Americans and people throughout the world have become increasingly dependent on America's great research universities. Yet few of us truly understand to what we owe this extraordinary excellence or what we must do to keep it. From the development of technologies like the laser, the global positioning system, the MRI, radar, and even Viagra, to predicting weather patterns, American research universities are one of our most vital sources of economic growth and social welfare. They have flourished because of a system that has invested public tax dollars in their work and, more importantly, granted substantial autonomy to funding agencies and the universities. This system is now under attack, the university's preeminence endangered by the USA PATRIOT Act and other conservative policies. This revelatory and alarming book will show how this vital institution is at risk of tragically losing its dominant status and why a threat to the university is a threat to the health and wealth of our nation.

This book expands on the argument that spectator sports, despite their problems, have become a central function of American universities.

Excerpt from Great American Universities The unprecedented growth of American universities in recent years and their efforts to conform or to resist con formity with the demands of the times have effected such a transformation it is difficult to get a clear idea of their present condition and relative standing. A list of the larger universities arranged in the order of their size, wealth, scholarly productivity, or other objective criterion has surprises for almost every reader. He finds in the list and near the head of it names of institutions about which he knows little, and probably some of those whose names are most familiar to him are really very different from his conception of them, derived from their history or from early acquaintance. The alumnus who returns for the decennial reunion finds his Alma Mater greatly changed. Usually he is inclined to think that the change has not been altogether for the better in spite of the new buildings and crowds of students. He can, in fact, name the date when his Alma Mater began to decline and to lose the real old college spirit. It was ten years ago, when was gradu ated what is universally conceded by all its members to be the brightest class that ever came forth from its walls. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

"Ellen Schrecker shows how universities shaped the 1960s, and how the 1960s shaped them. Teach-ins and walkouts-in institutions large and small, across both the country and the political spectrum-were only the first actions that came to redefine universities as hotbeds of unrest for some and handmaidens of oppression for others. The tensions among speech, education, and institutional funding came into focus as never before-and the reverberations remain palpable today"--