Paul LeBlanc’s new book has an ambitious goal—a reimagining of the landscape of higher education in America. In a very readable 168 pages, he sketches out some of the key challenges to higher education today and offers strong arguments for reforms that will foster innovation and preserve its specialization and variability. Although the critiques may be familiar to readers within the system, and those same readers may wish for more detail, the book still presents a valuable, accessible overview of those challenges.
The biggest challenge, he suggests, is affordability. The first chapter makes clear who the main villain is for LeBlanc: the credit hour or Carnegie unit. LeBlanc here presents a concise yet comprehensive attack on the credit hour that is a useful primer for those unfamiliar with the basic contours of the argument. In brief, time in class is a very poor measurement of actual learning and forces students...
