Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
E-mail: trow@socrates.berkeley.edu

Abstract

American higher education has been broadly successful in serving its society, in large part because American colleges and universities, and the system of which they are part, were created under conditions of weakness, both academic and financial. This was in part a consequence of the transformation between the American Revolution and the Civil War of the process by which colleges were granted charters. The paper also explores the impact of the failure during the same period to establish a national university, the University of the United States, as recommended by George Washington and his successors in the presidency, as well as the ground-breaking decision of the Supreme Court in the Dartmouth College Case, which prevented its takeover by the State of New Hampshire.