capabilities empower students to explore and foster ideas that will prepare them to successfully navigate constant change, capitalize on career opportunities, enrich their personal lives, and thoughtfully engage in public life.This innovative book also explores a wide range of initiatives and practices for educating inquiry-driven learners. Examples illustrate possibilities for developing inquiry-driven learners across the curriculum and are drawn from institutions with remarkably different missions and identities―from research universities to liberal arts colleges.

Cultivating Inquiry-Driven Learners: A College Education for the Twenty-First Century

Dunek, Laura

Johns Hopkins University Press

Advances a transformative purpose of a college education to develop learners who pursue innovative ideas that enable them to flourish in a rapidly changing world.
Inquiry-driven learners anticipate, embrace, and adapt to disruptive change. Clifton Conrad and Laura Dunek advance a transformative purpose of a college education. They invite stakeholders from across higher education to engage in vigorous dialogue about the aims of a college education―and how to realize those aims. 
Increasingly influenced by market forces, many universities employ a default purpose of a college education: preparing students for entry into the workforce. As a result, students remain unprepared for a world in which much of the knowledge they acquire will have a shelf life of only a few years.
Cultivating Inquiry-Driven Learners charts a new way forward. It proposes that a college education prepare students to be innovative and adaptable by developing four signature capabilities: core qualities of mind, critical thinking skills, expertise in divergent modes of inquiry, and the capacity to express and communicate ideas. In concert, these capabilities empower students to explore and foster ideas that will prepare them to successfully navigate constant change, capitalize on career opportunities, enrich their personal lives, and thoughtfully engage in public life.
This innovative book also explores a wide range of initiatives and practices for educating inquiry-driven learners. Examples illustrate possibilities for developing inquiry-driven learners across the curriculum and are drawn from institutions with remarkably different missions and identities―from research universities to liberal arts colleges.

JHUP

How can colleges develop learners who pursue innovative ideas that enable them to flourish and contribute in a rapidly changing world?
Two decades into the twenty-first century, our nation's colleges and universities no longer embrace a clear and convincing definition of the purpose of a college education. Instead, most institutions have fallen prey to a default purpose in which college is essentially workforce preparation for jobs that already exist, while students are viewed as commodities instead of being educated to flourish throughout their lives. But rather than bemoan the diminishing legacy of liberal education, this new edition of Cultivating Inquiry-Driven Learners argues that the time has come to advance a pioneering purpose of college that guides the undergraduate experience from program requirements to teaching and learning.
This purpose, Clifton Conrad and Laura Dunek write, is anchored in the premise that the world in which we live is one in which change―environmental, cultural, economic, political―is a constant driving force. The authors envision a college-educated person in the twenty-first century as an "inquiry-driven learner": a person equipped with the capabilities to explore and cultivate ideas that will prepare them to successfully navigate constant change, capitalize on career opportunities, enrich their personal life, and contribute to the public good. They describe four signature capabilities that students must develop in order to innovate and adapt: core qualities of mind, critical thinking skills, expertise in divergent modes of inquiry, and the capacity to express and communicate ideas.
Guided by this trailblazing vision, Conrad and Dunek have thoroughly revised every chapter of the book to reflect current scholarship and emerging trends. In an expanded conclusion, they provide a cornucopia of ideas for replenishing undergraduate education accompanied by real-world examples of innovative programs and practices from colleges and universities across the United States. Throughout, Cultivating Inquiry-Driven Learners challenges stakeholders from across higher learning―faculty, students, staff, administrators, and policymakers―to reflect on the purpose of college, embrace innovation, and ensure that students are educated to thrive in and contribute to our constantly changing world.

Cultivating Inquiry-Driven Learners: The Purpose of a College Education for the Twenty-First Century

Review\nThis ambitious, bold, and potentially controversial book argues for reframing undergraduate education as a collective enterprise, one that not only emphasizes principles of collaborative learning and collaboration generally but also asks us to shift our ideas about the purpose of a college education from one that prepares individuals to succeed to one that emphasizes communal learning that leads to societal change. Learning with Others should find a ready audience in practitioners and for use in courses on student development, curriculum, teaching and learning, and student affairs. -- Laurie A. Pohl, Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development\nA bold and visionary call for a paradigmatic shift in how higher education is conceptualized in America. Conrad and Lundberg convincingly advance that this model does not serve all populations well or equally, especially in a rapidly changing world rife with 'wicked problems' that will require a coalition-of-all to solve. In a country that seems to be ridden with what-about-me-ism, a turn to collaborative problem-solving as the heart of what undergraduate education should be is refreshing. -- Brandon O. Hensley, Wayne State University, coeditor of Critical Storytelling in 2020: Issues, Elections, and Beyond\nNot surprisingly, Clif Conrad and Todd Lundberg have produced a seminal book on the intersection of collaborative learning and its efficacy at Minority-Serving Institutions. It is a genuinely major contribution to our understanding of college student success, particularly for a too-frequently-neglected demographic of institutions and students. -- Ernest Pascarella, University of Iowa, coauthor of How College Affects Students: 21st Century Evidence that Higher Education Works\nLearning with Others provides a fresh look at collaborative learning, which has been part of educational reform initiatives for the last four decades. The authors question the individualistic orientation of American higher education and its roots in colonialism and racism and suggest that we would be much better served, particularly in contributing to the public good, by moving toward more a collectivist orientation. They engage a critical perspective to collaborative learning engaging conflict and confrontation to ensure that this approach does not reinforce whiteness. And the authors underscore how racialized minority students benefit from the move to classrooms and a curriculum based around shared problem-solving, deeper connections to the local community, and active engagement as co-constructors of learning. -- Adrianna Kezar, University of Southern California, coauthor of The Gig Academy: Mapping Labor in the Neoliberal University\nLearning from Others is the book that is needed now. Now more than ever, in our society, we need students to work together, to learn from each other, and to respect and build on each other's knowledge in order to make the strongest contributions to society. Conrad and Lundburg make an important and beautifully written contribution to the literature on student success and hopefully to our practice in classrooms and in colleges and universities overall. -- Marybeth Gasman, Rutgers University, coauthor of Educating a Diverse Nation: Lessons from Minority-Serving Institutions\nLearning with Others is specifically about learning with Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) and the students and educators within them. As the number of MSIs increases, there is a pressing need to rethink how we deliver education that centers students of color, with this book offering a transformative approach. Educators at all institutional types should embrace the educational practices offered in the book, with collaboration moving us away from an individualistic approach. -- Gina Garcia, University of Pittsburgh\nThis brilliant book advances the straight forward, but radical proposition, that collaborative, cooperative learning is superior to competitive, individual learnin

Learning with Others: Collaboration as a Pathway to College Student Success

Lundberg, Todd

A revised second edition of this collection of deathbed utterances of famous people.

Famous Last Words

Reference

Reed Editions

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Conrad, Clifton. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Conrad, Clifton

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Conrad, Clifton. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Emblems of Quality in Higher Education: Developing and Sustaining High-Quality Programs

Curriculum in Transition: Perspectives on the Undergraduate Experience

Educating a Diverse Nation: Lessons from Minority-Serving Institutions

Educating a Diverse Nation: Lessons from Minority-Serving Institutions

Cultivating Inquiry-Driven Learners: A College Education for the Twenty-First Century

Cultivating Inquiry-Driven Learners: A College Education for the Twenty-First Century

Cultivating Inquiry-Driven Learners: The Purpose of a College Education for the Twenty-First Century

Learning with Others: Collaboration as a Pathway to College Student Success

Famous Last Words