Higher Education in the American West offers the first comprehensive
regional history of American higher education, examining the role of
each state within four subregions, and demonstrates the importance of
understanding the American West's role in higher education nationally.
It concentrates on the fifteen-state western region served by the
Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education compact. Spanning the
years 1818 to 2013, campus and state leaders advanced the West's one
thousand two hundred public and private institutions of higher learning
through the rough founding pioneer days and later nineteenth-century
land-grant expansion era to their communities and citizens, reaching
contemporary acclaim as world-class research universities during the
contemporary service era. The companion volume, Public Policy Challenges
Facing Higher Education in the American West, further explores seven
current-day regional policy issues in the fifteen western states.