Going to College in the Sixties

The 1960s was the most transformative decade in the history of American higher education—but not for the reasons you might think.

Picture going to college in the sixties: the protests and marches, the teach-ins and sit-ins, the drugs, sex, and rock 'n' roll—hip, electric, psychedelic. Not so fast, says bestselling historian John R. Thelin. Even at radicalized campuses, volatile student demonstrations coexisted with the "business as usual" of a flagship state university: athletics, fraterniti...