NEW PRESIDENT OF HARVARD TAKES STAND FOR REAL EDUCATION

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SARA RIMER, NY TIMES -  Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard University's first
female president, was inaugurated Friday and offered a spirited defense
of American higher education against demands that it quantify what it is
teaching and focus primarily on training a global work force.

"The essence of a university is that it is uniquely accountable to the
past and to the future - not simply or even primarily to the present,"
said Dr. Faust, 60, a Civil War historian and the former head of the
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at the university.

"A university is not about results in the next quarter," Dr. Faust said.
"It is not even about who a student has become by graduation. It is
about learning that molds a lifetime, learning that transmits the
heritage of millennia; learning that shapes the future."

In clear opposition to pressure from the federal government for
universities to prove they are accountable by quantifying how well they
teach, she called on higher education institutions themselves "to seize
the initiative in defining what we are accountable for."

In an interview before the inauguration ceremony, Dr. Faust faulted a
federal Commission on the future of Higher Education empanelled by the
Bush administration for its focus on training a competitive work force
for the global economy. While higher education makes "a fundamental
contribution to training a work force," she said, it should strive to be
far more than that. . .

Dr. Faust's speech offered a ringing defense of the traditional role of
universities as "stewards of living tradition," as places for
"philosophers as well as scientists," where learning and knowledge are
pursued in part "because they define what has over centuries made us
human, not because they can enhance our global competitiveness."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/13/education/13harvard.html?ex=
1350273600&en=59fa9a6e3c22e74b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss


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