Saving Alma Mater: a rescue plan for America’s Public Universities by James C. Garland. Library Call Number: LB23452.G37 2009.
In this quartet of books about education, the state of American education is seen from many angles. James C. Garland, former President of Miami University of Ohio, outlines the cost pressures on the American public University in Saving Alma Mater. As the Library Journal review says, Garland “…explains the damaging impact of an unpredictable and uncompetitive system of state appropriations..[he] also shows that faculty values and the character of academic culture get in the way of cost-effective management and the identification of priorities. …Campus attitudes have led to a defensiveness that wastes resources, resists change, and undermines the academic excellence that students and society overall need…While Garland's recommended change in tuition policy may not work throughout the system, his clearly expressed and hardheaded analysis provide a valuable perspective for both the general reader and public officials.” 
Big Man on Campus: A University President Speaks out on American Education by Stephen Joel Trachtenberg. Library Call Number: LA228.T68 2008.
In Big Man on Campus, the former President of George Washington University and the University of Hartford provides a lively insight into the job of running a University and reminds readers that "Finding sufficient resources might be the greatest responsibility, but presidents also focus on student well-being, curriculum, athletics, security, facilities, and the concerns of university neighbors." The author reminds us that American education is still the place where students and professors from all over the world seek “personal and professional opportunities.”
Armstrong’s The Truth about Teaching takes the reader into the trenches of K-12 education and offers witty, inspiring and wry advice to present and aspiring educators alike. The publisher says,"This beautifully designed book is a celebration of the joys and challenges of the teaching life. Author and veteran educator Coleen Armstrong is a wise, witty, and caring mentor. Her words of encouragement will resonate with new teachers, with students in teacher education schools, and with veteran teachers who wish to remember that they are not alone in an often lonely profession."
The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University by Louis Menand. Library Call Number: LB2322.2 .M45 2010.
Louis Menand’s The Marketplace of Ideas, on the other hand, speaks to the disconnect inside institutions that have functioned for many years with an established structural and philosophical process and are now in an age with radically different students and faculty, along with a society where technology is radically changing the way information is produced and disseminated. Trying to separate what should be kept with what might be usefully discarded, Menand offers a glimpse of education’s future.
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