The definitive history of American higher education. For more than two decades, A History of American Higher Education has been the gold standard account of how colleges and universities shaped-and were shaped by-American society. In this fully revised fourth edition, John R. Thelin extends that history into a period of profound upheaval. The new edition adds a substantial final chapter examining the years from 2020 through 2025, a time marked by pandemic disruption, political conflict, demographic change, and growing challenges to the legitimacy of higher education itself. Thelin addresses campus closures and remote instruction, congressional scrutiny and protest movements, shifting patterns of philanthropy, debates over admissions and access, the commercialization of college sports, and the accelerating role of technology in teaching and learning. Together, these developments reveal an institution under extraordinary strain-and one whose future direction remains unsettled. Throughout, Thelin preserves the narrative clarity and interpretive balance that made earlier editions essential reading. Moving from colonial colleges to mass higher education, from the rise of the federal grant university to its present-day erosion, he situates contemporary crises within a longer history of adaptation, conflict, and reform. Comprehensive and authoritative, A History of American Higher Education remains indispensable for students, scholars, and anyone seeking to understand how American colleges and universities arrived at their current crossroads.
John R. Thelin is the University Research Professor Emeritus of the history of higher education and public policy at the University of Kentucky. His numerous books include College Sports: A History and Games Colleges Play.
Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: Historians and Higher Education 1. Colleges in the Colonial Era 2. Creating the "American Way" in Higher Education: College-Building, 1785 to 1860 3. Diversity and Adversity: Resilience in American Higher Education, 1860 to 1890 4. Captains of Industry and Erudition: University-Builders, 1880 to 1910 5. Alma Mater: America Goes to College, 1890 to 1920 6. Success and Excess: Expansion and Reforms in Higher Education, 1920 to 1945 7. Gilt by Association: Higher Education's "Golden Age," 1945 to 1970 8. Coming of Age in America: Higher Education as a Troubled Giant, 1970 to 2000 9. A New Life Begins? Reconfiguring American Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century 10. Prominence and Problems: Complexities and Conflicts in American Higher Education, 2010 to 2020 11. Cry the Beloved Campus: American Higher Education in Crisis, 2020 to 2025 Notes Essay on Sources Index
The definitive history of American higher education.
