A history of higher education in America and an investigation into the secrets of its success: โA Perfect Mess should become a classic.โ โTimes Higher Education
Read about Americaโs colleges and universitiesโrising student debt, affirmative action debates, conflicts between faculty and administratorsโand itโs clear that higher education in this country is a total mess. But as David F. Labaree reminds us in this book, itโs always been that way. And thatโs exactly why it has become the most successful and sought-after source of learning in the world.
Detailing American higher educationโs unusual struggle for survival in a free market that never guaranteed its place in societyโa fact that seemed to doom it in its early days in the nineteenth centuryโhe tells a lively story of the entrepreneurial spirit that drove American higher education to become the best. And the best it is: today Americaโs universities and colleges produce the most scholarship, earn the most Nobel prizes, hold the largest endowments, and attract the most esteemed students and scholars from around the world. But this was not an inevitability.
In their early years, weakly funded American schools had to rely on student tuition and alumni donations to survive. This gave them tremendous autonomy to seek out sources of financial support and pursue unconventional opportunities. As Labaree shows, by striving mightily to meet social needs and fulfill individual ambitions, they developed a broad base of political and financial support that, grounded by large undergraduate programs, allowed for the most cutting-edge research and advanced graduate study ever conducted. As a result, American higher education eventually managed to combine a unique mix of the populist, the practical, and the elite in a single complex system.
The answers to todayโs problems in higher education are not easy, but as this book shows, they shouldnโt be: No single person or institution can determine higher educationโs future. It is something that faculty, administrators, and students, adapting to societyโs needs, will determine togetherโjust as they have always done.