Where is higher education headed?
re: Deborah Spar (Barnard)
In her essay, In Search of Prophets, Debora Spar, President of Barnard College, asks,
“Where is the philosopher of the digital age?”
Among others, her paper makes four claims:
Claim 1: “Sadly, he or she [a philosopher of the digital age] doesn’t exist.”
Claim 2: “I don’t believe that higher education bears much of the blame for the inequities that now confront our country, or for the gloomy forecasts that have driven our students to the streets in protest.”
Claim 3: “Higher education does an excellent job of preparing our students to think.”
Claim 4: “… in a world increasingly adrift, we also need to prepare them [students] to do—to envision the problems before them as part of a broader conceptual whole, and to grasp for the grander visions that might eventually pave a way out.”
Read the entire essay HERE.
Questions for Colleges 