University of Chicago Press American Academic Cultures – A History of Higher Education

At a time when American higher education seems ever more to be reflecting on its purpose and potential, we are more inclined than ever to look to its history for context and inspiration. But that history only helps, Paul H. Mattingly argues, if it's seen as something more than a linear progress through time. With American Academic Cultures, he offers a different type of history of American higher learning, showing how its current state is the product of different, varied generational cultures, each grounded in its own moment in time and driven by historically distinct values that generated specific problems and responses. Mattingly sketches out seven broad generational cultures: evangelical, Jeffersonian, republican/nondenominational, industrially driven, progressively pragmatic, internationally minded, and the current corporate model. What we see through his close analysis of each of these cultures in their historical moments is that the politics of higher education, both inside and outside institutions, are ultimately driven by the dominant culture of the time. By looking at the history of higher education in this new way, Mattingly opens our eyes to our own moment, and the part its culture plays in generating its politics and promise. Review " American Academic Cultures is a fascinating and informative account of American higher education. It makes one wonder what the future character of academic culture will be with continual decline in government funding, increase in online technology adoption, and the persistent growth in administrative staff. By reviewing what has transpired in the past, American Academic Cultures provides us a glimpse forward of what may - and could - lie ahead."-- "VoegelinView" " American Academic Cultures provides a unique historical perspective from which to view the past, present, and future of higher learning in America from its beginnings in eighteenth century colleges to the early twenty-first century. Through the lens of varied generational cultures over time, Mattingly probes major developments, issues, assumptions and shifts in and outside of institutions of higher learning. He synthesizes much of the literature in the field but eschews a linear approach. In the process, he reconstructs varied generational cultures and provides insights into changes in various periods and over time. The book is dense with endnotes, which will be valuable to historians, educators, and other scholars in the field. However, the methodology and interpretation will also be of interest to policy makers and the general public searching for an understanding of changes over time and insights into approaching current issues and debates about American higher education." --Marilyn Tobias, author of Old Dartmouth on Trial: the Transformation of the Academic Community in Nineteenth-Century America "A consistent, authoritative, challenging, and fresh engagement with the major elements and stages of American higher education history, but one that never feels like a survey. An ambitious, distinctive, interpretive effort to make sense of what has become in our day a nodal segment of American society, economy, and public policy."--James M. Banner Jr., author of Being a Historian "In a narrative beginning with colonial education and ending with the present day, Mattingly has examined the major challenges facing American schools. Anyone interested in the history of American higher education--whether an educator or not--will find this work appealing."--David S. Brown, Elizabethtown College "No other study exposes the intellectual infrastructure of America's colleges and universities as well as American Academic Cultures. Only someone with Mattingly's mastery of the field could so deftly weave the complex, dynamic contexts out of which American higher education has evolved. In these engaging, incisive essays, Mattingly illumines the principal academic cultures whose dialectical interplay has not only