A perfect mess : the unlikely ascendancy of American higher education / David F. Labaree.
2017
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Details
Title
A perfect mess : the unlikely ascendancy of American higher education / David F. Labaree.
ISBN
9780226250588 (electronic bk.)
022625058X (electronic bk.)
9780226250441 (cloth ; alk. paper)
022625044X (cloth ; alk. paper)
022625058X (electronic bk.)
9780226250441 (cloth ; alk. paper)
022625044X (cloth ; alk. paper)
Published
Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2017.
Copyright
©2017
Language
English
Description
1 online resource (222 pages)
Summary
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.
Note
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.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
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Access limited to authorized users.
Source of Description
Print version record.
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Perfect mess.
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Table of Contents
A system without a plan
Elements of the American model of higher education
Unpromising roots
The ragtag college system in the nineteenth century
Adding the pinnacle and keeping the base
The graduate school crowns the system, 1880
1910
Mutual subversion
The liberal and the professional
Balancing access and advantage
Private advantage, public impact
Learning to love the bomb
America's brief cold war fling with the university as a public good
Upstairs, downstairs
Relations between the tiers of the system
A perfect mess.
Elements of the American model of higher education
Unpromising roots
The ragtag college system in the nineteenth century
Adding the pinnacle and keeping the base
The graduate school crowns the system, 1880
1910
Mutual subversion
The liberal and the professional
Balancing access and advantage
Private advantage, public impact
Learning to love the bomb
America's brief cold war fling with the university as a public good
Upstairs, downstairs
Relations between the tiers of the system
A perfect mess.