ABOUT THIS BOOK

The first volume of an ambitious new economic history of American higher education.

Exchange of Ideas launches a breathtakingly ambitious new economic history of American higher education. In this volume, Adam R. Nelson focuses on the early republic, explaining how knowledge itself became a commodity, as useful ideas became salable goods and American colleges were drawn into transatlantic commercial relations. American scholars might once have imagined that higher education could sit beyond the sphere of market activity—that intellectual exchange could transcend vulgar consumerism—but already by the end of the eighteenth century, they saw how ideas could be factored into the nation’s balance of trade. Moreover, they concluded that it was the function of colleges to oversee the complex process whereby knowledge could be priced and purchased. The history of capitalism and the history of higher education, Nelson reveals, are intimately intertwined—which raises a host of important and strikingly urgent questions. How do we understand knowledge and education as commercial goods? Who should pay for them? And, fundamentally, what is the optimal system of higher education in a capitalist democracy?

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Adam R. Nelson is Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Educational Policy Studies and History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is author of The Elusive Ideal: Equal Educational Opportunity and the Federal Role in Boston’s Public Schools, 1950–1985 (also published by the University of Chicago Press), among other books.

REVIEWS

"Should American colleges and universities serve the public good? It all depends on what we mean by 'the public,'of course, and what we imagine would be 'good' for it. Adam Nelson has produced the first full history of how Americans established and funded higher education, and--especially--of how they deliberated its fundamental purposes. From now on, anyone who wants understand that debate--or to enter into it themselves--will have to consult this groundbreaking book."

— Jonathan Zimmerman, University of Pennsylvania

"This book and its companion, Capital of Mind, represent a monumental achievement. They will fundamentally alter how we understand virtually every feature of US higher education during more than a century of its history. Nelson's work will cause a major splash and encourage readers to radically alter their views of the educational landscape before the Civil War. With these books, the history of American colleges and universities will never again look the same."

— Andrew Jewett, Johns Hopkins University

“In this remarkable book, Adam Nelson offers a dazzling reinterpretation of the origins of American higher education through the lens of political economy. He carefully reconstructs how material constraints, political maneuvers, and social theory interacted to produce our decentralized, diverse, market-driven ‘system’ of higher education. In doing so, Nelson demonstrates that the tensions that seem to define contemporary higher education, such as the commodification of knowledge and globalization, in fact have long roots reaching back to the beginning of the nation.”

— Julie A. Reuben, Harvard Graduate School of Education

TABLE OF CONTENTS

An Essay on the Best System of Liberal Education

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