An authoritative one-volume history of the origins and development of American higher educationThis 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 most in-depth and authoritative history of the subject available, The History of American Higher Education 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.Roger Geiger, arguably today's leading historian of American higher education, vividly 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.Breathtaking in scope and rich in narrative detail, The History of American Higher Education is the most comprehensive single-volume history of the origins and development of of higher education in the United States.

PREFACE ixPROLOGUE: UNIVERSITIES, CULTURE, CAREERS, AND KNOWLEDGE xiii1THE FIRST CENTURY OF THE AMERICAN COLLEGE, 1636 -1740Harvard College 1Yale College 8The College of William & Mary 11Conflict and New Learning in the Early Colleges 15The Embryonic American College 252COLONIAL COLLEGES, 1740 -1780New Colleges for the Middle Colonies 33Enlightened Colleges 48College Enthusiasm, 1760-1775 57Colonial College Students 763REPUBLICAN UNIVERSITIESMaking Colleges Republican 92Educational Aspirations in the Early Republic 102New Colleges in the New Republic 1094THE LOW STATE OF THE COLLEGES, 1800 -1820The Problem with Students 125The Second Great Awakening and the Colleges 132The Rise of Professional Schools 143Who Owns Colleges? 1605RENAISSANCE OF THE COLLEGES, 1820 -1840New Models for Colleges 175The Yale Reports of 1828 187Denominational Colleges I 193Higher Education for Women 2066REGIONAL DIVERGENCE AND SCIENTIFIC ADVANCEMENT, 1840 -1860The Early Collegiate Era in the Northeast 215Sectionalism and Higher Education in the South 229Denominational Colleges II: Proliferation in the Upper Midwest 243Science and the Antebellum College 2567LAND GRANT COLLEGES AND THE PRACTICAL ARTSPremodern Institutions 270The Colleges and the Civil War 277The Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 281Land Grant Universities 287Agricultural Colleges and A&Ms 298Engineering and the Land Grant Colleges 3068THE CREATION OF AMERICAN UNIVERSITIESThe First Phase 316The Academic Revolution 326Research, Graduate Education, and the New Universities 338The Great American Universities 348Columbia College and the University of Pennsylvania 350State Universities 3549THE COLLEGIATE REVOLUTIONThe High Collegiate Era 365High Schools, Colleges, and Professional Schools 380Higher Education for Women, 1880-1915 394Liberal Culture 40810MASS HIGHER EDUCATION, 1915 -1940World War I 423Mass Higher Education 428Shaping Elite Higher Education 446Liberal Culture and the Curriculum 455Advanced Education of African Americans 46711THE STANDARD AMERICAN UNIVERSITYPhilanthropic Foundations and the Standardization of Higher Education 479Research Universities in the Golden Age and Beyond 491Students and the Great Depression 507American Higher Education in 1940 514The American System of Higher Education 53212CULTURE, CAREERS, AND KNOWLEDGE 539INDEX 553