Perspectives On The History Of Higher Education 2007

This volume of Perspectives opens with two contrasting perspectives on the purpose of higher education at the dawning of the university age-perspectives that continue to define the debate today. A. J. Angulo recreates the controversy surrounding the founding and early years of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Whether presented as an alternative to or a repudiation of the prevailing classical liberal education, MIT was rejected as inherently inferior by college defenders. George Levesque offers a penetrating reappraisal of Yale president Noah Porter (1870-1886). Known almost solely for his role as a college defender, Porter is revealed as a vigorous scholar who became fixated with preserving the strengths of Yale College. As these matters were vigorously debated during these years, Porter's position was superseded by more powerful forces.

This volume of Perspectives opens with two contrasting perspectives on the purpose of higher education at the dawning of the university age--perspectives that continue to define the debate today. First A. J. Angulo recreates the controversy surrounding the founding and early years of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Whether presented as an alternative to or a repudiation of the prevailing classical liberal education, MIT was rejected as inherently inferior by college defenders. Second is George Levesque's penetrating reappraisal of Yale president Noah Porter (1870-1886). Known almost solely for his role as a college defender, Porter is revealed as a vigorous scholar who became fixated with preserving the strengths of Yale College. As these matters were vigorously debated during these years, Porter's position was superseded by more powerful forces. Considering the cliches about liberal domination of higher education, it is seldom appreciated that the conservative movement has had a presence on campus throughout the postwar era. Jennifer de Forrest uses the reorganization of several conservative foundations to offer a critical appraisal of their impact. Known as the "four sisters," the Bradley Foundation, the Scaife Foundations, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Olin Foundation have been sharply focused on winning student support by funding conservative scholars and networking organizations, as well as student groups and newspapers. The tempestuous state of academic publishing is made more vivid by the clash of colorful characters. At the dawn of modern academic publishing, the Educational Review, published by Columbia's Nicholas Murray Butler, was the foremost journal in its field. Paul McInerny interweaves the history of this journal with the educational issues of the late nineteenth century and the remarkable career of Columbia's longtime president. An additional actor is James McKeen Cattell, a noted psychologist and prolific academic publisher. As a Columbia professor, Cattell was also a thorn in the side of President Butler. In 1917 Butler fired Cattell for criticizing the war effort, an egregious breach of academic freedom even for those early times. Events took an ironic turn, however, when Cattell later acquired Butler's former Review.

Volume XXIII/2 of History of Universities contains the customary mix of learned articles, book reviews, and bibliographical information, which makes this publication an indispensable tool for the historian of higher education. It offers a lively combination of original research and invaluable reference material.

This volume of Perspectives opens with two contrasting perspectives on the purpose of higher education at the dawning of the university age--perspectives that continue to define the debate today. First A. J. Angulo recreates the controversy surrounding the founding and early years of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Whether presented as an alternative to or a repudiation of the prevailing classical liberal education, MIT was rejected as inherently inferior by college defenders. Second is George Levesque's penetrating reappraisal of Yale president Noah Porter (1870-1886). Known almost solely for his role as a college defender, Porter is revealed as a vigorous scholar who became fixated with preserving the strengths of Yale College. As these matters were vigorously debated during these years, Porter's position was superseded by more powerful forces.Considering the cliches about liberal domination of higher education, it is seldom appreciated that the conservative movement has had a presence on campus throughout the postwar era. Jennifer de Forrest uses the reorganization of several conservative foundations to offer a critical appraisal of their impact. Known as the "four sisters," the Bradley Foundation, the Scaife Foundations, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Olin Foundation have been sharply focused on winning student support by funding conservative scholars and networking organizations, as well as student groups and newspapers.The tempestuous state of academic publishing is made more vivid by the clash of colorful characters. At the dawn of modern academic publishing, the Educational Review, published by Columbia's Nicholas Murray Butler, was the foremost journal in its field. Paul McInerny interweaves the history of this journal with the educational issues of the late nineteenth century and the remarkable career of Columbia's longtime president. An additional actor is James McKeen Cattell, a noted psychologist and prolific academic publisher. As a Columbia professor, Cattell was also a thorn in the side of President Butler. In 1917 Butler fired Cattell for criticizing the war effort, an egregious breach of academic freedom even for those early times. Events took an ironic turn, however, when Cattell later acquired Butler's former Review.

The early twentieth century witnessed the rise of middle-class mass periodicals that, while offering readers congenial material, also conveyed new depictions of manliness, liberal education, and the image of business leaders. "Should Your Boy Go to College?" asked one magazine story; and for over two decades these middle-class magazines answered, in numerous permutations, with a collective "yes!" In the course of interpreting these themes they reshaped the vision of a college education, and created the ideal of a college-educated businessman.Volume 24 of the Perspectives on the History of Higher Education: 2005 provides historical studies touching on contemporary concerns--gender, high-ability students, academic freedom, and, in the case of the Barnes Foundation, the authority of donor intent. Daniel Clark discusses the nuanced changes that occurred to the image of college at the turn of the century. Michael David Cohen offers an important corrective to stereotypes about gender relations in nineteenth-century coeducational colleges. Jane Robbins traces how the young National Research Council embraced the cause of how to identify and encourage superior students as a vehicle for incorporating wartime advances in psychological testing. Susan R. Richardson considers the long Texas tradition of political interference in university affairs. Finally, Edward Epstein and Marybeth Gasman shed historical light on the recent controversy surrounding the Barnes Foundation.The volume also contains brief descriptions of twenty recent doctoral dissertations in the history of higher education. This serial publication will be of interest to historians, sociologists, and of course, educational policymakers.

Volume Twenty-Five of Perspectives on the History of Higher Education, the silver anniversary edition, offers three fresh contributions to the understanding of American higher education in the nineteenth century and three historical perspectives on topics of contemporary concern.The divergent paths of antebellum colleges in the North and South have long been recognized. Stephen Tomlinson and Kevin Windham discuss Alva Woods, who moved from Calvinist New England to preside over the new University of Alabama. Woods personified the commitment to evangelical Protestantism and rigid student discipline that prevailed in northern colleges of that era, but in Tuscaloosa confronted the sons of planters, raised to respect mainly independence, power, and the Southern code of honor. Adam Nelson considers geology, a crucially important science in early America that existed on the periphery of higher education but eventually exerted pressure for intellectual modernization. He portrays the small community of scientific pioneers who sought the latest scientific knowledge from Europe, surveyed the mineral wealth of American states, and advocated for science in the college curriculum.Beginning in the 1930s, the National Research Council waged an organized campaign to encourage academic patenting and centralize it within one organization. Jane Robbins explains the crosscurrents of interests that plagued and eventually scuttled that effort, but that set the stage for the contemporary practice of university patenting. Robert Hampel examines how, for more than four decades, students at Yale University took a major responsibility for learning into their own hands by publishing a Critique of courses. He analyzes these documents to determine if their aims were to identify easy or challenging offerings, and finds that this effort produced highly responsible articles. A review essay by Doris Malkmus sheds new light on the experience of co-eds in

The first scholarly treatment of private education outside the United States.

Published annually since 1985, the Handbook series provides a compendium of thorough and integrative literature reviews on a diverse array of topics of interest to the higher education scholarly and policy communities. Each chapter provides a comprehensive review of research findings on a selected topic, critiques the research literature in terms of its conceptual and methodological rigor and sets forth an agenda for future research intended to advance knowledge on the chosen topic. The Handbook focuses on a comprehensive set of central areas of study in higher education that encompasses the salient dimensions of scholarly and policy inquiries undertaken in the international higher education community. Each annual volume contains chapters on current important issues pertaining to college students and faculty, organization and administration, curriculum and instruction, policy, diversity issues, economics and finance, history and philosophy, community colleges, advances in research methodology and other key aspects of higher education administration. The series is fortunate to have attracted annual contributions from distinguished scholars throughout the world.