Product Description: This book presents the issues, controversies, and key players that formed and enabled the American college and university to endure as a critical institution of the nation and society. Nelson examines contested issues and concerns in the academy such as the role and position of religion; the place and value of the liberal arts; the threat of disunity and balkanization; the ideological contentions and fights for control; the effect of politics and ideologies on its future as an institution; its role as a critic and servant of society; and its promotion of academic freedom, free speech, and liberty...read more

Product Description: Thomas Jefferson had a radical dream for higher education. Designed to become the first modern public university, the University of Virginia was envisioned as a liberal campus with no religious affiliation, with elective courses and student self-government...read more

John R. Thelin’s A History of American Higher Education has become a standard in higher education studies. Designed to be used alongside this groundbreaking book or on its own, Essential Documents in the History of American Higher Education presents primary sources that chart the social, intellectual, political, and cultural history of American colleges and universities from the seventeenth century to the present. Documents are organized in sections that parallel the chapters in the first book both chronologically and thematically. Thelin introduces sections with brief headnotes establishing the context for each source.In addition to such landmark documents as the charter for the College of Rhode Island (1764), the Morrill Land Grand Act (1862), the GI Bill (1944), and the Knight Commission Report on College Sports (2010), Thelin includes lively firsthand accounts by students and teachers that tell what it was like to be a Harvard student in the 1700s, to participate in the campus riots of the 1960s, to be a female college athlete in the 1970s, or to enroll at UCLA as a economically disadvantaged Latina in the 1990s. Thelin also includes pieces by popular writers such as Robert Benchley and James Thurber on their own college days, as well as an excerpt from Groucho Marx’s screwball film Horse Feathers that help illustrate how ingrained college life has become in American pop culture.Reflecting the richness of three centuries of American higher education, this complex and nuanced collection will be an essential resource for students of the history of education.

Product Description: History of American Higher Education documents the fascinating evolution of American colleges and universities, touching on the historical events that shaped them, from the colonial era through the early twenty-first century. Throughout history, higher education has played an important role in the transmission of cultural identity from one generation to the next...read more