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  • For the Common Good

  • A New History of Higher Education in America
  • By: Charles Dorn
  • Narrated by: Doug McDonald
  • Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins

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For the Common Good

By: Charles Dorn
Narrated by: Doug McDonald
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Publisher's Summary

In For the Common Good, Charles Dorn challenges the rhetoric of America’s so-called crisis in higher education by investigating two centuries of college and university history. From the community college to the elite research university - in states from California to Maine - Dorn engages a fundamental question confronted by higher education institutions ever since the nation’s founding: Do colleges and universities contribute to the common good?

Tracking changes in the prevailing social ethos between the late 18th and early 21st centuries, Dorn illustrates the ways in which civic-mindedness, practicality, commercialism, and affluence influenced higher education’s dedication to the public good. Each ethos, long a part of American history and tradition, came to predominate over the others during one of the four chronological periods examined in the audiobook, informing the character of institutional debates and telling the definitive story of its time. For the Common Good demonstrates how 200 years of political, economic, and social change prompted transformation among colleges and universities - including the establishment of entirely new kinds of institutions - and refashioned higher education in the United States over time in essential and often vibrant ways.

The book is published by Cornell University Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

©2017 Cornell University (P)2019 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic Reviews

"Dorn's refreshing analysis is persuasive in showing that higher education for the common good is both central and complex." (John R. Thelin, author of A History of American Higher Education)

"Dorn offers compelling new insights into more than two centuries of higher education...." (Christine A. Ogren, author of The American State Normal School)

"Dorn has produced a book that offers insightful analysis on the past and important perspective to the present." (History of Education Quarterly)

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