bkrevs


Book Reviews  91

 

 

Book Reviews 

Kolodny, Annette. Failing the Future: A 
Dean Looks at Higher Education in the 
Twenty-first Century. Durham, N.C.: 
Duke Univ. Pr., 1998. 298p. $24.95, alk. 
paper (ISBN 0-8223-2186-6). LC 97­
037781. 

Annette Kolodny’s credentials to offer a 
dean’s perspective on higher education 
are impeccable. She is a recent dean of the 
College of Humanities at the University 
of Arizona; the book cover describes her 
prior experiences as “a distinguished 
teacher, a prize-winning scholar of Ameri­
can literature, a feminist thinker.” Failing 
the Future: A Dean Looks at Higher Educa-
tion in the Twenty-first Century fits neither 
its title nor its stated purposes. Rather, the 
book describes some experiences of one 
dean, few of which would be generaliz­
able. The way these experiences were 
written led me to conclude they were 
more a catharsis for the author than a pre­
scription for the next century. 

In fact, the book’s major failing is a 
clash among many intentions. Readers 
should be warned that this book will not 
help them learn how to be a dean or even 
to know whether—or how—to criticize 
current administrators; in short, readers 
should not expect to read a book about 
“deaning.” In the final chapter, Kolodny 
seems to discover that her purpose in the 
book has been to alter the conversations 
about education by changing the ques­
tions. She does this by sharing a collec­
tion of her opinions on education from 
kindergarten through graduate school. 
The topics covered do not organize into a 
systematic whole, which lessens the value 
of anything that could be called a premise 
or a major argument. 

Confusion over the book’s purpose 
continues into the writing style. Is it a 
collection of speeches? Is it written for 
alumni and Rotary Club lunches? Finally, 
either the editor or the author needed to 
eliminate duplicative references to expe­

riences. There are no graphics; 
the index is adequate. Many of 
the items in the nine-page bibli­
ography are from the 1990s, but 
the use of popular sources di­
minishes the seriousness of the 
answers. The author may have 
reason to be pleased with the college’s 
promotion and tenure document and the 
“Summary Checklist of Selected Family-
Friendly Initiatives and Programs” devel­
oped under her leadership, but they add 
little to her look at higher education in 
the twenty-first century. 

Recommended only for comprehen­
sive higher education collections or col­
l e c t i o n s  a t  t h e  U n i ve r s i t y  o f  A r i ­
z o n a . — M a r t h a  H a l e ,  E m p o r i a  S t a t e  
University. 

Levine, Arthur, and Jeanette S. Cureton. 
When Hope and Fear Collide: A Portrait 
of Today’s College Student. San Fran­
cisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998. 188p. $29.95, 
alk. paper (ISBN 0-7879-3877-7). LC 97­
042414. 

Academic librarians who have been left 
puzzled by encounters with the current 
generation of college students may well 
find their experiences described in this 
study of the 1990s collegiate culture based 
on surveys conducted between 1992 and 
1997 of 270 chief student affairs officers 
and 9,100 undergraduates, and supple­
mented with on-site interviews of staff 
and students. Arthur Levine, president 
and professor of education at Teachers 
College, Columbia University, and former 
executive editor of Change magazine, has 
been extensively involved in higher edu­
cation research. Indeed, in many ways, 
When Hope and Fear Collide is an extension 
of his 1980 book When Dreams and Heroes 
Died. Joined by fellow academic and re­
searcher, Jeanette Cureton, Levine offers 
a concise overview of the concerns and 
needs of college students. 

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