Abstract
THE INFLUENCE OF GERMAN UNIVERSITIES in reshaping American higher education during the nineteenth century is one of the fundamentals of American intellectual history and a major example of cross-cultural borrowing between modern societies. Among the important developments in American higher education that can be traced in large measure to German examples-or at least to what Americans thought they had witnessed in Germany-are the devotion of university teachers to research, concepts of academic freedom, the free elective system, lecture, seminar, and laboratory as teaching methods, and emphasis on the Doctor of Philosophy degree. German practice was observed by American educational leaders touring Europe, books and journals helped carry German ideas to the United States, and occasional immigrant scholars brought German ways along with them. But probably the chief avenue of German influence was the study in German universities by American students.2
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