Rethinking Campus Life

This edited volume explores the history of student life throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Chapter authors examine the expanding reach of scholarship on the history of college students; the history of underrepresented students, including black, Latino, and LGBTQ students; and student life at state normal schools and their successors, regional colleges and universities, and at community colleges and evangelical institutions. The book also includes research on drag and gender and on student labor activism, and offers new interpretations of fraternity and sorority life. Collectively, these chapters deepen scholarly understanding of students, the diversity of their experiences at an array of institutions, and the campus lives they built.

The two Duke University educators assess the current state of American higher education and provide a strategy for change.

Even as the number of students attending college has more than doubled in the past forty years, it is still the case that nearly half of all college students in the United States will not complete their degree within six years. It is clear that much remains to be done toward improving student success. For more than twenty years, Vincent Tinto’s pathbreaking book Leaving College has been recognized as the definitive resource on student retention in higher education. Now, with Completing College, Tinto offers administrators a coherent framework with which to develop and implement programs to promote completion. Deftly distilling an enormous amount of research, Tinto identifies the essential conditions enabling students to succeed and continue on within institutions. Especially during the early years, he shows that students thrive in settings that pair high expectations for success with structured academic, social, and financial support, provide frequent feedback and assessments of their performance, and promote their active involvement with other students and faculty. And while these conditions may be worked on and met at different institutional levels, Tinto points to the classroom as the center of student education and life, and therefore the primary target for institutional action. Improving retention rates continues to be among the most widely studied fields in higher education, and Completing College carefully synthesizes the latest research and, most importantly, translates it into practical steps that administrators can take to enhance student success.

Every generation of college students, no matter how different from its predecessor, has been an enigma to faculty and administration, to parents, and to society in general. Watching today’s students “holding themselves in because they had to get A’s not only on tests but on deans’ reports and recommendations,” Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, author of the highly praised Alma Mater, began to ask, “What has gone wrong—how did we get where we are today?” Campus Life is the result of her search—through college studies, alumni autobiographies, and among students themselves—for an answer. She begins in the post-revolutionary years when the peculiarly American form of college was born, forced in the student-faculty warfare: in 1800, pleasure-seeking Princeton students, angered by disciplinary action, “show pistols . . . and rolled barrels filled with stones along the hallways.” She looks deeply into the campus through the next two centuries, to show us student society as revealed and reflected in the students’ own codes of behavior, in the clubs (social and intellectual), in athletics, in student publications, and in student government. And we begin to notice for the first time, from earliest days till now, younger men, and later young women as well, have entered not a monolithic “student body” but a complex world containing three distinct sub-cultures. We see how from the beginning some undergraduates have resisted the ritualized frivolity and rowdiness of the group she calls “College Men.” For the second group, the “Outsiders,” college was not so much a matter of secret societies, passionate team spirit and college patriotism as a serious preparation for a profession; and over the decades their ranks were joined by ambitious youths from all over rural America, by the first college women, by immigrants, Jews, “townies,” blacks, veterans, and older women beginning or continuing their education. We watch a third subculture of “Rebels”—both men and women – emerging in the early twentieth century, transforming individual dissent into collective rebellion, contending for control of collegiate politics and press, and eventually—in the 1960s—reordering the whole college/university world. Yet, Horowitz demonstrates, in spite of the tumultuous 1960s, in spite of the vast changes since the nineteenth century, the ways in which undergraduates work and play have continued to be shaped by whichever of the three competing subcultures—college men and women, outsiders, and rebels—is in control. We see today’s campus as dominated by the new breed of outsiders (they began to surface in the 1970s) driven to pursue their future careers with a “grim professionalism.” And as faint and sporadic signs emerge of (perhaps) a new activism, and a new attraction to learning for its own sake, we find that Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz has given us, in this study, a basis for anticipated the possible nature of the next campus generation.

A new sexual revolution is sweeping the country, and college students are on the front lines. Few places in America have felt the influence of #MeToo more intensely. Indeed, college campuses were in many ways the harbingers of #MeToo. Grigoriadis captures the nature of this cultural reckoning without shying away from its complexity. College women use fresh, smart methods to fight entrenched sexism and sexual assault even as they celebrate their own sexuality as never before. Many “woke” male students are more open to feminism than ever, while others perpetuate the cruelest misogyny. Coexisting uneasily, these students are nevertheless rewriting long-standing rules of sex and power from scratch. Eschewing any political agenda, Grigoriadis travels to schools large and small, embedding in their social whirl and talking candidly with dozens of students, as well as to administrators, parents, and researchers. Blurred Lines is a riveting, indispensable illumination of the most crucial social change on campus in a generation.

“If you read only one book on educating children, this should be the book.… With a warm, informative voice, Bauer gives you the knowledge that will help you flex the educational model to meet the needs of your child.” —San Francisco Book Review Our K–12 school system isn’t a good fit for all—or even most—students. It prioritizes a single way of understanding the world over all others, pushes children into a rigid set of grades with little regard for individual maturity, and slaps “disability” labels on differences in learning style. Caught in this system, far too many young learners end up discouraged. This informed, compassionate, and practical guidebook will show you how to take control of your child’s K–12 experience and negotiate the school system in a way that nurtures your child’s mind, emotions, and spirit. Understand why we have twelve grades, and why we match them to ages. Evaluate your child’s maturity, and determine how to use that knowledge to your advantage. Find out what subject areas we study in school, why they exist—and how to tinker with them. Discover what learning disabilities and intellectual giftedness are, how they can overlap, how to recognize them, and how those labels can help (or hinder) you. Work effectively with your child’s teachers, tutors, and coaches. Learn to teach important subjects yourself. Challenge accepted ideas about homework and standardized testing. Help your child develop a vision for the future. Reclaim your families’ priorities (including time for eating together, playing, imagining, traveling, and, yes, sleeping!). Plan for college—or apprenticeships. Consider out-of-the-box alternatives.

Experimenting with new ways of looking at the contexts, subjects, processes and multiple political stances that make up life at the margins, this book provides a novel source for a critical rethinking of marginalisation. Drawing on post-colonialism and critical assemblage thinking, the rich ethnographic works presented in the book trace the assemblage of marginality in multiple case-studies encompassing the Global North and South. These works are united by the approach developed in the book, characterised by the refusal of a priori definitions and by a post-human and grounded take on the assemblage of life. The result is a nuanced attention to the potential expressed by everyday articulations and a commitment to produce a processual, vitalist and non-normative cultural politics of the margins. The reader will find in this book unique challenges to accepted and authoritative thinking, and provides new insights into researching life at the margins.

Business is the largest undergraduate major in the United States and still growing. This reality, along with the immense power of the business sector and its significance for national and global well-being, makes quality education critical not only for the students themselves but also for the public good. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's national study of undergraduate business education found that most undergraduate programs are too narrow, failing to challenge students to question assumptions, think creatively, or understand the place of business in larger institutional contexts. Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education examines these limitations and describes the efforts of a diverse set of institutions to address them by integrating the best elements of liberal arts learning with business curriculum to help students develop wise, ethically grounded professional judgment.

Drawing on Scripture, church history, and his own story, Shane Claiborne explores how a passion for social justice issues surrounding life and death--such as war, gun ownership, the death penalty, racial injustice, abortion, poverty, and the environment--intersects with our faith as we advocate for life in its totality. Many of us wonder how to think about and act on issues of life and death beyond abortion and the death penalty--yet the heated debates in our churches and the confusion of our own hearts sometimes feel overwhelming. What does a balanced, Christian view of what it means to be "pro-life" really look like? Combining stories, theological reflection, and a little wit with a Southern accent, activist Shane Claiborne explores the battle between life and death that goes back to the Garden of Eden. Shane draws on his childhood growing up in the Bible Belt, his own change of perspective on how to advocate for life, and his years of working on behalf of all people to help us: Learn from the Bible and the early church about valuing life Deepen our understanding of what a pro-life stance can look like Discover ways to discuss topics that are dividing our culture and churches Find encouragement when we feel politically homeless Renew our hope that there is a good way forward, even in difficult times We need a new movement that stands up for life--without exceptions. This moving and incredibly timely book creates a larger framework for thinking about God's love and our faith as we embrace a consistent ethic that values human life from womb to tomb.

Since the first edition was published in 1994, Rethinking Our Classrooms has sold over 180,000 copies.