2025/08/01 by Christian K. Anderson · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Academic Freedom and Politics
paper · doi:10.1093/sf/soaf121
openalex publication_date 2025/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
The American higher education system, wildly successful and maddeningly disappointing at the same time, is not the direct product of anyone’s design or anyone’s power. It is not the product of organic development either. It is the product of contests and compromises, attacks and counterattacks, ideas and exigencies.” These sentences from the Introduction to Other People’s Colleges: The Origins of American Higher Education Reform by Ethan W. Ris (p. 11) succinctly preview the main the book’s main argument. What follows in its eight chapters, divided into three parts – The Ethos of Reform, the Program of Reform, the Decline of Reform – is a detailed, rich, and incisive examination of the history of higher education reforms from 1890 to 1936. While scholarly, the book is accessible and highly readable. Ris gives readers the specifics they need to understand this story but he does not rely on them to already command the requisite insider knowledge. The book seamlessly weaves social, economic, business, and educational history with biography and sociological analysis.