Just read this book if you are really interested where it started and how it started! I am very happy and honored to have this book as my desk book! It has all the info about the emergence of American colleges and universities! Some dramatic events occured therein! Thanks to the author of the book! he deserves special recognition!

Frederick Rudolph is a master of graceful historical narrative, and this classic account of the development of American higher education should be on the shelf of everyone who teaches in a college or university. From heart-breaking stories of college buildings that burned down before they were completed, to the history of liberal education, to arguments over importance of the extracurriculum, to anecdotes of nineteenth-century professors imported from Germany who found themselves chasing after students with stolen turkeys ("Ach, all dis for two tousand dollars!"), Rudolph will delight you and educate you all at the same time. This is a volume not to be missed.

Rudolph's study of the history of American higher education is considered a premier work in this body of knowledge. It traces the development of the American college and university from the pre-revolution seminary through today's large, multi-line land grant and private instituions and provides insight into the people and events which shaped these institutions and our country. A must for any historian or education scholar.