Research and relevant knowledge : American research universities since World War II / Roger L. Geiger.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 339-404) and index.

1. Origins of the Federal Research Economy. 1. The Organization of Research for War. 2. Universities and War Research. 3. Postwar Federal Science Policy. 4. The Postwar Federal Research Economy -- 2. Research Universities in the Postwar Era, 1945-1957. 1. From War to Peace to Cold War. 2. The Burdens of Finance. 3. Organized Research in Postwar Universities. 4. An Autonomous Research Mission and Its Discontents -- 3. The Development of Universities in the Postwar Era. 1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 2. The University of California, Berkeley. 3. Yale University -- 4. Private Foundations and the Research Universities, 1945-1960. 1. Foundations and Academic Social Science. 2. Foundation Support for University Advancement -- 5. University Advancement from the Postwar Era to the 1960s. 1. Stanford University. 2. The University of California, Los Angeles. 3. The University of Pittsburgh -- 6. The Transformation of Federal Research Support in the Sputnik Era.

1. The 1950s Research Economy and the Rise of NSF. 2. Sputnik. 3. The Politics of Academic Science. 4. Federal Support and the Golden Age of Academic Science -- 7. The Golden Age on Campus: The Research Universities in the 1960s. 1. The Evolving University: Contemporary Perceptions. 2. Changing Patterns of Research and New Research Universities. 3. Academic Quality and Institutional Development. 4. Graduate Education in the 1960s -- 8. Dissolution of a Consensus. 1. The Student Rebellion. 2. The Financial Crisis of the Research Universities. 3. A Deeper Malaise -- 9. Surviving the Seventies. 1. The State of Universities in the Mid-1970s. 2. The University of Arizona. 3. Georgia Institute of Technology. 4. Private Industry and University Research -- 10. The New Era of the 1980s. 1. Turning Outward. 2. Research in the 1980s. 3. Centrifugal Forces. 4. Research Universities and American Society.

With this book, Roger L. Geiger completes a two-volume study of American research universities in the twentieth century. The first volume, To Advance Knowledge, focused on those few institutions that first embodied academic research and their interaction with private supporters. This book describes how the federal government relied on university scientists during World War II and how the resulting relationship set the pattern for the postwar mushrooming of academic research.

Although the vicissitudes of federal-university relations are one crucial element of this history, the focus is on the universities themselves, their internal aspirations to conduct research, and their adaptations to external constraints and opportunities.

Detailed cases are offered of individual institutions during critical periods - MIT and the University of California, Berkeley, in the postwar era; Stanford and UCLA in the go-go years after Sputnik; and Georgia Tech and the University of Arizona during the difficult 1970s. This book treats the many facets of research universities that impinge on their research role, including the student rebellion of the 1960s.

The final chapter addresses factors underlying the embattled status of research universities in the 1990s.