George Keller

Ten years after the publication of Transforming a College, Elon University continues to thrive as a school that reinvented itself and its community around the idea of inspiring and guiding students. George Keller's now-classic account has been used as an inspiration and playbook for many other institutions. Available for the first time in paperback, this edition coincides with Elon's 125th anniversary. A new foreword and afterword from Elon president Leo M. Lambert tell the rest of the story of the university's ambitious agenda to position Elon as a top-ranked liberal arts university and a national leader in engaged teaching and learning.

Ten years after the publication of Transforming a College, Elon University continues to thrive as a school that reinvented itself and its community around the idea of inspiring and guiding students. George Keller's now-classic account has been used as an inspiration and playbook for many other institutions. Available for the first time in paperback, this edition coincides with Elon's 125th anniversary. A new foreword and afterword from Elon president Leo M. Lambert tell the rest of the story of the university's ambitious agenda to position Elon as a top-ranked liberal arts university and a national leader in engaged teaching and learning.

The True Story Of A College Professor Who Became A Lion Trainer. This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

While he celebrated higher education as the engine of progress in every aspect of American life, George Keller also challenged academia's sacred cows and entrenched practices with provocative ideas designed to induce "creative discomfort." Completed shortly before his death in 2007, Higher Education and the New Society caps the career of one of higher education's exceptional minds. Refining and expanding ideas Keller developed over his fifty-year career, this book is a clarion call for change. In the face of a transformed American society marked by population shifts, technological upheavals, and a volatile economic landscape, Keller urges leaders in higher education to see and confront their own serious problems. With characteristic forthrightness and inimitable wit, Keller targets critical areas where bold thinking is especially important, taking on such explosive issues as the configuration of academic disciplines, the runaway problem of big-time sports, the decline of the liberal arts, and the urgent problems of finances and costs. Keller expected this book to ignite discussion and controversy within academic circles, and he hoped fervently that it would also lead to real thinking, real analysis, and urgently needed transformation.

Forty years ago, North Carolina's Elon College was struggling to attract students and remain solvent. Today Elon enrolls students from 46 states and 40 foreign countries. Since 1988, it has erected a new library, student center, football stadium, fitness center, and science facilities on its 500-acre campus. The number of applications has risen 40 percent since 1995, and SAT scores of incoming students have improved by 98 points. Elon has emerged as one of America's most desirable colleges. How did this transformation happen? What can other colleges and universities learn from Elon's remarkable turnaround? Taking a new approach to the study of higher education, George Keller examines the decisions made by Elon's administration, trustees, and faculty to transform a school with a limited endowment into a top regional university. Using Elon as a case study, Keller sheds light on high-stakes competition among America's colleges and universities-where losers face contraction or closure and winners gain money, talented students, and top faculty.

Among higher education institutions in the United States, for-profit colleges and universities have steadily captured a larger share of the student market. A recent trend at for-profit institutions is the coupling of job training with accredited academic programs that offer traditional baccalaureate, professional, and graduate degrees. Richard Ruch, with administrative experience in both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors of higher education, takes us inside these new for-profit institutions, describing who teaches there, who enrolls and why, and how the for-profits are managed and by whom. He analyzes their different structures, services, and outlook on higher learning and training, and explains in detail how they make profits from tuition income. In Higher Ed, Inc., Ruch opens up the discussion about for-profit higher education from the perspective of a participant-observer. Focusing on five providers-the Apollo Group (the University of Phoenix); Argosy Education Group (the American Schools of Professional Psychology); DeVry, Inc. (DeVry Institutes of Technology); Education Management Corporation (the Art Institutes International); and Strayer Education (Strayer University)-he conveys for the first time what it feels like to be inside this new kind of American institution. He is also candid about the less attractive aspects of the for-profit colleges, including what those who enroll may give up. As Ruch makes clear, the major for-profit colleges and universities offer a different approach to higher education-one that may be increasingly influential in the future.

A chilling, instructive, literate, compelling discussion of the staggering problems facing U. S. higher education and the management strategies required to cope with them. -- Washington PostGeorge Keller's best seller allows us to understand how techniques of strategic management can help deal with future uncertainties and shows how a number of campuses have faced hard times creatively. -- Higher Education