CAMPUS 1980: The Shape of the Future in American Higher Education

Now that higher education has become big business, its astrologers, i.e., planners, are recruited from an ever increasing corps of distinguished administrators, professors, and curriculum engineers. Here these leaders outline their predictions for the future of the university. The book consists of sixteen essays, eleven appearing for the first time, by such authors as John Gardner, David Riesman and Christopher Jencks, Nevitt Sanford, and Clark Kerr. The book is addressed to other professional educators. Its aim is to speed change, and perhaps channel it, by setting forth ""the problems, the options, and the prospects"" for the university. Two essays which focus primarily on populist rather than expanded elitist education--Joseph Cosand's strategy for community colleges and A. A. Liveright's model for extending adult education--actually do hypothecate institutions constructed specifically to serve the needs of a changing student body. But only Sanford deals with the live student. He predicts that the student radicalism of today will probably dominate most campuses by 1980, and, of course, the basic radical plank is that students should sharply influence the conduct of university policy and programs. These educators propose gigantic modifications. But the idea that informs all of the essays is that the institutions will be prepared for, not by, the new breed of students.