
Invent Ed
How an American Tradition of Innovation Can Transform College Today
Caroline Field Levander(Author)
MIT Press
Published on 16. December 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
352 pages
978-0-262-55251-6 (ISBN)
Description
An essential guidebook on innovation in higher education—and how we can ensure student success in college by looking to the history of American invention.
Invent Ed is a much-needed contribution to the broad ecosystem of innovation, creativity, and higher education in America. Our country’s many generations of inventors, from Benjamin Franklin to modern visionaries like Steve Jobs, have made important new discoveries by putting existing knowledge into unexpected new combinations. This inventive method has led to the discoveries that have made the nation a global power.
Influential educational leader Caroline Levander provides examples of how to integrate this creative method into the student experience. She offers industry leaders, regulators, and parents valuable insight into how to make the American college experience all that it should be. After tracing the riveting and forgotten history of invention in America, Invent Ed provides a succinct and useful account of how American colleges rose to global prominence and how they operate today. It then offers guidance on how to renew US higher education and thereby ensure the nation’s ongoing vitality.
Invent Ed is a much-needed contribution to the broad ecosystem of innovation, creativity, and higher education in America. Our country’s many generations of inventors, from Benjamin Franklin to modern visionaries like Steve Jobs, have made important new discoveries by putting existing knowledge into unexpected new combinations. This inventive method has led to the discoveries that have made the nation a global power.
Influential educational leader Caroline Levander provides examples of how to integrate this creative method into the student experience. She offers industry leaders, regulators, and parents valuable insight into how to make the American college experience all that it should be. After tracing the riveting and forgotten history of invention in America, Invent Ed provides a succinct and useful account of how American colleges rose to global prominence and how they operate today. It then offers guidance on how to renew US higher education and thereby ensure the nation’s ongoing vitality.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge (Massachusetts)
United States
Publishing group
MIT Press Ltd
Illustrations
BLACK AND WHITE ILLUS.
Dimensions
Height: 203 mm
Width: 133 mm
Weight
369 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-262-55251-6 (9780262552516)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Caroline Field Levander
Invent Ed
How an American Tradition of Innovation Can Transform College Today
E-Book
12/2025
MIT Press
€24.49
Available for download
Person
Caroline Field Levander is Vice President and Carlson Chair in the Humanities at Rice University. She is the author of numerous books on American culture, has held leadership positions on Coursera, 2U/EdX, the Fulbright Association among others, and has led strategic growth and innovation across the industry.
Content
Table of Contents
Introduction: Future-Proofing American College Education
Part I: Discovering an American Method of Invention
1. Men of Progress
2. The Art and Science of Founding a New Republic
3. The Inventor of an American Method of Invention: “The New Prometheus”
4. “A New Era in America”
Part II: Disciplines, Faculties, University
5.The Genius of the System: Two Cultures
6. Science as a National Concern
7. America’s Method of Invention and the American Research University
8. The New Education in America: 1869-1909
9. The Emergence of Big Science: 1914-1970
10. The Market University Emerges: 1970–Onward
Part III: Necessity—The Mother of Invention
11. Reinventing Invention in America
12. Creative as well as Critical Thinking
Notes
Introduction: Future-Proofing American College Education
Part I: Discovering an American Method of Invention
1. Men of Progress
2. The Art and Science of Founding a New Republic
3. The Inventor of an American Method of Invention: “The New Prometheus”
4. “A New Era in America”
Part II: Disciplines, Faculties, University
5.The Genius of the System: Two Cultures
6. Science as a National Concern
7. America’s Method of Invention and the American Research University
8. The New Education in America: 1869-1909
9. The Emergence of Big Science: 1914-1970
10. The Market University Emerges: 1970–Onward
Part III: Necessity—The Mother of Invention
11. Reinventing Invention in America
12. Creative as well as Critical Thinking
Notes