Higher education is in trouble. Commentators of all stripes bemoan escalating costs and diminishing quality. Solutions have been offered from all quarters, but tend to be piecemeal and all too often ideological. In this tough-minded look at the history, current climate, and future of university education in the United States, Melvyn L. Fein re-examines the mission of higher education and outlines what institutions can do to better prepare students for an ever more complex techno-commercial society.

Fein argues that students must have the opportunity to explore and discover what works...

Revolutionary and evolutionary theorists have very different views about change; Fein writes in favour of evolution. He proposes an integrated model of social evolution, one that accounts for the complexity, inconclusiveness, and impediments that characterize social transformations.

This multi-dimensional approach recognizes that change is always saturated in conflict. Major changes are rarely initiated by conscious decisions that are automatically implemented; power and morality generally control the direction that significant alterations take. Fein explains how the social...

Liberalism is dying--despite its superficial appearance of vigour. Most of its adherents still believe it is the wave of the future, but they are clinging to a sinking dream. So says Melvyn L. Fein, who argues that almost none of liberalism's countless promises have come true. Under its auspices, poverty was not eliminated, crime did not diminish, the family was not strengthened, education was not improved, and universal peace has not been established. These failures are not accidental; they flow directly from liberal contradictions. In Post-Liberalism, Fein demonstrates why this...