Description
Book SynopsisThe second volume of an ambitious new economic history of American higher education. Capital of Mindis the second volume in a breathtakingly ambitious new economic history of American higher education. Picking up from the first volume,Exchange of Ideas, Adam R. Nelson looks at the early decades of the nineteenth century, explaining how the idea of the modern university arose from a set of institutional and ideological reforms designed to foster the mass production and mass consumption of knowledge. This industrialization of ideas mirrored the industrialization of the American economy and catered to the demands of a new industrial middle class for practical and professional education. From Harvard in the north to the University of Virginia in the south, new experiments with the idea of a university elicited intense debate about the role of scholarship in national development and international competition, and whether higher education should be supported by public funds, especially in
Trade Review"Should American colleges and universities serve the public good? It all depends on what we mean by 'the public,'of course, and what we imagine would be 'good' for it. Adam Nelson has produced the first full history of how Americans established and funded higher education, and--especially--of how they deliberated its fundamental purposes. From now on, anyone who wants understand that debate--or to enter into it themselves--will have to consult this groundbreaking book." -- Jonathan Zimmerman, University of Pennsylvania
“This book and its companion,
Exchange of Ideas, represent a monumental achievement. They will fundamentally alter how we understand virtually every feature of US higher education during more than a century of its history. Nelson’s work will cause a major splash and encourage readers to radically alter their views of the educational landscape before the Civil War. With these books, the history of American colleges and universities will never again look the same.”
-- Andrew Jewett, Johns Hopkins University
“Adam Nelson’s dazzling study of the capitalist roots of the modern American university unearths the links between ideas and institutions, knowledge and politics, states and nations, and higher education’s past and present. This is a field redefining work.”
-- Christopher Loss, Vanderbilt University
Table of ContentsPreface
Introduction
Part I: The Idea of a “University,” 1812–18
Charlottesville
1. A Plan of a University in Virginia
2. The Literary Fund
Cambridge (via Göttingen)
3. Our Young Geniuses in Boston
4. The State of Literature in Germany
Consolidation
5. Every Science Deemed Useful
6. No One Will Buy What No One Has Offered to Sell
Part II: The Economy of Knowledge, 1818–24
Crises
7. The Late Riot at Göttingen
8. The Inadequacy of the Funds for the University
Controversies . . . and Curricula
9. A Professor of Political Economy
10. The Science of Wealth
Competition!
11. If We Can Ever Have a University at Cambridge
12. Intellectual Economy
Part III: The Industrialization of Ideas, 1824–30
Cosmopolitanism/Commercialism
13. To Improve Our Science, as We Have Done Our Manufactures, by Borrowed Skill
14. Filled by Foreigners
Conflict
15. Modern Views of Liberal Education
16. Friedrich List
Catalyst
17. Intellectual Power
18. An Honorable Competition with the Universities of Europe
Conclusion
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliographic Essay
Index
