The dream of public higher education in America is to provide opportunity for many and to offer transformative help to American communities and the economy. Expanding Opportunity in Higher Education:  Leveraging Promise explores the massive challenges facing California and the nation in realizing this goal during a time of enormous demographic change. The immediate focus on California is particularly appropriate given the size of the state—it educates one out of every nine students in the country—and its checkered political record with respect to civil rights and educational inequities.

The book includes essays not only by academics looking at the state’s educational system as a whole, but also by those within the policy system who are trying to keep it going in difficult times. The contributors show that the destiny of California, and the nation, rests on the courage of policymakers, both within the universities and within the government, to move aggressively to reclaim the hope of millions of students who can make enormous contributions to this society if only given the chance.

 

Contributors include:

Estela Mara Bensimon, Leticia Tomas Bustillos, Jorge Chapa, Brian K. Fitzgerald, Patricia Gandara, Saul Geiser, Bruce Hamlett, Stephen J. Handel, Lan Hao, Margaret Heisel, Barbara A. Hoblitzell, Catherine L. Horn, Patricia Marin, Julie Mendoza, Colleen Moore, Jeannie Oakes, Gary Orfield, Charles A. Ratliff, Veronica Santelices, Nancy Shulock, and David Silver.

About the Editors:

Patricia Gandara is professor of education at the University of California at Davis. She is the author of Over the Ivy Walls: The Educational Mobility of Low-Income Chicanos and the editor of The Dimensions of Time and the Challenge of School Reform, both also published by SUNY Press.

Gary Orfield is professor of education and social policy at Harvard University and has published many books, including Dropouts in America: Confronting the Graduation Rate Crisis.

Catherine L. Horn is assistant professor of educational leadership and cultural studies at the University of Houston and the coeditor (with Gary Orfield and Patricia Marin) of Higher Education and the Color Line: College Access, Racial Equity, and Social Change.

More information about the book is found here.

Reviews

“Expanding Opportunity in Higher Education gives the reader every reason to act now—invest in the future and reap the benefits, or pay later and suffer the consequences.” — Teachers College Record

“This book pays attention to issues that limit higher education opportunity at all steps of the educational pipeline, from academic preparation for college during high school through teacher preparation and faculty employment. By including chapters by policymakers along with academics and researchers, the book presents a more complete view of the challenges that limit efforts to address the continued gaps in higher educational opportunity.” — Laura W. Perna, coauthor of The African American Education Data Book