LaGuardia's Library presents: What Is College For?

Join us in a talk led by Dr. Andrew Delbanco (The Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies, Columbia University) that will address important questions about the idea of college including:

• How can college help students students become active citizens?
• How do we know if college effective?
• How do students know they are making the most of their opportunities?

20 autographed copies of Dr, Delbanco's book, College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be, will be raffled to students in attendance.

We live at a time of rising public anxiety about the cost and value of education at all levels. Andrew Delbanco, professor of American Studies at Columbia, and author of College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be?, will speak about the past, present, and future of a distinctive institution that is under growing pressure along with the students it serves: the American college.

How can our colleges help students become active citizens and fulfilled human beings? How can we know if a college education is effective--and to what end? How can we be sure that students make the most of their opportunities--acquiring measurable skills, yes, but also reaching for personal growth and development of mind that will continue beyond college throughout life?

Dr. Andrew Delbanco is Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies at Columbia University. He is the author of several books, including College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be (2012), which is required reading on many campuses, and has been translated into Chinese, Korean, Turkish, Russian, and Hebrew. Melville: His World and Work (2005), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Biography, was awarded the Lionel Trilling Award by Columbia University, and has been translated into German and Spanish. His essays appear regularly in The New York Review of Books and other journals, on topics ranging from American literary and religious history to contemporary issues in higher education.