Higher Education In The American West 1818 To The Present

In two volumes, editors Lester F. Goodchild, Richard W. Jonsen, Patty Limerick, and David A. Longanecker, working with eminent historians, policy analysts, and university leaders, provide a comprehensive overview of the role of education in the American West and the relationships between individual states and their institutions of higher learning. The volumes examine the states from North Dakota and the mountain West to Alaska and California, treating each both individually and as a part of the region; they provide concise, detailed information about each one's history, development, and current policies. One volume spans two hundred years of history, while its companion focuses on clarifying seven key public policy challenges facing higher education in the West today. Together, they make essential reading for higher education policymakers, scholars, and anyone who wants to know what the relationship between states and universities in the West has been and what its future might be.

Higher Education in the American West: Regional History and State Contexts is the first comprehensive regional history of American higher education. It offers new historical research on how societal forces and state actions brought about the region's one thousand two hundred institutions of higher learning in 15 western states.

This pathbreaking textbook addresses key issues which have often been condemned to exceptions and footnotes—if not ignored completely—in historical considerations of U.S. higher education; particularly race, ethnicity, gender, and class. Organized thematically, this book builds from the ground up, shedding light on the full, diverse range of institutions—including small liberal arts schools, junior and community colleges, black and white women’s colleges, black colleges, and state colleges—that have been instrumental in creating the higher education system we know today. A People’s History of American Higher Education surveys the varied characteristics of the diverse populations constituting or striving for the middle class through educational attainment, providing a narrative that unites often divergent historical fields. The author engages readers in a powerful, revised understanding of what institutions and participants beyond the oft-cited elite groups have done for American higher education. A People’s History of American Higher Education focuses on those participants who may not have been members of elite groups, yet who helped push elite institutions and the country as a whole. Hutcheson introduces readers to both social and intellectual history, providing invaluable perspectives and methodologies for graduate students and faculty members alike. This essential history of American higher education brings a fresh perspective to the field, challenging the accepted ways of thinking historically about colleges and universities.

"In this trenchant work of critical studies, the author retells the celebrated stories of US higher education history against the grain in order to identify their colonial past"--

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 author 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. He 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. The author moves through each era, exploring the growth of higher education.

A work that can truly be described as an underground masterpiece, Sears' Philanthropy in the History of American Higher Education was written as a dissertation seventy years ago, and subsequently published as a "Bulletin" by the United States Bureau of Education in 1922. It has been much spoken of and little read since then. As Roger L. Geiger points out in his new opening essay, this volume can still be read with wide interest and great profit. This is a tribute to the quality of mind and diligence of its author. The special quality of this volume is its close connection of educational philosophies of the past linked firmly to the educational philanthropies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The scope of coverage is broad-ranging: from the great universities to the manual labor colleges. But it is more than quantitative research that the reader will find. For Sears, from start to finish, while appreciating the benefits which foundations bestow, fully appreciated the continuing risks of such outside support. For Sears, the overwhelming impulse of philanthropy has been the encouragement of the public good, or at least the support of a healthy notoriety for the donors and recipients alike. But he also notes that a democratic society must never be expected to take massive gifts on faith. He urged that even a "grain of danger" should be weeded out if it carries with it the potential for the bias and special interest. This edition is graced by a fine essay that gives a deep background to the life and work of Jesse Brundage Sears. It covers his origins in rural Missouri, his move to Stanford University and work for Ellwood P. Cubberly, and his later work on the history of philanthropy. For individuals interested in the history of education, the structure of financing higher education, and the data on which social policy has been made, this will be indispensable reading. Roger L. Geiger, author of the recently published work, To Advance Knowledge: The Growth of American Research Universities, 1900-1940 and other works in education at The Pennsylvania State University. This volume is the twelfth volume in the Transaction Studies in Philanthropy and Society edited by Richard Magat of The Foundation Center.