American Academic Cultures : A History of Higher Education

In American Academic Cultures, Paul H. Mattingly tells the history of higher education in the United States by describing seven ?academic cultures” from the late eighteenth century to the present, each driven by historically distinct values that produce a special cadre of leaders, problems, and organized responses. These broadly sketched generational cultures include: evangelical, Jeffersonian, republican/non-denominational, industrially-driven, progressively pragmatic, internationally minded and self-critical, and the corporate model. Eschewing the description of the history of higher education as a linear progress through time, Mattingly provides new insight into present-day conundrums of American academia and topics such as collegiate architecture, the evolution of women’s education, the impact of refugee scholars in the United States, and the struggle between defenders of the humanities versus what Mattingly calls ?the unapologetic pragmatists.” He argues that the past affords the present an opportunity to study how different sets of assumptions condition social expectations that are both inherently unique and passed on to later generations. His study of higher learning at distinct moments in time provides us with the great luxury of rethinking how our present issues have played out in different historical circumstances.

Paul H. Mattingly is professor emeritus of history at New York University.