American Universities just After the Revolution: Thelin, Chapter 2 (plus, bonus note about engagement with justice for Black Americans)
The post-revolution time was one of development and expansion, and the emergence of some of the key purposes that are part of our modern conversations about higher education.
After the American Revolution, several institutions underwent name changes, to avoid their colonial and Crown-connected roots (e.g., Kings College becomes Columbia; Queens College becomes Rutgers). In this time, states were the primary source of authority to grant degrees, but then, as now, the states had a mixed and uncertain commitment to funding institutions. As such, funding remained a complicated challenge for colleges and universities, making them “susceptible” (Thelin’s word) to innovation. This ambivalence of states also extended to their orientation towards control over universities — although the modern accreditation schemes did not emerge until much later.
This period saw the creation of lots of new colleges and universities, including the small liberal arts colleges of New England, a variety of Universities in the south, and the emergence of medical schools and law schools. Interestingly, the latter were not affiliated with colleges in any necessary way (e.g., no BA/BS requirement for medical school), and at the time, people could still practice law or medicine via internships or apprentice-like arrangements, rather than via degree pursuit at institutions of education. This era also saw the emergence of programs in natural sciences, engineering, agriculture — and the distinctive “bachelor of science” degree in some contexts.
Women’s colleges also emerged at this time. It must have been quite exciting and dynamic, and I can imagine (though Thelin doesn’t really care about the experience of those involved in all these developments) that people building Universities at this time felt like they were part of building a new country in a really visceral and engaging way. The emergence of professional and applied courses of study presages a new purpose for education — one around skills for specific types of work.
On a perhaps less exciting, but nonetheless quite entrepreneurial note, the emergence of diploma mills occurred at this time — and while some particularly egregious fraudsters were caught selling meaningless degrees, enforcement of the unique rights of chartered institutions wasn’t especially robust. This opens additional questions about the purpose of higher education — as certification/credentialling versus educating. The former, Thelin notes, “Should a degree be based on classes attended and examinations passed at a set physical place? Or should a demonstration of proficiency and merit be the criterion?” (p. 58) Note that the latter sounds so very reasonable in the language Thelin uses — and somewhat different than the notion of a diploma mill in modern usage. This debate, which might be termed education versus credentialling, remains a pernicious problem today because it enables critics of higher education to question whether the work of faculty and others in helping students to develop their capacities is worthwhile. If the “real” purpose of degree granting institutions is a kind of vague and non-specific credentialling rather than educating (e.g., Caplan, 2018), then the expense of hiring and supporting expert faculty, providing well-equipped libraries and laboratories, and offering the kind of residential experience deemed important for education makes relatively little sense.
Regarding that residential experience, student life in this era continued to be something that was student-driven and either parallel to, or sometimes in opposition to, the curriculum and study that faculty offered. Student-promoted activities would emerge, becoming a focus of university attention (including efforts to eradicate or regulate those activities), and ultimately, getting incorporated into the major mission of the universities. One way to think about this is that today’s central presence of student affairs and athletic departments may have quite deep roots in American higher education — and reflect the outcome of a lengthy negotiation between student-driven elements of collegiate culture, including the socialization and “networking” aims that we think of as part of higher education today, and the more knowledge/scholarship focused educational aims of university faculty and curricula at the time.
So, things to carry forward about the purpose of higher education? Credentialling versus education; the joint purposes implied by student activities (co-curriculars) and the academic programs developed by faculty; and the emergence of an orientation towards professional/work-related education.
Black Lives Matter: A Shift in Project Aims.
I’m writing this pretty antiseptic tour of history during a time of real, justified, and intense upheaval in the United States. During this past couple weeks, protestors have hit the streets all over the country to demand change around the treatment of Black Americans, the continued stain of our country’s racist history and present, and the intolerable inequities in the way our culture operates. Tomorrow, June 10, 2020 is a day of solidarity for Black Americans, conducted by STEM workers and academics. If you’re interested, and June 10 is too little notice (or is past by the time you encounter this essay), here is another opportunity.
I won’t be working on my day job tomorrow, and instead, I’ll be doing my best to educate myself about the history of Black participation in higher education. Thelin addresses this throughout his book, which is where I will start, but I will also be pulling in some modern sources as well. Long-term, for people like myself, there is serious work to be done to promote equitable levels of academic success among Black students, so I will, in line with the protest plan, be looking at what I can do to further that project at my own and other institutions.
