Afterword

Abstract

I believe your generation of graduate students may prove the most important one since the World War II G. I. Bill. In a time of increasingly limited economic resources, higher educational institutions are transforming themselves once again. Whereas in 1944 massive investments in higher education were made to prevent a post-war economic depression, this time around it’s been cuts that have followed a postwar recession. Ironically, the US government’s most substantial recent investments have been back into the very institutions that caused our woes in the first place. Although the Obama administration’s well-meaning federal stimulus plan promises billions of dollars to higher education, in the form of everything from Pell Grants to research funds, few states will be able to use this money for much more than filling holes opened by drastic budget cuts. At best, the money’s purpose will be to stop our universities from bleeding. But from about 1945 until the turn of the century, America’s colleges and universities were part of what we might reasonably view as an expansionist project, and its benefits for undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty alike were tremendous; disciplinary fields proliferated, academic opportunities increased exponentially—especially for women, working class citizens, and minorities—and intellectual opportunities allowed scholars not only to pursue their most specialized interests but also to redefine in myriad ways traditional methods of study dating back to the universities of late medieval Europe.