A perfect mess: the unlikely ascendancy of American higher education

A system without a plan

Elements of the American model of higher education

Unpromising roots

The ragtag college system in the nineteenth century

Adding the pinnacle and keeping the base

The graduate school crowns the system, 1880

1910

Mutual subversion

The liberal and the professional

Balancing access and advantage

Private advantage, public impact

Learning to love the bomb

America's brief cold war fling with the university as a public good

Upstairs, downstairs

Relations between the tiers of the system

A perfect mess.