German university tradition into American higher education, with its emphasis upon disciplinary specialization, tended to fragment nature's laws into ponderously examined smithereens. Whatever the gains in rigor, the Germanic influence in American higher education created an enormous intellectural centrifuge that tended to leave holistic concerns to the unrigorous. So university-discovered synthetic fertilizers gave an explosive growth to American agriculture at the unperceived price of killing Lake Erie; so engineering marvels facilitated the creation of the ghettoed metropolis; so, in Omar Bradley's words, "America became a nation of technical giants and moral infants." The English inheritance of classical liberal arts, with its emphasis upon the public good and the obligations of citizens, has never found a comfortable reconciliation with the ultra-specialization of advanced learning in American higher education. I f "right reason" is to prevail in the decades ahead, if the higher laws of nature are to be understood, a reconciliation between these disparate streams in America's cultural tradition must be discovered. All Men are Created Equal Equality has been a major touchstone of the American dream. If it has rarely been defined clearly and virtually never honored in practice, it has continued throughout our history to disturb the slumbers of the callous and to temper the exploitations of the mighty. It has been a dynamic concept. Today, for example, the equality clause of the Declaration would surely have to be rewritten to include all "persons" rather than simply all "men." And "all" would have to be underscored. to The relevance of this higher education is clear. For most of American history, higher education has been generally sexist and intellectually elitist. Until fairly recently, large segments of the American population have been effectively excluded from education beyond grammar school, let alone high school. Only in recent decades has the promise of higher education been a reality for a substantial portion of the population. Historical statistics tell the story. From 1894 to 1957, the ratio of womer to men attending institutions of highe education in America fluctuated betweer one-fifth and one-half. Even today, fou men attend colleges and universities fo every three women. At the highe postgraduate level, the imbalance is ever greater. Roughly ten times as many men as Sketches of Collede Lifo by J.N Mead. THE SOPHOMORE. FRESH! OH, FRESH!! OH, GREEN FRESH!!! Give heed to these RULES laid down by your elders and betters, the CLASS OF 1903 to assist you in casting aside your robes of verdancy, and, in your aping the ways of college men, to prevent you from becoming too deeply involved in the labyrinthine circumplications and multiflexuousanfractuosities thereof. FIRST.---In every matter of college interest, FRESHMEN must rende implicit obedience to all upper classmen. SECOND.---FRESHMEN are not allowed to disgrape the college colors y displaying them on their person until after the mid-year examinations. THIRD.---Under no circumstances whatever will FRESHMEN be permitted to smoke pipes on the college campus. FOURTH-FRESHMEN must not carry canes. FIFTH---FRESHMEN must not wear loud or conspicuous clothing of any description. We do graciously condescend to call your attention to the following: For the sake of the propagation of a sense of medieval chivalry amor FRESHMEN they are cautioned against hugging, kissing, or otherwise annoying the co-eds. Facial appendages do not become the verdant physiognomies of FRESHMEN. FRESHMEN are advised to keep off the grass as the similarity of appearance would render them inconspicuous. The FRESHMEN class is expected to notify the Sophomore Class otheir banquet at least two weeks in advance. For the prevention of colic, croup, measles, who ping-cough, and se gums among the FRESHMEN Class, we advise them to have their milk bottles steriized at least once areek. or women have received doctoral equivalent professional degrees from American universities over the past century. For most blacks and ethnic poor, higher education has been a nonachievable goal. The situation has improved somewhat during the past decade. But the inequalities remain. A far larger proportion of whites than blacks enter college. The ratio is nearly two to one. Measured by the experience of other nations, of course, the American story of equalizing higher educational opportunity is an extraordinary success. Over nine million young Americans presently attend colleges and universities in the United States. A group that size represents a whopping "elite" by any measure. In one sense, the term "elite" becomes meaningless when applied to the modern college generation. On the basis of enrollment statistics alone, equality of educational opportunity during the past century has increased by quantum leaps. women Alas, the story is more complex than the simple arithmetic suggests. Not only has discrimination persisted toward and minorities, a class system has survived ight through the egalitarian revolution. Not all institutions of higher education are 'created equal." Tradition has given some Colleges a peculiar distinctiveness; private noney and the social position of the amilies of students have blessed these or ther institutions with special prestige; accidents of leadership and State pride lave made some of the great State universities "more equal" than others; of 1,800 institutions of higher education, not nore than 100 or so are recognized as najor centers of creative scholarship. The hreats to survival of all-black and of women's colleges are real and, if they do isappear, valued options for students will e reduced still further. For millions of students, local community colleges, four year/low-tuition public institutions, or proprietary schools are the real opportunities for postsecondary education. Patently, not everyone can go to Harvard. But controversy still exists about what principles should determine who goes to an Ivy League college. Should academic brilliance be the sole qualification? If so, does the system not substitute a meritocracy for an aristocracy perpetuating elitist tendencies in the social order? Should Harvard, in the name of equality, admit a random sample of high school graduates from across the Nation? On the other hand, is a lottery a useful surrogate for real equality? And if such a random sample of students competed as Harvard undergraduates, would not only the top scholars survive and be admitted to graduate professional schools, and to graduate schools of arts and sciences enthroning an elite at a different level of education? And why not? Who would want to receive medical treatment or legal services from poorly qualified professionals? Public policy and institutional policy are trying to thread their way through these and related moral issues. As the late Richard Hofstadter wrote in his brilliant essays for the Commission on Financing Higher Education in the early 1950s: "The United States has developed a system of mass education without achieving the goal of educational equality." The task of the future is to sort out what we really mean by educational equality, to assay its compatability with educational quality, and to develop arrangements and programs that can approximate what our most informed moral sense tells us about the contemporary educational meaning of "All men are created equal." They were part of the reality of national growth. a "Higher Education – American Style" has been handmaiden of upward mobility. The intellectually promising, regardless of class status, have found far greater opportunities here for access to higher education, and for entry into prestigious professions, than in any other nation. It is true, of course, that the classical conservatism of the pre-Civil War curriculum turned many entrepreneurial types away from the higher learning. It is also true that parts of the American population, notably agriculture, have always had a deep suspicion of "book farmin'" and "book larnin'." But by the turn of the 20th century, when LandGrant experiment stations and extension services were conveying useful new knowledge to the farming population, even these attitudes began to change. The past half century has seen a remarkable demonstration of an increasing of faith in the proposition that higher education is an essential instrument for maximizing career choice and avocational options. When nine million young Americans incur for themselves or their parents substantial financial burdens in order to meet the expenses and the opportunity costs of higher education, someone obviously believes in the worth of the enterprise. Parents, students, philanthropists, and local, State, and Federal governments presently spend an estimated $35 billion a year on higher education. There are, however, some disturbing portents of disenchantment. Rising costs and uncertainties about the occupational "pay-offs" of a liberal education have caused some students to switch to trade and technical schools, proprietary institutes, and paraprofessional courses Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of taught in community colleges. HighHappiness A strange ambivalence has always characterized America's moral posture: a stated belief in equality; a rousing defense of individual vitality. Like SO many dilemmas, this one can never be resolved. Equality without individual freedom leads to a social ant heap; freedom without equality produces a vicious Darwinian jungle. For most of our history, the search of individuals for a new life, for liberty, for the pursuit of happiness has had a real significance for an increasing number of our citizens. Blessed with enormous natural resources, and a political and economic theory compatible with their exploitation, the American Nation opened up dazzling opportunities for alert and aggressive individuals. Horatio Alger tales of rags to riches were more than fiction. tuition but nonprestigious private institutions are being particularly hard hit by these changing costs and beliefs, although a number of four-year residential public institutions as well are suffering drops in enrollment. After 1980, because of changing demographic trends in the Nation at large, enrollments in higher education institutions are likely to drop in any case. Unless some means are found to ease the direct financial burdens of higher education on parents and students, the drop may be severe. Will the next quarter century see the rapid demise of our faith that the quality of individual lives, encapsulated in spirit by the "life, liberty, pursuit of happiness" clause of the Declaration, is somehow related to higher education? This is surely one possibility. Social institutions are not immortal. Unless they continually justify Consent of the Governed For most of their history, American higher education institutions have been governed by lay trustees and their agents presidents and chancellors. This is a far cry from the English tradition where colleges and universities have been governed by the faculty. The origins of the American practice seem clear. When Harvard was created there was no indigenous corps of faculty in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. As Hofstadter has put it, "Since there was no real teaching class, the fathers of Massachusetts Bay resorted to nonteachers; they created a board of overseers consisting of six clergymen and six magistrates, as the founding and Over time, certain important areas of campus government, notably those involving course offerings and faculty hirings and promotions, came to be shared with at least senior faculty. In the mid20th century, students had gained decision-making power over certain limited classes of "student affairs." More recently, however, emerged that impinge upon established higher education governance: pressure to add faculty and students to boards of trustees; faculty unionization; masterplanning and State-wide coordinating and accountability systems over all or segments of postsecondary education in particular States; Federal requirements governing equal employment opportunity in colleges and universities receiving Federal funds; Federal policies governing the administration of student financial aid. Looking ahead, "Higher Education American Style" is attempting to develop governance formulas less autocratic than in the past, but with the kinds of autonomies and flexibilities traditionally associated with lay trusteeships. The struggle will not be easy. As government spending for higher education increases, legislators and taxpayers demand "accountability" for the money spent. "Accountability" wisely interpreted and humanely and sensitively imposed is an important prerogative of democratic governments. But "accountability" easily slips into overbearing bureaucratic regulations which frequently reduce themselves to mindless record-keeping and to the harrassment of academic life-styles into joyless and mechanical pedantry. A strange perversion occurs: The whole academic enterprise becomes "the governed,” with little opportunity except through the ponderous machinery of collective bargaining to express felt demands to, or induce consent from the regulators above. The only sure protection against this travesty is a widespread public belief that colleges and universities must be in part self-governing institutions, enjoying some of the immunities of the medieval church, enjoying the freedom to define their own mission and to bite the hand that feeds them, enjoying the heavy responsibility of searching for truth without political constraint. For in spite of its shortcomings, the glory of "Higher Education - American Style has been its relative independence from the suffocating surveillance of the state and from the heavy censures of privileged donors. As a result, in the early part of the 20th century, Professor John R. Commons of Wisconsin mitigated the excesses of a dominant capitalism by creating an American-style social insurance for the working class; Professor Thorsten Veblen embarrassed those who dominated the institutions he served ; more recent Professor Barry Commoner has helped : reveal an ecological interdependence tha has been disquieting to both privat enterprise and to officialdom. In short, a reasonably unfettered hig learning permits the search for truth to on. And in the long run, it is the truth an nothing but the truth that makes free. Senator Morrill's Baby of other forms of capital, governments at Of the many types of institutions aided Behind that shakeup was a growing awareness, climaxed as the United States approached the 100th anniversary of its founding, that American higher education was out of phase with the Nation's needs. Population was increasing rapidly, but college enrollments were actually declining. Young Americans interested in advanced training that would enable them to contribute more fully to the discovery of new knowledge in the natural sciences and its application through technology frequently turned to the universities of designated by the State legislature. This It was nevertheless true that important Out of all these discussions, initiatives, This Act offered to each State 30,000 To answer fears of Federal control, the Act specified that instruction should be given in such manner as the legislatures of the several States shall respectively prescribe." Annual reports on the use of required, but so long as they were used for the broad purposes specified, no Federal intervention was involved. Several factors slowed early development. One was the lack of funds for instruction. In accepting the terms of the Morrill Act, the States had recognized that funds would not be made available to underwrite the costs of buildings and equipment, but many had assumed that other costs would be covered by endowments created by the sale of the land they had been given. There was no real market for land, however, and the States could not wait for prices to increase. The result was that the revenues they actually received were in most cases far too small to cover an instructional program sufficiently substantial to carry out their missions. nother problem arose from the fact that collegiate instruction in agriculture was taken largely from the traditional methods of "good farmers." Lacking was a basis in scientific research for improved agricultural practices, and for effective instruction in those practices. In response, the Congress in 1887 passed an act sponsored by Representative Hatch of Missouri authorizing annual appropriations to repair this defect, a move that was to produce major benefits. Research under this and subsequent acts not only was an essential factor in the remarkable increase in productivity of American agriculture which has made it possible to feed and clothe increasing millions with fewer numbers of farm workers, but as educational historians point out, it became a crucial stimulus to the establishment of research as a major function of the American university. In 1890 Senator Morrill again came to the aid of "his" colleges with the Second Morrill Act, authorizing permanent annual appropriations for instruction in the State-designated Land-Grant institutions. In identical language, Senate and House committee reports on the bill said: "The passage of this measure, which is introduced by the distinguished father of this system of colleges, will place them on a sure foundation as long as we are a Nation and link his name with theirs in one common immortality." A provision of the 1890 Second Morrill Act in effect gave to the States the option of either barring racial discrimination in colleges receiving Federal funds under the act, or of establishing separate colleges for Negro and white students and dividing the funds "equitably" between them. For this reason some of the Land-Grant institutions which admitted only black students prior to the banning of racial segregation in education are sometimes referred to as the "1890" colleges, though the reference is incorrect in the strict sense, since several of the institutions involved were in fact founded under the 1862 Act. Today there are 71 Land-Grant institutions – one in each of 33 States, Puerto Rico, Guam, Virgin Islands, and District of Columbia, and two in each of 16 ! |