Download or read book The Pleasures of Academe written by James Axtell and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1999-03-11 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this timely book, historian James Axtell offers a compelling defense of higher education. Drawing on national statistics, broad-ranging scholarship, and delightful anecdotes, Axtell describes the professorial work cycle, the evolution of scholarship in the past three decades, the importance of ?habitual scholarship,? and the best ways to judge a university. He persuasively confronts the critics of higher education, arguing that they have perpetuated misunderstandings of tenure, research, teaching, curricular change, and professorial politics.