Capital of Mind : The Idea of a Modern American University.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nelson, Adam R.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States--Intellectual life--19th century.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (495 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2024.

Summary:

The second volume of an ambitious new economic history of American higher education. Capital of Mind is the second volume in a breathtakingly ambitious new economic history of American higher education. Picking up from the first volume, Exchange of Ideas, Adam R. Nelson looks at the early decades of the nineteenth century, explaining how the idea of the modern university arose from a set of institutional and ideological reforms designed to foster the mass production and mass consumption of knowledge. This "industrialization of ideas" mirrored the industrialization of the American economy and catered to the demands of a new industrial middle class for practical and professional education. From Harvard in the north to the University of Virginia in the south, new experiments with the idea of a university elicited intense debate about the role of scholarship in national development and international competition, and whether higher education should be supported by public funds, especially in periods of fiscal austerity. The history of capitalism and the history of the university, Nelson reveals, are intimately intertwined-which raises a host of important questions that remain salient today. How do we understand knowledge and education as commercial goods? Should they be public or private? Who should pay for them? And, fundamentally, what is the optimal system of higher education for a capitalist democracy?

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Part I: The Idea of a "University," 1812-18

Charlottesville

1. A Plan of a University in Virginia

2. The Literary Fund

Cambridge (via Göttingen)

3. Our Young Geniuses in Boston

4. The State of Literature in Germany

Consolidation

5. Every Science Deemed Useful

6. No One Will Buy What No One Has Offered to Sell

Part II: The Economy of Knowledge, 1818-24

Crises

7. The Late Riot at Göttingen

8. The Inadequacy of the Funds for the University

Controversies... and Curricula

9. A Professor of Political Economy

10. The Science of Wealth

Competition!

11. If We Can Ever Have a University at Cambridge

12. Intellectual Economy

Part III: The Industrialization of Ideas, 1824-30

Cosmopolitanism/Commercialism

13. To Improve Our Science, as We Have Done Our Manufactures, by Borrowed Skill

14. Filled by Foreigners

Conflict

15. Modern Views of Liberal Education

16. Friedrich List

Catalyst

17. Intellectual Power

18. An Honorable Competition with the Universities of Europe

Conclusion

Afterword

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliographic Essay

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Other Format:

Print version: Nelson, Adam R. Capital of Mind

ISBN:

0-226-82921-9

OCLC:

1409701669