At the time of its initial publication in 1904, The Higher Learning in America was known in educated circles as the most reflective study ever made of the university system in America. Veblen's evaluation of the misleading notions and erroneous beliefs were inherent in "the higher learning" was received as fair by most academics. As a result, many believed he paved the way to an improved age in college education. Just as applicable today as they were decades ago, his sophisticated style remains deprecatingly amusing; his biting critique just as disquieting as it was at the turn of the 19th century. The Higher Learning in America remains a penetrating book by one of America's greatest social critics. American economist and sociologist THORSTEIN BUNDE VEBLEN (1857-1929) was educated at Carleton College, Johns Hopkins University and Yale University. He coined the phrase "conspicuous consumption." Among his most famous works are The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904), and Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution (1915).
"Almost a century ago Thorstein Veblen analyzed how Big Business got down to the business of higher education in America. We are fortunate today to have Richard Teichgraeber’s rediscovery of this classic work, enhanced by his keen annotations that help explain the wicked satire of this trenchant social critic."
(John Thelin, University of Kentucky, author of
A History of American Higher Education)
"The republication of Thorstein Veblen's The Higher Learning in America in this new annotated edition―which sorts out the allusions and citations in Veblen's highly allusive writing―will be a tremendous help to scholars, students, and general readers alike."
(Chad Wellmon, University of Virginia)
"Reading The Higher Learning in America is an exercise in going back to the future. The dreary past of higher education described by Veblen in 1918 seems distressingly similar to its increasingly bleak future under the command of a new generation of leaders once mocked by Veblen as 'captains of erudition.' This splendid annotated edition will introduce a new generation of readers to Veblen's insightful work."
(Benjamin Ginsberg, author of
The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters)
"Richard Teichgraeber’s new edition of Veblen’s classic tract on the early twentieth-century American research university is a remarkable achievement. His extended Introduction not only explores the book’s complex genesis and various levels of meaning, but it raises a host of important issues that confirm Veblen’s continued timeliness as a critic and analyst of higher education. Teichgraeber fully restores Veblen’s work to the academic culture and social values of the era in which it was written, but he also uses The Higher Learning to provide an erudite commentary on the state of the universities a hundred years later."
(John W. Boyer, University of Chicago)
"Thorstein Veblen's odd, energetic, and idiosyncratic classic The Higher Learning in America, is more pertinent today than it was when it was published over a century ago. This new edition, with Teichgraeber's splendid introduction and deeply informative notes, reintroduce this book into debates it anticipated and still illuminates."
(Geoffrey Galt Harpham, Director, National Humanities Center)
"Richard F. Teichgraeber III (a professor of history at Tulane University), has prepared what’s bound to remain the standard edition of the text for a long time to come. His extensive yet unobtrusive notes 'identify―when identification proved possible―events, institutions, persons and publications alluded to or mentioned,' and he glosses the literary quotations and biblical references embedded in Veblen’s wild and sometimes woolly prose. The timeline of Veblen’s life and the recommended-readings list benefit from the past three decades of Veblen scholarship."
(Scott McLemee
Inside Higher Ed)
"A coherent and bracing critique of higher education at the dawn of the twentieth century."
(Siva Vaidhyanathan
The Baffler)
"A must read for any student of higher education... The book is 100 years old, but the arguments made are regularly heard on 21st century college campuses. Teichgraeber and Johns Hopkins are to be congratulated for bringing this book back to people's attention, and every academic library should have a copy."
(
Choice)
"The introduction and annotations by Teichgraeber (Tulane Univ.)are likely to ensure that this will be the standard edition of Veblen going forward; given the degree to which it presages modern criticisms of academic institutions, it is a must read for any student of higher education. In addition, it is affordable enough to sit on the bookshelf of anyone with administrative responsibility on a college campus. The book is 100 years old, but the arguments made are regularly heard on 21st-century college campuses. Teichgraeber and Johns Hopkins are to be congratulated for bringing this book back to people's attention, and every academic library should have a copy. "
(
American Library Association)
