| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.2

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 241 words from this article are provided below; about 414 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the Organization of American Historians, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a member of the Organization of American Historians, you can:: • Join the OAH and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the Journal of American History.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two-hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Journal of American History (86.1-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Journal of American History.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

A History of American Higher Education. By John R. Thelin. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. xxiv, 421 pp. Cloth, $55.00, ISBN 0-8018-7855-1. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-8018-8004-1.)

American colleges and universities may no longer cater, as they did through much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to the higher education of an Arnoldian saving remnant, but neither has the democratization of access in our own time had the larger saving effect predicted for it. Democratization has led in most cases only to greater fragmentation—a growing proliferation of choices for a higher education that in its new "postsecondary" phase and in its slavish adherence to the bottom line turns out to be not that much higher at all (p. 260). This, or something like it, is one of the many startling conclusions to emerge from John R. Thelin's fresh and important new history of higher education in America. Unfortunately, as Thelin consistently shows, history offers cold comfort for the current problems of higher education in America: new demands for accountability tied to the latest performance standards; the repeal of affirmative action in college admissions; increasingly disparate and disconnected curricular offerings; and a student body that has no more use for the supposed window dressing of a liberal and humane education of letters than did their parvenu counterparts at such places as Harvard and Princeton in the eighteenth century. History, it seems, has produced an oxymoron: the anti-intellectual university.

. . .

There are about 414 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.