Saturday, May 4, 2013

The American College and University: A History by Frederick Randolph

This book gives a wide-ranging history of higher education in the United States from its colonial beginnings to the 1960s (when the book was written). It works admirably to show the broad types of changes in higher education--its forms and priorities. Reading this book makes this much clear: while it's easy to look at the challenges facing higher education today and bemoan how much better things were in the past, higher education never faced a clear or easy road. Instead, its history is a long history of compromises and attempts to finance something that many people want but no one wants to pay for. While the book is good on broad strokes, it's less good at looking beyond the history of white men: education for women and education for African-Americans each have only one short chapter.

No comments: