Other People's Colleges
Other People's Colleges
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“Other People's Colleges provides critical insights for understanding contemporary calls for reform. The book provides a careful tracing of the lasting impact that came not only from the efforts of these philanthropists and their foundations to create reform, but also the coalitions that emerged to resist them. An important and timely read for those interested in higher education history, philanthropy, governance, and policy."
Centennial Presidential Professor of Education
Executive Director, Alliance for Higher Education and Democracy
University of Pennsylvania
"This book is of great value to those with interests in history, policy, philanthropy, finance, quality assurance, and higher education systems—but also individuals looking for tangible examples of systemic injustice and organizational activism. From the outset, Ris sets an intention to contribute to discourse on higher education history, historical political analysis, higher education philanthropy and higher education foundations. Through this work, he creates new historical understanding around the stratifying impact external organizations have exacted on the higher education system in the United States."
- The Review of Higher Education (Erica Eckert)
"The achievements of Ethan Ris’s first book, Other People’s Colleges: The Origins of Higher Education Reform, are numerous. Rare among histories of higher education, he brings together two distinct fields, sociology and history, to contribute to three different conversations regarding (1) the history of American higher education; (2) the study of philanthropy and civil society; and (3) the history of what has been called “American Political Development.” As a result, he does something even rarer—he not only offers snapshots of interesting moments in higher education that have transcended their time and place, but also presents an original theory of institutional change."
- History of Education Quarterly (Emily Levine)
“[R]emarkably researched and well-written. ... Ris's book should be required reading for anyone interested in today's discussions about the past and future of higher education. Highly recommended.”
- Choice (American Library Association)
“Other People’s Colleges seamlessly weaves together what could seem like disconnected case studies. Ris is a strong writer who ably injects what could have been a dry institutional history with color and humor. He has produced a stellar first book with a truly national scope that will stand as a useful model for future studies of higher education."
- Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (Cody Ewert)
© 2022 | University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226820224
For well over one hundred years, people have been attempting to make American colleges and universities more efficient and more accountable. Indeed, Ethan Ris argues in Other People’s Colleges, the reform impulse is baked into American higher education, the result of generations of elite reformers who have called for sweeping changes in the sector and raised existential questions about its sustainability. When that reform is beneficial, offering major rewards for minor changes, colleges and universities know how to assimilate it. When it is hostile, attacking autonomy or values, they know how to resist it. The result is a sector that has learned to accept top-down reform as part of its existence.
In the early twentieth century, the “academic engineers,” a cadre of elite, external reformers from foundations, businesses, and government, worked to reshape and reorganize the vast base of the higher education pyramid. Their reform efforts were largely directed at the lower tiers of higher education, but those efforts fell short, despite the wealth and power of their backers, leaving a legacy of successful resistance that affects every college and university in the United States. Today, another coalition of business leaders, philanthropists, and politicians is again demanding efficiency, accountability, and utility from American higher education. But, as Ris argues, top-down design is not destiny. Drawing on extensive and original archival research, Other People’s Colleges offers an account of higher education that sheds light on today’s reform agenda.
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