46,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
An updated analysis of the forces shaping contemporary higher education in America Combining historical perspective with in-depth coverage of current events, The Shaping of American Higher Education offers an authoritative account of the past, present, and future of higher education in the United States. Readers will gain a thorough understanding of trends in student access and equity, faculty professionalization, curricular expansion, institutional growth, college administration and governance, public and private funding, outcomes, and accountability. Much has happened in American higher education since the 2nd edition of this text was published in 2009. This streamlined new edition discusses contemporary colleges and universities within a broader societal context characterized by political polarization, social fragmentation, and distrust of government and public institutions, and illustrates how twenty-first century institutions are grappling with issues related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice; responding to decades of state and local disinvestment by engaging in public-private partnerships and other entrepreneurial ventures; and shedding historical precedents to educate and train learners in new ways. The book concludes with predictions for the future and an analysis of the challenges and opportunities that await higher education leaders, faculty, students, and policymakers. Readers of The Shaping of American Higher Education will: * Gain an awareness of how history has shaped--and has been shaped by--institutions of higher education * Develop an in-depth understanding of current issues in colleges and universities, including student activism and free speech; declining numbers of full-time and tenured faculty; equity-driven approaches to teaching and learning; new pathways to degrees and non-degree credentials; increasingly complex governance and administrative structures; entrepreneurial approaches to revenue generation and fiscal sustainability; and heightened pressures for student and institutional accountability. * Benefit from a comprehensive analysis of how American higher education has evolved from the first colonial colleges to a complex system of liberal arts colleges, research universities, broad-access and Minority-Serving Institutions, community colleges, and for-profit institutions The Shaping of American Higher Education is required reading for higher education administrators, faculty, scholars, and policymakers and makes an excellent textbook for use in graduate and undergraduate courses on higher education.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 1055
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
Ähnliche
Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
New in the Third Edition
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Introduction:
A Framework for Studying the History of Higher Education
A Framework for Studying the History of Higher Education
Supplementary Reading on the History of Higher Education in America
1 Establishing the Collegiate Form in the Colonies: 1636–1789
Societal Context
Institutions
Students
Faculty
Curriculum
Governance
Finance
Outcomes
2 Diffusion of Small Colleges in the Emergent Nation: 1790–1869
Societal Context
Institutions
Students
Faculty
Curriculum
Governance
Finance
Outcomes
3 University Transformation as the Nation Industrializes: 1870–1944
Societal Context
Institutions
Students
Faculty
Curriculum
Governance
Finance
Outcomes
4 Mass Higher Education in the Era of American Hegemony: 1945–1975
Societal Context
Institutions
Students
Faculty
Curriculum
Governance
Finance
Outcomes
5 Maintaining the Diverse System in an Era of Consolidation: 1976–1993
Societal Context
Institutions
Students
Faculty
Curriculum
Governance
Finance
Outcomes
6 Equity, Accountability, Distrust, and Disinvestment in the Contemporary Era: 1994–2023
Societal Context
Institutions
Students
Faculty
Curriculum
Governance
Finance
Outcomes
Summary and Trends
Note
References
Name Index
Subject Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 1
Table 1.1. Statistical Portrait of the Colonial Era, 1700–1789 (estimates)....
Table 1.2. The Nine Colonial Colleges.
Chapter 2
Table 2.1. Statistical Portrait of the Emergent Nation Era, 1790–1869 (esti...
Table 2.2. American College Libraries with the Largest Collections, 1849....
Chapter 3
Table 3.1. Statistical Portrait of the University Transformation Era, 1870–...
Table 3.2. Admissions Requirements for Various Bachelor's Degree Programs, ...
Chapter 4
Table 4.1. Statistical Portrait of the Mass Higher Education Era, 1945–1975...
Table 4.2. Undergraduate and Graduate Courses in American Institutions, by ...
Table 4.3. Percentage of Current-Fund Revenue of Private and Public Univers...
Table 4.4. Expenditures of Institutions of Higher Education as a Percentage...
Table 4.5. Voluntary support for institutions of higher education, by sourc...
Table 4.6. Institutional Expenditures and Median Parental Income of First-Y...
Chapter 5
Table 5.1. Statistical Portrait of the Consolidation Era, 1975–1993....
Table 5.2. Changes in Earned Bachelor's Degrees by Selected Field, 1975–197...
Table 5.3. Total Number of Degrees Awarded and Percentage Awarded to Women,...
Table 5.4. Average Salary of Full-Time Faculty by Gender and Type of Instit...
Table 5.5. Faculty Unionization by Institutional Type, Selected Years 1984–...
Table 5.6. Revenue of Institutions of Higher Education by Source of Funds, ...
Table 5.7. Percentage of Revenue by Source, Public and Private Institutions...
Table 5.8. Pell Grants and Stafford (GSL) Loans as a Proportion of College ...
Table 5.9. Ratio of Median Annual Earnings of Full-Time, Year-Round Workers...
Chapter 6
Table 6.1. Statistical Portrait of the Contemporary Era, 1994–2021....
Table 6.2. Percent of Undergraduate Enrollment by Type of Institution and R...
Table 6.3. Total Number of Degrees Awarded and Percentage Awarded to Women,...
Table 6.4. Changes in Earned Bachelor's Degrees by Selected Field, 1995–199...
Table 6.5. Average Salary of Full-Time Faculty by Gender and Type of Instit...
Table 6.6. Revenue of Public Institutions of Higher Education by Source of ...
Table 6.7. Percentage of Revenue by Source, Public and Private Institutions...
Table 6.8. Ratio of Median Annual Earnings of Full-Time, Year-Round Workers...
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Exhibit I.1. Trends and events in American higher education.
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1. Total Enrollment and Percentage Female, 1976 and 1993.
Figure 5.2. Percentage of Enrollment by Race or Ethnicity, Fall 1995.
Figure 5.3. Aid Awarded to Postsecondary Students, 1976–1994 (in Millions of...
Figure 5.4. Median Annual Earnings of Full-Time, Year-Round Workers 25 and O...
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1. Total Enrollment and Percentage Female, 1994 and 2020.
Figure 6.2. Outcomes Six Years After Starting a Four-Year College or Univers...
Figure 6.3. Median Annual Earnings of Full-Time, Year-Round Workers 25 and O...
Guide
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Introduction: A Framework for Studying the History of Higher Education
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
References
Name Index
Subject Index
End User License Agreement
Pages
iii
iv
v
ix
x
xi
xii
xiii
xv
xvi
xvii
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
586
587
588
589
590
591
592
593
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636
637
639
640
641
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
The Shaping of American Higher Education
Emergence and Growth of the Contemporary System
THIRD EDITION
Carrie B. Kisker
Arthur M. Cohen
Copyright © 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Inc., All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 750-4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permission.
Trademarks: Wiley and the Wiley logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic formats. For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Names: Kisker, Carrie B., 1977- author. | Cohen, Arthur M., author.
Title: The shaping of American higher education : emergence and growth of the contemporary system / Carrie B. Kisker, Arthur M. Cohen.
Description: Third edition. | Hoboken, New Jersey : Jossey-Bass, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2024000470 (print) | LCCN 2024000471 (ebook) | ISBN 9781394180899 (cloth) | ISBN 9781394180905 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781394180936 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Education, Higher—United States—History. | Universities and colleges—United States—History.
Classification: LCC LA226 .C66 2024 (print) | LCC LA226 (ebook) | DDC 378.73—dc23/eng/20240110
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024000470
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024000471
Cover Design: WileyCover Image: © Kevin Dodge/Getty ImagesAuthor photo: © Alexandra Turshen
For Harry Kisker, who first put a history of higher education into my hands, and who set an example—as an educator, spouse, and parent—to which I will always aspire.
Preface
This book had its origins in a History of Higher Education course that my co-author, colleague, mentor, and friend, Arthur M. Cohen, taught for many years in UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. As he related, and as I saw the year I was his teaching assistant, few of the students who enrolled each term had much prior knowledge of American history, and fewer still were aware of the roots of the collegiate tradition in our country. As the course evolved, it became apparent that a useful text would need to both encompass the entire scope of American higher education—from the Colonial Era to the present day—and set the developing colleges in the context of their times, all within the span of a 10-week quarter. Furthermore, the review of nearly 400 years of continuous expansion in enrollments, staff, curriculum, finance, and other aspects of the system had to be organized so that students and other readers could digest its component parts and come to understand how they influence one another. The matrix described in the Introduction to this volume has helped serve that purpose.
The Shaping of American Higher Education: Emergence and Growth of the Contemporary System was first published in 1998, and a second edition appeared in 2010. Both focused primarily on the Mass Higher Education Era (1945–1975) and the Consolidation Era (1976–1993), as most of the trends that had developed earlier either matured or transformed during these periods; the second edition also provided an early analysis of the Contemporary Era (then spanning the years between 1994 and 2009). While this third edition exhibits a few modifications in the system's history based on recent scholarship, its chief contribution is its synthesis of the Contemporary Era, which now encompasses the turbulent years between 1994 and 2023. In addition, unlike the other major texts on the history of American higher education, this book gives appropriate consideration to the development and contributions of the institution in which 40% of undergraduates first enroll: community colleges. These open-access institutions have been an essential thread in the fabric of American education since the early 1900s yet receive little mention in other major histories of colleges and universities in the United States.
New in the Third Edition
A new edition of The Shaping of American Higher Education is warranted now, as several shifts in the system's functioning have occurred in the past three decades, along with numerous changes in public perception and support of America's colleges and universities. In particular:
Like a snake biting its own tail, states and localities have continually disinvested in higher education and the institutions have responded by raising tuition and becoming increasingly entrepreneurial in their search for funds. Accordingly, the burden of paying for college has shifted ever more away from government and toward students, parents, corporations, and philanthropic donors. As a college degree has become viewed predominantly as a private good, the foundation on which the system was built and has been supported for nearly four centuries—the idea that higher education is essential for societal well-being—has begun to erode.
Nearly all institutions have implemented equity-minded approaches to teaching, learning, and student support and some have sought to alter longstanding structures and policies that have precluded social and economic mobility for racially marginalized groups. As a result, access, persistence, and completion rates improved across the board. However, a vitriolic backlash to the concept of structural racism, as well as recent rulings against affirmative action and legislation in some states to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and practices, have (at a minimum) complicated institutional efforts to provide welcoming and inclusive learning environments and may ultimately thwart higher education's ability to provide equitable support for marginalized or minoritized learners.
Along with the growing tendency to hire part-time and non-tenure-track faculty, frontal attacks on tenure and academic freedom in some states accelerated the trend toward faculty de-professionalization and now threaten institutional autonomy.
Over the past several decades, demands that institutions be held accountable for their stewardship of public funds and the outcomes of their students multiplied, contributing to rising administrative costs and entire units dedicated to compliance and reporting, not to mention a wealth of data from which to cherry-pick numbers to critique the system.
New pedagogical and technological approaches to teaching and learning were introduced, forcing a reckoning about the costs and purposes of higher education, as well as the skills and competencies that students need to succeed in the workforce and in a democratic society.
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated and laid bare what many in higher education have known for years: that unconsciously high numbers of students suffer from basic needs insecurities or mental health challenges. Institutional responses to providing new services or connecting students to resources in the community were publicly championed but often privately criticized as falling outside higher education's social role and responsibility.
Reflecting (and sometimes feeding) high levels of political polarization and social fragmentation across the nation, student activism has reached a fervor not seen since the 1960s and early 1970s. America's colleges and universities are once again battlefields on which America's culture wars are fought, yet unlike in previous eras, now they are also the targets of ideologically inspired attacks by politicians or commentators. As a result, public distrust in institutions of higher education has reached an all-time high, threatening the perceived legitimacy of a system that has long been the envy of the world.
The era from 1994 through the present is thus one of the most fascinating and—for its supporters—disquieting periods in the history of American higher education. Yet the roots of each of these and other contemporary issues can be traced through previous eras, along with institutional responses and systemic adjustments. The system is pliant; it rarely moves quickly or abandons that which has come before, yet somehow shapeshifts to meet emerging societal pressures and needs. For this to continue, institutional leaders—faculty and administrators alike—must embody the Sankofa and look both to the future and to the past. They must identify innovative solutions to contemporary problems, yet stand together to protect the great strengths of American higher education, including institutional autonomy, academic freedom, equal access, and equitable support.
It is my hope that this book provides college and university faculty, administrators, trustees, and students—as well as scholars, policymakers, and commentators—with a nuanced understanding of the trends and events that have shaped American higher education over the past 400 years and a renewed appreciation for the complexity and vital importance of our diverse and multipurpose system.
Acknowledgments
I have been blessed in life to have the support and love of several generations of family members and friends, including especially my husband, Sean, my exceptional children, Meredith and Grayson, my parents, Lucie and Rick Bourdon, and all my siblings and their spouses (Jackie and Clint Kisker, Hansell and Mac Woods, Allen and Lindsay Bourdon, Leland Bourdon and Megan Ash). But of all the intergenerational relationships I have been lucky enough to experience, the friendship, support, and love of my mentor, colleague, co-author, and friend Art Cohen has been perhaps the most surprising and—at least from a career perspective—monumental.
Art was four months shy of 50 years old when I was born, already well established as the grandfather of community college studies and a respected professor of higher education at UCLA. When I entered graduate school at age 25, he was three times my age and two years away from becoming emeritus. It was an unlikely friendship, but we recognized something in one another and for nearly 20 years Art advised me, encouraged me, debated with me, and eventually asked me to collaborate in the revision of his crown jewels: The American Community College and The Shaping of American Higher Education. Working with Art on the sixth and second editions, respectively, of these books taught me more than all my graduate courses put together; Art was a wealth of (sometimes esoteric) knowledge, and while I did not always agree with him, he taught me to listen, to hear, to reconsider, and then to formulate an iron-clad counterargument. Sometimes I even convinced him.
Art passed away in December 2020 at the age of 93, after months of COVID-induced separation in which I was able to visit him only once. Yet over the past 18 months, as I have written the seventh edition of The American Community College and the third edition of this book, I have heard his voice in my head almost daily, and his presence has been constant, shining through in sentences that only he could write as well as those that we composed together. For this, and for all that came before, I am ever so thankful. This book is much like our relationship was: a joining of scholarly thoughts and ideas, an amalgamation of our training and lived experiences. The only difference is that in this edition, when our perspectives differed, I always got the final word.
Writing a book such as this—especially when your co-author is deceased—can be a lonely venture, but several people provided support and camaraderie. Lauren Kater offered exceptional research assistance. Drs. Mark D'Amico and Reed Scull, who have both taught The Shaping of American Higher Education for years, provided encouragement and useful feedback on the new Contemporary Era chapter. (Indeed, the idea of urging readers to begin with the final chapter originated with Dr. D'Amico.) Many more—especially those mentioned in the first paragraph—gave me the love, time, and carpool assistance I needed to finish this treatise on the past, present, and possible futures of American higher education. Thank you all.
CARRIE B. KISKER
LOS ANGELES
SEPTEMBER 2023
About the Authors
Carrie B. Kisker is president of Kisker Education Consulting in Los Angeles and managing director of the Center for the Study of Community Colleges (CSCC). She received her BA (1999) in psychology from Dartmouth College and her MA (2003) and PhD (2006) in higher education from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Drawing from her own and others’ research, she regularly consults with college leaders on issues related to entrepreneurship and innovation, program and policy development, strategies for student equity, strategic planning and accountability, and civic learning and democratic engagement. Kisker is author of the sixth and seventh editions of The American Community College (2014, 2023), written with Arthur M. Cohen and Florence B. Brawer, Creating Entrepreneurial Community Colleges, A Design Thinking Approach (2021), and the second edition of The Shaping of American Higher Education: Emergence and Growth of the Contemporary System (2010) with Arthur M. Cohen.
Arthur M. Cohen (1927–2020) was professor of higher education at UCLA from 1964 until 2004. He received his BA (1949) and MA (1955) in history from the University of Miami and his PhD (1964) in higher education from The Florida State University. He was director of the ERIC Clearinghouse for Community Colleges from 1966 to 2003, president of CSCC from 1974 to 2007, and longtime editor-in-chief of New Directions for Community Colleges. Over the course of his career, Cohen served on the editorial boards of numerous journals and wrote extensively about community colleges, including 21 books; more than 80 book chapters, journal articles, and essays in edited volumes; and untold numbers of conference papers, journalistic pieces, and research reports.
IntroductionA Framework for Studying the History of Higher Education
Reading the history of higher education teaches appreciation for the power of tradition. Practically every aspect of the contemporary system can be traced to the formation of universities in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and many to the colleges in the Colonial Era. Some aspects were present in the universities of medieval Europe. This great weight of history and tradition is one of the system's strengths, but the stability of form over nearly 400 years also ensures a rather slow pace of change. New ideas—no matter how laudable—must always contend with the conflicting mandates, needs, and priorities of administrators, faculty, students, and other stakeholders. And all institutional decision-making occurs within the context of changing societal norms and public expectations about the purposes, costs, and outcomes of higher education.
Understanding the history of colleges and universities in America is thus essential for those who would reform the contemporary system or institutions within it. Publications calling for completely revising governance, teaching, funding, or student support appear frequently. An industry of innovation is apparent. But the practices, policies, and pedagogical approaches that are most likely to be adopted and institutionalized are those that build on what has come before, anchor themselves in the historic missions and purposes of the institution, incorporate incentives for each stakeholder group, and otherwise leave intact anything that does not directly conflict with the new approach. Even the most consequential event to have ever affected American higher education—the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath—did not result in fundamentally changed institutions: courses were moved online but remained part of the same programs, tied to the same institutional calendars and number of credit hours; student services personnel were asked to identify new ways to support learners at a distance, but the percentage of expenditures dedicated to student support did not increase commensurately.
Throughout its history the system has successfully resisted, co-opted, or absorbed—eventually changing but with the glacial majesty befitting a venerable structure. However, higher education has become more vulnerable to external forces over the last several decades. In particular, the slow but steady disinvestment in public institutions by states and localities, as well as fiscal repercussions stemming from the Great Recession of 2007–2009, have accelerated trends toward privatization and entrepreneurship. New governance players have exercised greater demands for accountability in both institutional actions and student outcomes. And intense media scrutiny of colleges and universities, driven in large part by the voracious demands of a 24/7 news cycle, clickbait headlines, rapidly rising tuition levels, and growing distrust of government and public institutions, has put higher education under a microscope. Public perception (whether it is rooted in fact or takes context into account) reigns supreme, and much institutional decision-making now takes place within a political arena.
In addition, colleges and universities have once again become flashpoints for conflict over changing American values. But unlike the student activism of the 1960s and 1970s, the social fragmentation and widespread distrust of the other that has thrust colleges and universities into the culture wars of the Contemporary Era threatens the perceived legitimacy of the system. And the emergence of new entry points to the workforce and different ways of “doing college” (Gaston and Van Noy, 2022, p. 28) threaten the necessity of a system designed around linear, sequential pathways. For nearly 400 years, American colleges and universities have held a near-total monopoly on providing access to a better life; for the first time in history, prospective students may be turning the other way or at least delaying entry.
Thus, 25 years into the twenty-first century, higher education is faced with a decision; either it gathers its cloak of history and tradition around itself in an attempt to insulate against an onslaught of public accusations and demands, in the process feeding the perception that college is for some people and not for others, or it spreads its arms, ensuring transparency, inviting innovation, and enveloping new approaches and ideas alongside time-honored values and institutional mores. One choice leads to a society in which U.S. institutions of higher education were once the envy of the world; the other to a future where they still are. The challenge, however, lies in recommitting to that decision every day, in every corner of every college, even in the face of reduced funding and politically motivated attacks.
Fortunately, many of the most fraught issues in higher education today have been debated since the colleges began. What shall be taught? Who shall learn it? Who shall pay? And who gets to decide? Such questions are grounded in the stories of each institution and historical responses differ according to the societal context in which they were considered. Today's challenges are related to yesterday's practices, and tomorrow's decisions must be informed by an understanding of what has come before.
A Framework for Studying the History of Higher Education
The history of higher education is taught in most graduate programs that prepare faculty or administrators for positions in colleges or universities, and it is increasingly appealing to those seeking to understand how and why such institutions frequently become symbols of societal discord or settings for social activism. Most courses and texts on the subject utilize a chronological approach; students and readers learn about colleges in the Colonial Era and then are led through the development of universities on into the present. Many also take a topical approach, pointing out changes in the number and types of institutions, students attending, working conditions for faculty, curriculum, patterns of governance, and public and private financing. These topics are often supplemented by subtopics of interest: the rise of women's colleges, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), intercollegiate sports, training for the professions.
Within these topics, various key events are noted. The founding of certain types of institutions—state colleges, graduate and professional schools, and community colleges, for example—may be accorded separate sections. Legislation, including the Morrill Acts and the Servicemen's Readjustment Act (popularly known as the GI Bill), is given space along with important court decisions such as the Dartmouth College case, which protected institutional independence. The courses and texts also show how certain trends have been pervasive: greater access for students, a trend toward occupationally relevant curricula, secular governance, and state-level coordination of higher education.
This book's approach is to define trends and events chronologically under topical headings and within six major eras, and to detail interrelationships among them. Exhibit I.1 displays the framework for this book. While many readers will choose to start at the Colonial Era (Chapter 1) and trace the history of American higher education as it is presented chronologically, others may elect to begin at the Contemporary Era (Chapter 6)—the time period with which they are most familiar—and then go back in time to learn about various antecedents to the modern system. This edition has been revised to better facilitate such an approach. Still other readers may elect to take a deep dive into particular topics, skipping from era to era to understand how curriculum, governance, or finance, for example, has evolved over nearly four centuries. All approaches are welcomed, and all six chapters conclude with several questions relating to trends and events associated with that era; these issues may serve as discussion topics in class or as starting points for student essays or dialogues.
As Exhibit I.1 shows, each of the topics illustrated has at least one major trend associated with it. Many of the tendencies have lengthy histories. The institutions have grown steadily larger and adopted more varied purposes and specialties. The trend for students has been in the direction of greater access; ever-increasing numbers of 18-year-olds and adults have matriculated. In recent years, attention to student equity has also come to the fore. In general, the faculty moved steadily toward professionalization, although this trend slowed and began showing distinct signs of reversal late in the twentieth century. Curriculum has become more directly related to workforce entry, as one occupational group after another began demanding additional years of schooling for its initiates. Throughout the first 350 years of American higher education, governance tended toward broader systems and a diminution of church-related control, but in the past three decades it has become increasingly decentralized and bureaucratized, with an ever-expanding number of governance actors demanding some level of accountability for student and institutional outcomes. Similarly, institutions became more and more dependent on public funds until the late twentieth century, when disinvestment in public institutions accelerated, the forces of privatization took hold, and colleges and universities were forced to broaden their search for support. Higher education's outcomes have been directed increasingly toward producing a skilled workforce, enabling people to move out of the social class into which they were born, and conducting scientific research that yields useful products and processes.
Not all topics show such distinct trends. The context varies as public perceptions reflect contemporary societal concerns. In general, the expectation that higher education will contribute to economic growth has found its way into the mainstream of public thought. But the belief that it can or should ameliorate social problems or that access and equitable support for everyone should be pursued is affected by the short-term mood of the nation, its media, and its national administration.
Exhibit I.1. Trends and events in American higher education.
The six eras reflect the evolution of the trends. In the Colonial Era, 1636–1789, the college form was established on Old World models. The Emergent Nation Era, 1790–1869, saw hundreds of small colleges established and the beginnings of access for different types of students. In the University Transformation Era, 1870–1944, the research university made its appearance, faculty professionalization took a leap forward, and the role of the state expanded. The Mass Higher Education Era, 1945–1975, was marked by greater size and number of institutions, augmented student access, and an increased reliance on federal funding. The Consolidation Era, 1976–1993, saw a flattening of growth in faculty professionalization, fewer institutional openings, and lower public per capita funding, matched by a greater reliance on state-level governance and increases in tuition and fees.
The era since 1994 is especially significant from a historical perspective, as it can be characterized by course changes in several of the trends evident throughout the first five eras. Namely, institutions became increasingly entrepreneurial in their search for funds as the historical reliance on public coffers shifted to corporations, individual donors, and students themselves. Faculty professionalization essentially came to a halt as colleges and universities employed ever greater numbers of part-time and non-tenure-track instructors and as legislators in some states mounted a frontal attack on tenure. Large, centralized public systems gave way to autonomous units and all institutions faced demands for greater accountability. A commitment to equity and to understanding the historic structures and policies that have precluded social and economic mobility for various racial and ethnic groups led to a widely publicized and at-times ugly backlash against the system, along with accusations that colleges and universities were anti-White. And the for-profit sector grew astronomically (and then shrank considerably) as federal regulations either supported the expansion of or cracked down on the sector's abuses.
For several of the topics, major events cluster around the cleavage lines separating the eras. The year 1790 marked the beginning of a rapid expansion in number and type of institutions. The first state colleges and the first technical institutes were formed shortly thereafter, and the curriculum was opened well beyond the liberal arts to include a broader array of emphases. Within a few years on either side of 1869, the Morrill Land Grant Act was passed, graduate study was introduced along with the first HBCUs, and the first sizable philanthropic donations were given to establish universities. The year 1945 marked the opening of the Mass Higher Education Era because the GI Bill, the President's Commission on Higher Education report, and the formation of the National Science Foundation all occurred around then. In the years surrounding 1976, America finally disentangled itself from the conflict in Vietnam, the gap between rich and poor began widening for the first time since the 1950s, and the rate of college-going turned up once more. However, the Consolidation Era was notable less for major events than for planting the seeds of change that would alter or even reverse historical trends in the years that followed. The beginning of the Contemporary Era in 1994 coincided with intensified public preferences—both at home and abroad—for smaller government and greater reliance on individual responsibility and free markets. Even though these preferences have weakened as people sought government aid to stimulate the economy or provide pandemic relief, together with increased access, escalating costs, and greater emphasis on efficiency, they have led to adjustments in several of the trends that had undergirded the previous 350 years of higher education in America.
This book accords approximately equal emphasis to each of the eight topics. But the eras are treated differentially. Because other works have covered the years prior to World War II rather completely, this book devotes only 30% of its total to those eras: 15% to the Colonial and Emergent Nation Eras together and 15% to the University Transformation Era. Roughly 20% each is devoted to the Mass Higher Education and Consolidation Eras, and about 30% of the book discusses the trends and events of the past 30 years.
The book is less a history than a synthesis. Several general history books from McMaster (1909) to Jordan and Litwack (1994) were consulted relative to the societal context for the period prior to 1945, but no attempt was made to uncover new information regarding debatable issues. A rich literature traces social reform; the background and effect of immigration policies; sources of the expansionist mentality in the nineteenth century; the oppression of Indigenous peoples; economic, social, and political issues related to slavery; and so on. As Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn (1997) documented, all have been reinterpreted repeatedly and are not repeated here. Controversies also persist over most major events within higher education: whether the Dartmouth College case of 1819 truly altered relations between states and private institutions; who was most influential in Congress's passing the Morrill Act of 1862; the extent to which the Civil War constrained the expansion of higher education in the South; the importance of various collegiate forms that were tried early in the twentieth century; which institutions deserve the lion's share of credit for preserving general education—to name only a few. Thorough treatments of each of these issues are available elsewhere.
This work traces higher education's first few centuries by synthesizing prevailing views without iterating the debates over motives, causes, or prime movers. It recounts the story of the early eras only to establish a background to the past 80 years for readers unfamiliar with the ways higher education developed. It centers on what was and what is, with a minimum of what ought to be. However, biases do appear throughout; absolute objectivity is an impossible conceit. In particular, we are unapologetic advocates for preserving and protecting at all costs the major pillars upon which higher education has rested for nearly 400 years, including institutional autonomy, academic freedom and free expression, and a commitment to acting for the public good. To these mainstays we add the (relatively) newer concepts of equal access and equitable support as essential aspects of the system. Over four centuries, American higher education has experienced numerous trends in curriculum, pedagogy, financing, and other characteristics, but these principles provide a through line from 1636 to the present and protect the ideals upon which this country was founded; abandoning them would be nothing short of abdicating higher education's role in the preservation of our democracy.
Not all of postsecondary education is treated here. People always have learned outside the formal system; apprenticeships, ateliers, and academies have been prevalent throughout history. Today, industry-granted nondegree credentials, noncredit courses, proprietary schools, and virtual universities (both non- and for-profit) surround the core enterprise and involve millions of learners. But this work considers primarily the sector that the National Center for Education Statistics calls higher education and that most people mean when they say they went to college: public and private, nonprofit community colleges, four-year institutions, and universities.
This book is useful as an overview for faculty, staff, and students in all institutions of higher education who may benefit from knowledge of the broad currents affecting their work. It draws on numerous historical and contemporary sources; unless otherwise cited, most statistics on the institutions and their students, faculty, governance, finances, and outcomes are from the U.S. Department of Education's Digest of Education Statistics or similar, broadly available publications. Since the first edition of this book was published in 1998, it has been adopted widely in undergraduate and graduate education and social science courses, providing students with an understanding of the institution in which they are engaged and where they might spend their careers. This book also may appeal to readers outside the postsecondary realm who are concerned with higher education's contributions to democracy, its role in reflecting and propelling major social movements, and what its trends, events, and priorities portend for the future of America and its place in the world.
Supplementary Reading on the History of Higher Education in America
A few books are indispensable for a rounded view of the history of higher education. Rudolph (1962, 1991) reviewed numerous single-college histories, anecdotal accounts of college life, and reports of collegiate functioning to produce The American College and University—a detailed account of colleges in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The transformation of the university has been documented in several basic texts. Bledstein's (1976) The Culture of Professionalism traces one of the pillars on which the university system was built. Veysey's (1965) The Emergence of the American University carries through the conversion of colleges and the development of new universities. Geiger's two-volume account of the research function, To Advance Knowledge (1986) and Research and Relevant Knowledge (1993), analyzes how the growth of research stimulated and was itself furthered by universities from the nineteenth century through the Consolidation Era. Thelin's (2021) Essential Documents in the History of Higher Education presents a collection of many primary sources critical to understanding the development of higher education in the United States.
Some texts examine the history and contemporary issues associated with particular institutional types. These include Lovett's (2015) America's Historically Black Colleges and Universities: A Narrative History and Harris's (2021) The State Must Provide: Why America's Colleges Have Always Been Unequal—And How to Set Them Right; Harwarth, Maline, and DeBra's (1997) Women's Colleges in the United States: History, Issues, and Challenges; Kisker, Cohen, and Brawer's (2023) The American Community College; and Geiger and Sorber's (2013) The Land-Grant Colleges and the Reshaping of American Higher Education.
Several books focus on particular topics within higher education. College students and their lives have been examined repeatedly, including in Levine and Dean's (2012) Generation on a Tightrope: A Portrait of Today's College Student. College costs and outcomes have been considered from many perspectives. Goldrick-Rab's (2016) Paying the Price examines how college costs and financial policies perpetuate an inequitable system. Bowen's (1980) The Costs of Higher Education displays various ways of analyzing costs, and his 1977 book Investment in Learning traces individual and societal benefits as revealed in numerous studies of college outcomes. The effects of college on individual students are reviewed by Feldman and Newcomb (1969), Astin (1977, 1993), Pascarella and Terenzini (1991/2005), and Mayhew et al. (2016). Kaplin's reviews of court decisions and legislation affecting higher education have appeared in six editions of The Law of Higher Education; the most recent of these succinct summaries (Kaplin et al., 2020) reveals how every aspect of the college is embedded in a legal structure. Excerpts from all these books, along with relevant journal articles or contemporary journalistic pieces, can be assigned alongside this text to provide students with both a broad understanding of the shaping of American higher education and opportunities to dig deeper into issues of interest in their lives and their studies.
1Establishing the Collegiate Form in the Colonies: 1636–1789
Three characteristics of the English colonies in America most affected their development. First was the settlers' determination to form a way of life different from the governmental and familial rigidities they had left in Europe. Second was the land—the limitless horizons for which dissidents and new immigrants could reach whenever they tired of their previous stations. Third was the religious spirit of the time—Protestantism and Anglicanism newly separated from Catholicism and continually reforming, yielding variations in patterns of observance from deism (later Unitarianism) to fervent religious sects established in reaction to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment.
Societal Context
The distance between Europe and the New World allowed the colonists to build their own societies with varying degrees of oversight from the parent country. Although explorers and immigrants had been arriving in the Western hemisphere for more than 100 years, no lasting English settlement occurred until the beginning of the seventeenth century. Under British sovereignty, Virginia, the first colony, was settled in 1607, and all but one of the colonies was formed by the end of the century. Georgia, the last of the original 13, was settled in 1732.
Each colony differed from the others as a consequence of its climate and the religion, mores, and social patterns characteristic of its early settlers. Among these groups were Puritans, who brought a high interest in literacy and a strong theological bent to Massachusetts. Next were distressed Royalists who saw Virginia as an extended export farm to be worked by indentured servants and enslaved Africans. The Society of Friends (Quakers) who emigrated from the English Midlands to the Delaware Valley were the most willing to interact peaceably with Indigenous peoples and to base their communities on religious toleration. The last groups were from Scotland and the north of England and Ireland, who emigrated to escape poverty in the mid-seventeenth century and settled the Appalachian back country. Each group stamped its lifestyle so definitively on its environment that its speech patterns and accents, attitudes toward learning and aging, child-rearing practices, and many other folkways (Fischer, 1989, names over two dozen) persist to this day.
Whereas the seventeenth century was characterized by an influx of English families, adventurers, and indentured servants, along with Africans who were brought unwillingly, in the eighteenth century, sizeable numbers of Germans, Scots, and Irish arrived. From around 250,000 in 1700, the colonial population quadrupled by midcentury and increased by as much as 30 to 40% each decade thereafter. The settlements were widespread; Boston, the largest city, had 7,000 people in 1700, and by the end of the Colonial Era it, Philadelphia, and New York each had as many as 10,000. The more Europeans who arrived, the greater the need for land, hence the forced displacement of native peoples as the immigrants conquered the wilderness. This expansionism was a continuation of the brutal colonialism that had characterized the Spanish in the Caribbean and Central and South America, and that the English and other European powers subsequently pursued in Australia and parts of Africa. The colonists began enslaving and importing people from Africa because they could not entice or coerce the Indigenous to work in farms or industries. The policy of removing Indigenous peoples persisted until the end of the nineteenth century, when the remnants of native populations had all been assimilated through intermarriage or sequestered on reservations.
For most of the settlers, the New World represented a chance for a new start. Some came as indentured servants who had escaped prison or penury and bought their passage by promising to work for the plantation owners for several years after arrival. Others were disinherited children who saw greater promise on a continent where land was cheap and a farm and family could be built anew. The desire for religious freedom brought groups from England and the European continent during an era of religious turmoil and conflict.
In their social and cultural context, the colonies were decidedly English. For a half-dozen generations after the founding of Jamestown and the landing at Plymouth Rock, they retained the characteristics of the motherland. The Germans brought their own language and customs, but the colonial laws, dress, culture, religion, professions, government, and child-rearing and educational practices were modeled on English forms. However, the years in America effected modifications in all areas of life. Some were necessitated by the challenge of living in a land where the wilderness and geographic remoteness posted a substantial threat. Others were shifts in thinking, as a unique American consciousness took shape. Distance from the mother country, reckoned in terms of the several weeks that it took for messages to pass between England and the American seaboard, allowed for new ideas in religious observance and acculturation of the young to take shape.
Religion and the churches are worthy of a special note because they were so close to the daily life and thought of the colonists. Anglicanism and various Protestant sects dominated seventeenth-century England, hence the English colonies as well. The Bible was the major text, often the only book in the home. God and the devil were real to believers. As the witchcraft trials in Massachusetts and Connecticut supposedly demonstrated, people could be possessed and have occult powers (although a good dose of misogyny was clearly also at work). The New England Puritans had fled the dictates of the high church of the home country and its links with the crown. They abhorred the idea of a theocracy, but the secular states they established had strong ties to their churches and in some areas of social control were more rigid than those they had left.
The Puritans especially felt they had a mission to create “a city upon a hill,” as John Winthrop exhorted even before his congregants reached shore. If they failed to establish God's Kingdom, he later preached, they would be turned out of the land. In other words, fail and you're damned. This thesis, modified toward secular pursuits, became so engrained that 200 years later Alexis de Tocqueville commented on how ambition was the universal feeling in America.
By the middle of the eighteenth century, European concepts of the Enlightenment and deism modified thought. Many of the leaders born in the first half of the century—Washington, Jefferson, Franklin—adhered to rationalist ideas, read political philosophy that espoused the rights of man, and had less attachment to organized religious observance. To them, the Bible was not revelation but a text. Reaction to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment came with a religious backlash known initially as the Great Awakening, dating from around 1750 and reappearing subsequently under different identifiers. This religious fervor led to the continual splintering of established churches into various sects.
The major peculiarity of the North American continent—its limitless land—influenced the way the colonies and eventually the nation developed. The country was large enough to allow for continual reformation in all aspects of colonial life. New forms of religious observance and fresh ideas in everything from the building of settlements to child rearing could emerge in the vast spaces available. The boundless horizons affected family life. The general outlook, especially in the New England colonies, was that everyone should live in family units. But the restless son, chafing under the domination of parents who might have little patience with a rebellious child, could always strike off on his own. The frontier, new opportunities, a different environment always beckoned. In a land where cash was scarce, a child had little reason to hope for an inheritance, but although nearby farmland was not free, the frontier was ever expanding and a young man could work his way into a homestead of his own. Accordingly, a sense of optimism grew. The sons could expect to have more wealth than their fathers; a young man could become a professional even if his father was not. There were few barriers to men on the move. Roles for women were more limited; most opportunities other than domestic service as wife, maid, or private nurse were still in the future.
The geographic openness of the land was reflected also in the way people could reinvent themselves. There were few restrictions on entering the professions. Lawyers, physicians, and theologians occasionally attempted to control entry into their professions, but in few communities was anyone eager to examine the credentials of a newly arrived practitioner; public licensing was seldom seen. Apprenticeships were the major form of access to the professions. A lawyer could take a young person to read with him, and that person could hang up a shingle and enter practice at any time. In medicine, a few physicians tried to form groups to judge who was entitled to call himself a doctor, but apprenticeships and the subsequent opening of practice were not regulated. According to Handlin and Handlin (1971), “Only one colony, New Jersey, in 1772, actually limited by law the right of anyone to assume the title of Doctor” (p. 39). Clergymen were both preachers and teachers, and congregations tended to value those who were schooled. Numerous preachers ascended to the pulpit without formal schooling, but “university graduates who could hurl about quotations in the original Hebrew and Greek and loftily demonstrate their superior familiarity with Scripture enjoyed a strategic advantage” (Handlin and Handlin, 1971, p. 43). Teaching required no specific preparation; anyone who could read and write could show others how to do it.
The development of literacy did not depend on schooling. Today's children are exposed to language on television, billboards, emails, texts, even the promotional material on cereal and toy boxes; regardless of the emphasis in their homes, they are surrounded by words. But although the colonists in the coastal cities saw books and newspapers, many who lived on the margins of civilization had little association with print other than in the family Bible. Their familiarity with ideas came through words delivered by a preacher or itinerant peddler. For the vast majority of young people, the family was the source of education in social mores, morality, and ways of behaving. Under the circumstances, the extent of literacy is remarkable. Their orthography was crude, but the colonists were more familiar with language than were their European social-class counterparts.
The American Revolution was born as the colonists gained a sense of uniqueness. Strung along the Eastern Seaboard from Massachusetts to Georgia, oriented to the sea across which the immigrants had come, most colonists saw England as the mother country. All the main towns were on bodies of navigable water, and most of the commerce was waterborne trade among the colonies themselves, the English colonies in the West Indies, and Britain. The reasons for the American Revolution have been discussed countless times. Was it commercial interests? Blundering by the English rulers? A by-blow of the French–British rivalry? The revolution has gained particular status as a mythic quest for freedom from oppression by the crown. Taking a cynical view of the latter reason, Samuel Johnson contemporaneously asked, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?” (Bate, 1975, p. 193). Most colonists had no trouble holding compartmentalized notions of freedom—one for themselves, another for the enslaved and servants. Views of parity were further stratified to account for what were perceived as natural differences among wealthy and poor and men and women. The “all men are created equal” phrase in the Declaration of Independence proved rather a qualified statement—one that was to be debated and reinterpreted countless times throughout the new nation's history.
Institutions
Table 1.1 shows a statistical picture of the conditions surrounding American higher education in the Colonial Era. Between 1700 and 1789, the number of institutions grew from two to nine, and the number of students and faculty increased 600% or more. Still, the roughly 1,000 students enrolled at the end of the Colonial Era comprised a miniscule portion of the free population.
The nine colleges that were organized in the colonies were modeled on educational forms that had been developed in Europe over the prior 500 years. This development has been traced well by Rashdall (1936), Herbst (1982), and more recently, Lucas (2006
