Download e-book for kindle: The University and the People: Envisioning American Higher by Scott M. Gelber

The collage and the People chronicles the impact of Populism—a robust agrarian movement—on public greater schooling within the overdue 19th century. Revisiting this pivotal period within the heritage of the yankee kingdom collage, Scott Gelber demonstrates that Populists expressed a stunning measure of enthusiasm for associations of upper studying. extra essentially, he argues that the challenge of the nation college, as we are aware of it at the present time, advanced from a fractious yet effective dating among public calls for and educational authority.

    Populists attacked a number of elites—professionals, executives, scholars—and looked as if it would be sure academia’s worry of anti-intellectual public oversight. The movement’s imaginative and prescient of the nation collage highlighted deep tensions in American attitudes towards meritocracy and services. but Populists additionally promoted state-supported larger schooling, with the goals of teaching the sons (and occasionally daughters) of normal voters, blurring prestige differences, and selling civic engagement. Accessibility, utilitarianism, and public carrier have been the bywords of Populist newshounds, legislators, trustees, and sympathetic professors. those “academic populists” inspired country universities to reckon with egalitarian views on admissions, monetary relief, curricula, and examine. And regardless of their opinions of school “ivory towers,” Populists supported the arts and social sciences, tolerated a level of ideological dissent, and lobbied for record-breaking appropriations for country institutions.