The transformation of American college life since World War II is traced by a university president who participated in the process at both Lawrence College (1944 to 1953) and Harvard University (1953 to 1971). Some of the crucial changes in university education during that period are discussed, including: its increasing availability to a far greater percentage of an enlarged population; the broadening of the undergraduate curriculum; and the burgeoning of graduate degree programs and research activity. It is shown how universities supplanted colleges as trend-setting institutions and how some of them, as the United States had to assume increased international responsibilities, became the world's strongest agents for intellectual advance. Financial demands are also discussed in a separate chapter. (LBH)