The first volume of an ambitious new economic history of American higher education.Exchange of Ideas launches a breathtakingly ambitious new economic history of American higher education. In this volume, Adam R. Nelson focuses on the early republic, explaining how knowledge itself became a commodity, as useful ideas became salable goods and American colleges were drawn into transatlantic commercial relations. American scholars might once have imagined that higher education could sit beyond the sphere of market activity--that intellectual exchange could transcend vulgar consumerism--but already by the end of the eighteenth century, they saw how ideas could be factored into the nation's balance of trade. Moreover, they concluded that it was the function of colleges to oversee the complex process whereby knowledge could be priced and purchased. The history of capitalism and the history of higher education, Nelson reveals, are intimately intertwined--which raises a host of important and strikingly urgent questions. How do we understand knowledge and education as commercial goods? Who should pay for them? And, fundamentally, what is the optimal system of higher education in a capitalist democracy?
Format:Hardcover
Language:English
ISBN:0226828492
ISBN13:9780226828497
Release Date:December 2023
Publisher:University of Chicago Press
Length:448 Pages
Weight:1.55 lbs.
Dimensions:1.4" x 6.1" x 9.1"
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Format: Hardcover
Condition: New
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