What's the Point of College?: Seeking Purpose in an Age of Reform

Johann N. Neem

Aug 2019 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Sean Pratt

About this audiobook

In What's the Point of College?, historian Johann N. Neem offers a new way to think about the major questions facing higher education today, from online education to disruptive innovation to how students really learn. As commentators, reformers, and policymakers call for dramatic change and new educational models, this collection of lucid essays asks us to pause and take stock. What is a college education supposed to be? What kinds of institutions and practices will best help us get there? And which virtues must colleges and universities cultivate to sustain their desired ends? During this time of drift, Neem argues, we need to moor our colleges once again to their core purposes. By evaluating reformers' goals in relation to the specific goods that a college should offer to students and society, What's the Point of College? connects public policy to deeper ethical questions. Exploring how we can ensure that America's colleges remain places for intellectual inquiry and reflection, Neem does not just provide answers to the big questions surrounding higher education-he offers listeners a guide for how to think about them.

About the author

Johann N. Neem is a professor of history at Western Washington University. He is the author of Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts and Democracy's Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America.

Sean Pratt, a working actor for over twenty-five years, has performed at numerous regional theaters around the country. He is the author of To Be or Wanna Be, and he has recorded over seven hundred books in just about every genre, earning eight AudioFile Earphones Awards and four Audie Award nominations.