This title provides a masterful history of the postwar transformation of American higher education, which is nearly four centuries old. In the decades after World War II, as government and social support surged and enrollments exploded, the role of colleges and universities changed dramatically. It reviews the GI Bill and the postwar expansion of higher education, the social upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s, desegregation and coeducation, and today's challenges. Shedding light on an era of rapid change, it shows how American universities emerged after the war as the world's most successful system for the advancement of knowledge, how the pioneering of mass higher education led to the goal of higher education for all, and how the selectivity sweepstakes
for admission to elite schools has resulted in increased stratification today. This book demonstrates how growth has defined modern higher education, and how each generation since the war has pursued it for different reasons.