Product Description

Examining postwar developments in American higher education Richard Freeland looks closely at eight universities in the Boston area that exemplify all the major trends.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2123885 in Books
• Published on: 1992-01-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 544 pages

Review
"A magnificent work of scholarship....No book tells more about the dirty little secrets of universities as they jockey to enhance their prestige and resources. No book tells more about the universities and colleges of a single state. Academia's Golden Age is one of the very best books ever written about the history of American higher education."--Society
"An elegantly written piece of social history that can take its place with pride next to the work of Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., Oscar Handlin, and Samuel Eliot Morison."--Boston Phoenix
"With higher education under fire from so many quarters, a comprehensive history of the development of eight Massachusetts colleges and universities could not be more timely.... From presidential searches to battles over campus expansions, the book provides an exhaustive behind-the-scenes look at some of the nation's leading institutions....Essential reading."--Boston Globe
"Provid[es] critical insights into an unexplored era in American higher education....This readable, scholarly text compares favorably with L.G. Heller's excellent The Death of the American University."--Choice
"With scholarly authority and clarity of style, Richard Freeland has captured brilliantly those brief years during which America put its colleges and universities on a pedestal. He does so with a focus on metropolitan Boston, long considered the academic Athens of America, and he examines that claim in contemporary times. Skillfully treating the overall pattern of development in higher education and that of eight specific institutions, Freeland moves over a wide range from Harvard and M.I.T. to the University of Massachusetts. He examines the triumphs andtrials of each. As a onetime faculty member and administrator in all three, I can testify to the quality of his historical analysis and to the gracefulness of his writing. For anyone who wants to understand higher education in the United States today, this book has to be read and pondered."--Robert Wood, Wesleyan University