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A Perfect Mess

David F. Labaree

Read the news about America’s colleges and universities—rising student debt, affirmative action debates, and conflicts between faculty and administrators—and it’s clear that higher education in this country is a total mess. But as David F. Labaree...

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Opening Credits

1/11/2026
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Dedication

1/11/2026
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1: A System without a Plan: Elements of the American Model of Higher Education

1/11/2026
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2: Unpromising Roots: The Ragtag College System in the Nineteenth Century

1/11/2026
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3: Adding the Pinnacle and Keeping the Base: The Graduate School Crowns the System, 1880–1910

1/11/2026
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4: Mutual Subversion: The Liberal and the Professional

1/11/2026
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5: Balancing Access and Advantage

1/11/2026
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6: Private Advantage, Public Impact

1/11/2026
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7: Learning to Love the Bomb: America’s Brief Cold War Fling with the University as a Public Good

1/11/2026
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8: Upstairs, Downstairs: Relations between the Tiers of the System

1/11/2026
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9: A Perfect Mess

1/11/2026
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Closing Notes

1/11/2026