Editor's Review of THE PLEASURES OF ACADEME: A CELEBRATION AND DEFENSE OF HIGHER EDUCATION and FAILING THE FUTURE: A DEAN LOOKS AT HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Available to Purchase

U.S. higher education has arrived at the new millennium in an environment that might charitably be called "dynamic." A demographic incline is bringing a larger and more diverse student body to the doors of U.S. colleges and universities. New technologies are multiplying venues for education, but our institutions of higher learning are simultaneously facing enormous pressures from penurious legislatures, growing competition from for-profit universities, and regents and state boards of higher education flocking to the banner of greater accountability. In the midst of these challenges, James Axtell's The Pleasures of Academe and Annette Kolodny's Failing the Future offer compelling and ultimately competing visions of the state of U.S. higher education on the doorstep of the twenty-first century.