Exchange of Ideas

The first volume of an ambitious new economic history of American higher education.

Exchange of Ideas launches a breathtakingly ambitious new economic history of American higher education. In this, the first volume, Adam R. Nelson focuses on the early republic, explaining how knowledge itself became a commodity, as useful ideas became saleable goods and American colleges were drawn into transatlantic commercial relations.

Earlier, scholars might have imagined that higher education could sit beyond the sphere of market activity—that intellectual exchange could transcend vulgar consumerism—but already by the end of the eighteenth century, Americans insisted that ideas were commodities and that it was the function of colleges to oversee the complex process whereby knowledge was priced and purchased.

The history of capitalism and the history of higher education, Nelson reveals, are intimately intertwined—which raises a host of important questions that remain salient today. How do we understand knowledge and education as commercial goods? Should they be public or private? Who should pay for them? And, fundamentally, what is the optimal system of higher education for a capitalist democracy?