Words matter. These are the best Derek Bok Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
There’s a great deal of difference between thinking reflectively about moral issues and achieving higher standards of ethical behavior.
Critics of American colleges typically attribute the failings of undergraduate education to a tendency on the part of professors to neglect their teaching to concentrate on research. In fact, the evidence does not support this thesis, except perhaps in major research universities.
The vast majority of students probably emerge from college with an adequate grasp of no more than a single method of inquiry. Even this capacity may erode over time if it does not relate to experiences and problems that recur in the student’s later life.
Universities are in a position where they can think very creatively.
I think it’s sort of an outrage that companies should have to hire firms to teach the college graduates they employ how to write.
The most obvious purpose of college education is to help students acquire information and knowledge by acquainting them with facts, theories, generalizations, principles, and the like. This purpose scarcely requires justification.
What we are doing in educating students is trying to prepare them to live more fulfilling lives for the decades after they graduate. And trying to provide a better, richer, fairer, more decent society for the generations after.
I think it’s very important to emphasize that there are many, many different educational institutions in what we call higher education, and they educate an enormous diversity of students. I think all of those institutions have to define particular roles for themselves; they can’t do everything at once.
Apart from finding a first job, college graduates seem to adapt more easily than those with only a high school degree as the economy evolves and labor-market needs change.
Once you start worrying about a national football championship, then you begin to worry about getting the quality of athlete, and the numbers needed, to win a national championship. And that worry leads to pressure to compromise academic standards to admit those athletes.
I think one thing that does cause unhappiness is protracted anxiety and worry.
The oldest of the arts and the youngest of the professions.
In 1968, the situation at Harvard was not one of which we can be proud. In that year, the proportion of minority persons in salary and wage positions was approximately 3 per cent. Virtually no minority workers were employed on Harvard construction projects.
Good teaching is creating really interesting generalizations out of war stories.
I suspect that no community will become humane and caring by restricting what its members can say.
I don’t think the alternative to Yale is jail by any means. On the other hand, there is a mass of research that does show that there are real advantages to your subsequent career in going to selective institutions.
There are no tests similar to SATs to tell us how much undergraduates know. State legislators, who appropriate billions of dollars each year to higher education, are naturally interested in finding out what they are getting for their money.
As countries embrace mass higher education, the cost of maintaining universities increases dramatically relative to an elite system.
Despite the hours spent debating different models of general education, the choices faculties make rarely lead to any significant difference in the cognitive development of undergraduates.
Greater inequality in Europe has made people less happy.
Education, and I regret to say this as an educator, but there’s no indication that education has a direct effect on happiness.
The first country to adopt happiness as an official goal of public policy is the tiny little country of Bhutan in Asia near China and India.
I won’t say there aren’t any Harvard graduates who have never asserted a superior attitude. But they have done so to our great embarrassment and in no way represent the Harvard I know.
Fewer than half of all university professors publish as much as one article per year.
Colleges and universities, for all the benefits they bring, accomplish far less for their students than they should. Many students graduate without being able to write well enough to satisfy their employers… reason clearly or perform competently in analyzing complex, non-technical problems.
Again and again, universities have put a low priority on the very programs and initiatives that are needed most to increase productivity and competitiveness, improve the quality of government, and overcome the problems of illiteracy, miseducation, and unemployment.
Most high governmental officials who speak of education policy seem to conceive of education in this light – as a way to ensure economic competitiveness and continued economic growth. I strongly disagree with this approach.
There is far too much law for those who can afford it and far too little for those who cannot.
Ever since economists revealed how much universities contribute to economic growth, politicians have paid close attention to higher education.
Although professors regard improving critical thinking as the most important goal of college, tests reveal that seniors who began their studies with average critical thinking skills have progressed only from the 50th percentile of entering freshmen to about the 69th percentile.
