The rise of American research universities to international preeminence constitutes one of the most important episodes in the history of higher education. Research and Relevant Knowledge follows Geiger's earlier volume on American research universities from 1900 to 1940. This second work is the first study to trace this momentous development in the post-World War II period. It describes how the federal government first relied on university scientists during the war, and how the resulting relationship set the pattern for the postwar mushrooming of academic research. The first half of the book analyzes the development of the postwar system of academic research, exploring the contributions of foundations, defense agencies, and universities. The second half depicts the rise of the "golden age" of academic research in the years after Sputnik (1957) and its eventual dissolution at the end of the 1960s graduate education. When the federal patron soon reduced its largesse, university students took the lead in challenging the putative hegemony of academic research. The loss of consensus quickly brought the malaise of the 1970s--stagnation, frustration, and equivocation about the research role. The final chapter appraises the renaissance of the 1980s, based largely on a rapprochement with the private sector, and ends by evaluating the embattled status of research universities at the beginning of the 1990s. Research and Relevant Knowledge provides the first authoritative analytical account of American research universities during their most fateful half-century. It will be of critical importance to all those concerned with the future of higher education in the United States. Roger L. Geiger is Distinguished Professor of Higher Education at the Pennsylvania State University. He has edited the History of Higher Education Annual since 1993, was a section editor for the Encyclopedia of Higher Education, and is the author of The American College in the Nineteenth Century, Private Sectors in Higher Education, and To Advance Knowledge, available from Transaction.

The rise of American research universities to international preeminence constitutes one of the most important episodes in the history of higher education. Research and Relevant Knowledge follows Geiger's earlier volume on American research universities from 1900 to 1940. This second work is the first study to trace this momentous development in the post-World War II period. It describes how the federal government first relied on university scientists during the war, and how the resulting relationship set the pattern for the postwar mushrooming of academic research. The first half of the book analyzes the development of the postwar system of academic research, exploring the contributions of foundations, defense agencies, and universities. The second half depicts the rise of the "golden age" of academic research in the years after Sputnik (1957) and its eventual dissolution at the end of the 1960s graduate education. When the federal patron soon reduced its largesse, university students took the lead in challenging the putative hegemony of academic research. The loss of consensus quickly brought the malaise of the 1970s--stagnation, frustration, and equivocation about the research role. The final chapter appraises the renaissance of the 1980s, based largely on a rapprochement with the private sector, and ends by evaluating the embattled status of research universities at the beginning of the 1990s. Research and Relevant Knowledge provides the first authoritative analytical account of American research universities during their most fateful half-century. It will be of critical importance to all those concerned with the future of higher education in the United States. Roger L. Geiger is Distinguished Professor of Higher Education at the Pennsylvania State University. He has edited the History of Higher Education Annual since 1993, was a section editor for the Encyclopedia of Higher Education, and is the author of The American College in the Nineteenth Century, Private Sectors in Higher Education, and To Advance Knowledge, available from Transaction.

The rise of American research universities to international preeminence constitutes one of the most important episodes in the history of higher education. Research and Relevant Knowledge follows Geiger's earlier volume on American research universities from 1900 to 1940. This second work is the first study to trace this momentous development in the post-World War II period. It describes how the federal government first relied on university scientists during the war, and how the resulting relationship set the pattern for the postwar mushrooming of academic research.The first half of the book analyzes the development of the postwar system of academic research, exploring the contributions of foundations, defense agencies, and universities. The second half depicts the rise of the ""golden age"" of academic research in the years after Sputnik (1957) and its eventual dissolution at the end of the 1960s graduate education. When the federal patron soon reduced its largesse, university students took the lead in challenging the putative hegemony of academic research. The loss of consensus quickly brought the malaise of the 1970s--stagnation, frustration, and equivocation about the research role. The final chapter appraises the renaissance of the 1980s, based largely on a rapprochement with the private sector, and ends by evaluating the embattled status of research universities at the beginning of the 1990s.Research and Relevant Knowledge provides the first authoritative analytical account of American research universities during their most fateful half-century. It will be of critical importance to all those concerned with the future of higher education in the United States.

American research universities are part of the foundation for the supremacy of American science. Although they emerged as universities in the late nineteenth century, the incorporation of research as a distinct part of their mission largely occurred after 1900. To Advance Knowledge relates how these institutions, by 1940, advanced from provincial outposts in the world of knowledge to leaders in critical areas of science. This study is the first to systematically examine the preconditions for the development of a university research role. These include the formation of academic disciplines--communities that sponsored associations and journals, which defined and advanced fields of knowledge. Only a few universities were able to engage in these activities. Indeed, universities before World War I struggled to find the means to support their own research through endowments, research funds, and faculty time. To Advance Knowledge shows how these institutions developed the size and wealth to harbor a learned faculty. The book illustrates how arrangements for research changed markedly in the 1920s when the great foundations established from the Rockefeller and Carnegie fortunes embraced the advancement of knowledge as a goal. Universities emerged in this decade as the best-suited vessels to carry this mission. Foundation resources made possible the development of an American social science. In the natural sciences, this patronage allowed the United States to gain parity with Europe on scientific frontiers, of which the most important was undoubtedly nuclear physics. The research role of universities cannot be isolated from the institutions themselves. To Advance Knowledge focuses on sixteen universities that were significantly engaged with research during this era. It analyzes all facets of these institutions--collegiate life, sources of funding, treatment of faculty--since all were relevant to shaping the research role.

This book explains how market forces are profoundly affecting finance, undergraduate education, basic research, and participation in regional and national economic development at American universities.

How free-market fundamentalists have shifted the focus of higher education to competition, metrics, consumer demand, and return on investment, and why we should change this. A new philosophy of higher education has taken hold in institutions around the world. Its supporters disavow the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and argue that the only knowledge worth pursuing is that with more or less immediate market value. Every other kind of learning is downgraded, its budget cut. In Knowledge for Sale, Lawrence Busch challenges this market-driven approach. The rationale for the current thinking, Busch explains, comes from neoliberal economics, which calls for reorganizing society around the needs of the market. The market-influenced changes to higher education include shifting the cost of education from the state to the individual, turning education from a public good to a private good subject to consumer demand; redefining higher education as a search for the highest-paying job; and turning scholarly research into a competition based on metrics including number of citations and value of grants. Students, administrators, and scholars have begun to think of themselves as economic actors rather than seekers of knowledge. Arguing for active resistance to this takeover, Busch urges us to burst the neoliberal bubble, to imagine a future not dictated by the market, a future in which there is a more educated citizenry and in which the old dichotomies—market and state, nature and culture, and equality and liberty—break down. In this future, universities value learning and not training, scholarship grapples with society's most pressing problems rather than quick fixes for corporate interests, and democracy is enriched by its educated and engaged citizens.

A masterful history of the postwar transformation of American higher education American higher education is nearly four centuries old. But in the decades after World War II, as government and social support surged and enrollments exploded, the role of colleges and universities in American society changed dramatically. Roger Geiger provides the most complete and in-depth history of this remarkable transformation, taking readers from the GI Bill and the postwar expansion of higher education to the social upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s, desegregation and coeducation, and the challenges confronting American colleges today. Shedding critical light on the tensions and triumphs of an era of rapid change, Geiger shows how American universities emerged after the war as the world’s most successful system for the advancement of knowledge, how the pioneering of mass higher education led to the goal of higher education for all, and how the “selectivity sweepstakes” for admission to the most elite schools has resulted in increased stratification today. He identifies 1980 as a turning point when the link between research and economic development stimulated a revival in academic research—and the ascendancy of the modern research university—that continues to the present. Sweeping in scope and richly insightful, this groundbreaking book demonstrates how growth has been the defining feature of modern higher education, but how each generation since the war has pursued it for different reasons. It provides the context we need to understand the complex issues facing our colleges and universities today, from rising inequality and skyrocketing costs to deficiencies in student preparedness and lax educational standards.