American Academic Cultures: A History of Higher Education By Paul H. Mattingly

Abstract

American Academic Cultures: A History of Higher Education is a valuable work. Perhaps its most important contribution is sixty-five pages of small-print notes, which serve as a rich guide to the history of higher education literature over the past several decades. The book synthesizes this scholarship, but also makes an argument that we should understand the history of American higher education as a series of generational cultures, with little necessary connection between them. Mattingly admits that there are multiple contending cultures in any era, but asserts that one culture often gains “special educational power”.