What are American colleges and universities for? What larger public purposes have they served, and which ones should they serve? What activities justify the expenditure of tax dollars on postsecondary education? Many historical accounts of higher education in the United States engage with such questions, at least in part, through exploration of the “Wisconsin Idea”—the notion, developed with particular intentionality at that state's flagship university amid the myriad early twentieth-century problems unleashed by industrialization, urbanization, and national economic integration, that higher education had a responsibility to undertake research that would help address society's most pressing needs and benefit all of its citizens.1
Elizabeth Tandy Shermer takes a different approach. Ranging across a full two centuries, Shermer argues that whatever objectives we might think guide higher education, actual policy-making and resource allocation has consistently reflected values and tactical calculations consistent with “neoliberal” capitalism. Her goal is to inform ever more...
