This volume examines the role of higher education in producing and reproducing American cultural identity from 1862 to 2015 and considers whether changes in federal policy regarding higher education result in paradigm shifts that directly impact the purpose of higher education. American institutions of higher education have served as a beacon of American idealism and identity since the foundation of the earliest universities. As the nation developed, higher education matured and maintained a position of importance in the future of the nation. While the university has perpetuated American national cultural identity, the nation-state has resourced and legitimated the university, inextricably linking national identity and higher education. In this historical analysis, the relationship between national identity, federal legislation, and higher education is established, and an identity of superiority, defined in economic terms, reinforced by higher education, is revealed.

Allison L. Palmadessa is Assistant Professor of History and Coordinator of Social Studies Licensure, Greensboro College, USA. 

Introduction.- Chapter 1. Industrialization and Competition: The Development of the American Research University.- Chapter 2. From Progressive Reform to Research and Competition: Higher Education from the Turn of the 20th Century through The Great War.- Chapter 3. A Failing Nation, A Struggling Institution: Higher Education in the Inter-War Period.- Chapter 4. University Technology and Arms to Win the War: The US in World War II.- Chapter 5. Higher Education for American Democracy.- Chapter 6. Cold War Challenges, Unrest and Rebellion, and a Shift in the Federal Role in Higher Education.- Chapter 7. The Impending 21st Century: Education to Save America or for Market Domination?.- Chapter 8. 21st Century Trials and Tribulations: Market Competition and National Dependence on Higher Education.- Chapter 9. Market Commodities and Human Capital: What Happened to Democracy and Sharing of Knowledge?.