Chapter 7 Postwar Higher Learning in America

1
Chapter 7Postwar Higher Learning in America

• Sandra McCutcheon
• and
• Lisa Reese

2
Academic Witch Hunts

• 1938- The House Committee on Un-American
  Activities (HUAC) was formed. The HUAC
  investigated disloyalty and it concentrated
  almost exclusively on communism.
• 1940-Immediately following the furor over
  Bertrand Russell, state legislators in Albany
  decide to create a joint legislative committee,
  the Rapp-Coudert Committee (1940-42) to examine
  the extent of subversive activities in the
  states schools and colleges.
• 1941-The Rapp-Coudert investigations and the
  subsequent Board of Higher Education trials lead
  to the dismissal, non-reappointment or
  resignation of over fifty faculty and staff at
  CCNY

3
Academic Witch Hunts

• 1948- Allen A. Zoll created a hypercritical
  organization called the National Council for
  American Education. Its main purpose was to
  eradicate from our schools Marxism, Socialism,
  Communism and all other forces that seek to
  destroy the liberty of the American people.
• 1949- the National Education Association
  resolution stated ...membership in the Communist
  Party and the accompanying surrender of
  intellectual integrity, render an individual
  unfit to discharge the duties of a teacher in
  this country. James Bryant Conant, President of
  Harvard.

4
Academic Witch Hunts

• 1949-Communists Should not Teach in American
  Colleges- Raymond B. Allen, President of the
  University of Washington, Seattle.
• The Real issue between Communism and education
  is the effect of Communist Party membership upon
  the freedom of the teacher and upon the morale
  and professional standards of the profession of
  teaching. Many would have us believe that it is
  an issue of civil liberty. This, I believe, it
  is not....the lack of freedom permitted the
  Communist has a great deal more than a mere
  passing or academic bearing upon the duties of a
  teacher. -
  Raymond B. Allen

5

• The Communist party of United States has put
  forth every effort to infiltrate the teaching
  profession of this country. In this endeavor to
  corrupt the teachers of youth, the agents of
  Kremlin have been remarkably successful,
  especially among the professors in our colleges
  and universities.- Senator McCarren,
• 1950- The Internal Security Act,
• sometimes called the McCarren
• Act or the anti-communist law,
• strips away civil liberties in the
• name of national security.

6

• Under direction from Senator McCarthy from
  Wisconsin, notoriously known today for
  McCarthyism, purges resume with new force in the
  1950s libraries were searched, books were
  burned, loyalty oaths were taken, and suppressive
  measures were enacted by municipal and state
  authorities.
•  
• As a result of McCarthyism the 1950s the academe
  generation is referred to as the Silent
  Generation.

7
(No Transcript)
8
(No Transcript)
9
Changing Growth Patterns

• Higher Education became more and more popular in
  the 1900s
• 29,000 degrees were awarded in the 1949-1950
  academic year alone
• Enrollment in Universities doubled every 15 years

10
Changing Growth Patterns
As percentages of high school students graduating
increased, so did the number of students
enrolling in universities.
11
Changing Growth Patterns

• Public institutions served more students than
  private institutions and experienced faster
  growth rates.

12
Changing Growth Patterns

• In 1970 there were 2,556 colleges and
  universities
• 1,665 of those were 4 year institutions
• 891 of those were 2 year schools

• In 1990 there were 3,800 colleges and
  universities
• 1,400 of those were private institutions.
• 900 public community colleges

13
Governmental and Business Involvement

• During WWII, with significantly lower
  enrollments, universities and colleges became
  almost entirely dependent on government subsidies
  for their survival.
• Aid assumed the form of research grants and
  contracts for specialized military training
  programs to provide war-related technical
  training and research under federal supervision.
• 1944- The GI Bill or Servicemens Readjustment
  Act authorized postsecondary education assistance
  that would ultimately send 8 million WWII
  veterans to college.

14
Governmental and Business Involvement

• 1945- Upwards of half of the income supporting
  certain academic institutions came from the
  national government.
• Over all, in the 1940s, it was estimated up to 80
  percent or more of the nations total
  expenditures for research in the physical and
  biological sciences was underwritten by the
  government.

15
Governmental and Business Involvement

• 1957- Sputnik, the worlds first satellite was
  launched sending shockwaves throughout the U.S.
• 1958- Congress passed the National Defense
  Education Act (NDEA) in response to the Soviet
  launch. To help ensure that highly trained
  individuals be available to help America compete
  with the Soviet Union in scientific and
  technological fields, it included support for
  loans to college students, the improvement of
  science, mathematics, and foreign language and
  area studies, and vocational-technical training.

16
Governmental and Business Involvement

• 1965- Higher Education Act authorized federal
  financing to enable academic institutions to
  assist in solving community problems of public
  health, poverty, housing by means of research,
  extension or continuing education.
• 1972- Higher Education Act further funded
  national teaching fellowships and granted
  low-interest loans or grants. This helped to
  provide thousands of students who otherwise lack
  the resources the opportunity to attend school.

17
Governmental and Business Involvement

• 1990- The University, and Owners Manual is
  written by Henry Rosovsky, former dean of the
  faculty of arts and sciences at Harvard.
•  
• 1990- Killing the Spirit Higher Education in
  America. is written by UCLA historian Page
  Smith, illustrating how universities are tied to
  the military-industrial complex by unbreakable
  financial bonds.

18
Governmental and Business Involvement

• Throughout the same decades, corporate
  involvement in higher education emerged.
•  
• More and more research is also funded by
  corporations that marketed the results and
  divided the profits with the funded universities.
  
•  
• The corporate role was criticized but did not
  raise the same ethical questions as the federal
  role.

19
Governmental and Business Involvement

• 1960s- State governments also attempt to control
  public higher education by creating strong
  centralized governing boards, directly answerable
  to the state governor or legislature.
• These boards were to help streamline higher
  education and prevent academic empire-building,
  and patterns and degrees of control varied by
  state.
• Regionalism and localism among politicians worked
  against this ideal of coordinated management at
  the state level.

20
Governmental and Business Involvement

• Admission standards and procedures, faculty
  workloads, student-loan allocations, work-study
  programs scrutinized. Faculty and administrators
  began drawing up strategic plans, mission
  statements and detailed operational analyses
  mandated under state law.

21
Corporate Academe

• Rapid expansion and proliferation of colleges and
  universities in the immediate postwar period.
• 2. The growing popularity of management
  strategies borrowed from businesses and
  industries in the 60s,70s, 80s.
• 3. Burgeoning enrollments and diminishing
  resources.
•  

22
Corporate Academe

• Academic institutions appear similar to
  large-scale
• business organizations in many ways
• Mission statements and strategic planning.
• Elaborate budgeting systems and meticulous
  record-keeping.
• Cost-effectiveness analysis.
• Marketing research and public relations efforts.
• Total-quality management and hierarchal
  governance
• Mathematical calculations of units of learning.
• Division and specialization of labor.

23
Corporate Academe

• Students compete for admission, grades, loans,
  scholarships and later jobs.
• Faculty compete for tenure, salary increments,
  advancement in rank, grants and contracts, work
  space, prestige and professional visibility.
• Individual departments, or colleges, compete for
  space, funding and administrative support.

24
Corporate Academe

• Intercollegiate athletic competition serves as
  evidence of corporate academe.
• Athletics is big business now and is a major
  source of revenue and major image-builder.
• College sports even parallel business scandals in
  rule violations, illegal recruitment tactics, and
  other unethical, questionable practices.

25
Black Higher Education

• Before 1939, only ½ of African Americans were
  enrolled in places of higher education in the
  North
• In the south only 10 of African American college
  students were enrolled in a predominately white
  institution
• In 1947, 6 of the total college population was
  comprised of African American students.
• In the 1950s the number of African American
  students attending white universities rose to 453

26
Black Higher Education

• 1954- Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education
• 1958 Clennon King
• he was declared insane on the premise
  that any black person who would apply for
  admission to the University of Mississippi had to
  be out of his mind
• 1961- James Meredith - also sought admission to
  the University of Mississippi

27
Black Higher Education

• 1963- 3 African American Students attempted to
  register at the University of Alabama
• Governor George C. Wallace publicly announced
  that he would never accept desegregation
• The National Guard then came and forced the
  Governor to allow the students admission

28
(No Transcript)
29
Black Higher Education

• 1965-1970 - Black enrollment in predominately
  white institutions more than tripled
• Black enrollment in historically Black
  institutions began to drop
• 1987- African American students were more likely
  to enroll in a historically white university than
  a historically black university.

30
What Do You Think?

• We are not yet convinced that predominately
  white institutions are ready to accept and take
  the risk with some of the black studentswe
  accept. Further, we do not believe that white
  colleges are ready to accept black students and
  black faculty in numbers that allow them to wield
  power in shaping the educational processes at
  those institutions. Society is constitutionally
  incapable of accepting black people and their
  culture on equal grounds.
• Ben E. Bailey, director of research at Tougaloo
  College (1991)

31
Curricular Inclusion

• Courses were diversified
• New disciplines and areas of study were offered
  as courses of study
• Between 1970-1975, 150 new womens studies
  programs were created

32
General Learning and Liberal Studies

• 1939- National Society for the Study of Education
  (NSSE) devoted its 38th yearbook to the topic of
  general education and found that people defined
  the term quite differently. Some believed it
  included vocational, some believed it did not,
  and some believed it was a combination of both.

33
General Learning and Liberal Studies

• Although not popularly received, Robert Hutchins,
  President of University of Chicago, attempted to
  define general education in terms of
  intellectual tradition gathered from reading
  the Great Books of the Western World.
• In contrast, philosopher and educator, John
  Dewey, argued a more utilitarian perspective,
  that general education was learning through
  experimentation and practice. He considered
  education as a tool that would enable the citizen
  to integrate culture and vocation effectively and
  usefully.

34
General Learning and Liberal Studies

• 1945- The General Education in a Free Society
  committee report is written by a Harvard faculty
  committee. It explored the meaning of general
  education and specialized education.
• The Committees analysis of educations overall
  objective
• 1) It should prepare people for their unqiue
  and personal functions in
• life.
• 2) It should help develop traits and
  understandings that people should
• share in common as citizens of a joint
  culture
• 1947- White House Commission on Higher Education
  for Democracy released a report enthusiastically
  endorsing general education on these lines.

35
General Learning and Liberal Studies

• By the 1940s and 1950s, people are beginning to
  separately define liberal and general education.
• Liberal was commonly defined as a fixed body of
  traditional liberal-arts disciples and general as
  any course of study exhibiting breadth or
  diversity.
• In the 1950s, the Cold War with the Soviet Union
  is sparking U.S. Government interest in promoting
  the values of Western Civilization and American
  democratic societybuilding a better citizen.

36
General Learning and Liberal Studies

• 1957- Sputnik accelerates the emphasis on higher
  education as a facilitator of personal attitudes,
  intellectual and social skills in larger society.
• Institutions of higher learning are now being
  assessed by the Government on how much they
  contribute to a nation, politically and
  militarily.

37
General Learning and Liberal Studies

• 1966- a five-day liberal Liberal Arts Conference
  sponsored by the University of Chicago was held
  to discuss general education.
• Philosopher Richard McKeon offered four useful
  distinctions in the ways education might be
  considered general 
• 1) It could connote common learned shared by
  allwhat the traditional prescribed curriculum
  had attempted to supply.
• 2) It could be construed as the search for
  principles of structures underlying all
  knowledge.
• 3) It might be taken to mean the search for
  learning appropriate to all human experienceno
  matter how acquired.
• 4) It could be understood as a the search for
  learning derived from or applicable to all
  cultures. 
• The meetings concluded with agreement as to the
  basic goals and outcomes of general education,
  but agreement on how to organize a curriculum to
  achieve them proved elusive as ever.

38
Student Activism and Dissent

• 1964- Campus Uprising at U.C. Berkeley
• http//www.historychannel.com/speeches/archive/spe
  ech_377.html

39
Student Activism and Dissent
Question Authority!
Power to the People!

• 1960s - civil rights crusade began in
  colleges and universities
• Hippies began to emerge on college campuses
• ...we condemned them, our children,
• for seeking a different future. We hated
• them for their flowers, for their love,
• and for their unmistakable rejection
• of every hideous, mistaken compromise
• that we had made throughout our hollow,
• money-bitten, frightened, adult lives. -
  June Jordan

Hell no, we won't go!
40
Student Activism and Dissent

• 1968- Students seize the administration building
  at Columbia University
• 1970- Nixon announces a U.S. invasion of
  Cambodia- many campuses experience anti-war
  protests

41
Student Activism and Dissent

• 1970- The Presidents Commission of Campus
  Unrest
• By 1971 there had been over 1,000 incidents at
  the Nations Universities.

42
What Do You Think?

• They profess individuality but exemplify
  conformity in their attachment to their own hair
  styles and dress codes. They profess humanism,
  but they tend to degrade reason, the very quality
  which makes us humanThey celebrate conscience,
  but then paralyze it with drugs. They eschew our
  technology, but delight in motor bikes,
  electronic music, recordings, television, hi-fi.
  They thoroughly disdain wealth and property,but
  liveon parental allowancesThey pretend
  humility, but display arrogance and
  self-righteousness toward those with whom they
  disagree
• -President Bloustein