The 1981 issue of the "History of Higher Education Annual," which is the first issue, is presented. The first of six articles, "A Message to Lushtamar: The Hilprecht Controversy and Semitic Scholarship in America," by Paul Ritterband and Harold Wechsler describes the impact of disagreement among scholars on the development of semitic scholarship. In "Church, State, and Higher Education: College Government in the American Colonies and States before 1820," Jurgen Herbst surveys the development of American college government prior to 1820 and considers the types of institutions that developed: state universities, private colleges sponsored by religious groups, private colleges sponsored by other private groups, and the degree-granting proprietary professional school. In "Education in Conflict: The Booker Washington Institute of Liberia," Donald Spivey examines the controversy surrounding this Institute in Liberia in the years following its founding in 1929; David B. Potts, in "Curriculum and Enrollments: Some Thoughts on Assessing the Popularity of Antebellum Colleges," uses enrollment data to reassess the popularity of colleges in antebellum America. In "The Bryn Mawr Workers' Summer School, 1921, 1933: A Surprising Alliance," Rita R. Heller comments on the early twentieth century Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers from a feminist perspective. Finally, in "The University Under Mussolini: The Fascist-Catholic Struggle for Italian Youth, 1922-1943," Richard J. Wolff describes the struggle between Fascists and Catholics under Mussolini for the allegiance of Italian college students. (SW)