The New Education: How to Revolutionize the University to Prepare Students for a World In Flux

A leading educational thinker argues that the American university is stuck in the past--and shows how we can revolutionize it to prepare students for our age of constant changeOur current system of higher education dates to the period from 1865 to 1925, when the nation's new universities created grades and departments, majors and minors in an attempt to prepare young people for a world transformed by the telegraph and the Model T.As Cathy Davidson argues in The New Education, this approach to education is wholly unsuited to the era of the gig economy. From the Ivy League to community colleges, she introduces us to innovators who are

Shecriticizes both technophobes who bemoan the internet and technophiles whobelieve computers will transform teaching. In anengaging, anecdotal, wide-ranging look at educational innovation, she arguesthat students "need new ways of integrating knowledge, including throughreflection on why and what they are learning." They must become activelearners, not merely passive absorbers of lectures and rote memorizers.Davidson advocates dramatic pedagogical revisions Today's students, writes the author, nee

Cathy N. Davidson directs the Futures Initiative at CUNY. She is the author of many books including Now You See It and has written for the Wall Street Journal and Fast Company, among others. Davidson lives in New York, NY.