The thoroughly updated second edition of this dynamic and thoughtful collection focuses on the issues that have shaped American higher education in the past decade. Essential Documents in the History of American Higher Education, designed to be used alongside John R. Thelin's A History of American Higher Education or on its own, presents a rich collection of primary sources that chart the social, intellectual, political, and cultural history of American colleges and universities from the seventeenth century to the present. The documents are organized in sections that parallel the chapters in A History both chronologically and thematically, and sections are introduced with brief headnotes establishing the context for each source. This updated edition of Essential Documents focuses on the issues that have shaped American higher education in the past decade, from congressional investigations into endowments and court cases about paying student-athletes to accounts of campus protests over racial discrimination and adjuncts struggling in the "gig economy." From the successful fund-raising campaigns of 2014 to the closing of campuses because of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, the book also includes • a new tenth chapter, "Prominence and Problems: American Higher Education since 2010," and an updated introduction; • a number of landmark documents, including the charter for the College of Rhode Island (1764), the Morrill Land Grand Act (1862), the GI Bill (1944), and the Knight Commission Report on College Sports (2010); and • lively firsthand accounts by students and teachers that tell what it was like to be a Harvard student in the 1700s, to participate in the campus riots of the 1960s, to be a female college athlete in the 1970s, or to enroll at UCLA as an economically disadvantaged Latina in the 1990s. Thelin even stretches the usual bounds of documentary sources, incorporating popular pieces by Robert Benchley and James Thurber on their own college days as well as an excerpt from Groucho Marx's screwball film Horse Feathers. What emerges is a complex and nuanced collection that reflects the richness of more than three centuries of American higher education.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments for First Edition Acknowledgments for Second Edition Introduction to First Edition Introduction to Second Edition 1. Colleges in the Colonial Era 1.1. Town and Gown: Anthony Wood's "Riot at Oxford" 1.2. A College Charter in the Colonial Era: The College of Rhode Island (1764) 1.3. A College's Laws and Code of Conduct 1.4. Finances of the Colonial Colleges 2. Creating the "American Way" in Higher Education: College Building, 1785 to 1860 2.1. A Charter for a New State University: The University of Georgia Charter (1785) 2.2. Founding State Universities: The Great Bicentennial Debate, 1785 to 1985 2.3. Philanthropy and Student Financial Aid: The American Education Society (1815) 2.4. Higher Education for Women: Charter for Mount-Holyoke Female Seminary (1836) 2.5. College Presidents and Their Students: Thomas R. Dew's Address before the Students of the College of William and Mary (1836) 3. Diversity of Adversity: Resilience in American Higher Education, 1860 to 1890 3.1. Federal Land Grant Legislation: The Morrill Act of 1862 3.2. Student Memoir: Lyman C. Bagg's Four Years at Yale (1871) 3.3. Federal Land Grant Legislation: The Second Morrill Act of 1890 3.4. Stephen J. Wright on the Historical Background and Future Prospects of Black Colleges and Universities (1987) 3.5. College Admissions and Student Consumerism: "The Oldest and Cheapest College in the South" (1892) 4. Captains of Industry and Erudition: University Builders, 1880 to 1910 4.1. Edwin Slosson on Great American Universities in 1910 4.2. Reforming Medical Education: Abraham Flexner's 1910 Report for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching 4.3. A College Professor's Wife (1905) 4.4. Jesse Brundage Sears's Report on Endowed Universities (1922) 5. Alma Mater: American Goes to College, 1890 to 1920 5.1. Student Memoir: Robert Benchley's "What College Did to Me" (1927) 5.2. The Popular Press and Women's Colleges: Smith College in 1897 5.3. Student Memoir: James Thurber's "University Days" (1933) 5.4. Real Estate Promotion and Colleges: "A College among the Orange Groves" (1920) 5.5. College Sports Reform: Howard J. Savage's 1929 Report for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching 6. Success and Exces: Expansion and Reforms in Higher Education, 1920 to 1945 6.1. Hollywood and Higher Education: The Marx Brothers Go to College (1932) 6.2. Student Memoir: John Kenneth Galbraith on Graduate School at Berkeley in the 1930s (1968) 6.3. Federal Student Financial Aid: The GI Bill of 1944 6.4. The Federal Government and Sponsored Research: Vannevar Bush's 1945 Report, Science: The Endless Frontier 6.5. Higher Education for American Democracy: The 1947 Truman Commission Report 7. Gilt by Assocation: Higher Education's "Golden Age," 1945 to 1970 7.1. Coeducation and Student Life: Rules and Regulations for Women in Higher Education in 1955–56 7.2. The 1960 California Master Plan for Postsecondary Education 7.3. Racial Desegregation at State Universities: Commemorative Plaque at the University of Mississippi 7.4. Student Memoir: Jackie Jensen as the "Student-Athlete" following World War II (1970) 7.5. Campus Unrest and Student Protest: Mario Savio's "Put Your Bodies upon the Gears" Speech at Sproul Plaza, University of California, Berkeley (1964) 7.6. Student Memoir: Steven Kelman on Political Activism at Harvard from 1966 to 1970 (1982) 8. Coming of Age in America: Higher Education as a Trouble Giant, 1970 to 2000 8.1. The Campus Condition: The 1971 Newman Report on Higher Education 8.2. Federal Student Financial Aid: Basic Educational Opportunity Grants Program (Pell Grants) from the 1972 Reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965 8.3. Missions and Functions of Community Colleges: The 1981 Report of the California Postsecondary Education Commission 8.4. The Changing Profile of College Students in the 1980s 8.5. Student Memoir: Rosa Maria Pegueros, "Todos Vuelven: From Potrero Hill to UCLA" (1995) 8.6. College Sports Reform: The 1991 Knight Commission Report 9. A New Life Begins? Reconfigured Higher Education in the Twenty-First Centry 9.1. College Spending in a Turbulent Decade: Findings from the Delta Cost Project, 2000–2010 9.2. Curriculum and the Culture of a Campus: A Clash between Students and the President at the University of Chicago (1999) 9.3. Faculty Memoir: A Conversation with Professor Laura Nader (2000) 9.4. College Sports Reform: The Problems of Presidents and Rising Expenses in the Knight Commission Report of 2010 9.5. European Expansion of Higher Education: The Bologna Process (1999) 9.6. Higher Education: A New Life Begins 10. Prominence and Problems: American Higher Education since 2010 10.1. Philanthropy and Prestige: Stanford University Sets a Record with Its Five-Year Fund-Raising Campaign (2012) 10.2. Paying for College: Student Federal Loan Debt Reaches $1.5 Trillion (2019) 10.3. The Changing Academic Workforce: Professors in the Gig Economy (2018) 10.4. Colleges and Congress: Federal Legislation on Taxing College Endowments (2017) 10.5. Campus Monuments and Memorials: Recognizing Race and the Dedication of the Richard T. Greener Statue at the University of South Carolina (2018) 10.6. Commercialism and College Sports on Trial: Intercollegiate Athletics as a Business (2015) 10.7. Higher Education and the Courts: The Rise of Purposive Organizations (2013) 10.8. Equity and Inclusion: Title IX and Sex Discrimination since 1972 (2015) 10.9. Campus Crises: Institutions Respond to the Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020 Credits Index