American Higher Education since World War II: A History
A masterful history of the postwar transformation of American higher education

American 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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American Higher Education since World War II: A History
A masterful history of the postwar transformation of American higher education

American 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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American Higher Education since World War II: A History

American Higher Education since World War II: A History

by Roger L. Geiger
American Higher Education since World War II: A History

American Higher Education since World War II: A History

by Roger L. Geiger

Hardcover

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Overview

A masterful history of the postwar transformation of American higher education

American 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.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780691179728
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication date: 07/02/2019
Series: The William G. Bowen Series , #115
Pages: 400
Product dimensions: 6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Roger L. Geiger is Distinguished Professor of Higher Education Emeritus at Pennsylvania State University. His books include The History of American Higher Education: Learning and Culture from the Founding to World War II (Princeton) and Knowledge and Money: Research Universities and the Paradox of the Marketplace. He lives in State College, Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xv

Prologue: American Higher Education and World War II xvii

Part I American Higher Education, 1945-1957

The GI Bill and Beyond: Higher Education, 1945-1955 3

The GI Bill 4

Ghosts of the New Deal: The President's Commission on Higher Education 8

General Education and Liberal Education 16

Denning Postwar America: The Cold "war and McCarthyism 28

2 Higher Education and the American Way of Life in the Conservative 1950s 39

Who Should Go to College? 43

The Expansion of Public Higher Education 49

Private Colleges and Universities in the 1950s 61

Postwar Universities 72

Part II The Liberal Hour, 1957-1968

3 The Ascendancy of the University 91

The Federal Research Economy 94

Foundations and University Research 98

The Academic Revolution 107

Universities and American Society 119

4 Expansion and Transformation 129

A Tidal Wave of Students 129

Mass Public Higher Education 136

Desegregation in the South, Diversity in the North 153

Curriculum, Quality, and Mass Higher Education 165

Part III The Unraveling and the New Era, 1965-1980

5 The Unraveling, 1965-1970 179

SDS and the Growth of Student Radicalism 180

Academic Armageddon: The 1968 Era, 1967-1970 190

Aftermath and Beginning of a New Era 203

6 Surviving the Seventies 217

The Federal Government and Higher Education 217

The Rise of Women 228

The Inversion of the Seventies: Students 240

The Inversion of the Seventies: Institutions 251

Part IV The Current Era in American Higher Education

7 The Dawn of the Current Era, 1980-2000 269

Universities and Economic Relevance: Revival of the Research Mission 270

Privatization: Public and Private Higher Education and the Selectivity Sweepstakes 281

The Culture Wars 299

8 American Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century 313

The $1,000,000,000,000 Debt 314

Bifurcation Revisited 324

Returns to Higher Education 329

The Learning Conundrum 338

University Culture in a Polarized America 345

Research Universities and the Knowledge Society 354

American Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century 362

Index 369

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Roger Geiger is the preeminent historian of American higher education and this book shows why. By absorbing the lessons of this authoritative and panoramic volume, we may find the wisdom to build on the accomplishments of the scientific and scholarly disciplines while treating the distempers that threaten higher education’s further progress."—Steven Brint, author of Two Cheers for Higher Education: Why American Universities Are Stronger Than Ever—and How to Meet the Challenges They Face

“Superb. Readers looking for insight into why the American higher education system developed the way it did will be rewarded by spending time with this erudite and important book.”—Christopher P. Loss, author of Between Citizens and the State: The Politics of American Higher Education in the 20th Century

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