ABSTRACT
Localism was to some extent merely a function of the difficulty, danger, and expense of travel. It seems safe to predict that the tension between localism and nationalism, which has pervaded academic history in the past, will continue unabated for the foreseeable future. Some will go to national boarding schools in early adolescence. The importance of professionalism in undermining localism is suggested by the fact that the first truly national institution of higher education was the Military Academy founded at West Point in 1802. As the nation becomes more urban and suburban and as the proportion of students attending college rises, it will become possible to build colleges of reasonable size within commuting distance of an ever-larger proportion of homes. Some of the settlers, on the other hand, did not want their children "Easternized," disliked what they regarded as Eastern snobbery, and distrusted the Old World morality, culture, and politics that they thought the Eastern colleges propagated.
