Synopses & Reviews
A Harvard professor and former Dean of Harvard College offers his provocative analysis of how America's great universities are failing students and the nation.
America's great research universities are the envy of the world and none more so than Harvard. Never before has the competition for excellence been fiercer. But while striving to be unsurpassed in the quality of its faculty and students, Universities have forgotten that the fundamental purpose of undergraduate education is to turn young people into adults who will take responsibility for society.
In Excellence Without a Soul, Harry Lewis, a Harvard professor for more than thirty years and Dean of Harvard College for eight, draws from his experience to explain how our great universities have abandoned their mission. Harvard is unique; it is the richest, oldest, most powerful university in America, and so it has set many standards, for better or worse. Lewis evaluates the failures of this grand institution from the hot button issue of grade inflation to the recent controversy over Harvard's handling of date rape cases and makes an impassioned argument for change. The loss of purpose in America's great colleges is not inconsequential. Harvard, Yale, Stanford these places drive American education, on which so much of our future depends. It is time to ask whether they are doing the job we want them to do.
Review
"Parents preparing to shell out a small fortune for their children's education will want to read Mr. Lewis's book as they ask themselves: What exactly are we paying for?" Wall Street Journal
Review
"The Harvard Lewis shows us in Excellence Without a Soul is tone-deaf to the American Republic, whose liberties it relies on yet whose virtues it no longer nurtures." Boston Globe
Synopsis
A Harvard professor and former Dean of Harvard College offers his provocative analysis of how America's great universities are failing students and the nation
About the Author
Harry Lewis, Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science and Harvard College professor, has been on the Harvard faculty for thirty-two years. He was Dean of Harvard College between 1995 and 2003 and chaired the College's student disciplinary and athletic policy committees. He has been a member of the undergraduate admissions and scholarship committee for more than three decades. Lewis lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.