Higher Education

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  Western Kentucky University

  Most Hilltoppers believe that Western Kentucky University is unique. They take pride in its lovely campus, its friendly spirit, the loyalty of its alumni, and its academic and athletic achievements. But Western's development also illustrates a major trend in American higher education during the past century. Scores of other institutions have followed the Western pattern, growing from private normal school to state normal school, to teachers college, to general college, finally emerging as an important state university.

  Historian Lowell Harrison traces the Western story from the school's origin in 1875 to the January 1986 election of its seventh president. For ...Read More

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  Transylvania: Tutor to the West

  Chartered in 1780, Transylvania University played a significant role as an educational pioneer in the developing trans-Allegheny West and served as its first institution of higher education. Strategically located in the growing city of Lexington, Kentucky, the university established schools of law and medicine at a time when there were few such educational offerings in the country. Noted alumni include emancipationist Cassius M. Clay and Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Two centuries later, Transylvania University maintains its commitment to the highest standards of the liberal arts education. Now passing its 225th anniversary, it remains an educational beacon for Kentucky and the ...Read More

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  Power and Empowerment in Higher Education: Studies in Honor of Louis Smith

  The tangled relationship of power and higher education is a fascinating one. Where power centers arise on campus, they influence and are influenced by sources of power outside. Students, faculty and administration compete for authority within the academic community; citizens whose education has placed them in a position to obtain social, political, and economic power outside the university walls frequently use it in a way that deeply affects the direction and nature of academic development.

  This collection of thought-provoking essays is dedicated to Professor Louis Smith, who has long been a student of higher education in this country and abroad. ...Read More

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  Albert D. Kirwan

  The name Albert Kirwan is inextricably bound with the University of Kentucky—in sports, scholarship, and administration. His skills and interests were so many and varied that his accomplishments in one area could not long satisfy his restless nature; he captained and later coached the U.K. Wildcats, took degrees in law and history, wrote or edited six books, taught a full load of classes, became dean of students, graduate dean, and finally, was unanimously installed as seventh president of the University.

  Under his guidance, the UK graduate program was improved and strengthened; he presented the University’s case before the National Collegiate ...Read More

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  The Humanities and the Understanding of Reality

  In their concern with the perennial controversy between the two great areas in which men seek knowledge, three eminent literary scholars and a distinguished journalist in these essays address themselves to the question, “Do the humanities provide a form of understanding of reality that the sciences do not?”

  Monroe C. Beardsley maintains that the humanities considered as contributors to knowledge must deal with the same subject matter as the sciences, but literature and the arts can enlarge our powers of understanding human nature, although not in the way the sciences do (under empirically or logically verifiable laws). Northrop Frye, while ...Read More

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  The University in the American Future

  In these four notable essays based on Centennial lectures, four eminent scholars analyze the tensions affecting university education today and the forces which will shape the American university of the future.

  Kenneth D. Benne, director of the Human Relations Center of Boston University, describes the fragmentation which has come to characterize the university in 1965 in three divergent philosophies of university education and calls for the universities to undertake a radical change of their social organization. For, he says, only by restoring the community of learning can the universities exercise their proper leadership in resolving the conflicts and tensions of ...Read More

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  Keeping the University Free and Growing

  During the fifteen years of Herman L. Donovan’s presidency (1941-56), the University of Kentucky entered a new era of maturity as an educational institution.

  The period was characterized by many administrative crises, such as those arising from the flood of veteran students following World War II, the rapidly rising costs of maintenance and expansion, and the apathy or active opposition of many Kentuckians to the concept of a free and developing university. Nevertheless, during this same period tremendous advances, both in material assets and in the less tangible qualities of academic life, were made.

  Realizing that evaluation of his administration ...Read More

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  The Gates Open Slowly: A History of Education in Kentucky

  Education in Kentucky has developed slowly, and even now the state ranks low in the nation in providing public funds for the development of its human resources. In this book the author, who was president of the University of Kentucky from 1917 to 1940, traces the tortuous path of education in the state from the pioneer log schoolhouse to the modern universities of Kentucky and Louisville.

  Frank L. McVey has been a teacher, administrator, president of two state universities, chairman of a state tax commission, and member of many educational survey groups. Born in Wilmington, Ohio, he was educated in ...Read More