The Higher Learning in America: The Annotated Edition: A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men

Commendation Quotes: Almost a century ago Thorstein Veblen analyzed how Big Business got down to the business of higher education in America. We are fortunate today to have Richard Teichgraeber's rediscovery of this classic work, enhanced by his keen annotations that help explain the wicked satire of this trenchant social critic. Commendation Quotes: The republication of Thorstein Veblen's "The Higher Learning in America" in this new annotated edition--which sorts out the allusions and citations in Veblen's highly allusive writing--will be a tremendous help to scholars, students, and general readers alike. Biographical Note: One of the most influential social scientists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) wrote numerous books, including "The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions" and "The Instinct of Workmanship: And the State of the Industrial Arts." Richard F. Teichgraeber III is a professor of history at Tulane University. He is the author of "Building Culture: Studies in the Intellectual History of Industrializing America, 1867"- "1910" and " Sublime Thoughts/Penny Wisdom: Situating Emerson and Thoreau in the American Market."Commendation Quotes: Reading "The Higher Learning in America" is an exercise in going back to the future. The dreary past of higher education described by Veblen in 1918 seems distressingly similar to its increasingly bleak future under the command of a new generation of leaders once mocked by Veblen as 'captains of erudition.' This splendid annotated edition will introduce a new generation of readers to Veblen's insightful work. Commendation Quotes: Thorstein Veblen's odd, energetic, and idiosyncratic classic The Higher Learning in America, is more pertinent today than it was when it was published over a century ago. This new edition, with Teichgraeber's splendid introduction and deeply informative notes, reintroduce this book into debates it anticipated and still illuminates."Commendation Quotes: Richard Teichgraeber's new edition of Veblen's classic tract on the early twentieth-century American research university is a remarkable achievement. His extended Introduction not only explores the book's complex genesis and various levels of meaning, but it raises a host of important issues that confirm Veblen's continued timeliness as a critic and analyst of higher education. Teichgraeber fully restores Veblen's work to the academic culture and social values of the era in which it was written, but he also uses "The Higher Learning "to provide an erudite commentary on the state of the universities a hundred years later. Publisher Marketing: Since its publication in 1918, Thorstein Veblen's "The Higher Learning in America" has remained a text that every serious student of the American university must confront. Intellectual historian Richard Teichgraeber brings us the first scholarly edition of Veblen's classic, thoroughly edited, annotated, and indexed. An extensive introduction discusses the book's composition and publishing history, Veblen's debts to earlier critics of the American university, and the place of "The Higher Learning in America" in current debates about the American university. Veblen's insights into the American university system at the outset of the twentieth century are as provocative today as they were when first published. Insisting that institutions of higher learning should be dedicated solely to the disinterested pursuit of knowledge, he urged American universities to abandon commitments to extraneous pursuits such as athletics, community service, and vocational education. He also believed that the corporate model of governance--with university boards of trustees dominated by well-to-do businessmen and university presidents who functioned essentially as businessmen in academic dress--mandated unsavory techniques of salesmanship and self-promotion that threatened to reduce institutions of higher learning to the status of competitive business enterprises. With a detailed chronology, suggested readings, and comprehensive notes identifying events, individuals, and institutions to which Veblen alludes, this volume is sure to become the standard teaching text for Veblen's classic work and an invaluable resource for students of both the history and the current workings of the American university.

Contributor Bio:  Veblen, Thorstein Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) was perhaps the most famous American economist and social critic of his time. He taught at the universities of Chicago and Missouri, Stanford University, and the New School for Social Research. His many books include The Theory of Business Enterprise, The Higher Learning in America, and The Theory of the Leisure Class, all available from Transaction. Contributor Bio:  Teichgraeber, Richard F, III Richard F. Teichgraeber III is professor of history at Tulane University. Heis the author of "Free Trade" and Moral Philosophy: Rethinking Sources of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and co-editor of The Boundaries of Economics, and The Culture of the Market: Historical Essays.