ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author invites readers to encourage recipients of doctorates in the history of higher education to send Perspectives on the History of Higher Education, an abstract of their dissertations. The dissertations are selected from titles supplied by Proquest. The chapter describes the origin and establishment of faculty collective bargaining at Hofstra University. A change in institutional culture, an unsuccessful president, salary inequalities, and the resolve of a professional organization were important factors in faculty adoption of collective bargaining. In an 1882 address to the Kentucky General Assembly, Kentucky Agricultural and Mechanical College President James Kennedy Patterson claimed that the Commonwealth had failed to place the college "on a proper living basis". American higher education is a dynamic, competitive, and complex arena, yet the established hierarchy of quality among elite research universities has remained remarkably consistent for a hundred years. The chapter identifies the key factors that have contributed to reputation and prestige in American higher-education research universities.
