Thelin chapter 2, Creating the “American Way” in Higher education, College Building, 1785-1860:

• College Mottoes and American aspiration:
  • Thelin starts off this chapter talking about how the American college mottoes of the antebellum era announced noble purposes. For instance Harvard’s “Light and Truth”, Brown’s “Hope in God”, etc.
  • Thelin claims, however, that these noble expressions did not capture the true spirit of the era, which was actually a period of “extreme innovation and consumerism, with virtually no government accountability or regulation.” 
  • He makes clear that it wasn’t a period of chaos for higher education b/c colleges displayed initiatives and appropriate responses for the changing nation.
    • Number of degree granting colleges reached 241 by 1860 (cool!)
    • In addition to new institutions (universities, academies, scientific schools…), new curricula were added (medicine, law, engineering, theology…). Something important happening was that these new institutions sought to enroll previously excluded groups. 
  • Something potentially confusing: “Higher education would become america’s ‘cottage industry’.” (pg 41, third paragraph). A cottage industry is a business carried in a person’s home, like the arts or clothing. In this context, the sentence could mean that higher education would become a specialized sector in American economy or society, much in the same way a home business’ products take specialized knowledge and time to create. 
• A new nation without nationalism:
  • Widespread distrust of national government and defused national initiatives
    • No national university despite proper advocation and funding by prominent leaders like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Benjamin Rush. 
  • The only exceptions to the createion of national institution were the U.S Miliatary Academy at West Point and U.S Naval Academy at Annapolis. 
• Charters and Changes:
  • In the colonies that became states, little changes were made to charters of existing colleges besides removing any reference to the monarchy. King’s college renamed to Columbia for instance.
  •  Despite the revolution, I guess the college of William and Mary just didn’t want to change names. (?)
  • Most obvious change was that higher education now fell under state govts. 
  • *In colonial America, charters were hard to come by, so the few institutions that were granted charters could count on enduring support. In comparison, new America now found granting charters was far more common.  This is b/c they were viewed as an easy and inexpensive way for legislators and governors to reward supporters. However, now there was no promise of funding so colleges had to seek funding from different sources. 

• More institution building in the South:
  • Bro talks about developments in the south. 
  • Transylvania University: Successful pioneering inst., new sponsors included Unitarians as opposed to presbyterians, new curriculum. Educated a lot leaders.
  • South Carolina College (University of SC): political inst., influenced several generations of political leaders. Was a haven for plantation aristocrats, who sent their sons to this college in order to keep their sons at home and away from dissenting ideas. 
  • University of Virginia: a model in education. Innovative curriculum, no links to religious denominations, hand picked faculty, petty rules and strict discipline replaced with a student code made by students. This freedom allowed to students led lot of problems: students challenging professors, bringing their slaves, servants, guns, alcohol to campus. 
• A Variety of institutions and Innovations:
  • New types of institutions and programs that furthered diversity of American higher ed:
    • More Med schools – no requirement to have a diploma or college degree to enter. Instruction offered on a pay-to-go basis. Students required to purchase non-refundable ticket to each lecture (?!). Law in a similar situation. 
    • Higher ed for women- Though there were small enrollment numbers for women at the time, at the least, opportunities for women in advanced study had begun to take place. Meanwhile in the colonial times, there were no records of women having received a degree. 
• *Consumerism and the Colleges:
  • Greatest growth in enrollment took place in the South and West. Social mobility for young men was provided mainly through small church-related colleges. Entrance requirements were flexible, and tuition was relatively low. 
  • “What these colleges did contribute to American life was a reasonably affordable entree in to a new, educated elite. They helped to create an elite rather than to confirm one.” (pg 69)
  • However, thelin spits some data that shows just how few in number college students made up of the population. So why so few students?: families couldn’t deal with forfeited labor of their children, also perceived as a high-risk venture that could prevent time from developing one’s fortune. 

Thelin Chapter 3, Diversity and Adversity, Resilience in American Higher Education, 1860-1890:

• Thelin starts off chapter by saying that though the Civil War and Morill act of 1862 stand out as national events that heavily impacted higher education, paying special attention just to these two would undermine the importance of more obscure, local, state, and regional developments in shaping higher ed.
  • Morill act-  set aside federal lands to create public colleges to “benefit the agricultural and mechanical arts.”
    • Land grants were not literal gifts where colleges would be built. The federal govt. Provided incentives for each state to sell distant western lands, and use the proceeds to help fund colleges. 
  • How the civil war influence higher ed? –  many southern college students and faculty enlisted or became officers in the Confederate Army. Many campuses, not just in the south, transformed into hospitals and shelters. 
  • Furthermore, some evidence suggests the war had allowed for a political opportunity where congress could push legislation that had been stalled for several years, the Morill act being one of them. 
• The Land-Grant Legacy
  • Land grants for schools and colleges had been used long before the 1862 Morill Land grant act. Congressional land grants for higher ed were made for seventeen states between 1796 a nd 1861. Ex: 100,000 acres to Tennessee and several tens of thousands of acres to other states. 
  • Context: Land grants were cheaper than direct financial support and more abundant at the time b/c there was so much “unused” land. 
  • Thelin claims that that the effects of the Morill act, at least in the first few decades after its enactment, have been misunderstood or exaggerated.
    • First misunderstanding- the act created flourishing colleges. Wrong because most state colleges were already well and established by 1862. The act merely led to more specialization within states. 
    • Second misunderstanding- the goal of the act was not to promote higher education, but to figure out whether unsettled lands should be opened for commercial purposed or to be used for settlement and raising revenues (the act was a triumph for the second approach). 
• Competitions and cooperation in scientific and technical education:
  • Throughout northeast, developments in applied sciences and technical education took place without coordination. 
• Women and higher education:
  • By 1860, at least 45 institutions offered collegiate degrees to women. 
  • This was complex and controversial at the time, as it was simultaneously unpopular with most Americans and an increasingly attractive subject to white women. 

• Normal schools:
  •  Normal schools = teacher’s college
  • Most ambitious was Alfred Holbrook’s National Normal University. Holbrook took great interest in curricular development and pedagogy (theory of how to teach)
  • In most of these schools, even the coeducational ones, women were the majority. 
  • The college of william and mary, struggling after the civil war, was granted annual state subsidies for providing advanced instruction for white males who would agree to teach in the state’s public school system. Important b/c it essentially became the counterpart to women’s normal schools.
    • The college’s annual funding from state subsidies provided more than 90% of its operating budget for over 2 decades. 
• Premature obituaries (death notices, especially in newspapers) for the Liberal Arts Colleges:
  • “[The implication of] proposals for utilitarian studies and a modern university was the notion that the historic liberal arts colleges were inadequate.” But where they?
    • Thelin provides examples of established liberal arts colleges with enrollments surpassing 200 students. He states that modern universities didn’t even surpass established colleges in terms of scholarly resources like labs and libraries. 

• Coeducation and Women:
  • Major change after civil war- coeducation of white women and men. 
  • This allowed women’s colleges an opportunity to provide a distinct structure for the higher education of women. This included options to participate in journalism, athletics, music, literary groups, and advanced studies. A great deal of alumnae from women’s colleges in the 1880s went on to pursue studies in law, medicine, and Ph.D programs. 
• College Administraiton and finances:
  • How did colleges plan and implement their annual operating budgets? Tuition charges were low, and even considering tuition payments from full-time students, this wasn’t enough to cover salaries and services, let alone construction. 
  • “If a student was excluded from a particular college, it was more likely due to social, gender, ethnic, racial, or religious discrimination than to the price of attendance.” Colleges struggled to get young Americans to join. 
  • As we discussed in previous classes, college presidents were the principal fund raisers, and most institutions also dependeon on paid college agents, who would both recruit students and enlist donors. 
  • Most colleges  remained dependent on gifts and funding from the local community b/c they were deemed indispensable. 
  • Between 1850 and 1890, an important change in higher ed was the increasing influence of substantial philanthropy. Women’s colleges became major successful beneficiaries of philanthropy b/c they weren’t mainstream, therefore already relied on intense commitment from donors. 
• Interregional Philanthropy and the Black colleges:
  • Black colleges’ focus on practical education carried with it the notions of race combined with socioeconomic tracking. 
  • Black higher educaiton philanthropy preferred segregated black institutions whose curricula offered preparation for crafts and trades as part of a plan for regional economic development within the confines of a conservative, racially segregated atmosphere. This is a fancy way of saying that philanthropy from the north was typically provided for the purpose of economic development still under segregation. 

Drewery and doermann Chapter 3, The Beginnings of Black Higher Education:

• Claim: black higher education began in southern institutions following the civil war, however, there were a few black people in higher education prior.
  • First black students entered American colleges and Universities two centuries after Harvard was found. John Chavis was the first black person involved in American higher education. Although not formally enrolled, he studied privately under John Witherspoon (president of the college and one of the founding fathers) in the late 18th century. 
  • First degrees by black Americans were earned in 1826 by Edward A. Jones and John Russworm. 
• Pre-war institutions for providing higher ed. to black Americans founded for same reason as colleges for white women: both groups were previously excluded in this regard. These institutions were located in areas with anti-slavery sentiments like Pennsylvania and northern Ohio. 
• There was, however,  a big difference in inst.’s for women in comparison to black people, even though both were established at the same time period. For one, there was a greater hostility towards educating them in many regards, particularly in the South. Therefore, many white women were ahead in terms of education before higher learning and statewide public educational systems became available. 
•   In 1865, Freedmen’s Burea created- a branch of the War department that aimed to help assist newly emancipated black people, providing services like medical care, education, housing, and legal assistance. 
• Though short-lived and lacking in many areas, the Burea made its most progress in education.
  •  “the establishment of 4,207 schools, employing 8,967 teachers, and serving 210,618 pupils “of all kinds [graded schools, high and normal schools, night schools, and Sabbath schools]” (pg 36). 
• * “But it is difficult to identify another civil war in which the defeated side suffered less in the aftermath of defeat… By 1870, all the former Confederate states were back in the Union. No fines, long prison terms, or death sentences were imposed on the Confederacy’s political and military leaders and by 1872, amnesty had been granted to all former Confederates” (pg 38).
  • This is an important quote b/c it shows how this leniency was taken at the expense of black Americans, who could not secure a proper education or accumulate resources essential for success. 

Solomon chapter 4:

• Chapter starts off talking about Lucy Stone, the first woman from Massachusetts to receive an A.B degree. 
• By 1900, women had access to various institutions and coeducation had become the norm, however the ivy league colleges were still off bounds. Solomon says that women’s efforts alone did not lead to the rise in coeducation, although their persistence did make the difference in cementing real change.
• There were three factors which took place between the civil war and WWI that led to this rise of females in higher education.
  • First and most lasting was the rising popularity in public education 
  • Second was the affect of the Civil War and reconstruction period.
    • The civil war allowed women opportunites both in employment and in education. “The question of whether an employed women was stepping out of her domestic sphere became irrelevant in the face of an overwhelming need for labor” (pg 45). 
    • “The forced reevaluation of soceity that accompanied the end of slavery logically extended to a reconsideration of the status of women” (pg 45).
    • As immigration and settlement to the west expanded, the need for employed women grew. Also note that there were many widows following the war who needed to provide for themselves. 
  • Lastly, the expansion in University education throughout the period. 
• However, in direct opposition to educating women were those who believed women should hold a different, more traditional place in society. 
• Political dimensions of female educatoin:
  • Disappointment in lack of suffrage (the right to vote) of women even though 15th amendment provided it for black men.
• Catholic colleges for women began to sprout just before the start of the 20th century: College of Notre dam (1896) and Trinity college (1897). 
• The founders of cornell expected the college to be coeducational, but the charter did not mention women. The college opened in 1868 with 400 male students. This changed when a woman by the name of Jenny Spencer applied with a state scholarship. Solomon states that Jenny was allowed into the college b/c cornell’s funding came from one of the founders as well as from New York State and the Morill Land Grant Act. Does this imply that the state scholarship is what allowed Jenny to enter or does the Morill act force all colleges it helped fund to enforce coeducation? Even though women weren’t included or excluded from the act, this still begs the question what legal precedent in co-education did the Morill act create?
• Jenny spencer’s admission to cornell foreshadowed other confrontations over coeducation in the 1870s:
  • The refusal to admit women to the City College of New York in 1847 led to the creation in 1870 of the normal school for women, later known as Hunter College. 
  • Some colleges were founded as a way to avoid coeducation:
    • Flora Mather college was founded so that Adelbert college of Western Reserve University could become an all-boy’s school, reversing its coeducational beginning.
    • Brown University worked out an arrangement so that faculty could instruct women at pembroke college. 
    • Jackson’s college and the women’s college of rochester university also were founded as coeducational but later opted for single-sex segregation. 
• *New arguments emerged in opposition to educating women from a scientific perspective:
  • Darwinian evolution assigned women as permanently inferior both physically and mentally.
  • Some doctors declared it to even be harmful for them to try to educate themselves. 
• Most famous attack came from Dr. Edward Clarke, retired Harvard Medical school professor.
  • His book, Sex in education, was widely read and discussed. In it, he describes how after studying the cases of seven female college students, he concluded that “if women used up their ‘limited energy’ on studying, they would endanger their female apparatus (system or structure). 
  • What made his argument most compelling at the time was the separation of women’s education from women’s rights. It was more important for a society if women focused on bearing children than to risk harming themselves in the pursuit of education. 

•  Any Excitement over Clarke’s warnings subsided soon after, as acceptance of coeducation rose over the next decade. The 1890s saw the establishment of two major universities that admitted female students right from the start: University of chicago and Stanford
• Between 1902 and 1912, the explosion in female enrollments in coeducational institutions created another wave of criticism. In particular, their success in collegiate education created a number of negative reactions.
  • New fear was that women would take over colleges and impact on male enrollments was the major issue. 
  •  “Academic achievements was held against females when they surpassed males in either sheer numbers or academic honors. Faculty members echoed the the views of disgruntled… male students and charged that women interfered with male academic performance. 
• Pg 61, last paragraph of the chapter: “The period between the 1870s and the 1910s witnessed an extraordinary movement of women taking advantage of new opportunities not always designed for them. Whatever the attitudes towards them…. Women as a group stayed on the academic scen and by their faith and tenacity created collegiate patterns for future generations.”

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