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Nathan M. Sorber, Ph.D.

Director: School of Education

Professor

Professional Highlights

  • Director, School of Education West Virginia University
  • Author of multiple books on Higher Education in the United States
  • Editor, Perspectives on the History of Higher Education

Degrees

  • Ph.D., Education Policy Studies: Higher Education, Pennsylvania State University, 2011
  • M.Ed., Higher Education, Vanderbilt University, 2004
  • B.A., Economics and Political Science, Bucknell University, 2002

Areas of Expertise

  • History of U.S. Higher Education
  • Foundations of Education
  • Education & Economic Development
  • Education & Public Policy
  • Philosophy and Sociology of Education

Research Interests

  • History of American Education
  • International and Comparative Education
  • Land-Grant Colleges and Universities
  • Education State and Federal Policy

Biographical Sketch

   Nathan M. Sorber is an associate professor and Director of the School of Education at West Virginia University. He is the author of Change and Continuity in American Higher Education: Lessons from Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Innovations (Routledge, 2020), Land-Grant Colleges and Popular Revolt: The Origins of the Morrill Act and the Reform of Higher Education (Cornell University Press, 2018), co-author of American Higher Education in the Postwar Era (Routledge, 2017), and co-author of Land-Grant Colleges and the Reshaping of American Higher Education (Transaction Press, 2013). Sorber has written extensively on land-grant colleges, the history of American higher education, and the relationship between education and American capitalism. 

He is the co-editor of the book series Perspectives on the History of Higher Education (Routledge), and has published pieces in the Higher Education Handbook of Theory and Research, International Encyclopedia of Higher Education, History of Education Quarterly, History of Agriculture, and Higher Education in Review, and has presented numerous papers at the annual meetings of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), the American Education Research Association (AERA), and the History of Education Society (HES).