240 pages | © 2017

Paper List Price $22.00 | ISBN: 9780226637006 | 2019

"How did a ragbag of colleges become a towering assemblage of world-class universities? In this deft history, David Labaree tracks the evolution of the US higher-education system, an unwieldy array that nevertheless produced 40% of Nobel laureates between 1901 and 2013. US economic ascendancy, the rise of English as a lingua franca, and postwar research funding all played a part; but the fulcrum was the autonomy and strangely effective 'anarchic complexity' of the system itself. As Labaree asks, "Why ruin a perfect mess?”—Nature