Customer Reviews

The Rise of American Research Universities: Elites and Challengers in the Postwar Era

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As a college admissions officer, I regularly have direct contact with prospective students. Consequently, I need to keep abreast of current issues, trends and my university's academic competition. The book by Graham and Diamond clearly illustrates American research universities without bias or pseudo-science. Moreover, it shows that the public research universities (most notably the University of California campuses) are not only giving the Ivy League schools a run for their money, they're surpassing them.

In my view, this book serves two purposes:

1) Provides an understanding for how American research universities overtake the European universities in research since after World War II. This reflection should be read by both European and American scholars that are seriously concerned about the future of their respective higher education, as well as public policy makers and administrators. "Free market type", decentralized, and pluralistic competitions in research grants do produce the best research and researchers.

2) Provides an understanding of how reputational rankings of research universities came about and how that it is outdated and no longer reflecting today's reality. Instead, faculty productivity based on research grants received, published research, and peer approval, which are widely used in academia, should be the true yardstick to gauge the research universities.

Additionally, this book should be read by college students who intend to pursue a PhD degree. This book will aid them in selection of graduate programs and free them from the damaging and misleading rankings by reputation.