Education and Democracy: Cooperation or Conflict? Review of the book: Delbanco A. (2015) College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be

Abstract

The reviewer believes that A. Delbanco’s analysis of challenges produced by democratization of access to higher education in America should be of great interest to a Russian reader. His book investigates into the meaning higher education has for the country as a whole and for each individual, into the specifics of goals pursued by colleges and universities, into the abundance of academic dishonesty in American higher education institutions, as well as into the effect of modern education development trends on social inequality. Briefly outlining the author’s key bullet points on the history of American colleges, triggers of their establishment, teachers’ and students’ lifestyle, consequences of the reputation race, the reviewer keeps drawing parallels with the Russian education system. He argues that blurring the specifics of higher education under the rationale of wide public accessibility is even more dangerous for Russia than for America, where the background situation was much better.