The idea that higher education reflects and is a significant contributor to a country’s well-being is a key assumption of Lesson Plan: An Agenda for Change in American Higher Education. The book’s authors, Michael G. Bowen and Michael S. McPherson, argue that American higher education ‘needs to do much better than it is doing at present in meeting pressing national needs’ (p. vii). Bowen, president emeritus of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Princeton University and founding chair of ITHAKA, and McPherson, president of the Spencer Foundation and former president of Macalester College, bring decades of experience in higher education to this work. In the book, they identify what the United States needs from higher education, how higher education is falling short of these needs, and policy changes to address these shortcomings. The problems they identify and solutions they propose range from national-level efforts to changes at the institutional level.
Read the review: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1360080X.2017.1254378.
Purchase Lesson Plan: https://www.amazon.com/Lesson-Plan-American-Education-William/dp/0691172102.