Main entry:

Leslie, William Bruce.

Title & Author:

Gentlemen and scholars : college and community in the "Age of the University," 1865-1917 / W. Bruce Leslie.

Publication:

University Park, Pa. : Pennsylvania State University Press, ©1992.

Description:

xx, 284 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-277) and index.
Four Colleges and Their Communities -- PART ONE: COLLEGES AND COMMUNITIES 1865-1890 -- Rural Piety and Urban Wealth -- When Professors had Servants -- "What Knowledge is of Most Worth" -- Students and Gentlemen -- PART TWO: CONVERGENCE AND COSMOPOLITANISM 1890-1917 -- Piety versus Prosperity in the Protestant College -- Presidential Power and Academic Autonomy -- Knowledge Fit for Protestant Gentlement -- "The Side Shows Have Swallowed Up the Circus" -- PART THREE: EMERGENCE OF THE MODERN AMERICAN COLLEGE -- The Age of the College -- The College in the Social Order.

Summary:

Historians have dubbed the period from the Civil War to World War I "the age of the university," suggesting that colleges had become static institutions that were out of touch with American society. Bruce Leslie challenges this view by offering compelling evidence for the continued vitality of colleges, drawn from case studies of four representative colleges from the Middle Atlantic region - Bucknell, Franklin and Marshall, Princeton, and Swarthmore. According to Leslie, nineteenth-century colleges were designed by their founders and supporters to be vehicles of ethnic, denominational, and local identity. The four colleges in this study were representative of the type, each serving a particular religious denomination or lifestyle. Over the course of this period, however, these colleges, like many others, were forced to look beyond traditional sources of financial support, toward wealthy alumni and urban benefactors. This development led to the gradual reorientation of these schools toward an emerging national urban Protestant culture. Colleges therefore found it essential to become dynamic institutions that responded to new currents in American society and higher education. Those that continued to serve cultural distinctiveness and localism did so at the risk of financial sacrifice. Leslie develops his argument from a close study of faculties, curricula, financial constituencies, student bodies, and campus life.

Resources:
Table of contents

ISBN:

0271008296 (alk. paper)
9780271008295 (alk. paper)

Subject:

Private universities and colleges United States History 19th century Case studies.
Private universities and colleges United States History 20th century Case studies.
Education, Higher Social aspects United States History 19th century Case studies.
Education, Higher Social aspects United States History 20th century Case studies.
Enseignement supérieur Aspect social États-Unis Histoire 19e siècle Études de cas.
Enseignement supérieur Aspect social États-Unis Histoire 20e siècle Études de cas.
Education, Higher Social aspects.
Private universities and colleges.
Höheres Bildungswesen
Universiteiten.
université Etats-Unis 1865 1917.
enseignement supérieur Etats-Unis 1865 1917.
Sozialgeschichte 1865-1917.
United States.
USA.

Form/genre:

Case studies.
History.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 86365
Call No.: ID PLS; ID:93-B1860
Status: Available