This essential history of American higher education addresses key issues which have often been condemned to exceptions and footnotes-if not ignored completely-in historical considerations of U.S. higher education: particularly race, ethnicity, gender, and class.

Philo Hutcheson does not offer yet another account of higher education in the U.S. that focuses primarily on elite institutions, leaders, and students in which stories about their diversity are sprinkled like a final pinch of seasoning. Instead, in A People's History of American Higher Education, he radically reconceives this history by centering his attention on a beautifully diverse range of historical players and revealing their fundamental importance. I am eager to bring Hutcheson's thematically-driven, compelling, and witty account to the students in my history of higher education classes.
-Jackie Blount, Professor, Department of Educational Studies, The Ohio State University