Distinguished by their sharp insights, eloquence, even humor, the writings of Martin Trow on the development of higher education have helped define the field. Collected here are his most influential essays, tracing the arc and evolution of his prolific scholarly career over more than four decades.

Trow is well known for his pioneering work on the transition from elite to mass to universal higher education, and scholars worldwide continue to use his conceptual framework for analyzing and comparing institutions.

As both a sociologist and a public policy analyst, Trow hoped his analyses of higher education would help influence public policy. He believed that understanding how higher education had developed—its peculiarities in a particular society and the direction of change within it—would lead to wiser policy choices.

Martin Trow began compiling this collection before his death in 2007. Editor Michael Burrage, along with Trow’s friends and colleagues, worked to carry out Trow's wishes, writing introductions to the essays which situate them in their context and which continue each contributor’s conversations with Trow during his lifetime.

Those seriously interested in the emergence of mass higher education, and the debates surrounding it, will appreciate finding many of Trow's groundbreaking works—including three articles never before published—in a single volume.

Martin Trow (1926–2007) was one of higher education’s most influential and prolific writers. Much of his distinguished career was spent at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also served as Director of the Center for Studies in Higher Education. His many publications on political sociology and comparative education include The British Academics, Students and Colleges, The New Production of Knowledge, and Accountability of Colleges and Universities. Michael Burrage is a research fellow emeritus in the Department of Sociology at the London School of Economics.