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Dynamics of the contemporary university : growth, accretion, and conflict
\"This book is an expanded version of the Clark Kerr Lectures of 2012, delivered by Neil Smelser at the University of California at Berkeley in January and February of that year. The initial exposition is of a theory of change--labeled structural accretion--that has characterized the history of American higher education, mainly (but not exclusively) of universities. The essence of the theory is that institutions of higher education progressively add functions, structures, and constituencies as they grow, but seldom shed them, yielding increasingly complex structures. The first two lectures trace the multiple ramifications of this principle into other arenas, including the essence of complexity in the academic setting, the solidification of academic disciplines and departments, changes in faculty roles and the academic community, the growth of political constituencies, academic administration and governance, and academic stratification by prestige. In closing, Smelser analyzes a number of contemporary trends and problems that are superimposed on the already-complex structures of higher education, such as the diminishing public support without alterations of governance and accountability, the increasing pattern of commercialization in higher education, the growth of distance-learning and for-profit institutions, and the spectacular growth of temporary and part-time faculty\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The university and the people
The University and the People chronicles the influence of Populism—a powerful agrarian movement—on public higher education in the late nineteenth century. Revisiting this pivotal era in the history of the American state university, Scott Gelber demonstrates that Populists expressed a surprising degree of enthusiasm for institutions of higher learning. More fundamentally, he argues that the mission of the state university, as we understand it today, evolved from a fractious but productive relationship between public demands and academic authority. Populists attacked a variety of elites—professionals, executives, scholars—and seemed to confirm academia’s fear of anti-intellectual public oversight. The movement’s vision of the state university highlighted deep tensions in American attitudes toward meritocracy and expertise. Yet Populists also promoted state-supported higher education, with the aims of educating the sons (and sometimes daughters) of ordinary citizens, blurring status distinctions, and promoting civic engagement. Accessibility, utilitarianism, and public service were the bywords of Populist journalists, legislators, trustees, and sympathetic professors. These “academic populists” encouraged state universities to reckon with egalitarian perspectives on admissions, financial aid, curricula, and research. And despite their critiques of college “ivory towers,” Populists supported the humanities and social sciences, tolerated a degree of ideological dissent, and lobbied for record-breaking appropriations for state institutions.
eBook
Reconstructing the Campus
The Civil War transformed American life. Not only did thousands of men die on battlefields and millions of slaves become free; cultural institutions reshaped themselves in the context of the war and its aftermath. The first book to examine the Civil War's immediate and long-term impact on higher education,Reconstructing the Campusbegins by tracing college communities' responses to the secession crisis and the outbreak of war. Students made supplies for the armies or left campus to fight. Professors joined the war effort or struggled to keep colleges open. The Union and Confederacy even took over some campuses for military use.
Then moving beyond 1865, the book explores the war's long-term effects on colleges. Michael David Cohen argues that the Civil War and the political and social conditions the war created prompted major reforms, including the establishment of a new federal role in education. Reminded by the war of the importance of a well-trained military, Congress began providing resources to colleges that offered military courses and other practical curricula. Congress also, as part of a general expansion of the federal bureaucracy that accompanied the war, created the Department of Education to collect and publish data on education. For the first time, the U.S. government both influenced curricula and monitored institutions.
The war posed special challenges to Southern colleges. Often bereft of students and sometimes physically damaged, they needed to rebuild. Some took the opportunity to redesign themselves into the first Southern universities. They also admitted new types of students, including the poor, women, and, sometimes, formerly enslaved blacks. Thus, while the Civil War did great harm, it also stimulated growth, helping, especially in the South, to create our modern system of higher education.
eBook
For the Common Good
Are colleges and universities in a period of unprecedented disruption? Is a bachelor's degree still worth the investment? Are the humanities coming to an end? What, exactly, is higher education good for?
InFor the Common Good, Charles Dorn challenges the rhetoric of America's so-called crisis in higher education by investigating two centuries of college and university history. From the community college to the elite research university-in states from California to Maine-Dorn engages a fundamental question confronted by higher education institutions ever since the nation's founding: Do colleges and universities contribute to the common good?
Tracking changes in the prevailing social ethos between the late eighteenth and early twenty-first centuries, Dorn illustrates the ways in which civic-mindedness, practicality, commercialism, and affluence influenced higher education's dedication to the public good. Each ethos, long a part of American history and tradition, came to predominate over the others during one of the four chronological periods examined in the book, informing the character of institutional debates and telling the definitive story of its time.For the Common Gooddemonstrates how two hundred years of political, economic, and social change prompted transformation among colleges and universities-including the establishment of entirely new kinds of institutions-and refashioned higher education in the United States over time in essential and often vibrant ways.
eBook
Science as Service
Science as Service :
Establishing and Reformulating American Land-Grant
Universities, 1865–1930 is the first of a two-volume
study that traces the foundation and evolution of America’s
land-grant institutions. In this expertly curated collection of
essays, Alan I Marcus has assembled a tough-minded account of the
successes and set-backs of these institutions during the first
sixty-five years of their existence. In myriad scenes, vignettes,
and episodes from the history of land-grant colleges, these
essays demonstrate the defining characteristic of these
institutions: their willingness to proclaim and pursue science in
the service of the publics and students they serve. The Morrill
Land-Grant College Act of 1862 created a series of
institutions—at least one in every state and
territory—with now familiar names: Michigan State
University, Ohio State University, Purdue University, Rutgers
University, the University of Arizona, and the University of
California, to name a few. These schools opened educational
opportunities and pathways to a significant segment of the
American public and gave the United States a global edge in
science, technical innovation, and agriculture.
Science as Service provides an essential body of
literature for understanding the transformations of the
land-grant colleges established by the Morrill Act in 1862 as
well as the considerable impact they had on the history of the
United States. Historians of science, technology, and
agriculture, along with rural sociologists, public decision and
policy makers, educators, and higher education administrators
will find this an essential addition to their book
collections.
eBook