Review of Meyer, Heinz-Dieter (2017): The Design of the University: German, American, and “World Class”. Abingdon: Routledge

peer reviewed ; By and large, we take our universities for granted. Indeed, the oldest have outlived political regimes of all kinds. This stimulating historical and comparative study exemplifies the importance of in-depth experience and engagement with the cultural and structural environments in which some of the world’s greatest universities have over centuries incrementally developed and been embedded. This is crucial if we hope to understand the sources of their authority and myriad contributions to scientific knowledge and human flourishing. A neo-institutionalist scholar and multicultural citizen who fruitfully contributes to dialogues exploring core institutions in education and society on both sides of the Atlantic, Heinz-Dieter Meyer is uniquely placed to grapple with the complex processes of institutional learning and design that have made the German and American universities among the globally most productive. He also shows how they have influenced each other via the complex, yet crucial flows of inspired scholars and students carrying key idea(l)s with them for interpretation and application back home. The contributions of key actors, but also the outcomes of choices at critical junctures, such as the failure to establish a national state-funded university in the United States, take center stage in this engaging account of how the leaders of American universities adapted the German model, joining diverse concepts to design what has become the greatest uni-versity system in the world, yet one that remains nearly impossible to emulate due to the unique constellation of actors and institutional environment in which it developed. In eighteen chapters in four parts, The Design of the University: German, American, and “World Class” takes us from Göttingen and Berlin to Boston and to the world level as the scientific enterprise—and competition between scientists and the most crucial organizational form in which they conduct their experiments and make their arguments, the research university—becomes ever more ...