This volume of Perspectives opens with two contrasting perspectives on the purpose of higher education at the dawning of the university age-perspectives that continue to define the debate today

The Initial Reception of MIT, 1860s-1880s; Noah Porter Revisited; For Education and Employment: The American Federation of Teachers and Academic Freedom, 1926-1941; Conservatism Goes to College: The Role of Philanthropic Foundations in the Rise of Conservative Student Networks; Nicholas Murray Butler, James McKeen Cattell, and the Educational Review : Footnote to a Famous Feud; Selected Recent Dissertations in the History of Higher Education; Contributors