What Ought to Be

Jonathan Cole in Toward a More Perfect University extends his scholarly reflections on the problems and possibilities of elite U.S. research universities. The book, by the former long-serving Columbia University administrator and provost, is a follow-up companion to The Great American University:Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must Be Protected(Public Affairs, 2010). He aims in his new book to suggest “what ought to occur” in an important subset of elite higher education institutions. In general Cole’s work provides sensible suggestions based on personal experience and prior scholarship in the field—interspersed with often entertaining, but less well-grounded idiosyncratic ideas for potential institutional innovation. A strength and weakness of the book is that it comes from a deeply invested elite actor in the system—a perspective that biases the author in the direction of deep