In Old Dartmouth On Trial, Marilyn Tobias successfully integrates into her account a number of existing studies on nineteenth-century colleges and universities, illuminating larger issues in the history of American education--professionalization, alumni demands for a voice in the governance of colleges and universitites, and the growth of the indirect power of students and faculty."Stands as 'Exhibit A' in a critical test case, namely, 'Can historical writing be meshed with organizational theory in the systematic study of higher education?' Thanks to Tobias's exemplary work, the verdict is overwhelmingly favorable. . . . By refuting the stereotype of collegiate stagnation, historian Tobias fills in crucial voids that are essential for better understanding of what David Riesman and Christopher Jencks call the "university college" of the mid-twentieth century. . . .This work warns us that we should no longer be satisfied with chronicles of campus events that fail to connect with structural and policy studies...will be most valuable if it reaches an audience of nonhistorians because it provides a superb model for using historical methods and perspective to probe organizational complexities. It is good reading that enhances the 'real world' tasks of institutional research and policy planning." -- Journal of Higher Education"A significant contribution to the literature documenting American institutions of the late nineteenth century. This cohesive work explores the notion of 'changing community' by focusing on a dramatic episode in Dartmouth's history. While the roots of the controversy may be explained in part by the college's unique legacy, Tobias carefully demonstrates how this model of community conflict is a reflection of the transformation taking place within the larger society . . . will interest not only community historians, but also educators and policy analysts. . . . This fine piece of historical analysis may well serve as a model for similar studies in the histories of community and education." -- Public Historian"An important addition to a small but growing list of monographs and scholarly articles that are revising our understanding of American colleges in the nineteenth century. Eschewing traditional institutional history, Marilyn Tobias has developed a more imaginative interpretive framework. . . Through comparison and contrast of the public attitudes, group roles, and self-conception of faculty, students, alumni, and trustees of both eras, Tobias demonstrates that Dartmouth underwent fundamental changes in institutional characteristics and educational mission. . . . In significant ways Tobias has broken methodologically with traditional college historians. She has provided us with a number of new insights concerning the nineteenth-century American college, and she has furthered the efforts of certain contemporary historians to place the history of these colleges fully within the context of national cultural and institutional developments." --Journal of American History"Brings educational history into the mainstream of current American historiography and removes Dartmouth from isolation. By using a community-studies approach and incorporating recent findings concerning the professions, urban life, and the antebellum colleges, the author attempts to explain institutional change through factors outside of the college, to connect higher education to the broader society, and to establish an agenda and, at minimum, a vocabulary for the study of other educational institutions during the age of modernization. . . . The interpretation of the crisis at Dartmouth is attractive and useful. Especially important for researchers is the incorporation of the role of trustees, students, and the scientific-technological faculty." -- History of Education Quarterly

This book examines how previously excluded high-achieving, low-income students are faring socially and academically at an Ivy League college in New England. In the past, research conducted on low-income students in elite schools focused mainly on the admissions process. As a result, there is a dearth of research on what happens to low-income students once they are admitted and attend classes. This book chronicles an ethnographic study of twenty low-income men and women in their senior year at Dartmouth College and follows up with them four and twelve years post-graduation. By helping to bring visibility and self-awareness to low-income students and expose class issues and struggles, the author hopes to encourage elite institutions to change their policies and practices to address the needs of these students.

At a time when American higher education seems ever more to be reflecting on its purpose and potential, we are more inclined than ever to look to its history for context and inspiration. But that history only helps, Paul H. Mattingly argues, if it’s seen as something more than a linear progress through time. With American Academic Cultures, he offers a different type of history of American higher learning, showing how its current state is the product of different, varied generational cultures, each grounded in its own moment in time and driven by historically distinct values that generated specific problems and responses. Mattingly sketches out seven broad generational cultures: evangelical, Jeffersonian, republican/nondenominational, industrially driven, progressively pragmatic, internationally minded, and the current corporate model. What we see through his close analysis of each of these cultures in their historical moments is that the politics of higher education, both inside and outside institutions, are ultimately driven by the dominant culture of the time. By looking at the history of higher education in this new way, Mattingly opens our eyes to our own moment, and the part its culture plays in generating its politics and promise.

Organized as a series of walks through the distinct neighborhoods of Dartmouth College and parts of the surrounding town of Hanover, New Hampshire, The Campus Guide: Dartmouth College provides an intimate view of one of the most unique and picturesque Ivy League campuses. It contains a comprehensive illustration of today's campus and charts its historic evolution from a small school in the wilderness to the last college granted a Royal charter before the Revolution. Dartmouth College is architecturally distinguished by such unique features as its central Green, which dates from the days when the college considered itself a town in its own right. Comprised primarily of clean, classical, and simple buildings by turn-of-the-century architects like Jens Frederick Larson and Charles Alonzo Rich, Dartmouth’s campus also boasts impressive modern buildings by Gwathmey Siegel; Robert A.M; Stern, KieranTimberlake Associates; and Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates. This extensively illustrated guide explores how these beautiful and historical buildings have helped to shape the Dartmouth identity. Author Scott Meacham explains the historically productive tension between the ideals of college and university and how it affects the scale and character of the campus, the ninth oldest in the U.S.

This 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 author 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. He 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. The author moves through each era, exploring the growth of higher education.

The definitive history of American higher education—now up to date. Colleges and universities are among the most cherished—and controversial—institutions in the United States. In this updated edition of A History of American Higher Education, John R. Thelin offers welcome perspective on the triumphs and crises of this highly influential sector in American life. Exploring American higher education from its founding in the seventeenth century to its struggle to innovate and adapt in the first decades of the twenty-first century, Thelin demonstrates that the experience of going to college has been central to American life for generations of students and their families. Drawing from archival research, along with the pioneering scholarship of leading historians, Thelin raises profound questions about what colleges are—and what they should be. Covering issues of social class, race, gender, and ethnicity in each era and chapter, this new edition showcases a fresh concluding chapter that focuses on both the opportunities and problems American higher education has faced since 2010. The essay on sources has been revised to incorporate books and articles published over the past decade. The book also updates the discussion of perennial hot-button issues such as big-time sports programs, online learning, the debt crisis, the adjunct crisis, and the return of the culture wars and addresses current areas of contention, including the changing role of governing boards and the financial challenges posed by the economic downturn. Anyone studying the history of this institution in America must read Thelin's classic text, which has distinguished itself as the most wide-ranging and engaging account of the origins and evolution of America's institutions of higher learning.

There was a time when the faculty governed universities. Not anymore. The Rise and Decline of Faculty Governance is the first history of shared governance in American higher education. Drawing on archival materials and extensive published sources, Larry G. Gerber shows how the professionalization of college teachers coincided with the rise of the modern university in the late nineteenth century and was the principal justification for granting teachers power in making educational decisions. In the twentieth century, the efforts of these governing faculties were directly responsible for molding American higher education into the finest academic system in the world. In recent decades, however, the growing complexity of “multiversities” and the application of business strategies to manage these institutions threatened the concept of faculty governance. Faculty shifted from being autonomous professionals to being “employees.” The casualization of the academic labor market, Gerber argues, threatens to erode the quality of universities. As more faculty become contingent employees, rather than tenured career professionals enjoying both job security and intellectual autonomy, universities become factories in the knowledge economy. In addition to tracing the evolution of faculty decision making, this historical narrative provides readers with an important perspective on contemporary debates about the best way to manage America’s colleges and universities. Gerber also reflects on whether American colleges and universities will be able to retain their position of global preeminence in an increasingly market-driven environment, given that the system of governance that helped make their success possible has been fundamentally altered.

Ranging from Plato in antiquity to Martha Nussbaum in the present era, the authors of the seventy readings included in The Liberal Arts Tradition present significant and exemplary views addressing liberal arts education over the course of its history, particularly in the United States. Most of the documents are newly translated or no longer available in print. Arranged chronologically, each selection is accompanied by an informative introduction and extensive explanatory notes discussing its place within the liberal arts tradition. Based upon the author's twenty-five years of experience leading seminars concerning the history of liberal education, this collection presents a uniquely comprehensive and salient set of documents, while incorporating the neglected portrayal and discussion of women within the history of the liberal arts.

Perhaps more than any other two colleges, Harvard and Yale gave form to American intercollegiate athletics--a form that was inspired by the Oxford-Cambridge rivalry overseas, and that was imitated by colleges and universities throughout the United States. Focusing on the influence of these prestigious eastern institutions, this fascinating study traces the origins and development of intercollegiate athletics in America from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Smith begins with an historical overview of intercollegiate athletics and details the evolution of individual sports--crew, baseball, track and field, and especially football. Then, skillfully setting various sports events in their broader social and cultural contexts, Smith goes on to discuss many important issues that are still relevant today: student-faculty competition for institutional athletic control; the impact of the professional coach on big-time athletics; the false concept of amateurism in college athletics; and controversies over eligibility rules. He also reveals how the debates over brutality and ethics created the need for a central organizing body, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which still runs college sports today. Sprinkled throughout with spicy sports anecdotes, from the Thanksgiving Day Princeton-Yale football game that drew record crowds in the 1890s to a meeting with President Theodore Roosevelt on football violence, this lively, in-depth investigation will appeal to serious sports buffs as well as to anyone interested in American social and cultural history.

Historians have dubbed the period from the Civil War to World War I "the age of the university," suggesting that colleges, in contrast to universities, were static institutions out of touch with American society. Bruce Leslie challenges this view by offering compelling evidence for the continued vitality of colleges, using case studies of four representative colleges from the Middle Atlantic region u Bucknell, Franklin and Marshall, Princeton, and Swarthmore. A new introduction to this classic reflects on his work in light of recent scholarship, especially that on southern universities, the American college in the international context, the experience of women, and liberal Protestantism's impact on the research university. According to Leslie, nineteenth-century colleges were designed by their founders and supporters to be instruments of ethnic, denominational, and local identity. The four colleges Leslie examines in detail here were representative of these types, each serving a particular religious denomination or lifestyle. Over the course of this period, however, these colleges, like many others, were forced to look beyond traditional sources of financial support, toward wealthy alumni and urban benefactors. This development led to the gradual reorientation of these schools toward an emerging national urban Protestant culture. Colleges that responded to and exploited the new currents prospered. Those that continued to serve cultural distinctiveness and localism risked financial sacrifice. Leslie develops his argument from a close study of faculties, curricula, financial constituencies, student bodies, and campus life. The book will be valuable to those interested in American history, higher education, as well as the particular institutions studied. "This book continues the story started by Veysey's Emergence of the American University. Its innovative approach should encourage scholars to study colleges and universities as parts of local communities rather than as freestanding entities. Leslie's findings will substantially revise currently accepted accounts of the history of education in the late nineteenth century."--Louise L. Stevenson, Franklin and Marshall College