As the author of this article read through the fascinating ruminations of Drs. Albisetti, Finkelstein, Thelin, and Urban, it seemed to him that two basic points emerge, one conceptual and one methodological. Conceptually, Albisetti, Finkelstein, and Urban are asking historians of education to move away from national frames of reference to either a…

The author of this article, James W. Fraser, is Professor of History and Education at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University. He begins this article with an expression of his gratitude to Robert Hampel and the editors of "The History of Education Quarterly" for commissioning the four…

What topic would you choose if you had the luxury of writing forever? In this article, John Thelin provides his response: He would opt to write about the history of higher education in a way that relies on quantitative data. "Numbers, please!" is his research request in taking on a longitudinal study of colleges and universities over…