The universities of Britain, France, Germany, and the United States stem from a common European academic tradition and are today among the most influential and powerful in the world. Each has cultivated a high degree of scientific and intellectual autonomy and has served as a model for world higher education. Yet, those four systems are structurally distinct and show considerably different patterns of development. In Centers of Learning Joseph Ben-David sxplores these differences and provides insight into the role and scope of contemporary higher education.