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In Chap. 3, David Labaree addresses "The power of the parochial in shaping the American system of Higher Education'. By the mid-nineteenth century, the United States had constructed the largest system of higher education in the world. Cobbled together without an overall plan, this system was characterised by wide geographical dispersion, radically localised governance and the absence of guaranteed support from either church or state. Only a small number of these institutions were creatures of the individual states and dependent on state appropriations. The modal institution was the independent college in a small town with a corporate charter and standalone finances. Most had the blessing of a religious denomination, which granted legitimacy and a source of students but provided little or no financial help. Instead, they had to survive on the tuition paid by students and the gifts of individuals from the town and from the larger church community. They operated in a very competitive market for higher education, where supply vastly exceeded demand and where their main selling points were that they were geographically accessible, religiously compatible, academically undemanding and relatively inexpensive. The purpose of this chapter is to show how this parochial and academically weak system rose from obscurity in the nineteenth century to world leadership in the twentieth century. By 1880 the system had developed a series of strengths that would serve it well in the emerging world of higher education: enormous capacity, spread across the landscape of a continental country; institutions that had the ability to survive in a highly competitive setting with little support from church or state; sensitivity to consumer demand, which allowed colleges to adapt quickly to changes in the marketplace; a broad base of popular support; and a reputation for providing a practical education. All the system needed was students and academic credibility, and the new model of the research university provided both. The rest is history.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-6247-3_3

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