Search results for ""Author Roger L. Geiger""

Market forces have profoundly affected the contemporary research university's fundamental tasks of creating and disseminating knowledge. They arguably have provided American universities access to greater wealth, better students, and stronger links with the economy. Yet they also have exaggerated inequalities, diminished the university's control over its own activities, and weakened the university's mission of serving the public. Incorporating twenty years of research and new data covering 99 research universities, Knowledge and Money explains this paradox by assessing how market forces have affected universities in four key spheres of activity: finance, undergraduate education, primary research, and participation in regional and national economic development. The book begins by chronicling how universities have enlarged revenues by optimizing tuitions, and how they have managed these funds. It reveals why competition for the best students through selective undergraduate admissions has led to increased student consumerism and weakened university control over learning. The book also explains why research has become an increasingly autonomous activity within the university, expanding faster than class instruction or faculty resources. Finally, it shows how the linkage of research to economic development has engendered closer ties with industry and encouraged the commercialization of knowledge.

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A masterful history of the postwar transformation of American higher educationIn the decades after World War II, as government and social support surged and enrollments exploded, the role of colleges and universities in American society changed dramatically. Roger Geiger provides an in-depth history of this remarkable transformation, taking readers from the GI Bill and the postwar expansion of higher education to the social upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s, desegregation and coeducation, and the ascendancy of the modern research university. He demonstrates how growth has been the defining feature of modern higher education, but how each generation since the war has pursued it for different reasons. Sweeping in scope and richly insightful, this groundbreaking book provides the context we need to understand the complex issues facing our colleges and universities today, from rising inequality and skyrocketing costs to deficiencies in student preparedness and lax educational standards.

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This book tells the compelling saga of American higher education from the founding of Harvard College in 1636 to the outbreak of World War II. The most in-depth and authoritative history of the subject available, The History of American Higher Education traces how colleges and universities were shaped by the shifting influences of culture, the emergence of new career opportunities, and the unrelenting advancement of knowledge. Roger Geiger, arguably today's leading historian of American higher education, vividly describes how colonial colleges developed a unified yet diverse educational tradition capable of weathering the social upheaval of the Revolution as well as the evangelical fervor of the Second Great Awakening. He shows how the character of college education in different regions diverged significantly in the years leading up to the Civil War--for example, the state universities of the antebellum South were dominated by the sons of planters and their culture--and how higher education was later revolutionized by the land-grant movement, the growth of academic professionalism, and the transformation of campus life by students. By the beginning of the Second World War, the standard American university had taken shape, setting the stage for the postwar education boom. Breathtaking in scope and rich in narrative detail, The History of American Higher Education is the most comprehensive single-volume history of the origins and development of of higher education in the United States.

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A masterful history of the postwar transformation of American higher educationAmerican higher education is nearly four centuries old. But in the decades after World War II, as government and social support surged and enrollments exploded, the role of colleges and universities in American society changed dramatically. Roger Geiger provides the most complete and in-depth history of this remarkable transformation, taking readers from the GI Bill and the postwar expansion of higher education to the social upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s, desegregation and coeducation, and the challenges confronting American colleges today.Shedding critical light on the tensions and triumphs of an era of rapid change, Geiger shows how American universities emerged after the war as the world’s most successful system for the advancement of knowledge, how the pioneering of mass higher education led to the goal of higher education for all, and how the “selectivity sweepstakes” for admission to the most elite schools has resulted in increased stratification today. He identifies 1980 as a turning point when the link between research and economic development stimulated a revival in academic research—and the ascendancy of the modern research university—that continues to the present.Sweeping in scope and richly insightful, this groundbreaking book demonstrates how growth has been the defining feature of modern higher education, but how each generation since the war has pursued it for different reasons. It provides the context we need to understand the complex issues facing our colleges and universities today, from rising inequality and skyrocketing costs to deficiencies in student preparedness and lax educational standards.

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Can university-based scientific research contribute to the economic development of a region? Can it generate wealth for the university? American universities are under increasing pressure to maximize their economic contributions. Tapping the Riches of Science offers a rigorous and far-sighted explanation of this controversial and little-understood movement.Just how do universities contribute to innovation in industry? How have state legislatures promoted local university commitments to economic relevance? And how has the pressure to be economically productive affected the core academic missions of teaching and research? Drawing from a range of social science analyses, campus interviews, and examples of university-industry partnerships, Roger Geiger and Creso Sá reveal the ways that economic development has been incorporated into university commitments. Noting enduring cultural differences between the academic and business worlds, Geiger and Sá deflate both suspicious and overconfident views. They show how elusive success can be for embryonic discoveries with as-yet-unclear applications. Warning against promising—and expecting—too much, Tapping the Riches of Science nonetheless makes a strong case for the long-term promise of practical uses for academic research.

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