How Scholars Trumped Teachers

Examining a century of university history, Larry Cuban tackles the age-old question: What is more important, teaching or research? Using two departments (history and medicine) at Stanford University as a case study, Cuban shows how universities have organizationally and politically subordinated teaching to research for over one hundred years. He explains how university reforms, decade after decade, not only failed to dislodge the primacy of research but actually served to strengthen it. He examines the academic work of research and teaching to determine how each has influenced university structures and processes, including curricular reform. Can the dilemma of scholars vs. teachers ever be fully reconciled? This fascinating historical journey is a must read for all university administrators, faculty, researchers, and anyone concerned with educational reform.

Larry Cuban is Professor Emeritus of Education at Stanford University. In addition to How Teachers Taught, his books include Teachers and Machines, Frogs into Princes: Writings on School Reform, Why Is It So Hard to Get Good Schools? and How Can I Fix It? Finding Solutions and Managing Dilemmas.

“Larry Cuban’s approach provides a healthy alternative to the historical critiques of higher education that have been published in recent years.”
Gordon Davies, President, Kentucky Council for Postsecondary Education

“This is an important book…(that) will have a wide audience both among intelligent readers interested in reform of the American university as well as among scholars of higher education and teaching.”
Gerald Grant, Syracuse University