The Graduate School of Princeton University has a worldwide reputation for educating productive scholars. Yet, formal graduate education at Princeton, as elsewhere in the United States, is surprisingly recent, dating only to the latter decades of the 19th century, with the development of scientific disciplines and an increasing demand for professionally trained scholar-teachers. The evolution of Princeton's approach to post-baccalaureate study is a story full of twists, colourful personalities, and intrigue. With scholarly attention to detail and the recounting of dramatic episodes, this book portrays both the excitement and uncertainties of the Graduate School in 1990 to its contemporary eminence. Documenting Princeton's early experience with postgraduates and examining the nature of the advanced degrees awarded in the colonial and post-revolutionary eras, this book captures the visionary drive of the energetic president, James McCosh, to lay the scholarly foundations and organize graduate courses at the College of New Jersey in the 1870s.
The reader is engaged in the controversy surrounding the structure and location of the Graduate College, as plots were repeatedly hatched and f