Friday, June 29, 2012

Excellence without a Soul: How a Great Universty Forgot Education

Buku yang harus dibaca semua ahli akademik dan pentadbir universiti

Excellence Without a Soul: Does Liberal Education Have a Future?
gambar dari Amazon.com

Buku 'Excellence without a Soul: How a Great Universty Forgot Education" Harvard Univ. Press, 2006) dihasilkan oleh Profesor Harry Lewis. Prof Harry pernah menjadi Dekan Kolej Harvard selama 8 tahun dan Profesor selama 32 tahun.

Buku ini menjelaskan bahawa penyelidikkan dibawah arah negara dan industri tidak pedulikan kesan-kesan negatif kepada masyarakat. Profesor-profesor sibuk mengejar dana penyelidikkan dan lupa tugas pendidikan dan pengajaran.

Rektor/presiden/Naib Canselor sibuk dengan usaha menambah kekuatan kewangan universiti untuk mendapat ranking tinggi. Isu-isu pelajar pelajar bertambah buruk.

Terdapat pensyarah dan profesor yang mempunyai akhlak yang buruk, mementingkan diri sendiri, memandang rendah pada orang lain yang tidak menyanjung mereka dan sikap membenci nilai-nilai agama dan etika. Terdapat juga hasad dengki, polticking dan mengejar pangkat dengan cara tidak beretika.

Kata seorang ahli akademik di Kampus Kesihatan USM, "bahangnya  telah menjangkau diuniversiti-universiti tempatan di Malaysia."

Diskripsi Buku seperti yang terdapat di lama Amazon.com

August 14, 2007
America's great research universities are the envy of the world—and none more so than Harvard. 
 
Never before has the competition for excellence been fiercer. But while striving to be unsurpassed in the quality of its faculty and students, Universities have forgotten that the fundamental purpose of undergraduate education is to turn young people into adults who will take responsibility for society. 
 
In Excellence Without a Soul, Harry Lewis, a Harvard professor for more than thirty years and Dean of Harvard College for eight, draws from his experience to explain how our great universities have abandoned their mission. Harvard is unique; it is the richest, oldest, most powerful university in America, and so it has set many standards, for better or worse. 
 
Lewis evaluates the failures of this grand institution—from the hot button issue of grade inflation to the recent controversy over Harvard's handling of date rape cases—and makes an impassioned argument for change. The loss of purpose in America's great colleges is not inconsequential. Harvard, Yale, Stanford—these places drive American education, on which so much of our future depends. It is time to ask whether they are doing the job we want them to do.

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