Although America's universities have become the envy of the world for their creative energy and their production of transformative knowledge, few understand how and why they have become preeminent. This groundbreaking book traces the origins and the evolution of our great universities. It shows how they grew out of sleepy colleges at the turn of the twentieth century into powerful institutions that continue to generate new industries and advance our standard of living. Far from inevitable, this transformation was enabled by a highly competitive system that invested public tax dollars in university research and students while granting universities substantial autonomy. Today, America's universities face considerable threats. Even greater than foreign competition are the threats from within the United States. Under the Bush administration, government increasingly imposed ideological constraints on the freedom of academic inquiry. Restrictive visa policies instituted after 9/11 continue to discourage talented foreign graduate students from training in the United States. The international financial crisis, which has depleted university endowments and state investments in higher education, threatens the vitality of some of our greatest institutions of higher learning. In order to sustain and enhance the American tradition of excellence, we must nurture this powerful -- yet underappreciated -- national resource. “A passionate and intelligent defense of the university's role in creating knowledge, not just disseminating it. Every university has its own story; this book steps back to tell the history of American universities as a whole. Cole describes the logic, people, and context that drove the universities to pair teaching with research and discovery. He provides an irresistible tour of advances in science and culture that grew in the universities, from artificial hips to Google to eyewitness unreliability, and a clear-eyed view of their failings, from red scares to groupthink. Cole is a compelling advocate, and his book is a resource for academics, students, and all friends of the university.” Vartan Gregorian, president, Carnegie Corporation of New York; former president, Brown University “The story of American universities has been one of great success. Now, at a time when American higher education in general—and American public higher education in particular—is in crisis, Jonathan Cole's The Great American University is a timely analysis of higher education's current problems and prospects. I hope that policymakers will heed the author's cogent arguments about the centrality of American universities in the panoply of our national life, as well as their vital contribution to the economic, political, and social advancement of the United States.” Library Journal “Cole has amassed extensive information to make a convincing case. Highly recommended, particularly for those interested in American history, social institutions, and public policy, as well as those working in higher education.” New York Times Book Review “As provost of Columbia University for 14 years and a professor of sociology and dean of faculties before that, Jonathan R. Cole is an excellent position to write about the rise of the American research university and its special contribution to American life. In “ The Great American University ,” he makes a case for the extraordinary role such institutions play in improving our daily lives. He also argues that these ‘jewels in our nation's crown face a host of serious threats.'” Dallas Morning News “This is a work that should be read and studied by college faculties, administrators, regents and trustees, legislators and particularly large monetary donors to today's colleges and universities… The Great American University is one of the most important books on higher education to be written in the past several decades.” “Jonathan Cole has produced a masterpiece, a modern classic. This is at once a scintillating biography of the great American university, a powerful diagnosis of its major challenges today, and an invaluable guide for a robust future of this unique, world-changing institution. This is sociological inquiry, technological history, and social philosophy at its most powerful, a penetrating study of how America's research universities have been shaped by and have shaped American society. Cole's study will be avidly read in all parts of the world, as societies attempt to emulate and adapt the strengths of America's research universities to the challenges of building knowledge-based economies and democratic societies of the twenty-first century.” Henry Louis Gates, Jr., professor, Harvard University “I can think of no one better than Jonathan Cole to lead the crucial discussion on the role of the American university as the preeminent seat of intellectual and technological innovation. In the face of alarming trends in legislation and government intervention, he of