Problems in the History of Higher Education: A Review Article

Abstract

Few fields are today more ripe for the application of modern research strategies and tactics, and few offer greater promise of rich intellectual rewards, than the history of education. Thus Lawrence Stone in his introduction to this collection of work done at Princeton's Davis Center over a four-year period. No one who has worked in the field will disagree with Stone's assessment. Once dissatisfied with narrative accounts of individual institutions, the historian of education faces an extraordinary task. He must combine a variety of viewpoints and skills, for education is at once a complex and a central activity in any society. Among the merits of the essays under review, not the least is the wide range of approaches they exemplify. Since I cannot discuss them all in a few pages, I shall comment on those that illustrate issues I consider particularly central, controversial, or simply interesting to me personally. Despite their diversity, most of the essays deal with one of three very broad topics: long-term changes in enrollments, the characteristics of student subcultures, and the role of academics as teachers and scholars.