The history of higher education in the United States begins in 1636 and continues to the present time.
American higher education is known throughout the world.
Colonial era
![ChristopherWrenBuilding](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/ChristopherWrenBuilding.jpg)
Religious denominations established most early colleges in order to train ministers. They were modeled after
Oxford
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
and
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...
universities in England, as well as Scottish universities.
Harvard College
Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher lea ...
was founded by the
Massachusetts
Massachusetts (Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut Massachusett_writing_systems.html" ;"title="nowiki/> məhswatʃəwiːsət.html" ;"title="Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət">Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət'' En ...
Bay colonial legislature in 1636, and named after an early benefactor. Most of the funding came from the colony, but the colleges began to collect endowments early on. Harvard first focused on training young men for the ministry, and won general support from the
Puritan
The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. ...
government, some of whose leaders had attended either Oxford or Cambridge. The
College of William & Mary
The College of William & Mary (officially The College of William and Mary in Virginia, abbreviated as William & Mary, W&M) is a public research university in Williamsburg, Virginia. Founded in 1693 by letters patent issued by King William I ...
was founded by the
Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...
government in 1693, with of land for an endowment, and a penny tax on every pound of tobacco, together with an annual appropriation.
James Blair James Blair may refer to:
*James Blair (Australian judge) (1870–1944), Australian judge, lawyer, and politician
*James Blair (cricketer) (1900–1961), Australian-born New Zealand cricketer
* James Blair (farmer) (1825–1901), Scottish-born farm ...
, the leading
Church of England
The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britai ...
minister in the colony, was
president for 50 years, and the college won the broad support of the Virginia gentry. It trained many of the lawyers, politicians, and leading planters at the time.
Yale College
Yale College is the undergraduate college of Yale University. Founded in 1701, it is the original school of the university. Although other Yale schools were founded as early as 1810, all of Yale was officially known as Yale College until 1887, ...
was founded in 1701, and in 1716 was relocated to New Haven, Connecticut. The conservative Puritan ministers of Connecticut had grown dissatisfied with the more liberal theology of Harvard and wanted their own school to train orthodox ministers.
New Light
The terms Old Lights and New Lights (among others) are used in Protestant Christian circles to distinguish between two groups who were initially the same, but have come to a disagreement. These terms originated in the early 18th century from a spl ...
Presbyterians in 1747 set up the College of New Jersey, in the town of Princeton; it was later renamed
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
in 1896. In
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
, the Church of England set up King's College by
royal charter
A royal charter is a formal grant issued by a monarch under royal prerogative as letters patent. Historically, they have been used to promulgate public laws, the most famous example being the English Magna Carta (great charter) of 1215, but s ...
in 1746, with its president Doctor
Samuel Johnson the only teacher. Following the American Revolutionary War, the Tory administration of the college was overthrown and it was renamed
Columbia College in 1784, then later renamed
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
in 1896. Rhode Island College was founded by
Baptists in 1764, and in 1804 it was renamed
Brown University in honor of a benefactor. Brown was especially liberal in welcoming young men from other denominations. The Academy of Pennsylvania, a secondary school, was founded in 1749 by
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the leading inte ...
and other civic-minded leaders in
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...
. In 1755, it received its charter, was renamed College of Philadelphia and was converted into an institution of higher education. Unlike the other universities, it was not oriented towards the training of ministers. It was renamed the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
in 1791. The
Dutch Reformed Church
The Dutch Reformed Church (, abbreviated NHK) was the largest Christian denomination in the Netherlands from the onset of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century until 1930. It was the original denomination of the Dutch Royal Family and ...
in 1766 set up Queen's College in New Jersey, which later became
Rutgers University
Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was ...
.
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native ...
, chartered in 1769, moved to its present site in Hanover,
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the nor ...
, in 1770.
Seeking a national university
Although European nations did not have a national university, many political and intellectual leaders called for one to unify the new nation intellectually, promote
republicanism
Republicanism is a political ideology centered on citizenship in a state organized as a republic. Historically, it emphasises the idea of self-rule and ranges from the rule of a representative minority or oligarchy to popular sovereignty. It ...
, enhance the status of learning, and keep up with European standards of scholarship. George Washington as president was the most prominent advocate along with Benjamin Rush, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Charles Pinckney, James Wilson, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Joel Barlow, and James Monroe. Strong opposition came from the economy- and provincial-minded men who distrusted imposed uniformity in ideas. Anti-intellectualism, states-rights-ism, and indifference defeated the dream. However repeated efforts produced some smaller-scale operations: Columbian College in 1919 (now
George Washington University
The George Washington University (GW or GWU) is a Private university, private University charter#Federal, federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. Chartered in 1821 by the United States Congress, GWU is the largest Higher educat ...
) as well as national scientific centers including a National Observatory, the Smithsonian Institution, and in 1863, the National Academy of Sciences.
Nineteenth century
Most Protestant, as well as Catholic, denominations opened small colleges in the nineteenth century, mostly after 1850. Nearly all taught in the English language, although there were a few German language seminaries and colleges.
Frontier
While colleges were springing up across the Northeast, there was little competition on the western frontier for
Transylvania University
Transylvania University is a private university in Lexington, Kentucky. It was founded in 1780 and was the first university in Kentucky. It offers 46 major programs, as well as dual-degree engineering programs, and is accredited by the Southern ...
, founded in Lexington, Kentucky in 1780. In addition to its undergraduate program, it boasted law and medical programs. It attracted politically ambitious young men from across the Southwest including 50 who became United States senators, 101 congressmen, 36 governors and 34 ambassadors, as well as Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. Many of the colleges started at this time were funded by churches and denominations, instructing pastors and teachers. It wasn't until the
Morrill Land-Grant Acts
The Morrill Land-Grant Acts are United States statutes that allowed for the creation of land-grant colleges in U.S. states using the proceeds from sales of federally-owned land, often obtained from indigenous tribes through treaty, cession, or s ...
of 1862 and 1890 that public colleges and universities were started in the Midwest, including many of the first public
HBCU's
Curriculum
All the schools were small, with a limited undergraduate curriculum based on the liberal arts. Students were drilled in Greek, Latin, geometry, ancient history, logic, ethics and rhetoric, with few discussions and no lab sessions. Originality and creativity were not prized, but exact repetition was rewarded. The college president typically enforced strict discipline, and the upperclassman enjoyed hazing the freshman. Many students were younger than 17, and most of the colleges concurrently operated a preparatory school. There were no organized sports or Greek-letter fraternities, but literary societies were active. Tuition was very low and scholarships were few. Many of the students were sons of clergymen; most planned professional careers as ministers, lawyers or teachers.
By the 1820s there was a growing demand to replace Greek and Latin with modern languages, as had been proposed by Jeffersonians at the University of Virginia and the newly opened University of the City of New York. The Yale Report of 1828 was a defense of the Latin and Greek curriculum. It called to maintain traditions, especially against the forceful reputation of the German research universities that were starting to attract young American postgraduate scholars. Most critics viewed it as a reactionary move, although Pak Depicted in terms of attracting students from the growing number of private academies that continued to stress the classic languages. The reformers failed, and the classical languages continued as the centerpiece of the rigid traditional curriculum until after the Civil War. For example, at East Alabama Male College, a small Methodist school was founded in 1856 with a curriculum centered on Latin, Greek, and moral science; it resembled most other antebellum Southern colleges. It closed during the Civil War and reopened as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama, becoming the state's land-grant institution. While retaining some of the antebellum classical curriculum to accommodate the returning faculty, it added new courses in agricultural and industrial arts, as well as applied sciences. It became Alabama Polytechnic Institute in 1899, and is now known as
Auburn University.
Impact of 19th-century colleges
Many American scholars and scientists studied at German universities before 1914. They returned with PhDs and built research-oriented universities based on the German model, such as Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Chicago and Stanford, and upgraded established schools like Harvard, Columbia and Wisconsin.
However the liberal arts colleges also flourished and most did not add graduate programs. Summarizing the research of Burke and Hall, Katz concludes that in the 19th century:
# The nation's many small colleges helped young men make the transition from rural farms to complex urban occupations.
# These colleges especially promoted upward mobility by preparing ministers, and thereby provided towns across the country with a core of community leaders.
# The more elite colleges became increasingly exclusive and contributed relatively little to upward social mobility. By concentrating on the offspring of wealthy families, ministers and a few others, the elite Eastern colleges, especially Harvard, played an important role in the formation of a Northeastern elite with great power.
Law and medical schools
There were no schools of law in the early British colonies. Thus no schools of law were in America during the colonial times. A few lawyers studied at the highly prestigious
Inns of Court
The Inns of Court in London are the professional associations for barristers in England and Wales. There are four Inns of Court – Gray's Inn, Lincoln's Inn, Inner Temple and Middle Temple.
All barristers must belong to one of them. They have ...
in London, while the majority served apprenticeships with established American lawyers. Law was very well established in the colonies, compared to medicine, which was in a more rudimentary condition. In the 18th century, 117 Americans had graduated in medicine in Edinburgh, Scotland, but most physicians in the colonies learned as apprentices. In Philadelphia, the
Medical College of Philadelphia was founded in 1765, and became affiliated with the university in 1791. In New York, the medical department of King's College was established in 1767, and in 1770 awarded the first American M.D. degree. It is now
.
On the frontier after 1799, medical professionalism and medical education was heavily influenced by the medical program at
Transylvania University
Transylvania University is a private university in Lexington, Kentucky. It was founded in 1780 and was the first university in Kentucky. It offers 46 major programs, as well as dual-degree engineering programs, and is accredited by the Southern ...
in Kentucky, which graduated 8000 doctors by 1860.
Women and African-Americans at college
Mary Lyon (1797-1849) founded Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in 1837; it was the first college opened for women and is now
Mount Holyoke College, one of the
Seven Sisters. Lyon was a deeply religious Congregationalist who, although not a minister, preached revivals at her school. She greatly admired colonial theologian
Jonathan Edwards for his theology and his ideals of self-restraint, self-denial, and disinterested benevolence. Georgia Female College, now
Wesleyan College
Wesleyan College is a private, liberal arts women's college in Macon, Georgia. Founded in 1836, Wesleyan was the first college in the world chartered to grant degrees to women.
History
The school was chartered on December 23, 1836, as the Ge ...
opened in 1839 as the first Southern college for women.
Oberlin College opened in 1833 as Oberlin Collegiate Institute, in the heavily Yankee northeastern corner of Ohio. In 1837, it became the first coeducational college by admitting four women. Soon they were fully integrated into the college, and comprised from a third to half of the student body. The religious founders especially evangelical theologian
Charles Grandison Finney
Charles Grandison Finney (August 29, 1792 – August 16, 1875) was an American Presbyterian minister and leader in the Second Great Awakening in the United States. He has been called the "Father of Old Revivalism." Finney rejected much of trad ...
, saw women as morally superior to men. Indeed, many alumnae, inspired by this sense of superiority and their personal duty to fulfill God's mission engaged in missionary work. Historians have typically presented coeducation at Oberlin as an enlightened societal development presaging the future evolution of the ideal of equality for women in higher education Intensely anti-slavery, Oberlin was the only college to admit black students in the 1830s. By the 1880s, however, with the fading of evangelical idealism, the school began segregating its black students.
The enrollment of women grew steadily after the Civil War. In 1870, 9,100 women comprised 21% of all college students. In 1930, 481,000 women comprised 44% of the student body.
During 1973 and 1975 the numbers of African Americans who graduated from high school and went to college rose, but in the 1980s the numbers went down again. In the 1980s the number of white students stayed the same while African American students dropped. Scholars say this is because of changes of college costs and changes to the Pell Grant. Most attribute these changes in numbers to Pell Grant cuts. The numbers were higher in the 1970s because the costs for education at that time were lower. Since the drop of these numbers and the number of African American students seemed connected scholars decided that prices were the reason for changing student demographics. While there are always other reasons for changes in student enrollment, cost in the nineteenth century had a lot to do with the enrollment of students. The prices increased in the 1980s, leading to lower income families becoming unable to enroll in colleges. Changes to the Pell Grant qualifications changed the ability to attend for many students. The Pell Grant, as time went on, covered less costs and included less students. There have been many changes to the Pell Grant over the years.
African American studies bloomed in colleges during the black power protests and changing cultural views which created a different campus experience. These changes occurred during the civil rights movement and the Vietnam protests. During this time colleges started to change over to be co-educational. More women were then allowed to attend schools that previously only accepted male students. The baby-boomers who were attending college at this time changed many aspects of college life, which included a more inclusive structure for women and minorities. In the late 1960s the Rockefeller foundation gave a grant to Reed college for more African American Students to attend.
Philanthropy and funding
![Das_östliche_Eingangstor_der_Brown_University](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Das_%C3%B6stliche_Eingangstor_der_Brown_University.jpg)
Local wealthy families supported local schools, especially of their religious denomination, often by donating land. Wealthy philanthropists for example, established
Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...
,
Stanford University,
Carnegie Mellon University,
Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million ...
and
Duke University.
John D. Rockefeller
John Davison Rockefeller Sr. (July 8, 1839 – May 23, 1937) was an American business magnate and philanthropist. He has been widely considered the wealthiest American of all time and the richest person in modern history. Rockefeller was ...
funded the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...
without imposing his name on it.
Protestant denominations set up funds that by 1830 subsidized about a fourth of the prospective ministers then in college. The
American Education Society American Society for the Education of Pious Youth for the Gospel Ministry was organized in 1815 for the purpose of aid in the education of Protestant clergymen. It was renamed American Education Society (AES) in 1820, 1911-1913 It was formed under a ...
, founded in 1815, raised funds from local Protestant churches to support their students. Furthermore, it aided academies, colleges, and seminaries and helped to maintain high academic standards. It was a champion of the classical curriculum against the demands for more modern skills.
Land Grant universities
![Flickr_-_USCapitol_-_Land_Grant_College](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Flickr_-_USCapitol_-_Land_Grant_College.jpg)
Each state used federal funding from the
Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act
The Morrill Land-Grant Acts are United States statutes that allowed for the creation of land-grant colleges in U.S. states using the proceeds from sales of federally-owned land, often obtained from indigenous tribes through treaty, cession, or s ...
s of 1862 and 1890 to set up "
land grant colleges
A land-grant university (also called land-grant college or land-grant institution) is an institution of higher education in the United States designated by a state to receive the benefits of the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890.
Signed by Abraha ...
" that specialized in agriculture and engineering.
Among the first were
Iowa State University
Iowa State University of Science and Technology (Iowa State University, Iowa State, or ISU) is a public land-grant research university in Ames, Iowa. Founded in 1858 as the Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm, Iowa State became one of the ...
, in Iowa,
Purdue University
Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and mone ...
in Indiana,
Michigan State University,
Kansas State University,
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
(in New York),
Texas A&M University
Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...
,
Pennsylvania State University,
The Ohio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publi ...
and the
University of California
The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Franci ...
. Few alumni became farmers, but they did play an increasingly important role in the larger food industry, especially after the Extension system was set up in 1916 that put trained agronomists in every agricultural county.
The engineering graduates played a major role in rapid technological development. Indeed, the land-grant college system produced the agricultural scientists and industrial engineers who constituted the critical human resources of the managerial revolution in government and business (1862–1917) laying the foundation of the world's preeminent educational infrastructure that supported the world's foremost technology-based economy.
Pennsylvania State University is a good example of this. The Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania (later the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania and then Pennsylvania State University), chartered in 1855, was intended to uphold declining agrarian values and show farmers ways to prosper through more productive farming. Students were to build character and meet a part of their expenses by performing agricultural labor. By 1875, the compulsory labor requirement was dropped, but male students were to have an hour per day of military training in order to meet the requirements of the Morrill Land Grant College Act. In the early years the agricultural curriculum was not well developed, and politicians in Harrisburg often considered it a costly and useless experiment. The college was a center of middle-class values that served to help young people on their journey to white-collar occupations.
Black land grant colleges
In 1890, Congress funded all-black land grant colleges, which were dedicated primarily to teacher training. These colleges made important contributions to rural development, including the establishment of a traveling school program by the
Tuskegee Institute
Tuskegee University (Tuskegee or TU), formerly known as the Tuskegee Institute, is a private, historically black land-grant university in Tuskegee, Alabama. It was founded on Independence Day in 1881 by the state legislature.
The campus was de ...
in 1906. Rural conferences sponsored by Tuskegee focused on improving the efficiency and living standards of black farmers. Its founder,
Booker T. Washington
Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856November 14, 1915) was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to several presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American c ...
, was the most influential black spokesman of the 1895–1915 era, and he obtained many academic grants from northern philanthropists and foundations. Starting in 1900, he worked to open connections with educators in Africa; for example he worked with the
Phelps-Stokes Fund
The Phelps Stokes Fund (PS) is a nonprofit fund established in 1911 by the will of New York philanthropist Caroline Phelps Stokes, a member of the Phelps Stokes family. Created as the Trustees of Phelps Stokes Fund, it connects emerging leade ...
and the Firestone Rubber Company to design the
Booker T. Washington Agricultural and Industrial Institute in Liberia. It was delayed by World War I and opened in 1928, 13 years after Washington's death. Since the 1960s, the 19th century schools had helped train many students from less-developed countries who returned home with the ability to improve agricultural production.
Twentieth century
At the beginning of the 20th century, fewer than 1,000 colleges, with 160,000 students, existed in the United States. Explosive growth in the number of colleges occurred in bursts, especially in 1900–1930 and in 1950–1970. State universities grew from small institutions of fewer than 1000 students to campuses with 40,000 more students, as well as a network of regional campuses around the state. In turn the regional campuses broke away and became separate universities. To handle the growth of K–12 education, every state set up a network of teachers' colleges, beginning with Massachusetts in 1830s. After 1950, they became state colleges and then state universities with a broad curriculum.
Graduate programs
![Yale-University-Commons-Building-Schwarzman-Center-Hewitt-Quadrangle-Beinecke-Plaza-New-Haven-Connecticut-Apr-2014](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Yale-University-Commons-Building-Schwarzman-Center-Hewitt-Quadrangle-Beinecke-Plaza-New-Haven-Connecticut-Apr-2014.jpg)
Advanced degrees were not a criterion for professorships at most colleges. This began to change in the mid-19th century, as thousands of the more ambitious scholars at major schools went to Germany for one to three years to obtain a
Doctor of Philosophy
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
(PhD) in the sciences or the humanities. Graduate schools slowly emerged in the United States. In the 1860s and 1870s, Yale and Harvard awarded a few PhD's. The major breakthrough came with the opening of
Clark University
Clark University is a private research university in Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1887 with a large endowment from its namesake Jonas Gilman Clark, a prominent businessman, Clark was one of the first modern research universities in the ...
, which only offered graduate programs, and
Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...
, which began focusing more seriously on its PhD program. By the 1890s, Harvard, Columbia, Michigan and Wisconsin were building major graduate programs; their alumni were in strong demand at aspiring universities. By 1900, there were 6,000 enrolled graduate students. The six main universities awarded about 300 PhD's annually.
In Germany, the national government funded the universities and the research programs of the leading professors. It was impossible for professors who were not approved by Berlin to train graduate students. In the United States, private universities and state universities alike were independent of the federal government. Independence was high, but funding was low. This began to change when private foundations began regularly supporting research in science and history; large corporations sometimes supported engineering programs. The postdoctoral fellowship was established by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1919. Meanwhile, the leading universities, in cooperation with the academic scholars of the time, set up a network of scholarly journals. "Publish or perish" became the formula for faculty advancement in the research universities. After World War II, state universities across the country expanded greatly in undergraduate enrollment, and eagerly added research programs leading to master's or doctorate degrees. Their graduate faculties had to have a suitable record of publication and research grants. Late in the 20th century, "publish or perish" became increasingly important in colleges and smaller universities, not just large research universities.
Junior colleges
Major new trends included the development of the
junior colleges
A junior college (sometimes referred to colloquially as a juco, JuCo or JC) is a post-secondary educational institution offering vocational training designed to prepare students for either skilled trades and technical occupations and workers in su ...
. They were usually set up by city school systems starting in the 1920s. By the 1960s some were renamed "community colleges".
Junior colleges grew from just 20 in 1909 to 170 in 1919. By 1922, 37 states had set up 70 junior colleges, enrolling about 150 students each. Meanwhile, another 137 were privately operated, with about 60 students each. Rapid expansion continued in the 1920s, with 440 junior colleges in 1930 enrolling about 70,000 students. The peak year for private institutions came in 1949, when there were 322 junior colleges in all; 180 were affiliated with churches, 108 were independent non-profit, and 34 were private Schools run for-profit.
Many factors contributed to rapid growth of community colleges. Students, parents and businessmen wanted nearby, low-cost schools to provide training for the growing white-collar labor force, as well as for more advanced technical jobs in the blue collar sphere. Four-year colleges were also growing, albeit not as fast; however many of them were located in rural or small-town areas away from the fast-growing metropolis. Community colleges continue as open enrollment, low-cost institutions with a strong component of vocational education, as well as a lower-cost preparation for transfer students into four-year schools. They appeal to a poorer, older, less prepared element.
Great Depression and New Deal
The
Great Depression that began in 1929 was a major blow to higher education. Only the richest schools like Harvard had endowments big enough to absorb the losses. Smaller prestigious schools, such as MIT and Northwestern, had to cope with serious cutbacks. Despite appeals from
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt () (October 11, 1884November 7, 1962) was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist. She was the first lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945, during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt's four ...
,
Howard University
Howard University (Howard) is a Private university, private, University charter#Federal, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C. It is Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, classifie ...
–the federally operated school for blacks—saw its budget cut below Hoover administration levels.
After the golden years of the 1920s, the downturn hit hard at Northwestern University, a private school in Illinois. Its annual income dropped 25 percent from $4.8 million in 1930–31 to $3.6 million in 1933–34. The endowment investments shrank, fewer parents could pay full tuition, and annual giving from alumni and philanthropy fell from $870,000 in 1932 to a low of $331,000 in 1935. The university responded with two salary cuts of 10 percent each for all employees. It imposed a hiring freeze, a building freeze, and slashed appropriations for maintenance, books, and research. From a balanced budget in 1930–31, the university had deficits in the range of $100,000 for the next four years, which was made up by using the endowment. Enrollments fell in most schools, with law and music hardest hit. However, the movement toward state certification of school teachers enabled Northwestern to open up a new graduate program in education, bringing in a new clientele. At this financial low point, in June 1933, President
Robert Maynard Hutchins
Robert Maynard Hutchins (January 17, 1899 – May 14, 1977) was an American educational philosopher. He was president (1929–1945) and chancellor (1945–1951) of the University of Chicago, and earlier dean of Yale Law School (1927–1929). His& ...
of the University of Chicago proposed to merge the two universities, estimating annual savings of $1.7 million. The two presidents were enthusiastic, and the faculty were supportive. However, the Northwestern alumni were vehemently opposed, fearing the loss of their traditions. The medical school was oriented toward training practitioners, and felt it would lose its mission if it was merged into the larger, research oriented University of Chicago medical school. The merger plan was thus dropped. The
Deering family gave an unrestricted gift of $6 million in 1935 that rescued the budget, bringing it up to $5.4 million in 1938–39. That allowed many of the spending cuts to be restored, including half the salary reductions.
State colleges and universities had depended largely on grants from the legislature, ignoring fund-raising, philanthropy. They kept tuition close to zero. Many were very hard-pressed by the Great Depression—it almost shut down the University of Colorado, as the legislature slashed its budget, there was practically no endowment, and tuition was already very low. The medical school was nearly closed in 1938 – it survived when the legislature allowed it to borrow more money. In 1939. The main campus in Boulder came within a few days of having to close. The bright spot came in the building projects. The PWA spent nearly $1 million on 15 new buildings on the Boulder campus and the medical school campus in Denver. That included a fieldhouse, a natural history museum, new wings for the college of arts and sciences, a faculty club, a small library and a new hospital. The RFC loaned $550,000 in 1933 to build women's dormitories, with the loans repaid through room and board charges.
Indiana University fared much better than most state schools thanks to the entrepreneurship of its young president
Herman Wells
Herman B Wells (June 7, 1902 – March 18, 2000), a native of Boone County, Indiana, was the eleventh president of Indiana University Bloomington and its first university chancellor. He was pivotal in the transformation of Indiana University ...
. He collaborated with
Frederick L. Hovde
Frederick Lawson Hovde (7 February 1908 – 1 March 1983) was an American chemical engineer, researcher, educator and president of Purdue University.
Born in Erie, Pennsylvania, Hovde received his Bachelor of Chemical Engineering from the Unive ...
, the president of IU's cross state rival, Purdue; together they approached the Indiana delegation to Congress, indicating their highest priorities. For Wells, it was to build a world-class music school, replacing dilapidated facilities. As a result of these efforts, the
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...
(WPA) built one of finest facilities in the country. He added matching funds from the state legislature, and opened a full-scale fund-raising campaign among alumni and the business community. In 1942, Wells reported that "The past five years have been the greatest single period of expansion in the physical plant of the university in its entire history. In this period 15 new buildings have been constructed.
Higher education was much too elitist to fit into the
New Deal agenda. The educational establishment was ignored. President Franklin Roosevelt even ignored his Commissioner of education
John Ward Studebaker and cut his budget. Pleas for emergency assistance for higher education, or for research projects, were rejected. However, relief agencies such as WPA and PWA were in the construction business, and work closely with local and state government which sometimes included new buildings and athletic facilities for public universities. While the New Deal would not give money to colleges or school districts, it did give work-study money to needy students, from high school through graduate school. The average pay scale was $15 a month for part-time work.
GI Bill
Eager to avoid a repeat of the highly controversial debates over a postwar years and then the bonus to veterans of the first World War, Congress in 1944 passed the
G.I. Bill
The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in 1956, bu ...
. It was promoted primarily by the veterans organizations, especially the
American Legion, and represented a conservative program of financial aid not to poor people, but one limited to veterans who had served in wartime, regardless of their financial situation. The
GI Bill made college education possible for millions by paying tuition and living expenses. The government provided between $800 and $1,400 each year to these veterans as a subsidy to attend college, which covered 50–80% of total costs. This included forgone earnings in addition to tuition, which allowed them to have enough funds for life outside of school. It opened up higher education to ambitious young men who would otherwise have been forced to immediately enter the job market. When comparing college attendance rates between veterans and non-veterans during this period, veterans were around 10% more likely to go to college than non-veterans. Most campuses became overwhelmingly male thanks to the GI Bill, since few women were veterans. However, by 2000, women had reached parity in numbers and began passing men in rates of college and graduate school attendance.
Great Society
Under the leadership of President
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...
, Congress in 1964, passed numerous
Great Society
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964–65. The term was first coined during a 1964 commencement address by President Lyndon B. Johnson at the Universit ...
programs that greatly expanded federal support for education. The
Higher Education Act of 1965
The Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA) () was legislation signed into United States law on November 8, 1965, as part of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society domestic agenda. Johnson chose Texas State University (then called " Southwest Te ...
set up federal scholarships and low-interest loans for college students, and subsidized better academic libraries, ten to twenty new graduate centers, several new technical institutes, classrooms for several hundred thousand students, and twenty-five to thirty new community colleges a year. A separate education bill enacted that same year provided similar assistance to dental and medical schools.
For-profit universities
A major development of the late twentieth century was the emergence on a very large scale of
for-profit higher education institutions. They have traditionally appealed to low-income students, who could borrow money from the federal government to pay the tuition, and to veterans who received tuition money as part of their enlistment bonus. They have become very controversial in the 21st century, because of the high proportion of students who fail to graduate, or who do graduate and fail to get appropriate jobs; many default on repayment of their federal loans as a result. There has been additional concern over for-profit colleges as they fundamentally changed the view of colleges as a public good. As of 2016, some for profit colleges have been sanctioned by federal agencies for preying on vulnerable populations who accrue massive student loan debt in the course of earning a degree that has less value than those obtained from public or private institutions of higher learning. Federal and state officials started cracking down on for-profit universities, and some have gone out of business.
Roman Catholic colleges and universities
![Georgetown_Spires](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Georgetown_Spires.jpg)
The first Catholic college in the United States was
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...
, founded in Georgetown (now Washington, D.C.). Some of the small colleges of the 19th century have become major universities and integrated into the mainstream academic community.
The Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities was founded in 1899 and continues to facilitate the exchange of information and methods. Vigorous debate in recent decades has focused on how to balance Catholic and academic roles, with conservatives arguing that bishops should exert more control to guarantee orthodoxy.
The orders of nuns, and some dioceses, founded numerous colleges for women. The first was the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, which opened elementary and secondary schools in
Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
in 1873 and a four-year college in 1895. It added graduate programs in the 1980s that accepted men and is now
Notre Dame of Maryland University
Notre Dame of Maryland University is a private Catholic university in Baltimore, Maryland. NDMU offers certificate, undergraduate, and graduate programs for women and men.
History
The Roman Catholic academic/educational religious congregation ...
. Another 42 women's colleges opened by 1925. By 1955, there were 116 Catholic colleges for women. Most—but not all of them—went co-ed, merged, or closed after 1970.
Twenty-first century
The twenty-first century has been characterized by the growth of
for-profit higher education, including the continued evolution of online learning. By 2010, student enrollment had peaked, and enrollment at community colleges, for-profit colleges, regional institutions, and smaller colleges and universities began to drop. But online education, boosted by
online program manager
As part of EdTech, Online Program Managers (OPMs) provide products and services on which educational institutions can run online courses. OPMs, mostly for-profit enterprises, have allowed universities to enter into the online education business an ...
s continued to grow. In 2020 and 2021, the federal government provided billions of dollars in relief to schools that suffered from the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
.
See also
*
University#History
*
Doctor of Philosophy
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
*
Graduate school
Postgraduate or graduate education refers to academic or professional degrees, certificates, diplomas, or other qualifications pursued by post-secondary students who have earned an undergraduate ( bachelor's) degree.
The organization and stru ...
*
List of fields of doctoral studies
*
*
Jewish quota
A Jewish quota was a discriminatory racial quota designed to limit or deny access for Jews to various institutions. Such quotas were widespread in the 19th and 20th centuries in developed countries and frequently present in higher education, o ...
*
Asian quota
An Asian quota is a racial quota limiting the number of people of Asian descent in an establishment, a special case of '' numerus clausus''. It usually refers to alleged educational quotas in United States higher education admissions, specific ...
Notes
Further reading
Surveys
* Bogue, E. Grady and Aper, Jeffrey. ''Exploring the Heritage of American Higher Education: The Evolution of Philosophy and Policy.'' Oryx, 2000. 272 pp.
* Cohen, Arthur M. ''The Shaping of American Higher Education: Emergence and Growth of the Contemporary System.'' (Jossey-Bass, 1998)
* Dorn, Charles. ''For the Common Good: A New History of Higher Education in America'' (Cornell UP, 2017) 308 pp
* Delbanco, Andrew. ''College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be'' (2012
online*Geiger, Roger L. ''The History of American Higher Education: Learning and Culture from the Founding to World War II'' (Princeton UP 2014), 584pp; encyclopedic in scope
* Geiger, Roger L., ed. ''The American College in the Nineteenth Century''. Vanderbilt University Press. (2000)
online review* Geiger, Roger L. ''To Advance Knowledge: The Growth of American Research Universities, 1900–1940''. (Oxford University Press, 1986).
* Geiger, Roger L. ''Research and Relevant Knowledge: American Research Universities Since World War II''. Oxford University Press. (2001).
* Horowitz, Helen L. ''Campus life: Undergraduate cultures from the end of the eighteenth century to the present.'' (1987).
* Jarausch, Konrad H., ed. ''The Transformation of Higher Learning 1860-1930: Expansion, Diversification, Social Opening, and Professionalization in England, Germany, Russia, and the United States'' (U. of Chicago Press, 1983) 375 pp.
* Kerr, Clark. ''The Great Transformation in Higher Education, 1960–1980.'' State U. of New York Press, 1991. 383 pp.
* Levine, D. O. ''The American college and the culture of aspiration, 1915–1940.'' (1986).
* Lucas, C. J. ''American higher education: A history.'' (1994).
*
*
* Robson, David W. ''Educating Republicans: The College in the Era of the American Revolution, 1750–1800.'' (Greenwood, 1985
online* Ruben, Julie. ''The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality''. University Of Chicago Press. (1996).
* Rudolph, Frederick. ''The American College and University: A History'' (1962), a standard survey
*
Thelin, John R. ''A History of American Higher Education.'' Johns Hopkins U. Press, 2004. 421 pp.
* Veysey Lawrence R. ''
The Emergence of the American University
''The Emergence of the American University'' is a non-fiction book in the history of education by Laurence Veysey, published in the 1965 by University of Chicago Press. It "trac sthe development of the modern American university during its forma ...
.'' (1965).
* Wechsler, Harold S. and Lester F. Goodchild, eds. ''The History of Higher Education'' (ASHE Reader) (3rd ed. 2008) excerpts from scholarly articles
Specialty topics
* Barrow, Clyde W. ''Universities and the Capitalist State: Corporate Liberalism and the Reconstruction of American Higher Education, 1894–1928'' (University of Wisconsin Press 1990)
* Cardozier, Virgus R. ''Colleges and universities in World War II'' (1993
online* Freeland, Richard M. ''Academia's Golden Age: Universities in Massachusetts, 1945-1970'' (1992
online* Goodchild, Lester F., et al., eds. ''Higher Education in the American West: Regional History and State Contexts'' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
* Jencks, Christopher, and David Riesman. ''The Academic Revolution'' (1969) influential study of changes in 1960
online* Leslie, W. Bruce. ''Gentlemen and Scholars: College and Community in the "Age of the University," 1865-1917'' (1992
online* Oliver Jr., John William et al. eds. ''Cradles of Conscience: Ohio's Independent Colleges and Universities'' (2003
online* Syrett, Nicholas L. ''The Company He Keeps: A History of White College Fraternities'' (2009
online
Community colleges
* Beach, J. M. and W. Norton Grubb. ''Gateway to Opportunity: A History of the Community College in the United States'' (2011)
* Brint, S., & Karabel, J. ''The Diverted Dream: Community colleges and the promise of educational opportunity in America, 1900–1985.'' Oxford University Press. (1989).
* Cohen, Arthur M. and Florence B. Brawer. ''The American Community College'' (1st ed. 1982; new edition 2013
excerpts & text search widely cited comprehensive survey
* Frye, John H. ''The Vision of the Public Junior College, 1900–1940: Professional Goals and Popular Aspirations.'' Greenwood, 1992. 163 pp.
Women and minorities
* Eisenmann, Linda. ''Higher Education for Women in Postwar America, 1945–1965.'' (Johns Hopkins U. Press, 2006). 304 pp.
* Faragher, John Mack and Howe, Florence, ed. ''Women and Higher Education in American History.'' Norton, 1988. 220 pp.
* Gasman Marybeth and Roger L. Geiger. ''Higher Education for African Americans before the Civil Rights Era, 1900-1964'' (2012)
* Gleason, Philip. ''Contending with Modernity: Catholic Higher Education in the Twentieth Century.'' (Oxford U. Press, 1995). 434 pp
online*
* Leahy, William P. ''Adapting to America: Catholics, Jesuits, and Higher Education in the Twentieth Century.'' (Georgetown U. Press, 1991) 187 pp.
* Perez, Mario Rios, and Sharon S. Lee. "Balancing Two Worlds: Asian American College Students Tell Their Life Stories /Mi Voz, Mi Vida: Latino College Students Tell Their Life Stories," ''Journal of American Ethnic History'' (2008) 27#4 pp 107–113. online
* Roebuck, Julian B. and Komanduri S. Murty. ''Historically Black Colleges and Universities: Their Place in American Higher Education'' (1993
online
Primary sources
* Cohen, Sol, ed. ''Education In the United States: A Documentary History'' (5 vol, 1974), 3600 pp of primary sources from origins to 1972
* Hofstadter, Richard and Wilson Smith, eds. ''American Higher Education: A Documentary History'' (2 vol 1967); especially strong an academic freedom
* Ihle, Elizabeth L., ed. ''Black Women in Higher Education: An Anthology of Essays, Studies, and Documents.'' (Garland, 1992). 341 pp.
* Knight, Edgar W., ed. ''A Documentary History of Education in the South Before 1860'' (5 vol 1952)
* Willis, George, Robert V. Bullough, and John T. Holton, eds. ''The American Curriculum: A Documentary History'' (1992)
{{DEFAULTSORT:History of Higher Education In The United States
History of education in the United States