Reviewed by:

• Other People's Colleges: The Origins of American Higher Education Reform by Ethan W. Ris
• Erica Eckert, Assistant Professor

While commonly regarded as a path for social advancement, it is well-known that higher education is a stratified system (Taylor & Cantwell, 2019). In Other People's Colleges: The Origins of American Higher Education Reform, Ethan Ris illustrates an underappreciated yet essential originator of postsecondary stratification—the philanthropic foundation. From the outset, Ris explains his goals are to look behind the curtain at the people, organizations, and movements seeking to reform higher education between 1890 and 1936. This period represents the earliest years in which philanthropic foundations leveraged financial resources to form higher education into a stratified system of vertically integrated institutions serving specific populations of students while systematically excluding or diverting others. These efforts and the pioneering opposition to these efforts comprise the book's scope. Ris argues that these higher education reform efforts and the efforts to oppose shaped higher education as it exists today.

The book spans three phases of reform: ideas (1890–1905), efforts (1905–1915), and resistance (1915–1936). When most people think of the Progressive Era in the early 20^th century United States, they likely think of muckraking journalism and individuals such as Jane Addams, W. E. B. DuBois, and Theodore Roosevelt (despite his more problematic beliefs) advocating for grassroots change. Progressivism also coincided with the scientific management movement, social Darwinism, and the prevailing belief that with sufficient expertise, all problems could be solved. Having amassed their fortunes by relying upon the labor of others, Gilded Age captains of industry John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie believed adherence to principles of scientific management and engineering could improve society at large.

The first two major philanthropic organizations were Andrew Carnegie's Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (CFAT) and John D. Rockefeller's General Education Board (GEB). Ris presents the origin stories of these foundations, which were formed in large part to reshape the system of American higher education at the system rather than at the institution or individual level. The foundations were animated by the people who ran them and Ris characterizes these people as academic engineers. Ris carefully explains how the academic engineers developed their perspectives and inflicted them on higher education. This creates a rather dramatic storytelling landscape throughout the early sections of the book and Ris draws from a mass of personal papers and correspondence, historical essays and scholarship, journalism, and organizational documentation as evidence.

The first section of the book describes the ideas and aims of higher education reform. In the first chapter, Ris introduces the academic engineers. Although their views were not completely uniform, most academic engineers held the belief that American higher education was not living up to its promise, needed to be fixed, and only those outside the system could fix it. Many of the academic engineers failed to complete (or attend) college, viewed themselves as self-made, and had the superiority complex to match. Most academic engineers were formally or informally affiliated with CFAT or GEB, although some served as college leaders or government officials. [End Page 127]

CFAT and GEB wanted higher education "To earn the right to survive" by being "more efficient, more accountable, and more useful to both students and society" (p. 1). They did not, however, plan to create efficiency and accountability through competition. Instead, as Ris explains in the second chapter, they sought to reduce the total number of institutions and reduce competition among institutions. They aimed to reorganize the system of higher education, which would have the consequence of reinforcing social structures by directing students (along class, citizenship, racial, and economic lines) to specific institution types and geographic areas. Their mechanism of influence was money doled out by CFAT and GEB administrators using seemingly arbitrary guidelines. The classic and well-described example Ris provides is the CFAT pension fund for professors that could only be secured at the institution level, provided the institution abided by certain requirements. The promise of pension funds...

审阅者：

• 其他人的大学：美国高等教育改革的起源伊森·W·里斯 (Ethan W. Ris)
• 埃里卡·埃克特，助理教授

虽然高等教育通常被视为社会进步的道路，但众所周知，它是一个分层系统（Taylor & Cantwell，2019）。在别人的大学里：美国高等教育改革的起源伊桑·里斯 (Ethan Ris) 阐述了高等教育分层的一个未被充分重视但又至关重要的创始人——慈善基金会。里斯从一开始就解释说，他的目标是观察 1890 年至 1936 年间寻求改革高等教育的人们、组织和运动的幕后情况。这一时期代表了慈善基金会利用财政资源将高等教育转变为社会经济的最早几年。垂直整合机构的分层系统，为特定学生群体提供服务，同时系统性地排除或转移其他学生。这些努力以及对这些努力的先锋反对构成了本书的范围。里斯认为，这些高等教育改革努力和反对努力塑造了当今的高等教育。

该书跨越了改革的三个阶段：思想（1890-1905）、努力（1905-1915）和抵抗（1915-1936）。当大多数人想到 20 世纪初美国的进步时代时^，他们可能会想到揭露黑幕的新闻业和简·亚当斯 (Jane Addams)、WEB 杜波依斯 (WEB DuBois) 和西奥多·罗斯福 (Theodore Roosevelt)（尽管他的信仰更有问题）等倡导草根变革的个人。进步主义也与科学管理运动、社会达尔文主义以及“只要有足够的专业知识，所有问题都可以解决”的普遍信念不谋而合。镀金时代的工业领袖约翰·D·洛克菲勒和安德鲁·卡内基依靠他人的劳动积累了财富，他们相信坚持科学管理和工程原则可以改善整个社会。

最早成立的两个主要慈善组织是安德鲁·卡内基的卡内基教学促进基金会（CFAT）和约翰·D·洛克菲勒的普通教育委员会（GEB）。里斯讲述了这些基金会的起源故事，这些基金会的成立很大程度上是为了在系统层面而不是在机构或个人层面重塑美国高等教育体系。这些基金会是由管理它们的人推动的，里斯将这些人描述为学术工程师。里斯仔细地解释了学术工程师如何发展他们的观点并将其应用于高等教育。这在本书的前几部分创造了一个相当戏剧性的讲故事景观，里斯从大量个人论文和信件、历史论文和学术、新闻和组织文档中汲取证据。

本书第一部分阐述了高等教育改革的思路和目标。在第一章中，里斯介绍了学术工程师。尽管他们的观点并不完全一致，但大多数学术工程师都认为美国高等教育没有兑现其承诺，需要解决，而且只有体制外的人才能解决这个问题。许多学术工程师未能完成（或上）大学，认为自己是白手起家，并具有与之相匹配的优越感。大多数学术工程师都正式或非正式地隶属于 CFAT 或 GEB，尽管有些工程师担任大学领导或政府官员。[完第127页]

CFAT 和 GEB 希望高等教育通过“更高效、更负责、对学生和社会更有用”来“赢得生存权”（第 1 页）。然而，他们并不打算通过竞争来提高效率和问责制。相反，正如里斯在第二章中解释的那样，他们寻求减少机构总数并减少机构之间的竞争。他们的目标是重组高等教育体系，通过引导学生（按照阶级、公民身份、种族和经济路线）到特定的机构类型和地理区域，从而加强社会结构。他们的影响机制是 CFAT 和 GEB 管理者使用看似武断的指导方针发放资金。Ris 提供的经典且描述良好的例子是教授的 CFAT 养老基金，该基金只能在机构层面获得保障，前提是机构遵守某些要求。养老基金的承诺...