Diploma Mills: How For-Profit Colleges Stiffed Students, Taxpayers, and the American Dream by A. J. Angulo. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016. 203 pp., $29.95.For the Common Good: A New History of Higher Education in America by Charles Dorn. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017. 308 pp., $35.00.A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education by David F. Labaree. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. 222 pp., $25.00.

This chapter examines the rise of commercialism in American higher education. Popularly known as Stanford University, Leland Stanford Junior University was exceptional both because of the Stanfords' thirty-million-dollar endowment—the largest gift in the history of higher education up to that time—and because it represented the commercial fortune one couple could amass as a result of changes to the nation's political economy during the second half of the nineteenth century. Thus, when Stanford University opened to students in 1891, it served as a conspicuous manifestation of commercialism's rise in American higher education. Indeed, Stanford University's founding grant reflected the rise of a social ethos of commercialism in higher education when it stated that the institution's central “object” was “to qualify its students for personal success.” While scientific and technological advances increased the number of professions from which students could choose, the industrial age accelerated the growth of a commercial society.

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John R. Thelin, A History of American Higher Education (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University, 2004). Pp. xxii+362. 0 8018 7855 1 (hbk.) 0 8018 8004 1 (pbk.).

Journal of American Studies ◽

10.1017/s0021875805469583 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 39 (1) ◽

pp. 139-140

Author(s):

W. BRUCE LESLIE

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

American Higher Education ◽

Johns Hopkins University ◽

History Of

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John R. Thelin. A History of Higher Education. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. 432pp. Cloth $55.00. Paper $19.95.

History of Education Quarterly ◽

10.1111/j.1748-5959.2006.tb00173.x ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 46 (1) ◽

pp. 113-115

Author(s):

Jana Nidiffer

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

History Of Higher Education ◽

Johns Hopkins University ◽

History Of

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The Gendered Roots of American Higher Education

10.1093/oso/9780190650940.003.0002 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Deondra Rose

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

United States ◽

The United States ◽

Educational Institutions ◽

History Of Higher Education ◽

Government Programs ◽

American Higher Education ◽

Women's Participation ◽

History Of ◽

Historical Role

This chapter analyzes the history of women’s participation in American higher education and the federal government’s historical role in shaping who has access to it. Higher educational institutions in the United States were established with men in mind, and for approximately three hundred years after the establishment of the nation’s first college, women were excluded from equal access to postsecondary institutions. On campus, women were often greeted with hostility and found themselves treated as second-class students. The history of higher education in the United States yields important lessons for thinking about the effect that government programs have had on the gender dynamics of American citizenship since the mid-twentieth century.

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A Conversation: Historiographic Issues in American Higher Education

History of Education Quarterly ◽

10.1017/s0018268000011845 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 39 (3) ◽

pp. 291-294

Author(s):

Linda Eisenmann ◽

Philo A. Hutcheson ◽

Jana Nidiffer

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

History Of Higher Education ◽

College And University ◽

American Higher Education ◽

History Of

Many of us who teach the history of American higher education likely experience an uncomfortable moment at the beginning of each collegiate term when we order for our classes a book first published in 1962: Frederick Rudolph's classic The American College and University: A History. Of course, we are somewhat heartened by choosing the 1990 republished version with its fine new introduction by John Thelin, as well as by requiring Lester Goodchild and Harold Wechsler's recently revised compendium of articles, The History of Higher Education. Nonetheless, choosing a textbook as old as Rudolph's for a basic overview of the field feels awkward to historians who are witnessing a surge of work in the history of American higher education.

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