In Networks of Trust, Anthony Laden argues that higher education should shift from cultivating broadly scientific thinking to fostering open-mindedness. While the expected benefits of this proposal are richly detailed, potential costs are not similarly explored. Here, I flesh out some consequences of Laden’s proposal for higher education, and argue that the costs of his preferred educative model may turn out to be just as weighty as those he attributes to the current model.
BakerDP (2014) The Schooled Society: The Educational Transformation of Global Culture. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
3.
BecherTTrowlerPR (2001) Academic Tribes and Territories: Intellectual Enquiry and the Culture of Disciplines, 2nd edn. London: The Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press.
4.
BrighouseH (2006) On Education. New York: Routledge.
GibbonsMLimogesCNowotnyH, et al. (2010) The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
HirstPH (1983) Educational theory. In: HirstPH (ed.) Educational Theory and Its Foundation Disciplines, pp. 3–29. New York: Routledge.
9.
KleinJT (2021) Beyond Interdisciplinarity: Boundary Work, Communication, and Collaboration. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
10.
KotzeeB (2023) The economic and epistemic division of labour: On Philip Kitcher’s The Main Enterprise of the World. Journal of Philosophy of Education57(2): 400–408.
11.
LadenAS (2024) Networks of Trust: The Social Costs of College and What We Can Do about Them. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
12.
MacedoS (2000) Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
13.
MartinC (2022) The Right to Higher Education: A Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
14.
NewfieldC (2016) The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
15.
O’BrienD (2022) How far can political liberalism support reforms in higher education?Social Theory and Practice48(4): 713–744.