A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education

by David F. Labaree

Overview

Read the news about America’s colleges and universities—rising student debt, affirmative action debates, and conflicts between faculty and administrators—and it’s clear that higher education in this country is a total mess. But as David F. Labaree reminds us in this book, it’s always been that way. And that’s exactly why it has become the most successful and sought-after source of learning in the world. Detailing American higher education’s unusual struggle for survival in a free market that never guaranteed its place in society—a fact that seemed to doom it in its early days in the nineteenth century—he tells a lively story of the entrepreneurial spirit that drove American higher education to become the best.
           
And the best it is: today America’s universities and colleges produce the most scholarship, earn the most Nobel prizes, hold the largest endowments, and attract the most esteemed students and scholars from around the world. But this was not an inevitability. Weakly funded by the state, American schools in their early years had to rely on student tuition and alumni donations in order to survive. This gave them tremendous autonomy to seek out sources of financial support and pursue unconventional opportunities to ensure their success. As Labaree shows, by striving as much as possible to meet social needs and fulfill individual ambitions, they developed a broad base of political and financial support that, grounded by large undergraduate programs, allowed for the most cutting-edge research and advanced graduate study ever conducted. As a result, American higher education eventually managed to combine a unique mix of the populist, the practical, and the elite in a single complex system.
           
The answers to today’s problems in higher education are not easy, but as this book shows, they shouldn’t be: no single person or institution can determine higher education’s future. It is something that faculty, administrators, and students—adapting to society’s needs—will determine together, just as they have always done.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226637006
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	04/04/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

David F. Labaree is professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. He is the author of many books, including, most recently, The Trouble with Ed Schools and Someone Has to Fail.
 

Table of Contents

1 A System without a Plan: Elements of the American Model of Higher Education
2 Unpromising Roots: The Ragtag College System in the Nineteenth Century
3 Adding the Pinnacle and Keeping the Base: The Graduate School Crowns the System, 1880-1910
4 Mutual Subversion: The Liberal and the Professional
5 Balancing Access and Advantage
6 Private Advantage, Public Impact
7 Learning to Love the Bomb: America’s Brief Cold War Fling with the University as a Public Good
8 Upstairs, Downstairs: Relations between the Tiers of the System
9 A Perfect Mess
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Index

What People are Saying About This

Larry Cuban

“Nearly five million international students attend US universities, more than in any other country, yet Labaree’s book on the history of American higher education is called A Perfect Mess. This contradiction is one of many paradoxes that Labaree takes up in clear, crisp language. US universities are populist yet elitist, extend opportunity yet protect privilege, and are a public good yet also a private one offered to American young adults. Labaree’s parsing of these historical paradoxes becomes a yellow flashing light to anyone with plans to transform US universities. Understanding how American universities, the envy of the world, became A Perfect Mess should give pause to those reform-minded policymakers and politicians who, uninformed by the past, want to alter the landscape and mechanics of American higher education.”

John W. Meyer

“American higher education evolved under pressures (and opportunities) from multiple sources, not under a single authority. Labaree provides a fine review of this history, showing how it generated a great and expansive dynamism. Applying this perspective to the present situation, he shows how the apparent disorder of current higher education can be seen as enabling continuing adaptation rather than breakdown. His ideas will be of great interest to all those concerned with the evolution of higher education in this country.”

William Tierney

“A Perfect Mess is a concise history that has a point. Labaree argues there is method to America’s higher education madness, and we are well advised to stay the course, however madcap that course can be. Well written, erudite, thoughtful, and engaging.”

Paul Reitter

“This book will be of interest to anyone concerned with the state of higher education in the United States—especially to those who are open to seeing the usual opinions strongly challenged. In fluid prose Labaree presents new and compelling insights into the dynamics behind the success of the American system—or non-system—of higher education, several of which will be sure to raise eyebrows and prompt debate.”

Editorial Reviews

A Perfect Mess should become a classic, to be put on the same shelf as Frederick Rudolph’s The American College and University: A History (1962), Laurence Veysey’s The Emergence of the American University (1965) and Burton Bledstein’s The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America (1976).” 

Times Higher Education

Unlike several longer histories of higher education, Labaree always keeps the reader oriented as he develops an argument rather than piles on details.… The result is a series of graceful essays reminiscent of Burton Clark, David Riesman, and Martin Trow, three scholars who tackled huge issues in a few pages without oversimplifying or distorting.

American Journal of Education

"[A] course in American higher-ed history that you can hold in your hand."

Chronicle of Higher Education

How did a ragbag of colleges become a towering assemblage of world-class universities? In this deft history, David Labaree tracks the evolution of the US higher-education system, an unwieldy array that nevertheless produced 40% of Nobel laureates between 1901 and 2013. US economic ascendancy, the rise of English as a lingua franca, and postwar research funding all played a part; but the fulcrum was the autonomy and strangely effective ‘anarchic complexity’ of the system itself. As Labaree asks, ‘Why ruin a perfect mess?’

Nature

How did a ragbag of colleges become a towering assemblage of world-class universities? In this deft history, David Labaree tracks the evolution of the US higher-education system, an unwieldy array that nevertheless produced 40% of Nobel laureates between 1901 and 2013. US economic ascendancy, the rise of English as a lingua franca, and postwar research funding all played a part; but the fulcrum was the autonomy and strangely effective ‘anarchic complexity’ of the system itself. As Labaree asks, ‘Why ruin a perfect mess?’

Nature Lib

05/01/2017
This fresh and enlightening work from Labaree (Someone Has to Fail: The Zero-Sum Game of Public Schooling), a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, describes higher education in America as a consumer-driven, adaptable, stratified, expensive, and successful system. “I could easily write this book as a critique,” he notes, “focusing on the system’s failings, but instead I choose to write it as an appreciation, examining the distinctive institutional dynamics that enable it to be all things to all people.” The book includes a chronological overview of how higher education in the United States grew from a few old private colleges to a bonanza of universities, and an analysis of how the system has so successfully straddled public and private funding and governance, research and teaching priorities, and liberal and vocational aims. Labaree argues that the system both furthers social stratification and gives students real access to opportunity—but only if they can overcome the many barriers to completing a four-year degree. He explains why campus buildings often look like medieval cathedrals, how athletics are inextricable from the college degree, and why, “in order to become an academic powerhouse, the university also had to become a party school.” Labaree’s provocative view of higher education as a dysfunctional thing of beauty is likely to make anyone working in the field more than a little uncomfortable. Nevertheless, the book is chock-full of aha moments, and contributes an uncommon view to the larger discussion. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

“American higher education evolved under pressures (and opportunities) from multiple sources, not under a single authority. Labaree provides a fine review of this history, showing how it generated a great and expansive dynamism. Applying this perspective to the present situation, he shows how the apparent disorder of current higher education can be seen as enabling continuing adaptation rather than breakdown. His ideas will be of great interest to all those concerned with the evolution of higher education in this country.

John W. Meyer

“This book will be of interest to anyone concerned with the state of higher education in the United States—especially to those who are open to seeing the usual opinions strongly challenged. In fluid prose Labaree presents new and compelling insights into the dynamics behind the success of the American system—or non-system—of higher education, several of which will be sure to raise eyebrows and prompt debate.

Paul Reitter

“Nearly five million international students attend US universities, more than in any other country, yet Labaree’s book on the history of American higher education is called A Perfect Mess. This contradiction is one of many paradoxes that Labaree takes up in clear, crisp language. US universities are populist yet elitist, extend opportunity yet protect privilege, and are a public good yet also a private one offered to American young adults. Labaree’s parsing of these historical paradoxes becomes a yellow flashing light to anyone with plans to transform US universities. Understanding how American universities, the envy of the world, became A Perfect Mess should give pause to those reform-minded policymakers and politicians who, uninformed by the past, want to alter the landscape and mechanics of American higher education.

Larry Cuban

“A Perfect Mess is a concise history that has a point. Labaree argues there is method to America’s higher education madness, and we are well advised to stay the course, however madcap that course can be. Well written, erudite, thoughtful, and engaging.

William Tierney

★ 05/01/2017
Labaree (education, Stanford Univ.; Someone Has To Fail) convincingly argues that American higher education is still dominant in the world, primarily because of its messy, anarchic character, which offers both accessibility and excellence. From early days to the present, leaders of colleges and universities had to be entrepreneurial and build broad support by providing social mobility. Higher education expanded substantially and gained academic excellence through the 20th century, although it remains highly stratified and doesn't consistently fulfill its promises. Labaree points out that all colleges and universities, even public ones, get only modest monetary support from government, receiving primary funding from student tuition, donations, and research grants. He condemns current reformist demands for more transparency and disaggregation of multipurpose institutions as damaging to the autonomy and flexibility that maintain this vital sector. VERDICT Highly recommended as a lively and iconoclastic defense of American higher education. This book is particularly insightful because it demonstrates how the current system evolved over 300 years to meet the needs of society.—Elizabeth Hayford, formerly with Associated Coll. of the Midwest, Evanston, IL

Library Journal