President Lincoln signed the Morrill Land-grant Act in 1862, launching a nationwide project in public higher education that would build democracy, prosperity, and competitiveness to levels undreamed of 150 years ago. As student costs skyrocket, driven by steep drops in public funding, the viability of that project, like the nation itself, is under threat. "In Precipice or Crossroads?" top experts in higher education address a broad range of issues central to the question of whether the quality of these institutions--and of American life and democracy--can be sustained. Contents of this book include: (1) Foreword (Peter McPherson); (2) Introduction (Daniel Mark Fogel); (3) Democracy, the West, and Land-Grant Colleges (Coy F. Cross II); (4) The 1890 Institutions in African American and American Life (Carolyn R. Mahoney); (5) The Modern Public University: Its Land-Grant Heritage, Its Land-Grant Horizon (E. Gordon Gee); (6) Commitments: Enhancing the Public Purposes and Outcomes of Public Higher Education (Mark G. Yudof and Caitlin Callaghan); (7) Challenges to Viability and Sustainability: Public Funding, Tuition, College Costs, and Affordability (David E. Shulenburger); (8) University-Based R&D and Economic Development: The Morrill Act and the Emergence of the American Research University (Michael M. Crow and William B. Dabars); (9) From a Land-Grant to a World-Grant Ideal: Extending Public Higher Education Core Values to a Global Frame (John Hudzik and Lou Anna K. Simon); (10) Statewide University Systems: Taking the Land-Grant Concept to Scale in the Twenty-First Century (Nancy L. Zimpher and Jessica Fisher Neidl); (11) Creating the Future: The Promise of Public Research Universities for America (James J. Duderstadt); and (12) Challenges to Equilibrium: The Place of the Arts and Humanities in Public Research Universities (Daniel Mark Fogel).