Slogans, myths, and isolated anecdotes are inadequate substitutes for documented history and contextual understanding. Literature on the history of higher education is dominated by ahistorical and contextually ignorant slogans. Seldom acknowledged, in discussions of the “decline” or “failure” of the modern university, is 1) how long it has been going on (at least since the 1960s); and 2) universities’ own complicity in this long, complicated, and contradictory process. Myths intertwine inseparably with slogans to echo yet another “lost cause.” Our collective, as well as individual, pasts provide essential lessons if we know how to read and learn from them. More complicated is imagining a plausible better future for universities. In Reconstructing the “Uni-versity”: From the Ashes of the “Mega- and Multi-versity” to the Futures of Higher Education, Harvey J. Graff, bringing experience from over 50 years as a professor, provides an accurate history of higher education, redefining the issues and terms to establish a new agenda.
This book offers an accurate history of higher education and, in the process, counters endlessly repeated, ahistorical, and contradictory myths. The author builds on a foundational understanding of the past to propose a reconstruction of the “uni-versity” for a new era.
