Providing a clear, logical guide to an illogical topic, this book provides an easy-to-understand guide for anyone who wants to successfully navigate the labyrinth of going to college-and paying for the experience. 100 years ago, college tuition at prestigious Ivy League colleges such as Harvard and Brown was about $130 per year. Even when adjusted for inflation, today's cost of higher education has increased dramatically-to the point where a college education is shifting further out of reach for many Americans. This book explains the essential concepts in the debate regarding the staggering costs of higher education, supplying ten original essays by higher education policy experts, a lively historical narrative that provides context to current issues, and systematic guides to finding additional sources of information on the subject. Written from a historian's point of view, The Rising Costs of Higher Education: A Reference Handbook explains the economics of higher education in a manner that encourages readers to participate in the discussion on how to control ever-increasing tuition costs. Both college-bound students and parents will come to appreciate how complicated the problem of paying for college is, and grasp the crucial differences between "cost" and "price" in the specific economics of colleges and universities.

* Authored by well-known scholar, leader, and author in the field * New end-of-chapter questions for discussion encourage student interactivity * This volume tackles topics that are pervasive but often overlooked or misunderstood in the field, including intercollegiate athletics, fund raising and philanthropy, and budgeting * Each chapter includes sections on Issues, Characters and Constituents, Complexities and Conflicts, Connections with Diversity and Social Justice, and Additional Readings

* Authored by well-known scholar, leader, and author in the field * New end-of-chapter questions for discussion encourage student interactivity * This volume tackles topics that are pervasive but often overlooked or misunderstood in the field, including intercollegiate athletics, fund raising and philanthropy, and budgeting * Each chapter includes sections on Issues, Characters and Constituents, Complexities and Conflicts, Connections with Diversity and Social Justice, and Additional Readings

The definitive history of American higher education-now up to date. Colleges and universities are among the most cherished-and controversial-institutions in the United States. In this updated edition of A History of American Higher Education, John R. Thelin offers welcome perspective on the triumphs and crises of this highly influential sector in American life. Exploring American higher education from its founding in the seventeenth century to its struggle to innovate and adapt in the first decades of the twenty-first century, Thelin demonstrates that the experience of going to college has been central to American life for generations of students and their families. Drawing from archival research, along with the pioneering scholarship of leading historians, Thelin raises profound questions about what colleges are-and what they should be. Covering issues of social class, race, gender, and ethnicity in each era and chapter, this new edition showcases a fresh concluding chapter that focuses on both the opportunities and problems American higher education has faced since 2010. The essay on sources has been revised to incorporate books and articles published over the past decade. The book also updates the discussion of perennial hot-button issues such as big-time sports programs, online learning, the debt crisis, the adjunct crisis, and the return of the culture wars and addresses current areas of contention, including the changing role of governing boards and the financial challenges posed by the economic downturn. Anyone studying the history of this institution in America must read Thelin's classic text, which has distinguished itself as the most wide-ranging and engaging account of the origins and evolution of America's institutions of higher learning.

The 1960s was the most transformative decade in the history of American higher education-but not for the reasons you might think. Picture going to college in the sixties: the protests and marches, the teach-ins and sit-ins, the drugs, sex, and rock 'n' roll-hip, electric, psychedelic. Not so fast, says bestselling historian John R. Thelin. Even at radicalized campuses, volatile student demonstrations coexisted with the "business as usual" of a flagship state university: athletics, fraternities and sororities, and student government. In Going to College in the Sixties, Thelin reinterprets the campus world shaped during one of the most dramatic decades in American history. Reconstructing all phases of the college experience, Thelin explores how students competed for admission, paid for college in an era before Pell Grants, dealt with crowded classes and dormitories, voiced concerns about the curriculum, grappled with new tensions in big-time college sports, and overcame discrimination. Thelin augments his anecdotal experience with a survey of landmark state and federal policies and programs shaping higher education, a chronological look at media coverage of college campuses over the course of the decade, and an account of institutional changes in terms of curricula and administration. Combining student memoirs, campus publications, oral histories, and newsreels, along with archival sources and institutional records, the book goes beyond facile stereotypes about going to school in the sixties. Grounded in social and political history, with a scope that will appeal both to a new generation of scholars and to alumni of the era, this engaging book allows readers to consider "going to college" in both the past and the present.

In Games Colleges Play John Thelin chronicles the history of intercollegiate athletics from 1910 to 1990 from the early, glory days of Knute Rockne and the "Gipper" to the modern era of big budgets, powerful coaches, and pampered players. He describes how "extracurricular" sports programs seldom accorded equal prominence with teaching and research in mission statements or annual reports have become central to the life of many universities. As administrators search for a proper balance between athletics and academics, Thelin observes, this "peculiar institution" in American higher education grows increasingly powerful and controversial. Looking past the playing fields and lavish facilities into board rooms and administrative suites, Thelin finds disturbing patterns of abuse and limited reform and explores the implications of these patterns for today's college presidents, faculty, and students. He examines the 1929 Carnegie Foundation Report, the formation of major athletic conferences, the national college basketball scandals after World War II, the dissolution of the Pacific Coast Conference in the 1950s, and the Knight Foundation Report of 1991. Games Colleges Play provides historical background that will inform current policy discussions about the proper place of intercollegiate athletics within the American university. "Intercollegiate athletics has been a perennial source of opportunity and temptation", concludes Thelin, "as the American campus has worked and re-worked its relations with American culture".

First published in 1962, Frederick Rudolph's study, ""The American College and University"", has been described as one of the most significant works on the history of higher education in America. Bridging the chasm between educational and social history, this book examines developments in higher education in the context of the social, economic and political forces that were shaping the nation at large. Surveying higher education from the colonial era through the mid-20th century, Rudolph explores a multitude of issues, from the financing of institutions and the development of curriculum to the education of women and blacks, the rise of college athletics and the complexities of student life. In his foreword to this new edition, John Thelin assesses the impact that Rudolph's work has had on higher education studies. The new edition also includes a bibliographic essay by Thelin covering major works in the field that have appeared since the publication of the first edition.