Between Citizens and the State, by Christopher P. Loss

Abstract

Christopher P. Loss. Between Citizens and the State: The Politics of American Higher Education in the 20th Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2012. 238 p. ISBN 9780691148274. $35. Christopher Loss’s Between Citizens and the State: The Politics of American Higher Education in the 20th Century, winner of the 2013 American Educational Research Association Outstanding Book Award, traces the development of higher education and its eventual arrival at the current business model. In this book, Loss (Vanderbilt University), who has written vigorously about higher education in regards to public policy, convincingly portrays the state and higher education’s “marriage” (and eventual split) over the course of a little more than a century and begins with the educational implications of World War I and the concept in loco parentis. (p. 22). In loco parentis was a commonplace ideology in early 20th higher education because it positioned professors as parents and students as their children; a position that has shaped higher education until World War II. Though this ideology was abandoned, universities and colleges alike still implement orientations and other functions that place the university in the role of the parent. Orientations have been minimized to often only one day affairs, instead of the week long processes that they use to be, and are run by faculty and staff . Likewise, many classes have been implemented to help students adjust to their new environment and way of living