Veysey began by sketching the alien, moribund world of antebellum colleges ruled by piety and discipline. Clergymen dominated the ranks of administration while professors received little status or pay. Both groups believed that suffering benefited the mind as well as the soul, and students built their mental faculties through painful recitation of long passages in ancient Greek.
But in Veysey’s telling, those faltering, marginal institutions were soon overcome by the demands of surging industrialization. Scholars began returning from Europe with tales of Humboldtian research universities in which the independent, credentialed professor reigned supreme. At the same time, land-grant universities were expanding and pursuing a utilitarian mission of mechanical arts and practical education. The third vision was liberal education, which the English theologian John Henry Newman had described as teaching students to understand “the great outlines of knowledge, the principles on which it rests, the scale of its parts, its lights and shades, its great points and its little …”