The Princeton Graduate School: A History

(Hardback, Revised edition)

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The Graduate School of Princeton University has a worldwide reputation for educating productive scholars. Yet, formal graduate education at Princeton, as elsewhere in the United States, is surprisingly recent, dating only to the latter decades of the 19th century, with the development of scientific disciplines and an increasing demand for professionally trained scholar-teachers. The evolution of Princeton's approach to post-baccalaureate study is a story full of twists, colourful personalities, and intrigue. With scholarly attention to detail and the recounting of dramatic episodes, this book portrays both the excitement and uncertainties of the Graduate School in 1990 to its contemporary eminence. Documenting Princeton's early experience with postgraduates and examining the nature of the advanced degrees awarded in the colonial and post-revolutionary eras, this book captures the visionary drive of the energetic president, James McCosh, to lay the scholarly foundations and organize graduate courses at the College of New Jersey in the 1870s. The reader is engaged in the controversy surrounding the structure and location of the Graduate College, as plots were repeatedly hatched and f

Author Bio

The late Willard Thorp was for many years Holmes Professor of Belles Lettres at Princeton University. He was an eminent figure in American literary history, having produced the first fully annotated edition of Melville's Moby Dick. Minor Myers, Jr., President of Illinois Wesleyan University since 1989, is a political scientist and a graduate alumnus of Princeton. His most recent book is Liberty without Anarchy: A History of the Society of the Cincinnati. He coauthored the first edition of The Princeton Graduate School in 1978. Jeremiah Stanton Finch, former Secretary of Princeton University, served also as Dean of the College from 1955 to 1961. A scholar of seventeenth-century English literature, he has also published and lectured on teacher preparation and liberal education. James L. Axtell has been William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Huamanities at the College of William and Mary since 1986.