Symposium: Rethinking College

For years, we have heard about the coming bursting of the higher education bubble. Cancellation of college debt is an active political issue. Free speech on campus (or lack thereof) is a perennial issue. Criticisms of higher education from across the ideological spectrum continue to grow. The Covid-19 pandemic brought many of these issues to a head and has many people rethinking college. This symposium is interested in papers engaging these or other normative questions and issues about higher education.

Possible topics/questions/issues:

  • Curriculum: general education requirements; curriculum reforms in response to concerns about diversity, inclusion, and social justice; standards for curriculum reform or structure.
  • Virtual education: with the pandemic most colleges shifted to virtual learning environments or various hybrid models. Most expect these changes to remain in some form: what are some of the normative issues with these changes?
  • Going to college: should we encourage it or incentive it? What are viable alternatives?
  • Role/purpose of universities in society: knowledge creation; citizen development; extended adolescence, or job training?
  • Funding of college: public, loan/debt forgiveness, financial aid.
  • Faculty governance
  • Tenure system; adjuncts; teaching vs research
  • Teaching evaluations
  • Academic dishonesty and plagiarism
  • Teachers as therapists; pedagogy as therapy.
  • Teachers as activists; pedagogy as activism.
  • Free Speech on campus/cancel culture.
  • Issues of political or ideological diversity on campuses.
  • Intercollegiate athletics
  • Responses to any of the various critiques of education, such as Brennan & Magness (Cracks in the Ivory Tower), Lukianoff and Haidt (The Coddling of the American Mind), Arum and Roksa (Academically Adrift), Murray (Real Education),      Carey (The End of College) or Caplan (The Case against Education).
  • Other normative issues connected to higher education.

Details:

  • Manuscript due date: July 15, 2021
  • Length: 3000-6000 words
  • All submissions will go through internal editorial review process.
  • Send submissions to reasonpapers@gmail.com in Word or as a Rich Text Format. Please do not submit PDFs.
  • Editorial questions should be sent to reasonpapers@gmail.com.
  • Detailed requirements and guideline for submissions: https://reasonpapers.com/submissions/