Education Commons^™

The Emergence Of The New American College, Daniel R. Denicola

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The story of the "New American College" is about the development of a new kind of institution embodying a set of ideals which may resonate across all of higher education. It begins, however, with the humble matter of institutional taxonomy. How we classify our schools and colleges may seem an unexciting issue, but our classification systems reveal our assumptions, our expectations, and ultimately our values. Recall that a conceptual revolution, a breakthrough, is often presaged by an accumulation of classification problems, an accretion of anomalies, a proliferation of misfits. [excerpt]