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The Review of Higher Education 26.4 (2003) 533-535



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Roger L. Geiger (Ed.). The American College in the Nineteenth Century. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2000. 368 pp. Paper: $24.95. ISBN 0-8265-1364-6.

My recent final exam for a higher education history course asked students to examine the rise of the research mission in American higher education. One student began an essay (that became more nuanced than this introductory sentence would suggest) with: "A handful of colleges were founded before the Civil War. The classical curriculum taught by these institutions was challenged by a more practically minded society, culminating in The Yale Report debate about the purpose of higher education. And then the research institution was invented after the Civil War by Johns Hopkins University." [End Page 533]

The student's simplistic summary captures how many higher education students remember the sweep of the development of American colleges and universities from its presentation in higher education courses and such general texts as Frederick Rudolph, Arthur M. Cohen, Christopher J. Lucas, and Lester F. Goodchild and Harold S. Weschler. A review of higher education history course syllabi show that colonial and antebellum colleges receive short shrift compared to land-grant schools, the German research model, and the rise of universities. This pattern suggests that the research university overshadows the college in importance, long-term effects, and evolutionary complexity. What gets lost in the memories of most readers of these texts and students in these courses is the subtle and complex evolution of the 19th century college as forerunner to the 20th century university. Research universities did not just appear on the American landscape—voilà—in the form of land-grant institutions, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Chicago. These institutions evolved from humbler, tentative, and chaotic collegiate beginnings to become today's research universities.

The American College in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Roger L. Geiger, attempts to set this record straight. It shows the trial-and-error evolution of colleges over a crucial century in the development of the structure and diversity of the American post-secondary system. The book collects 13 articles previously published in the History of Higher Education Annual, a primary outlet for outstanding scholarship on the history of American colleges and universities. The studies seek "to fulfill an immediate need for a history of the nineteenth-century college that reflects the achievements of recent scholarship" (p. viii).

Geiger's introduction serves as a guide to themes now being developed by scholars on the change forces in 19th century higher education. These include the transformation of student life, regional differences, the mid-century shift from college to multi-purpose and modern format institutions, and the relationship of the university to its collegiate roots. The articles selected highlight and investigate these themes. While providing cultural and historical context, Geiger critiques the previous and current knowledge base about each theme and points out where holes of knowledge still exist. This comprehensive essay, which would be an excellent addition to higher education history courses, shows how these colleges were "products of nineteenth-century society that advanced to the extent that conditions allowed" (p. 8).

One overarching topic unifies the articles: the impact and vitality of the market economy in pushing institutional evolution and the importance of reinvention in staying viable in that market economy. For example, Margaret A. Nash explores how three women's colleges in Oxford, Ohio, addressed different audiences, their concepts of advanced education, and the level of willingness to purchase each educational concept for daughters. Roger L. Geiger in "The Era of Multipurpose Colleges in American Higher Education" delineates the many permutations of purpose found in post-Civil War colleges and institutional experimentation to attract students in the marketplace. James Findlay explores how the plethora of religious denominations and their splits created new colleges to serve their interests and how denominational funding functioned in market positioning. Peter Dobkin Hall's investigation of the modernization of American higher education enumerates the struggles to invent new, lay governance that would provide optimum support...

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