Full Description
The first volume of an ambitious new economic history of American higher education.
Exchange of Ideas launches a breathtakingly ambitious new economic history of American higher education. In this volume, Adam R. Nelson focuses on the early republic, explaining how knowledge itself became a commodity, as useful ideas became salable goods and American colleges were drawn into transatlantic commercial relations. American scholars might once have imagined that higher education could sit beyond the sphere of market activity—that intellectual exchange could transcend vulgar consumerism—but already by the end of the eighteenth century, they saw how ideas could be factored into the nation's balance of trade. Moreover, they concluded that it was the function of colleges to oversee the complex process whereby knowledge could be priced and purchased. The history of capitalism and the history of higher education, Nelson reveals, are intimately intertwined—which raises a host of important and strikingly urgent questions. How do we understand knowledge and education as commercial goods? Who should pay for them? And, fundamentally, what is the optimal system of higher education in a capitalist democracy?
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Part I: From Mercantilism to Republicanism
Academic Mercantilism
1. "Hearts and Purses"
2. "Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences"
3. "Bethesda College" and "Hampshire College"
A Republic of Knowledge
4. "A Center of Intelligence"
5. "The University of the State of Pennsylvania"
6. "A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge"
Part II: From Republicanism to Nationalism
Intellectual Independence
7. "Educated in His Own Country"
8. "Knowledge . . . Has Been the Least of Our Importations"
9. "An Equal Diffusion of Literature"
The Idea of a (National) University
10. "Here, the Human Mind Is in a State of Fermentation"
11. "The Rights and Duties of Neutral States"
12. "To Supersede the Necessity of Sending the Youth of This Country Abroad"
Part III: From Nationalism to Liberalism
Imported Ideas . . . Imported Infidelity
13. An Essay on the Best System of Liberal Education
14. "All the Wisdom of the World"
15. "University of North America"
A "Liberal" Education?
16. "Of the Profits of the Man of Science"
17. "The State Offers Very Inconsiderable Motives for the Acquisition of Knowledge"
18. "A Utopian Dream"
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliographic Essay
Index
