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Goodchild, Lester F., Richard W. Jonsen, Patty Limerick, & David Longanecker. Higher Education in the American West: Regional History and State Contexts. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 318 pp. Hardcover: $80.94. ISBN 978-1- 137-38194-1.
Goodchild, Lester F., Richard W. Jonsen, Patty Limerick, & David Longanecker. Public Policy Challenges Facing Higher Education in the American West. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 223 pp. Hardcover: $95.00. ISBN 978-1- 137-38197-2.
The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2003. WICHE is a 15-member state compact, comprising Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Higher Education in the American West: Regional State Contexts provides an overview of the history of colleges and universities in the fifteen WICHE states, comprising chapters by various educators, policy analysts, and WICHE administrators. As such, it is the first regional history of post-secondary education in the US. The value of such an historical overview becomes apparent when reading the companion volume, Public Policy Challenges Facing Higher Education in the American West, wherein the impor tance of regional and historical context looms large. The editors, Lester F. Goodchild, Richard W. Jonsen, Patty Limerick, and David Longanecker argue in the first volume that if citizens and policymakers knew of all the ways in which public higher education was a boon to the Western states in the past, the states' current defunding campaigns would come to an end. Together, the two volumes make the case that public higher education has helped us in the past, and it can help us in the future.
There are many values of a regional focus. In the second volume, the editors argue that three issues are particularly challenging for the Western states today. These are changing demographics, changes in state financing commitments and capabilities, and rapidly increasing tuition. Although most readers will find these three issues challenging across the United States, the informative historical chapters of the first volume do help us understand the particular ways in which these issues intersect with Western history and state development. There are ways in which the West is different from the rest of the nation. For example, as a politically younger region, it was always more dependent...