Comprehensive treatment of the challenges faced by America's public research universities, and of what those challenges may mean for the nation.

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.