American higher education is nearly four centuries old. But in the decades after World War II, as government and social support surged and enrollments exploded, the role of colleges and universities in American society changed dramatically. Roger Geiger provides the most complete and in-depth history of this remarkable transformation, taking…

About 16 percent of veterans use the GI Bill to attend private institutions, roughly the same proportion as students generally. But at the most highly selective colleges, veterans using the Post-9/11 GI Bill barely fill a single classroom--38 at Penn, 22 at Cornell, and at Princeton, just one. The sparse numbers do not go unnoticed, veterans say.…