Background
Jencks, Christopher Sandys was born on October 22, 1936 in Baltimore, Maryland. Son of Francis Haynes and Elizabeth (Pleasants) Jencks.
( The Academic Revolution describes the rise to power of ...)
The Academic Revolution describes the rise to power of professional scholars and scientists, first in America's leading universities and now in the larger society as well. Without attempting a full-scale history of American higher education, it outlines a theory about its development and present status. It is illustrated with firsthand observations of a wide variety of colleges and universities the country over-colleges for the rich and colleges for the upwardly mobile; colleges for vocationally oriented men and colleges for intellectually and socially oriented women; colleges for Catholics and colleges for Protestants; colleges for blacks and colleges for rebellious whites. The authors also look at some of the revolution's consequences. They see it as intensifying conflict between young and old, and provoking young people raised in permissive, middle-class homes to attacks on the legitimacy of adult authority. In the process, the revolution subtly transformed the kinds of work to which talented young people aspire, contributing to the decline of entrepreneurship and the rise of professionalism. They conclude that mass higher education, for all its advantages, has had no measurable effect on the rate of social mobility or the degree of equality in American society. Jencks and Riesman are not nostalgic; their description of the nineteenth-century liberal arts colleges is corrosively critical. They maintain that American students know more than ever before, that their teachers are more competent and stimulating than in earlier times, and that the American system of higher education has brought the American people to an unprecedented level of academic competence. But while they regard the academic revolution as having been an historically necessary and progressive step, they argue that, like all revolutions, it can devour its children. For Jencks and Riesman, academic professionalism is an advance over amateur gentility, but they warn of its dangers and limitations: the elitism and arrogance implicit in meritocracy, the myopia that derives from a strictly academic view of human experience and understanding, the complacency that comes from making technical competence an end rather than a means.
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(How widespread is homelessness, how did it happen, and wh...)
How widespread is homelessness, how did it happen, and what can be done about it? These are the questions explored by Christopher Jencks, America's foremost analyst of social problems. Jencks examines the standard explanations and finds that the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, the invention of crack cocaine, rising joblessness among men, declining marriage rates, cuts in welfare benefits, and the destruction of skid row have all played a role. Changes in the housing market have had less impact than many claim, however, and real federal housing subsidies actually doubled during the 1980s. Not confining his mission to studying the homeless, Jencks proposes several practical approaches to helping the homeless.
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Jencks, Christopher Sandys was born on October 22, 1936 in Baltimore, Maryland. Son of Francis Haynes and Elizabeth (Pleasants) Jencks.
He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1954 and was president of the school"s newspaper, the Exonian, as a senior. After Exeter, he received an Bachelor of Arts in English literature from Harvard in 1958, followed by a Master of Education in Harvard Graduate School of Education. During the year 1960-1961 he studied sociology at the London School of Economics.
Jencks is currently the Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He has previously held positions at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and the University of California at Santa Barbara. His interests are in the study of education, social stratification, social mobility, poverty and the poor.
His recent research concerns changes in family structure over the past generation, the costs and benefits of economic inequality, the extent to which economic advantages are inherited and the effects of welfare reform.
Prior to his university career, he was an editor at The New Republic from 1961 to 1967 and a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, District of Columbia from 1963 to 1967. He is currently an editor of the American Prospect.
Widely discredited for the way it linked race to Intelligence Quotient levels, the thesis lost Richwine his job at the Foundation. Asked to pass comment on his involvement in what journalist and historian Jon Wiener calls a "travesty," Jencks replied "Nope.
But thanks for asking.".
(How widespread is homelessness, how did it happen, and wh...)
( The Academic Revolution describes the rise to power of ...)
(One of the foremost sociologists of our time makes a ferv...)
(Inequality: A Reassessment Of The Effect Of Family And Sc...)
National Academy of Sciences]
Jencks was on the dissertation committee of former member of The Heritage Foundation Jason Richwine, who completed his Doctor of Philosophy thesis, "Intelligence Quotient and Immigration Policy," at Harvard"s Kennedy School. Member of the National Academy of Education. Member of the National Academy of Sciences, 1997.