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Universities and Their Cities

Urban Higher Education in America

Steven J. Diner

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The first broad survey of the history of urban higher education in America.

Today, a majority of American college students attend school in cities. But throughout the nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries, urban colleges and universities faced deep hostility from writers, intellectuals, government officials, and educators who were concerned about the impact of cities, immigrants, and commuter students on college education. In Universities and Their Cities, Steven J. Diner explores the roots of American colleges’ traditional rural bias. Why were so many people, including professors...

The first broad survey of the history of urban higher education in America.

Today, a majority of American college students attend school in cities. But throughout the nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries, urban colleges and universities faced deep hostility from writers, intellectuals, government officials, and educators who were concerned about the impact of cities, immigrants, and commuter students on college education. In Universities and Their Cities, Steven J. Diner explores the roots of American colleges’ traditional rural bias. Why were so many people, including professors, uncomfortable with nonresident students? How were the missions and activities of urban universities influenced by their cities? And how, improbably, did much-maligned urban universities go on to profoundly shape contemporary higher education across the nation?

Surveying American higher education from the early nineteenth century to the present, Diner examines the various ways in which universities responded to the challenges offered by cities. In the years before World War II, municipal institutions struggled to "build character" in working class and immigrant students. In the postwar era, universities in cities grappled with massive expansion in enrollment, issues of racial equity, the problems of "disadvantaged" students, and the role of higher education in addressing the "urban crisis." Over the course of the twentieth century, urban higher education institutions greatly increased the use of the city for teaching, scholarly research on urban issues, and inculcating civic responsibility in students. In the final decades of the century, and moving into the twenty-first century, university location in urban areas became increasingly popular with both city-dwelling students and prospective resident students, altering the long tradition of anti-urbanism in American higher education.

Drawing on the archives and publications of higher education organizations and foundations, Universities and Their Cities argues that city universities brought about today’s commitment to universal college access by reaching out to marginalized populations. Diner shows how these institutions pioneered the development of professional schools and PhD programs. Finally, he considers how leaders of urban higher education continuously debated the definition and role of an urban university. Ultimately, this book is a considered and long overdue look at the symbiotic impact of these two great American institutions: the city and the university.

Reviews

Reviews

Diner’s slim volume provides a good historical foundation for tracing the shifts in higher education and urban spaces in the United States... Diner’s synthetic yet expansive book deserves inclusion in courses grappling with the role of higher education in American life.

Highly informative study of the relationship between higher education and the metropolis... Urban colleges and universities continue to defy a tidy definition, as they have for decades. For anyone seeking to better understand that complexity, Universities and Their Cities is an excellent place to start.

Diner's superb scholarship documents how and where colleges and their communities have changed. Whereas a half century ago the "urban crisis" sounded an alarm of inner-city population decline, migration out to the suburbs, and the flourishing of traditional campuses, the situation in the twenty-first century is markedly different.

A unique and focused book that traces, for the first time, the history of urban universities over nearly two centuries of American higher education. Diner brings outstanding credentials to the topic as a strong historian with practical and long leadership experience in urban institutions.

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Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
192
ISBN
9781421422411
Illustration Description
14 halftones
Table of Contents

Preface
Chapter 1. The Collegiate Ideal and 19th Century Cities
Chapter 2. Urban Reality, 1900-1945
Chapter 3. Postwar Higher Education and the Needs of Cities, 1945-1963
Chapter 4. Response to the Urban

Preface
Chapter 1. The Collegiate Ideal and 19th Century Cities
Chapter 2. Urban Reality, 1900-1945
Chapter 3. Postwar Higher Education and the Needs of Cities, 1945-1963
Chapter 4. Response to the Urban Crisis, 1964-1980
Chapter 5. Government, Universities and the Urban Crisis, 1964-1980
Chapter 6. The Legacy of the Urban Crisis and the Ever-Changing City, 1981-2016
Conclusion
Notes
Index

Author Bio
Steven J. Diner
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Steven J. Diner

Steven J. Diner (NEW YORK, NY) is a University Professor at Rutgers University–Newark, where he served as chancellor from 2002 to 2011. He is the author of A City and Its Universities: Public Policy in Chicago, 1892–1919, and Universities and Their Cities: Urban Higher Education in America.