Crisis on Campus

Taylor (chair, religion dept., Columbia Univ.) is a widely published, highly successful academic who remains involved in innovative teaching projects. Here, he asserts that American higher education faces an intellectual, organizational, and financial crisis and needs to be transformed. Because new information and communication technologies have created a network culture that changes the way information is produced and consumed, universities need to develop strategies for interdisciplinary curricula and collaborative relationships with both academic and nonacademic institutions. In his wide-ranging analysis, Taylor combines intellectual history and contemporary cultural criticism with examples of academic innovation and current university inefficiencies. He demonstrates an exuberant willingness to take on academic conventions, most dramatically calling for the end of lifelong tenure appointments.