"These recollections shine with the wit and wisdom of one of our most experienced and admired university presidents...a spirited and reasoned and much-needed meditation on the aspirations and obligations of the research university." - J. W. Peltason, President, University of California. "Tom Ehrlich - a distinguished scholar, public servant, and university president - has written a lucid, provocative, and intensely personal account of the challenges facing higher education and the associated role of university presidents." - Harold Shapiro, President, Princeton University. "This is a splendid chronicle of astute observations, thoughtful reflections, and seasoned advice...Every new college president would be helped enormously by a careful reading of this valuable account of experiences and insights." - Steven C. Beering, President, Purdue University. "But sports are misleading metaphors for life, and particularly misleading in the context of a college education. On the playing field, only one team can win. Most of life is not made up of winning and losing, but rather of countless steps toward increased understanding and fulfillment in service to others.
A college education is learning how to take these steps, to deal with complexity on the one hand and ambiguity on the other, and in the process to achieve a clearer sense of values. Most of the difficulties students will face in their personal and professional lives have many dimensions, and judgments must be made where certainty is not possible and no rule book exists. A university education should equip one to entertain three things - a friend, an idea, and oneself." - Thomas Ehrlich, from the book. "The Courage to Inquire" is an informed, behind-the-scenes look at American higher education. Thomas Ehrlich brilliantly analyzes the key issues currently debated in higher education, the role of research versus teaching, the importance of research for its own sake, the qualities that make a good teacher, and the need for professors to serve their communities.
He also deals with the most troublesome - and in some cases controversial - challenges to universities: the complexities of planning in today's complicated world, the challenge of educating the new majority (nontraditional students), how to enhance minority presence on predominately white campuses, how to combat bigotry, the importance of resisting political correctness, tenure, and the difficulties of keeping athletics within bounds (an issue that received considerable publicity in Ehrlich's first year at Indiana).
- ISBN10 0253329132
- ISBN13 9780253329134
- Publish Date 30 January 1996
- Publish Status Transferred
- Out of Print 12 March 2014
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Indiana University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 168
- Language English