A provocative look at the troubled present state of American higher education and a passionately argued and learned manifesto for its future. Educator Mark C. Taylor expands on the ideas in his hugely controversial 2009 New York Times op-ed. His suggestions for the ivory tower are both thought-provoking and rigorous: End tenure. Restructure departments to encourage greater cooperation among existing disciplines. Emphasize teaching rather than increasingly rarefied research. And bring that teaching to new domains, using emergent networks to connect students worldwide. Taylor shows us the consequences of decades of organizational neglect: students chafing under the restrictions of traditional higher education, recent graduates with massive debts and unpromising jobs, anxious parents anticipating inflated future tuitions. Accommodating the students of today and anticipating those of tomorrow, attuned to schools' financial woes and the skyrocketing cost of education, Taylor imagines a new system, improvisational, responsive and innovative.--From publisher description