This annual compilation presents four papers on different aspects of the history of higher education in Europe and the United States. The first paper is "The Rights of Man and the Rites of Youth: Fraternity and Riot at Eighteenth Century Harvard" by Leon Jackson. This paper argues that the lines of division in the student body at eighteenth-century Harvard were drawn between two competing understandings of friendship and association prevalent during this period and analyzes social order and disorder in the college between 1788 and 1794. The second paper is "The Era of Multipurpose Colleges in American Higher Education, 1850-1890 by Roger L. Geiger. This paper focuses on small multipurpose colleges and the demographic and economic factors which encourages both their rise and eventual decline from 1850 to 1890. The third paper is titled: "A "Curious Working of Cross Purposes" in the Founding of the University of Chicago" by Willard J. Pugh. It reviews the founding negotiations among various groups wishing to found a first class Baptist university; the roles of such individuals as John D. Rockefeller and William Rainey Harper; and the institution's early commitment to research. The fourth paper is "Patterns of Access to the Modern European Universities: The Social Origins of Students" by Fritz Ringer. This paper critiques the assumption that expanded enrollment since the early nineteenth century was a reflection of democratization and provides data from Germany, France, England, and Scotland to support a two-stage process of expanded schooling in which little increased access to the most favored occupations results. Also provided is a review essay by W. Bruce Leslie, "The Academic Revolution Across Three Cultures,". An annotated list of recent dissertations in the field is included. Each of the four major papers contains extensive reference notes. (DB)

A collection of articles and review essays from the year 2000 that make up Volume 20 of the annual publication by The Pennsylvania State University.

Published in 1998, this is Volume 18 of the Perspectives on the History of Higher Education annual which includes a collection of 7 articles on The Land-Grant Act and American Higher Education: Context and Consequences.

An expanded narrative of the rich, unique history of the University of Chicago. One of the most influential institutions of higher learning in the world, the University of Chicago has a powerful and distinct identity, and its name is synonymous with intellectual rigor. With nearly 170,000 alumni living and working in more than one hundred and fifty countries, its impact is far-reaching and long-lasting. With The University of Chicago: A History, John W. Boyer, Dean of the College from 1992 to 2023, thoroughly engages with the history and the lived politics of the university. Boyer presents a history of a complex academic community, focusing on the nature of its academic culture and curricula, the experience of its students, its engagement with Chicago’s civic community, and the resources and conditions that have enabled the university to sustain itself through decades of change. He has mined the archives, exploring the school’s complex and sometimes controversial past to set myth and hearsay apart from fact. Boyer’s extensive research shows that the University of Chicago’s identity is profoundly interwoven with its history, and that history is unique in the annals of American higher education. After a little-known false start in the mid-nineteenth century, it achieved remarkable early successes, yet in the 1950s it faced a collapse of undergraduate enrollment, which proved fiscally debilitating for decades. Throughout, the university retained its fierce commitment to a distinctive, intense academic culture marked by intellectual merit and free debate, allowing it to rise to international acclaim. Today it maintains a strong obligation to serve the larger community through its connections to alumni, to the city of Chicago, and increasingly to its global community. Boyer’s tale is filled with larger-than-life characters—John D. Rockefeller, Robert Maynard Hutchins, and many other famous figures among them—and episodes that reveal the establishment and rise of today’s institution. Newly updated, this edition extends through the presidency of Robert Zimmer, whose long tenure was marked by significant developments and controversies over subjects as varied as free speech, medical inequity, and community relations.

A collection of articles and review essays from the year 1996 that make up Volume 16 of the annual publication by The Pennsylvania State University