Word: bok
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...Bok describes at length the failure of requirements which are not supported by adequate faculty and administrative support. Introductory writing classes taught by relatively inexperienced graduate students and visiting professors, rather than tenured faculty, are singled out as examples. Bok also highlights the kind of language requirements that fail to produce fluency but represent an undue course burden...
Another chief concern is the development of moral reasoning and character. Bok spends considerable time describing the role of university leaders in shaping an ethical community. Everyone—from presidents to dormitory proctors—contributes to setting a moral standard. If moral development is not to be “merely an option for students who are interested...and for college authorities when it is not too costly,” universities must actively seek to promote more ethical thinking in daily life and at every level...
...Bok refrains from offering specific recommendations about coursework, but he repeatedly questions the efficacy of curricula that will not be remembered or applied later in life...
...Bok is well-aware of the difficulty of qualitatively evaluating academic progress. Nonetheless, he presents specific directives—such as revising faculty tenure procedures to include evaluations of teaching ability—to rouse the sleeping giants of American undergraduate education from their collective slumber...
...Whether Bok can implement his own suggestions at Harvard is yet to be seen. It is one thing to put ideas in a book—but quite another to put those ideas into action in the unwieldy environment of the modern university...