What the Student Body, reflected in the bodies of students, reveals about the purpose of Higher Ed.
Prologue: Unpacking the idea of purpose.
“…in 2001, [Kerr] concluded that American higher education in the twenty-first century had become uncertain and unclear in its direction and mission.” Thelin, 2019, p. xiii.
Several of my readers and colleagues have suggested the complexity of asking about purpose — in various ways. One asked whether I was interested in descriptive purposes or prescriptive ones — am I trying to merely understand what higher education is aiming to do, or to articulate what higher education should be doing. Another person’s comments pointed at a distinction between purpose, which I think denotes intentional, conscious, deliberate goals, and impact — the functional impact that higher education has had, currently has, and could have — whether intended or not. We may have one set of purposes governing how we design recruitment, admissions, enrollment, curricular, or co-curricular opportunities and paths, but those same processes may have other, functions — functions that may be not-quite-intentional.
It occurred to me that a different angle on my reading of, and writing about, Thelin’s (2019) history of U.S. higher education could partially address some of these different pieces of purpose while skimming across his chronological organization. This article takes up the question of who higher education aims to admit, enroll, educate, and graduate — the individual bodies that compose the student body, but focuses specifically on enrollment of Black students.
The Student Body through Time
Higher education in the U.S. (as well as elsewhere) has historically sought to enroll, educate, and graduate white males from relative elite backgrounds. In Thelin’s coverage, shifts in the student body are addressed throughout, but in the context of other institutional innovations, transformations, and machinations. Black students, at least in Thelin’s account, are absent for a long historical period. Only in the mid- to late 1800s did options open for Black Americans to attend college in more widespread ways, after the development of women’s colleges. At the time, institutions were segregated, and missionary organizations (The American Missionary Association, for one) helped to fund schools for Black students. These schools were focused on practical training — producing elementary level teachers, and knowledgeable agricultural workers, among other goals, and the Tuskegee Institute (initially) was rooted in this more practical kind of educational mission. Importantly, there were also Black only institutions founded during this era by Black communities — and these, in contrast to the practically focused schools, sought to provide a more traditional liberal arts education towards the shaping of community leaders.
Through the turn of the century, Black colleges continued to develop, but under limited resource conditions and with relatively little attention in media treatments of ‘college life’. At this time, Howard and Fisk, in particular, were offering a strong liberal arts curriculum aimed at training future leaders, with a seriousness of purpose that was less evident in the emphasis on ‘college life’ at white institutions. Between 1920 and 1945, women’s colleges began to admit some Black students, and Black students began to be admitted to northern colleges in small numbers — often encouraged by southern institutions that did not want to enroll Black students.
In the aftermath of World War II, the GI Bill led to changes in the representation of Black students at predominantly white universities, even as their numbers overall remained relatively small. The historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) during this time also remained active, and were educating those who would take on leadership roles in the Civil Rights movement; however, desegregation began to create competition between the HBCUs and elite predominantly white institutions for talented Black students; a situation that remains true today. From the 1970s to the 21st century, regulations around equity led to diversification of the student body along many racial, ethnic, and gender dimensions.
Today’s Student Body: Admission/Enrollment and Graduation.
Data from the National Center for Education Statistics suggest that the proportion of Black students enrolled in higher education has increased from 2000 to the present, but these enrollments mask continued disparities in the places where Black students are enrolled, compared to their White counterparts (see Atlantic article; Cottom, 2017). Further, enrollment is only the beginning of access to higher education, and graduation gaps between Black and White college students remain (U.S. News); such gaps are also present for other historically minoritized groups, as well as for economically less privileged students (see related data on ‘gateway’ courses here).
Back to Purpose and Function
Regardless of its purpose, the conclusion is unavoidable, and I am not delivering an original insight here: Higher education has historically functioned to reproduce inequality in the United States, along class, racial, gendered, and ethnic boundaries. To some extent, that function may be inextricable from the purposes for higher education that characterize its early history: those around human capital and social capital.
Human Capital. Education in the U.S. has always been partially about providing training to those with power and resources so that they might lead. It has also long involved training for non-elite individuals so as to maximize their human capital via practical training, and the occasional elevation of deserving non-elites (there is a whole story here about standardized testing). As such, our country, with the exception of the HBCUs, has not on the whole built educational institutions for the purpose of educating Black students, and to the extent that it has included Black students, that has been with an emphasis on practical skills, rather than leadership. Moreover, the inclusion of Black students in higher education has been shaped by the availability of money tied to education — via missionary efforts historically and a broader array of resources now.
Again, I’m not providing novel insights here. A broader history of the relations between Black labor and U.S. higher education can be found in this book: Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the troubled history of America’s universities. Currently, for-profit institutions, profiled in Tressie McMillan Cottom’s Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of for-profit Colleges in the New Economy, continue to exploit the needs of Black and Brown students as a means to move financial aid funding into the pockets of corporate elites.
What I found so striking, however, was the way in which the function of universities in reproducing a highly restricted elite and placing that elite in leadership positions emerges from bare-bones, factual history. A highly nuanced social, economic, and historical analysis like those in the books I mention and many others can illuminate these connections with greater sophistication and foundation. But Thelin’s concise, and fact-focused account, one that does not appear to aim at evaluative statements, supports precisely the same conclusion.
Social Capital. Education in the U.S. has also long entailed a social component — one in which children of the elite are brought together to form lasting bonds, and to practice leadership in the context of their own, student-centered culture. This component of the purposes of higher education is directly related to both the long-standing institutions of student culture (Greek life, eating clubs, student government) and, I suspect, but cannot prove, to the “feature-creep” of modern campuses, with their copious amenities for students’ residential lives.
What about Forging An Educated, Engaged, Broadly Inclusive Citizenry?
Of course, human and social capital can easily get narrowly construed, around the individual benefits of going to college — the notion of college as a private good. But human capital is also a public good in many ways. Developing human capital is an engine for economic growth, and beyond that, a society with more educated and capable people engaging in public debate and helping to forge collective decisions (via voting, or other means) would presumably make and support better policies and decisions, and have greater resilience in times that call for adaptation and change. Every year, the Utah System of Higher Education (USHE) holds a conference on “What is an educated person?” The purpose of this conference is for institutions within the state to engage in an evolving conversation about what an educated person is, their/our collective role in helping people become educated, and the importance for our state that we devote attention to that process. A move towards a more inclusive student body is a move to develop our collectively shared store of human capital.
A society with greater social capital — more ties among its’ members — has the capacity to act more cohesively and for the common good in a crisis. I write this in a time when there is great debate about the need to wear masks to protect others, and ourselves, from a highly contagious novel virus. Many writers are speculating that the individualistic and atomistic culture of the U.S. is hampering our ability to adapt to the threat of the novel coronavirus. While that is a hypothesis in wait of a good, strong test, the move to more inclusive educational institutions is also a move to increase social capital for us all.
An explicitly inclusive purpose emerges from higher education history only relatively recently — as the student body becomes composed of a much wider array of student bodies. This purpose, cutting across the human and social capital functions of higher education, is a very challenging one to fulfill. I think it’s safe to say we don’t quite know how to do it well, we’re stumbling around trying, and our efforts are falling short. But in the wake of Black Lives Matter, it seems like it is time to place the inclusive purpose of higher education squarely in focus, and ask whether the system we’ve designed is going to enable us to reach that goal — and if not, what needs to change?
