# The New American University

![rw-book-cover](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/images/article4.6bc1851654a0.png)

## Metadata
- Author: [[Nadia Eghbal]]
- Full Title: The New American University
- Category: #articles
- URL: https://nadiaeghbal.com/asu

## Highlights
- ASU is an example of what President Crow and his colleague, William Dabars, call the “New American University”, a model that they hope other public research universities will emulate. There are a bunch of interesting aspects to this model, but the most striking, in my view, has been to throw away the Ivy League playbook, rejecting the idea that a university’s prestige is defined by whom they exclude. Instead, ASU has significantly improved their rankings while accepting and graduating more students.
- Academic social networks are some of the most refined and valuable structures our civilization has produced. Nowhere have we amassed a greater concentration of specialists focused full-time on knowledge production….This is the beating heart of progress. It’s in these networks that the fire of the Enlightenment burns hottest.
    - Tags: [[academia]] [[education]] 
- Borrowing a restaurant metaphor from Harvard physicist Atul Gawande, Crow and Dabars explain that most universities aspire towards offering a Michelin star experience to students, but what we actually need is a ‘fast casual’, Cheesecake Factory-like option that can provide an affordable, quality education to millions.
- Institutional reform is hard is because everyone is stuck in the same way of thinking (Crow’s “isomorphism” at work), and bureaucracy is hard to improve incrementally.
    - Tags: [[favorite]]