By ANTHONY GRAFTON [Daily Princetonian] – American universities didn’t simply imitate the Germans. German universities offered only graduate courses. American universities also taught, and emphasized, courses for undergraduates. The German universities were financed by their states, which allowed students to move freely from university to university, taking credits with them (they were also free to take the courses that interested them), and provided the funds to compete for top professors. Some American universities were public and some private, though pretty much all of them treated students as children and marched them through required courses.

American universities adopted the German lecture as a new and inspiring form of undergraduate, more than graduate, teaching. They also developed undergraduate seminars and senior theses, which enabled thousands who did not plan to become scientists or scholars or teachers, as German students mostly did, to spice their survey courses in the liberal arts with a splash of original research and the intellectual adventures it provides. And they found their own sources for funding, everywhere from state appropriations to foundation grants to gifts from donors.

For half a century, the synthesis has worked remarkably well. American higher education has produced great scientists and scholars, as well as thousands of professionals and business people who know the values and methods of scholarship and science at first hand. It has also proved resilient. At times, trustees, politicians and administrators have tried to limit free inquiry. They have harmed individuals and institutions, but the system’s complexity and variety has preserved it from ruin. When private colleges and universities sagged in the 1970s, public institutions grew and improved. When government support for research slowed, private support expanded. Eventually, even Europeans — even Germans — began to talk about imitating our model.

So far so good, as the man said when he fell past the 50th floor. But what comes next?

Continued at the Daily Princetonian | More Chronicle & Notices.