There are perhaps 50 "elite" colleges and universities among the 3,000 institutions of higher education in the United States. They are, as their brochures plainly admit, highly selec- tive; 3 out of 4 applicants for admission regularly fail to pass through the needle's eye. They are also expensive: $8,000 or more for a year in collegiate heaven. A few of them (such as the University of California at Berkeley) are public schools, the flag- ship campuses of state institutions. But most...
Community colleges, which now enroll about one-third of the country's 11 million undergraduates, crowd the very bottom of higher education's pecking order. Ranking below even the least prestigious of the four-year colleges and universities, these two-year schools struggle along without the assets that make for high intellectual status.
First of all, they are completely nonexclusive, admitting vir- tually anyone who walks through their doors. Their students usually have average academic preparation-or...
Everyone is familiar with certain claims made for American higher education: It is the largest and most equitable system in the world; its research and scholarship are unsurpassed; it is the engine driving the American Dream Machine. And indeed, it is all these things. It is one of our national glories.
the early 20th century, first- rate research universities rivaling their European models.
From the start, campus debate has been vigorous-over academic free- dom, admissions policy, the cur- riculum, research. Should Harvard tolerate heretics (Cotton Mather, 1702)? Are the classics an anach-ronism (The Yale Report, 1828)? Must the university deal with populist as well as aristocratic tastes (Ezra Cor- nell, 1865)?
In Laurence Veysey's view (The Emergence of the American Univer- sity, Chicago,...
Readers' letters to the editors of Soviet women's magazines depict a society where household appliances break down, hus- bands drink heavily, and the process of divorce is often costly and time-consuming; where wage scales are low, where child care conflicts with the need to work, and husbands refuse to help with the household chores.
One cartoon shows a frenzied wife, exhausted from eight hours on the job, hurrying to prepare her family's supper. The husband, in house slippers, lounges in front...
A RECURRING FEVER
Economists still haggle over a proper definition of inflation, but most Americans know inflation's impact: rising prices. From Kennedy to Nixon to Carter, Washington's stop-and-go anti- inflation strategies have proved inadequate. Here the editors outline the postwar record, and economist Laurence Seidman describes the latest proposed remedy.
According to Plutarch, Athens under Solon (fl. 600 B.c.) wrestled with severe inflation after depreciation of the mina. To restore stabi...
decree. Since then, India has receded from the headlines (ex- cept during President Carter's flying visit last January). The na- tion's current economic and political health is relatively good, but the long-term outlook is a matter of dispute. We present here some diverse views. Former diplomat Edward O'Neill traces Indian-American relations since the bloody Moslem-Hindu Par- tition of the subcontinent in 1947; journalist B. G. Verghese looks at India's political history; and economist Lawrence...
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Eighteen months ago, the West hailed India's return to democ- racy after Prime Minister Morarji Desai took office in the wake of voters' rejection of Indira Gandhi and her "Emergency" rule by decree. Since then, India has receded from the headlines (ex- cept during President Carter's flying visit last January). The na- tion's current economic and political health is relatively good, but the long-term outlook is a matter of dispute. We present here some diverse views. Former diplomat...
n Parliament-and the Prime Minis- ter's office.
The Congress held the country together in 1948 during the appalling trauma of Partition, when millions of people moved between Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan and uncounted hun- dreds of thousands were slaughtered on the basis of their reli- gious faiths. The Congress shaped India's 1950 Constitution and established the democratic framework that its latter-day leader, Indira Gandhi, drastically abridged before she, and the party, were brought down...
as a whole. It cuts through elegant quarters and crowded slums, through a seemingly endless variety of neighborhoods that re- flect India's sundry regions, religions, castes, and classes.
The daily traffic is an extraordinary mix: government offi- cials, diplomats, and business executives speeding through the dust in their limousines; fleets of aggressive, gaily painted trucks; a seemingly endless parade of bicyclists and pedestrians; and a slow circus procession of farmer's bullock carts, buffaloes,...