Description
Book SynopsisThe definitive history of American higher educationnow up to date. Colleges and universities are among the most cherishedand controversialinstitutions in the United States. In this updated edition of A History of American Higher Education, John R. Thelin offers welcome perspective on the triumphs and crises of this highly influential sector in American life. Exploring American higher education from its founding in the seventeenth century to its struggle to innovate and adapt in the first decades of the twenty-first century, Thelin demonstrates that the experience of going to college has been central to American life for generations of students and their families. Drawing from archival research, along with the pioneering scholarship of leading historians, Thelin raises profound questions about what colleges areand what they should be. Covering issues of social class, race, gender, and ethnicity in each era and chapter, this new edition showcases a fresh concluding chapter that focus
Trade ReviewRequired reading for anyone who wants to offer any utterance, no matter how small, about where higher ed might be going.
—Joshua Kim,
Inside Higher EdTable of ContentsPreface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Historians and Higher Education
1. Colleges in the Colonial Era
2. Creating the "American Way" in Higher Education: College-Building, 1785 to 1860
3. Diversity and Adversity: Resilience in American Higher Education, 1860 to 1890
4. Captains of Industry and Erudition: University-Builders, 1880 to 1910
5. Alma Mater: America Goes to College, 1890 to 1920
6. Success and Excess: Expansion and Reforms in Higher Education, 1920 to 1945
7. Gilt by Association: Higher Education's "Golden Age," 1945 to 1970
8. Coming of Age in America: Higher Education as a Troubled Giant, 1970 to 2000
9. A New Life Begins? Reconfiguring American Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century
10. Prominence and Problems: American Higher Education since 2010
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index
