The thoroughly updated second edition of this dynamic and thoughtful
collection focuses on the issues that have shaped American higher
education in the past decade.
Essential Documents in the History of American Higher Education,
designed to be used alongside John R. Thelin's A History of American
Higher Education or on its own, presents a rich collection of primary
sources that chart the social, intellectual, political, and cultural
history of American colleges and universities from the seventeenth
century to the present. The documents are organized in sections that
parallel the chapters in A History both chronologically and
thematically, and sections are introduced with brief headnotes
establishing the context for each source.
This updated edition of Essential Documents focuses on the issues that
have shaped American higher education in the past decade, from
congressional investigations into endowments and court cases about
paying student-athletes to accounts of campus protests over racial
discrimination and adjuncts struggling in the "gig economy." From the
successful fund-raising campaigns of 2014 to the closing of campuses
because of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, the book also includes
- a new tenth chapter, "Prominence and Problems: American Higher
Education since 2010," and an updated introduction;
- a number of landmark documents, including the charter for the College
of Rhode Island (1764), the Morrill Land Grand Act (1862), the GI Bill
(1944), and the Knight Commission Report on College Sports (2010); and
- lively firsthand accounts by students and teachers that tell what it
was like to be a Harvard student in the 1700s, to participate in the
campus riots of the 1960s, to be a female college athlete in the 1970s,
or to enroll at UCLA as an economically disadvantaged Latina in the
1990s.
Thelin even stretches the usual bounds of documentary sources,
incorporating popular pieces by Robert Benchley and James Thurber on
their own college days as well as an excerpt from Groucho Marx's
screwball film Horse Feathers. What emerges is a complex and nuanced
collection that reflects the richness of more than three centuries of
American higher education.
