Stressing Johns Hopkins, Cornell, Clark, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Michigan, Chicago, Stanford and Berkeley, Veysey showed how the newly created and newly reformed schools were influenced by German approaches that taught new findings based on experimental and empirical research techniques.

The doctoral dissertation required students to create new knowledge, preferably through experimental methods or research in original sources.

[3] Deemed "a major contribution to the history and sociology of American education" when first published,[4] the book continues to garner attention decades after its publication.

"[5] Christopher Loss called it the "founding text" "for historians interested in tracking the organization, production, and consumption of knowledge in the United States", introducing a 2005 special issue.

[6] This 2005 special issue of History of Education Quarterly contains an introduction and 6 essays reflecting on the book, along with an obituary of Veysey, who died in 2004.