Education and the New Economy

By Claire Potter. We return to guest blogger, historian and former Zenith provost Judith C. Brown.  Her full biography and Part I of this series can be viewed here.  Brown ended the first section of her essay by reflecting: “in the early 19th century, it was in the relative ‘backwater’ of the German universities as well as in the newer universities of Europe, where imagination and flexibility with regard to change were able to flourish, that we see the beginnings of the modern research university.”  She then asked: “Are we in that kind of turning point in American higher education?”  The answer is yes.
American higher education is at a major turning point.