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The Golden Age of American Higher Education

From 1945 to 1975, American higher education had the Midas Touch. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

After each major war in the history of the United States, significant growth occurred in the American higher education enterprise. All of these increases combined did not equal the growth in the three decades following WWII. The period between 1945 and 1975 could easily be labeled the Golden Age of American Higher Education.

During this time span, American higher education had the Midas touch. Everything was going well. American colleges and universities had overflowing enrollments. They couldn’t build facilities fast enough to satisfy the undergraduate student demand. Graduate schools couldn’t produce a sufficient number of PhDs to fill the faculty positions needed to teach the surfeit of undergraduate students. Public and private supporters tripped over each other as they rushed to provide the enormous increase in financial support needed to finance the vast expansion occurring. Nationally and internationally the reputation and prestige of American higher education were soaring to new heights.

During these three decades, the face of American higher education (AHE) was completely altered. AHE changed its focus. No longer was it predominantly an exclusive club for the sons of the wealthy elite, providing them with a liberal arts veneer to establish and ground them so that they could assume their “rightful place” of leadership in business, governmental, ecclesiastical, and social circles.

President Roosevelt in the Oval Office signing the GI Bill into law. The original photograph was taken by an unknown government employee as part of that person’s official duties. Thus, the photograph is in the public domain in the United States. Image courtesy of the FDR Library and Wikimedia Commons.

As WWII wound down and the nation transitioned into a post-war phase, two presidential actions had an enormous effect on American higher education. The first occurred two weeks after the Allied landing on the beaches of Normandy, France on D-Day, which began the most important battle of the war. On June 22, 1944, President Roosevelt signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, into law.  This bill provided a very wide range of benefits for returning World War II veterans, including educational assistance for veterans and their families.

This law expired in 1956 and was subsequently replaced by adjustments for veterans of the Korean Conflict and Vietnam War. Of the nearly 16 million World War II veterans, more than 2.2 million used benefits to enroll in a college or university and another 5.6 million participated in various career-oriented training programs. In the peak year of 1947, veterans accounted for 49 percent of all U.S. college admissions. Between 1956 and 1975, another 6 million individuals were aided by educational assistance programs for veterans and their families through extensions to the original GI Bill.

President Truman in 1945. This is an official presidential photograph taken by Edmonston Studio, which did not renew its copyright when the initial copyright expired. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress and Wikimedia Commons.

In light of the economic, demographic and educational changes occurring in the United States, by proclamation on July 13, 1946, President Harry S. Truman instituted a Commission on Higher Education, and named George F. Zook, then president of the American Council on Education, as its Chair. Truman charged the Commission

“…to concern itself with the ways and means of expanding educational opportunities for all able young people; the adequacy of curricula, particularly in the fields of international affairs and social understanding; the desirability of establishing a series of intermediate technical institutes; and the financial structure of higher education with particular reference to the requirements for the expansion of physical facilities.”

In the Commission’s 1947 Report, Higher Education for Democracy, it was noted that

“Education is by far the biggest and the most hopeful of the Nation’s enterprises. Long ago our people recognized that education for all is not only democracy’s obligation but its necessity. Education is the foundation of democratic liberties. Without an education citizenry alert to preserve and extend freedom, it would not long endure.”

The last phrase echoes the words of President Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the Gettysburg Civil War Battlefield Cemetery.

In reflecting on President Truman’s charge to the Commission, the report stated that

“…the President’s Commission on Higher Education has attempted to select, from among the principal goals for higher education, those which should come first in our time. They are to bring all the people of the Nation:

  • Education for a fuller realization of democracy in every phase of living.

  • Education directly and explicitly for international understanding and cooperation.

  • Education for the application of creative imagination and trained intelligence to the solution of social problems and to the administration of public affairs.”

In spite of the new frontiers in to which American Higher Education was being pushed by the perceived new national needs and the plethora of government commissions, reports, and programs, along with the burgeoning population growth engendered by the Baby Boom and subsequent diversification of the potential higher education clientele, AHE still proclaimed itself as the legitimate heir and guardian of the liberal arts tradition. The only concession that AHE seemed willing to make was the introduction of the new model of a liberal education to replace the declining model of the ancient liberal arts.

An illustration of the seven liberal arts from the 12th-century book Hortus Delicarum of Herrad of Landsberg. This image is in the public domain because it is a faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art. Image courtesy of Dnalor 01 and Wikimedia Commons.

The seven traditional liberal arts of Medieval times were divided into two parts. The first part was called the trivium, which consisted of three literary disciplines. The second part was called the quadrivium, which consisted of four quantitative disciplines.

The three literary disciplines were:

  • Grammar. This deals with the correct usage of language, both in speaking and writing.
  • Dialectic (or logic). This is correct thinking, helping an individual arrive at the truth.
  • Rhetoric. This concerns the expression of ideas, particularly through persuasion. It deals with ways of organizing thoughts in a speech or document so that people can understand your ideas and believe them.

The four quantitative or mathematical disciplines were:

  • Arithmetic. This deals with numbers and the simple operations involving numbers.
  • Geometry. This concerns spaces, spatial calculations, and spatial relationships.
  • Astronomy. This is the study of the stars. It is used for timekeeping, navigation, and developing a sense of place.
  • Music. This is the study of ratio, proportion, and sound as it is related to melody and song.

Prior to the 20th-century, with a few exceptions for professional and practical arts programs, American higher education followed the medieval liberal arts paradigm. In the 20th-century, American society transitioned from a rural and agricultural society to an urban and manufacturing culture. In response to these changes, AHE evolved along with them.

This chart is the blog author’s graphic interpretation of the 2002 definition of Liberal Education offered by the AAC&U. The chart was created using ClickChart software.

The 20th-century American higher education version of the liberal arts added several other components. These were usually framed in the sense of the answer to the question: “What foundation of general knowledge did a well-educated individual need?” These additions began with a solid grounding in the humanities and sciences, including history, philosophy, the social sciences, and the natural sciences. AHE invented the term liberal education in an attempt to describe this “slightly altered” form. To describe this new form of education, the term liberal designated the knowledge and values which freed up or liberated an individual to be more human or humane. The American Association of Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) took it upon itself to define more fully what the new liberal education should look like and involve.

American higher education became bifurcated and unapologetically splintered. While one side of campuses persisted as the solid, unyielding fortresses of the liberal arts and liberal education, the other side of campuses rapidly developed into the training ground of choice for a quickly and constantly changing workforce which needed professional, technical, and career knowledge and skills. Students flocked to American colleges and universities to study the practical arts and sciences (such as the agricultural sciences of horticulture and animal husbandry), engineering, technology, educational studies (such as pedagogy and curriculum), and career and professional studies (such as accounting, business administration, and management).

In each of the two camps of the liberal arts and the practical and professional studies, more fissures appeared. Both camps separated themselves into undergraduate and graduate schools. The undergraduate schools concentrated on providing students with basic post-secondary education, helping them acquire the skills and knowledge necessary for further study or to obtain the first position in their field. The graduate schools concentrated on assisting qualified students to do more in-depth study within their field and prepare themselves to add to the world’s knowledge base.

President John F. Kennedy speaking at Rice University on September 12, 1962. This image was originally posted to Flickr by NASA on The Commons at https://flickr.com/photos/44494372@N05/29533458786. It was reviewed on 15 September 2016 by FlickreviewR and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the No known copyright restrictions. Image courtesy of Flickr, NASA, and Wikimedia Commons.

American higher education had expanded its reach after the Civil War into the service arena with the Land Grant Act. University faculty were also drawn into national service through research projects directed toward the national defense in the lead up to WWII. After WWII these areas exploded. Rising revenues from government and industry sources transformed faculty research from an afterthought into a booming business.

President Kennedy was the superb politician and master of the one-liner. He spurred the nation into a service frenzy, with his “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” The peace corp, an outgrowth of Kennedy’s inaugural speech, became the embodiment of the ideals toward which the Morrill Act of a century earlier had pointed a growing nation.

Kennedy then jump-started the space race in his famous Rice University speech with the line:  “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…” This challenge set the tone for a decade of exploits not only in space travel but many other areas of scientific and medical research in which American research universities led the way.

Picture of the University of Chicago as it may have appeared in 1900. The image by an unknown photographer. It is the public domain because it was published prior to 1916. Image courtesy of the University of Chicago and Wikimedia Commons.

The American research university came into being in the late 19th century as a few American institutions took the German Humboldt University model and put a new world twist on it. In February 1900, the presidents of five American universities (Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and the University of California) invited the presidents of nine other universities (Catholic University of American, Clark, Cornell, Princeton, Stanford, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, University of Wisconsin – Madison, Yale) to meet at the University of Chicago to discuss plans to solidify the place and reputation of American universities in the research and higher education world. As a result of these discussions, the fourteen schools formed the Association of American Universities (AAU).

The initial agenda of the AAU included three items:

  1. to bring about “a greater uniformity of the conditions under which students may become candidates for higher degrees in different American universities, thereby solving the problem of migration,”
  2. to “raise the opinion entertained abroad of our own Doctor’s degree,” and
  3. to “raise the standard of our own weaker institutions.”

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, as the American research university matured, the unofficial agenda of the AAU became the following four points:

  • inspire research institutions to emphasize a distinction between preparatory studies and higher learning;
  • encourage research institutions to make the idea of advancing knowledge through specialized, original research a central tenant of their mission statements;
  • embolden research institutions to assure the independence of faculty and students in the area of intellectual inquiry (i.e., guarantee “academic freedom” in their studies)
  • exhort research institutions to provide the necessary institutional structure to fully support the “research ideal.”
Radar image of Tropical Storm Humberto approaching the United States along the Texas coastline in September 2007.  This image is in the public domain because it contains materials that originally came from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, taken or made as part of an employee’s official duties. Image courtesy of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Wikimedia Commons

After WWII, the AAU redoubled its efforts to push a “specialized research” and an “America first agenda.” Although world rankings of universities didn’t exist until several years into the 21st century, the 60 United States members of the AAU were recognized around the world as top-flight educational institutions. By 1975 these schools and many other American colleges were attracting students and faculty from every corner of the world.

To many inside and outside the American higher education community, the horizon for American higher education could not have looked brighter. However, to the critics and some commentators of AHE, warning signs abounded. There was a storm brewing that was just showing up on radar screens across American campuses. Just like the radar screenshot of Tropical Storm Humberto shown at the left, only small showers had landed prior to the approach of the massive body of the storm, which was getting ready to unload its full fury a short time later. Was the golden age of American higher education about to end? Spoiler alert: my next post in this series will focus on the disruptive forces which played havoc with American higher education from 1975 to the present.

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Some Mathematicians Are Different

This is a modified page scan of “The Ugly Duckling” a story from “Fairy tales and stories” by Hans Christian Anderson, translated by Hans Lien Brækstad, with illustrations by Hans Tegner. The book was originally published in 1900. and as such is in the Public Domain. Image is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

From the comments I received after I published the recent post Are All Mathematicians Crazy?, it is obvious that I didn’t convince many readers that some mathematicians are almost normal. I readily admit that some mathematicians are off the chart on the eccentric side of the normality continuum. These famous curve busters make it difficult for the rest of us. There are mathematicians who indeed were strange birds and didn’t always fit the normal mode. They were different and stood out from their peers. Through the years, these unconventional mavericks have gotten most of the press coverage. Once you admit that you are a mathematician, you are automatically branded as different. 

In a series of posts, I will discuss some of the more stranger mathematicians among us. The earliest outlier that I want to discuss is Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570 – c. 495 BC).  He has been called by many the leading philosopher and ethicist of his day. Since there is no record of Pythagoras ever putting quill to papyrus, we have none of his works in his own words. All that we know of him and his teachings are what others have recorded. If half of the legends concerning Pythagoras are true, then in today’s vernacular, he could easily be labeled “a strange duck.”

Cropped photograph of the bust of Pythagoras in the Vatican Museum. Pythagoras is portrayed as a tired old man. This photograph was uploaded to English Wikipedia by Andargor in March 2008. Andragor released the image to the public domain. Image courtesy of Andragor and Wikimedia Commons.

Although he influenced many great philosophers, ethicists, and mathematicians, he is probably best known for the formula bearing his name, the Pythagorean Theorem, which states that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. However, Pythagoras didn’t discover this formula since it was used in construction in Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations at least one millennium before he lived. It bears his name because Pythagoras is credited with the first generalized proof of this relationship, which is the proof I referenced in my previous post Are All Mathematicians Crazy?.

In terms of Pythagoras’ life, there are many contradictory stories. We believe he was born on Samos, a Greek Island in the Aegean Sea near modern day Turkey. His father most likely was a European merchant living and trading on Samos. Legend has it that Pythagoras, as a child and young man, traveled extensively throughout Asia, Asia Minor, Europe, and Africa. He reportedly sat under the tutelage of the best teachers and priests in Asia Minor, India, Egypt, and Greece.

Photograph of a page from the book “The Story of the greatest nations” by Ellis and Horn, published in 1913. The scene depicts the Pythagorean School in Croton. Since the book was published before 1924, it is in the Public Domain. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

We know that he was a gifted thinker and a great teacher. People traveled from all over the world to sit at his feet and learn from the master. He started a school known as the Semicircle since that was the shape of the Pythagorean classroom. This classroom model is still very common in college settings today. Pythagoras would take center stage with a clear view of all students, while the students could see all other students and direct answers and questions directly to them as well as the teacher. However, students have always been students. Notice the lack of attention on the face of the one student in the foreground, staring off into space. Even the great teacher Pythagoras couldn’t keep her attention.

In the illustration of the Pythagorean School, most of the students depicted are women. Pythagoras was the first Greek philosopher or teacher who advocated education for women. He was also the first prominent Greek to promote monogamy within marriage. His influence on women’s rights and the education of women was felt for centuries.

From his time in an Egyptian temple, he may have picked up his ideas on metempsychosis, the belief in reincarnation.  It is reported that Pythagoras could recall all of his former lives. He entertained his students and followers for hours on end with stories of his former lives. Since he believed that he was there in one of his former lives, he supposedly enthralled his listeners with vivid accounts of the great battle and fall of Troy. In at least one incarnation, Pythagoras was supposedly a beautiful courtesan, a prostitute who lived an unhappy and unfulfilled life in the lap of luxury, courtesy of her wealthy customers. Some writers attribute his high regard for women to the time he spent as this oppressed woman with few rights.

A photograph of the Temple at Luxor in 1867 by Félix Bonfils. This image is in the public domain since Bonfils died in 1885 and the copyright subsequently expired. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

While in Egypt, it has been reported that he was admitted into the priesthood at the Temple of Karnak near the cities of Thebes (Greek name: Diospolis – city of the gods) and Luxor. If true, he would have been the only non-Egyptian to have ever been granted this great honor. Supposedly he learned much of his geometry from the Egyptian priests. They also instilled in him their lifestyle and moral codes, which included abstinence from sexual pleasure, and avoidance of clothes made from animal skins. The Theban priests were vegetarians with one quirk. They refused to eat or even touch beans. This unusual behavior was apparently well-engrained into Pythagoras.

Pythagoras studied at Luxor for ten years until Cyrus and the Persian army defeated the Egyptians in 526 BC. In the battle for Thebes, the Persians killed Egyptian Pharoah Psamtik III, son of Amasis II.  The Persians were so enamored by the size and beauty of the Luxor Temple that they ordered the defeated Egyptians to rebuild Thebes and repair all damages to the Luxor Temple. The Persians were also impressed with the intelligence of Pythagoras, a Greek they found among the priests at Luxor. They took him captive back to Babylon, where he studied under the wisest sages of Persia for another ten years.

Photograph of a page from an early 16th Century French manuscript drawn by an unknown artist using a pen, brown ink and watercolor on paper. It depicts Pythagoras repulsed by fava beans. The manuscript was a gift of Andrea Woodner to the National Museum of Art, Washington, D.C. Image courtesy of the Woodner Collection, National Museum of Art, and Wikimedia Commons.

Many historians believe that after leaving Egypt, Pythagoras had a life-long battle with an irrational fear of beans. If the legends are correct, his leguminophobia may have cost him his life. Years later when his school at Croton in Italy was attacked and destroyed, Pythagoras supposedly escaped. While running away from the attackers, he stumbled upon a field of beans. He froze in his tracks and would not go any further.  According to one legend, the rioters found him terror-stricken, cowering at the edge of the field he had refused to enter. They proceeded to beat and club the old man to death.

According to a second legend, the rioters knew Pythagoras was deathly afraid of beans. Thus, they never searched for him in the vicinity of the bean field because they knew that Pythagoras would have never approached it. After hiding in the weeds on the edge of the bean field for a long time, Pythagoras returned to his school. Seeing that it was destroyed and many of his students killed, he left Croton for Metapontum to escape persecution for his anti-democracy teachings. In Metapontum, he supposedly hid in the Temple of the Muses. He reframed from eating because the priests of the Temple didn’t provide the vegetarian diet he requested. They offered him meat and beans. After 40 days of a self-imposed hunger strike, he died of starvation in the temple.

There are many other stories and legends of the exploits of Pythagoras. If only a small fraction of them were true, Pythagoras was indeed different and could be considered a strange duck. The next unusual mathematician that I will consider is Archimedes. In the meantime, I will return to my series on the changing scene in American higher education.

 

 

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KPI – Part XI: Era of Expansion and Disruption in American Higher Education

Some historians of American Higher Education call the era between the American Civil War and WWII the Gilded Age of American Higher Education. When I look at it, I see a period of unparalleled expansion, confusing disruptions, and bewildering rearrangements. It is also a period rife with widespread uncertainties and inescapable paradoxes. It is a period of unprecedented diversification.

A schematic view of the American Higher Education Family Tree, with the four main branches (University, College, Institute, and Faith-Based Schools), and their many intertwined connections. This schematic was created by the blog’s author using ClickChart Software.

During the Civil War, much of American higher education shut down. Many colleges were forced to cease operations due to a lack of students. In both the North and the South, many young men of military age either enlisted or were drafted. Since this group formed the overwhelming majority of college students, the potential student population was almost completely depleted.

Photograph of Rev. John M.P. Atkinson, 10th President of Hampden-Sydney College, and Captain of the Hampden-Sydney boys, part of the Virginia Militia. Image is in the Public Domain since it was published prior to 1924. Image courtesy of Alfred Morrison, Hampden-Sydney College, and Wikimedia Commons

The stories of what four institutions. Hampden-Sydney (with its sister school Union Theological Seminary), the United States Military Academy at West Point, and the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, went through during the Civil War Period are so interesting I will address them in a separate, future post.

Since much of the actual fighting in the Civil War occurred in the territory of the Confederacy, a large number of colleges in the South found themselves in battle zones. A few colleges in the North, like Pennsylvania College (since 1921, known as Gettysburg College) and its sister institution Lutheran Theological Seminary, were also put in dangerous situations. This placed students and faculty at severe risk. Travel was treacherous at best. Students from the Confederate States who were studying in the Union States, and vice versa, were prohibited from crossing territorial or battlelines and were forced to withdraw from their colleges.

During the eight decades between the Civil War and WWII, the current structure of American higher education began to take shape. Prior to the Revolutionary War, all colonial colleges were begun with a religious emphasis by individual clergy or denominations. These schools were founded to provide an educated clergy for the church.  Studying the early days of these institutions, we also see that they were not in the business of changing the social stratification of the colonies.

Most of the colleges established between the Revolutionary and Civil Wars were built to maintain the status quo. They only enrolled white, males. They were expensive, residential institutions, which meant that the “lower class” families could not afford the luxury of doing without the income supplied by the family sons. Entrance requirements of many were rigorous and only within the reach of the wealthy few who had the advantage of a demanding secondary education.

The few female colleges were also expensive, residential colleges that trained girls to be “ladies”. These schools were beyond the reach of most families and didn’t fit the long-term goals of most girls in America.

Prior to the Civil War, there were very few coed colleges. There were also very few female applicants who could meet the admissions requirements. There were only a handful of colleges open to African-Americans. Colleges prior to the Civil War were the great sustainers of an elite hierarchy with white males at the top of the ladder. Many obstacles were placed in the paths of others trying to ascend the ladder of social mobility.

The cover of the catalog of Pennsylvania Female College (now known as Chatham University) in 1886. Since it was published before 1924, it is in the public domain. Image courtesy of Chatham University and Wikimedia Commons.

Immediately after the Civil War, the dams of restrictive access were leaking a little, before they finally burst. In those early post-war days, a number of changes occurred. It became more acceptable for women to attend college. More women colleges were opened, and more colleges permitted men and women to sit in the same classrooms.

A second new stream of students consisted of the returning soldiers. Their war experience awakened new dreams. They saw that the only difference between them and many of their “educated” officers was formal education. The rank and file soldiers found that they were just as smart as their officers. They began to question why had they been deprived of an opportunity to advance themselves. They demanded the right to go to college, and some colleges opened their doors to these new students. However, more than college for themselves, they demanded college for their children so that they could better themselves and not be limited to the status of a lackey or foot soldier in the future.

Jubilee Hall, oldest permanent building on the campus of Fisk University (an HBCU in Nashville, TN). It was opened in 1876. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties under the terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the US Code. Image courtesy of Fisk University, National Park Services and Wikimedia Commons.

A third stream formed with the opening of colleges for African-Americans. At first, this was a small stream because these students had many deficits to fill in from their lack of education prior to the Civil War.

In 1860, there were less than 10 institutions of higher education which were open to African-American students. By 1900, there more than 100 institutions that were dedicated primarily to the education of African-American individuals. These schools became known as Historical Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU).

First-year students in cadaver lab of Univ. of Penn Medical School in 1890. The image is in the Public Domain since it was first published prior to 1924. Image is courtesy of Amy Hutchens, University of Pennsylvania and Wikimedia Commons.

A fourth stream formed with the demand for specialized training and education. Career colleges, business schools, technical and engineering institutions, art schools, research universities, Bible colleges and seminaries, agricultural schools, medical specialty colleges, nursing schools, and law schools began popping up in every corner of the growing country.

Another new strand of higher education emerged in the first decade of the 20th century, the community or junior college. These colleges were designed to offer the first two years of a general college education and permit their graduates to then transfer to the four-year colleges and universities. Joliet Junior College in Illinois was the first public junior college. It opened in 1901.

A publicity card depicting the two founders, Sam Knight and William Baine, of Central City Commercial College in Waco, Texas. Image courtesy of the William Baines Papers of the Texas Collection at Baylor University.

Previously, colleges were primarily residential and located in rural or semi-rural settings. But now urban students demanded and got schools in the middle of cities. These students didn’t want the residential experience, so a new type of commuter college was invented.

Schools like Central City Commercial College (4C), which opened in Waco, Texas, in 1924, met the need of urban residents for training in employable skills or retraining in new skills. In 1935, 4C expanded its evening programs in order to accommodate shift workers who wanted to learn new skills.

Prior to the Civil War, most colleges were founded under the flag of religion. By the time the Civil War began, many of these institutions had drifted from their religious moorings. Some had become secular institutions, while others had their ownership assumed by governmental agencies and had become public institutions.

The Honorable Justin Smith Morrill, Senate sponsor of the Morrill Act of 1862. The photograph was taken between 1865 and 1880. The image is courtesy of Brady-Handy Photograph Collection (Library of Congress). It is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cwpbh.04981.

After the Civil War, three separate strands of institutional control were formally recognized. The first strand was public institutions, which were primarily funded by governmental agencies such as states, counties, or cities. These institutions were kick-started by the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890, also known as the Land-Grant Acts. These pieces of legislation provided grants of land to states to finance the establishment of colleges specializing in Agriculture, Home Economics, the Mechanical Arts, and other useful professions. Public institutions began to dominate higher education with their seemingly untouchable advantage of an apparently unending supply of tax revenue.

The second strand consisted of private, non-profit institutions. These were chartered by states, but controlled by independent boards. Some of these were sectarian in nature. They were founded by, controlled by denominations or churches, and funded through the religious founders. Others were non-sectarian, without any particular religious bent.

The third strand was the proprietary schools. These consisted of schools typically founded by an entrepreneur who viewed the institution as a profit-making venture. They were chartered by states, but controlled by the founder or a board of trustees, similar to a corporation. These three strands still dominate the higher education scene of the 21st century.

Diversity in these colleges was not just limited to the type of control, students, programs offered, or geographic location. Students began choosing colleges for more reasons than particular academic programs. They began including in their selection processes non-academic programs like athletics, debate teams, musical opportunities, both vocal and instrumental, and social organizations.

In the opening game at Michigan Stadium, Michigan beat Ohio State in October 1927 before a crowd of 84,000. This image is courtesy of Kaufmann & Fabry Co. – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID pan.6a28995. See Commons: Licensing for more information., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2348814

Rutgers University defeated Princeton in the first intercollegiate football game on November 6, 1869. The University of Michigan’s football stadium, Michigan Stadium (known as the Big House), was built in 1927 with a capacity of 72,000. It soon outgrew it and added 10,000 more seats within five years. The stadium was formally dedicated on October 22, 1927,  when Michigan beat Ohio State before a standing-room-only crowd that exceeded 84,400 people. College sports had become a big-time business. Colleges began recruiting athletes to attend their school in order to play for them.

Intracollegiate debating on college campuses seems to have originated in literary societies as early as 1830. The first recorded intercollegiate debate may have been between Wake Forest University and Trinity College (later known as Duke University) in 1897. Soon debate teams were touring the country, holding matches and tournaments. The movie “The Great Debaters” memorializes a 1935 debate team of African-American students from Wiley College (Marshall, TX) which supposedly traveled to Harvard University, and defeated the reigning national championship debating team. In reality, the debaters from Wiley did not debate Harvard. They debated and defeated the reigning national debate team from the University of Southern California. However, the Wiley team could not declare themselves victors because African-Americans were not permitted to join the Debate Society until after WWII.

James Farmer, Jr., was recruited as a 14-year old freshman by Melvin Tolson, the founder, and coach of the Wiley College Debate Team to become a valuable member of this formidable debating powerhouse. He went on to a have distinguished career in civil rights work in the United States in the middle of the 20th century.

Civil Right Activists including Martin Luther King Jr, Whitney Young, Roy Wilkins, and James Farmer Jr in the White House on January 18, 1964. The picture is in the public domain because it is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties under the terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the US Code. Image is courtesy of the LBJ Presidential Library and Wikimedia.Commons

James Farmer Jr. was considered one of the “Big 4” in the civil rights world. The first of the other three was Martin Luther King Jr. (1948 graduate of Morehouse College an HBCU institution in Atlanta, GA), and founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The second was Whitney M. Young Jr. (1941 graduate of Kentucky State University and HBCU institution in Frankfort KY) who served as the Executive Director of the National Urban League, transforming it from a passive organization into an aggressive force working to give socioeconomic access to all individuals who had been historically disenfranchised. The third member of the group was Roy Wilkins (1923 graduate of the University of Minnesota which had a long history of accepting African-American scholars and students), who was Executive Director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from 1955 to 1977. Roy Wilkins was one of the primary organizers of the 1963 March on Washington. In 1967, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian decoration.

Postcard publicizing the Carlton College Glee Club itinerary for the 1913 season. The image is in the public domain since it was published prior to 1924. Image is courtesy of Carlton College and Wikimedia Commons.

Glee Clubs were small choral groups dedicated to singing glees, short secular choral songs, which were written or arranged for several vocal parts.   These clubs originated in London in the late 18th century and made their way to the American college campuses in the mid-19th century. The first documented American collegiate glee club was founded at Harvard University in 1858.

By 1910, there were more than 100 colleges hosting Glee Clubs. Many of these co-curricular clubs were replaced on campuses by larger choral groups and formal choirs which performed under the auspices of the music department or school. Many of the colleges would sponsor the Glee Club tours for fundraising and student recruiting purposes.

The Purdue Marching Band “Block P” formation from 1922 football game. Image in the Public Domain since it was published prior to 1924. Image is courtesy of Purdue University and Wikimedia Commons

Historically marching bands were associated with military ventures. They consisted primarily of wind, brass, and percussion instruments. By the middle of the 19th century, they found their way onto college campuses. The first official collegiate marching band was the University of Notre Dame Band of the Fighting Irish, founded in 1845. It first performed at a football game in 1887. By the end of the 19th century, hundreds of American colleges and universities hosted marching bands and orchestras. In 1907, the Purdue All-American Marching Band unveiled the first pictorial formation on a football field with their rendition of the Purdue “Block P.” Not to be outdone, later that year, the University of Illinois Marching Illini band performed the first full halftime show at the football game between the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago.

Colleges and universities began recruiting students to perform in their vocal and instrumental musical groups. Other performing arts, like drama and dance, soon followed. Colleges and universities became cultural centers, not only for students but for the communities in which they were located.

Fraternities, sororities, and other social clubs dated their beginning on American campuses from December 5, 1776, with the founding of the Phi Beta Kappa Society at the College of William and Mary. Between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, fraternities and sororities developed slowly. They were primarily centered in the Northeast quadrant of the United States.

A photograph of the monument in Lexington, VA commemorating the founding of three Panhellenic fraternities in that town. SuperNova at the English Wikipedia, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publishes it under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Image courtesy of Super Nova and Wikimedia Commons.

After the Civil War, with the great expansion of colleges and universities, fraternities and sororities also flourished. The American higher education system began encountering racial, religious, and gender diversity and new colleges were founded or reformed throughout the south and west. Growth in the fraternity system overall during this period would lead some to label the last third of the 19th century as “The Golden Age of Fraternities.”

However, the diversity of institutions which engendered a diversity of students also had a darker, hidden side. Students looked to the fraternities and sororities not as vehicles to encourage diversity, but as avenues of escape and as a way to avoid associating with large numbers of particular types of students. They became vehicles of discrimination.

Thus the period between the Civil War and WWII was an era of growth in terms of the number of students and the diversity of types of institutions, types of campus activities, and diversity of students within the system as a whole. Paradoxically, it was also an era of rampant discrimination and exclusion. WWII produced another pause in the development of the American higher education system. We pick up that story in the next post.

 

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Are All Mathematicians Crazy?

Crazy mathematician playing with his computer. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

I personally guarantee it. “Not all mathematicians are crazy.” You can take it from me that some of us are almost normal. However, the eccentric ones seem to get most of the press.

I am taking a short break from my higher education series of posts so that I can respond to several serious questions I received concerning the series. In this post, I will address the question of how I do mathematics and what that has to do with my thinking and writings about higher education. In several related future posts, I will deal with six famous mathematicians who have defined how the general public views mathematicians.

I was born a little too early for this scene. If computers had been around then, who knows? Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

Why was I attracted to mathematics? Was it nature or nurture? YES. Speaking like a true mathematician, I’m using the inclusive form of the conjunction “or.” Both nature and nurture led me into the world of mathematics.

I see mathematicians characterized by four traits. I believe that I was born with a rudimentary form or kernel of all four of these traits. However, I didn’t stop there. I worked very hard to cultivate the early buds of those traits in order to enhance and help them blossom into fully-formed fruit.

Simple arithmetic. Quantitative aptitude. Image courtesy of Presenter Media

I believe “Quantitative Aptitude” is the first trait a mathematician needs. This trait is a natural comfort with numbers and numerical concepts. My parents always told me that I recognized numerical differences from a very early age. I could count almost as soon as I could speak. Numbers were some of the first words that I used. I was doing simple arithmetical operations like addition and subtraction by the time I was two. I knew my multiplication tables by the time I was three. By the time I entered school, I remember “showing off” by doing three digit multiplication problems in my head without using pencil and paper. I had learned and developed a number of short-cuts and tricks to doing multiplication that I still use today.

Geometric Aptitude includes identifying geometric shapes and putting the right blocks in the right holes. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

The second necessary trait for a mathematician is “Geometric Aptitude.” This is a natural comfort with geometric shapes and differences in sizes. I could always identify the larger piece of cake. To all who know me well, this is clearly the intersection of two of my loves: mathematics and food. From an early age, I could never get enough of either of them.

By the time I was four, I had taught myself simple division and fractions by proportioning out food. I loved the “game” of filling a square or a rectangle with smaller squares and rectangles. To make it more challenging I would include triangles. I remember one of my greatest discovery in high school was the relationship between algebra and geometry. These were two sides of the same coin. They went together like a hand in a glove.

The inverse relationship between multiplication and division came to me automatically. I was doing long division by the time I entered the first grade. The idea of a remainder was never a problem for me. I stretched my abilities by attempting more complicated long division problems “in my head” without using pencil and paper.

Mathematicians can identify patterns. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

The third trait of a good mathematician is the ability to recognize and identify patterns. These patterns may be recurring numbers, shapes, letters, or objects. The standardized tests where an individual is shown three objects and asked to identify the next object in the sequence were always super easy for me. The patterns would just jump off the page at me. To improve my ability in identifying patterns, I kept looking for more involved sequences on which to work.

Mathematicians love to solve puzzles. We can’t get them out of our heads. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

Jigsaw puzzles are excellent exercises to improve one’s ability to identify patterns. The patterns may be the shape of the pieces or the image that is on the piece. Deciphering cryptograms is a great exercise for finding patterns.  Two more great exercises that I just recently discovered are Sudoku and Word Searches.

The fourth trait of a mathematician is a love of solving problems. Growing up I remember begging my parents to “test” me with math problems, riddles, and mysteries. We didn’t have video games back in the dark ages. Besides baseball and basketball, these were the games I loved and with which I lived. I even transformed baseball and basketball into problem-solving adventures by thinking about how to handle certain situations and then practicing those solutions on the court or diamond.

A photograph of a painting of Archimedes deep in thought by Niccolo Barabino from 1860. As a true photographic image of a 2D work of art more than 100 years old, it is in the public domain. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and the Public Museum Rivoltella in Trieste.

I remember my excitement in fifth-grade when I discovered Archimedes’ method for solving problems.

  1. Observe and analyze the situation
  2. Propose or hypothesize solutions
  3. Test your solutions or hypotheses
  4. Evaluate solutions and hypotheses to find the best one
  5.  Prove your selected solution or hypothesis is right

Here was the systematic approach to problem-solving that I craved. It combined my natural intuition with logical and quantitative reasoning. I believed it fit me and I adopted it and have used it for the past 60+ years.

Within the Archimedian method are four hidden gems. Good mathematicians must be expert observers. They must have a natural intuition to be able to identify patterns and problems within the situations they encounter. Good mathematicians must be masters in the art and skill of generalization, having the ability to translate real-world problems into problems which are solvable using familiar methods or have the ability to create new methods. They must be extremely proficient in the abstract world of logic in order to “prove” their solutions are the best ones possible. The rudimentary skill and art of observation, intuitive thinking, generalization, and abstraction are innate (nature) but honed by repeated practice (nurture).

I remember four specific events that fixed my path to becoming a mathematician. Three of them occurred in fifth grade. I had a fifth-grade teacher who believed in challenging his students with tough problems to see what solutions they would propose and how they arrived at their destinations. The first defining problem for me related to the area of a triangle. Without telling us how to solve the problem, the teacher asked us to calculate the area of a triangle. I was the first in the class to propose the correct solution. I observed that any triangle could be considered as one half of a rectangle. The area of a rectangle is base times height. Therefore, the area of a triangle must be 1/2 of its base times its height.

Image of the geometric proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. This file is licensed by
its creator Blackbombchu under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Image courtesy of Blackbombchu and Wikimedia Commons.

The second fifth-grade event involved proving the Pythagorean Theorem. Our teacher had introduced the idea of using logic to prove certain theorems or geometric relationships. He showed us how the Egyptians constructed square corners to their buildings and pyramids using the 3-4-5 right triangle and a rope with knots tied at the three, four, and five unit marks. He suggested that in any right triangle the square of the hypotenuse was equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides. ( a2 + b2 = c2 ).

He asked us to prove it. Again, I was the first to come up with a logically, valid proof. I used the alternating square tiles on the floor of our classroom to derive the standard geometric proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. The teacher looked at my proof and said, “Well done. You should become a mathematician.”

First 8 Rows of Pascal Triangle, created by the author of this post using ClichCahrt Software.

Later in the year, this teacher challenged us further with polynomial expansions. Starting with the straight forward multiplication of (x+y) times (x+y), he asked us to try multiplying three terms and then four terms. He asked us to do it up to ten terms.

He asked if we saw any patterns that could be generalized. As I did the repeated multiplications, I wrote the results one over the next. I saw a pattern emerging. The coefficients to combinatoric powers of x and y formed a pyramid in which an entry was the sum of the two entries above it. I had rediscovered Pascal’s Triangle.

Although I needed several hints from the teacher before I could prove the formula logically, the structure of Pascal’s Triangle suggested applications of the numbers in the triangle to not only binomial expansions but also to combinatorics (the number of possible combinations of n things taken r at a time). I went a little further and showed how this would determine the probability of the number of boys and girls in a family of a given size. This time the teacher said, “You are a mathematician.”

The fourth and final event occurred in my final year of undergraduate school. During my first three years in college, I pursued a double major in mathematics and physics. In preparing to register for my last semester, I need one more credit in physics to earn the double major. Unfortunately, the only physics courses the university was offering were courses that I had already taken or the second semester of course sequences for which I had not taken the prerequisite first semester. I asked the department chair for an independent study to complete the physics major. He hesitated for a moment and then said, “Son, I’m sorry but I’m not going to allow this. You need to stick to mathematics. You’re not a physicist. You do physics as if it were mathematics. You don’t have the intuition to be a physicist.” So I took an economics course in place of the physics course and completed undergraduate school with a B.S. in mathematics and double minors in economics and physics (one credit shy of the double major in physics.) I never looked back.

What does mathematics have to do with higher education? Higher education is built on the three foundational blocks of the creation, organization, and distribution of knowledge. The four building blocks of mathematics and the three building blocks of higher education are two sides of the same coin. The purpose of higher education is about identifying patterns and solving problems. I dealt with these two situations in every one of my positions as a faculty member or college administrator. I also found my quantitative and geometric aptitudes extremely helpful. Making things add up and fitting the right block into the correct slot were daily agenda items. Being a mathematician made me a better higher education administrator.

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KPI – Part X: Post Revolutionary War Expansion of American Higher Education

My previous post KPI- Part IX: Higher Education in Colonial America highlighted the fairly slow start of higher education in colonial America. In this post, I will address the first age of expansion in American higher education, the post-Revolutionary War era. In the four-score plus years between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, higher education blossomed in the United States on several fronts.

Map of the United States in 1860 showing 33 states and a number of territories. This image is in the public domain in the United States because it only contains materials that originally came from the United States Geological Survey, an agency of the United States Department of the Interior. Image courtesy of United State Geological Survey and Wikimedia.

During this period the United States grew both in terms of population and geography. Although there was no census data in 1780, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the population of the thirteen colonies was approximately 2.5 million. By 1860, the 8th official census put the population of the 33 states and several territories, which made up the United States just prior to the Civil War, at 31.4 million. This population increase amounted to more than a twelve-fold increase.

The addition of 20 states and territories added more than 2 million square miles of land mass to the 864,746 square miles of the original 13 colonies. By the start of the Civil War, the United States stretched from “sea to shining sea.” It had crossed the Appalachian Mountains, the Mighty Mississippi River basin, the great plains, and the Rocky Mountains. It spanned the great land gap between Canada and Mexico.

With more people spread out across more land, there is an increased need for primary and secondary education. It was only natural for the people of each town to demand their own local primary and secondary schools. This created an accompanying need for more teachers, which created the collateral need for more higher education. As more teachers are involved in the classrooms, in addition to deeper subject-content matter mastery, they found a need for more specialized training in teaching methods.

This colonial structure located in Lexington (MA), which now houses a Masonic Temple, was the first state-supported normal school. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published in the United States between 1924 and 1977 without a copyright notice. Image courtesy of Boston Public Library and Wikimedia Commons.

This created a need for a new type of higher education institution. Thus the teacher education school or  “normal school” was created. Some of these schools were short-lived such as several founded and run by Samuel Read Hall. Hall founded teacher education programs as an adjunct to academies in Concord (VT), Andover (MA), Plymouth (NH), and Craftsbury (VT). The earliest teacher training programs were typically two years beyond the secondary level designed to introduce the best secondary students to the topics of curriculum and pedagogy in order to turn them into teachers.

As noted in the previous post, there were also no “official” medical or law schools in the colonial period. Although several of the colonial colleges did offer additional courses in anatomy and “physik.” they were not intended to train doctors. As the U.S. population grew and spread out all over the country, there was a much greater need for more doctors and lawyers. The apprenticeship model of education which worked well for a small demand proved totally inadequate for the much larger demand of the new world. A new, more efficient, model had to be instituted. We needed a model that would produce consistent, quality results. We needed schools for doctors and lawyers.

Litchfield Law School building constructed by Tapping Reeve in 1784. The building stands today on its original location, south of Tapping Reeve’s House on South Street in Litchfield, CT. This photo is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Image courtesy of Litchfield Historical Society and Wikimedia Commons.

The first institution established for the sole purpose of teaching law was the Litchfield Law School in Litchfield (CT). The school was founded in 1874 by educator, lawyer, judge Tapping Reeve. Reeve opened his law school to accommodate the large of apprentices that he was attracting.  Judge Reeve continued lecturing at his law school even after becoming the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of Connecticut, until shortly before his death in 1823.

Without the name and draw of its founder, the Litchfield Law School lasted just one more decade until it closed due to lack of students. However, during its sixty-year run of operations, it attracted more than 1,100 students. The most famous/infamous Litchfield graduate is probably Aaron Burr, Jr., the brother-in-law of Tapping Reeve.

Engravings of Stephen van Rensselar III, New York statesman, military general, and philanthropist, whose generous gifts established one of the first technical, scientific and engineering schools in the U.S. This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3c21159. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress and Wikimedia Commons.

As the country grew, so did the demand for more and better buildings, bridges, transportation, and communications. We needed people with technical skills. How could we possibly produce such people in sufficient quantities to meet the demands? We needed technical and engineering schools. Another new type of schools is instituted.

Technical and engineering schools began popping up in urban contexts. Two of the first technical and engineering schools were Norwich University (1819) in Northfield (VT) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1825) in Troy (NY).

People are people and they must have their religion and their churches. With the population increase and with the dispersion of the population across a wider expanse, there was a need for more churches, and hence a need for more clergy. With the changing nature of the first round of religious schools, America needed schools that were again dedicated to educating individuals who could preach the gospel and teach their congregations the tenets of the faith.

A photograph of the 2-D work of art entitled: “Andover Theological Seminary,” lithograph printed in colors, by the artist J. Kidder. Image Courtesy of the Yale University Art Gallery, Yale University, New Haven, CT, and Wikimedia Commons.

More seminaries and faith-based colleges teaching piety and virtue were created. Due to the lack of action in filling a chair of preaching, on the part of growing faction of liberal faculty at Harvard, a number of the older orthodox, conservative-Calvinistic faculty members left Harvard in 1807 to form the Andover Theological Seminary in Newton (MA). Similar events took place at many of the schools of religion within the Colonial Colleges.

The residence of the Superintendent of West Point. It is the oldest existent building (1820) on the campus. This image or media file contains material based on a work of a National Park Service employee, created as part of that person’s official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, such work is in the public domain in the United States. Image courtesy of the National Park Service and Wikimedia Commons.

Besides education, religion, and professional studies, one area of concern to the whole human race has been military activities. In the history of mankind, there have been wars and rumors of war. During this era of great expansion of higher education in America, war and military action went to college. In addition to the U.S. Military Academy, established in 1801 at West Point (NY), and the U.S. Naval Academy, established in 1845 at Annapolis (MD), there were at least a dozen more military schools established during this time frame.

This is a bird’s eye view of Mount Holyoke College in 1837. This is a faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art, as such this photograph itself is in the public domain. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and the Murray City School District.

In the previous post, I noted that almost exclusively the institutions in the first round of colleges were open only to men. As the nation matured and changed, women understood that education should be open to them.

 

The first solution to this new demand was the creation of women’s colleges. A few of the earliest women’s colleges were Georgia Female College (1836) in Clinton (GA); Stephens College (1833) in Columbia (MO); and Mount Holyoke College (1837) in South Hadley (MA).

Photograph of Old Main of Franklin College, built in 1847. This work has been released into the public domain by its author, Mingusboodle at the Wikipedia project. Image courtesy of Mingusboodle and Wikimedia Commons.

 

The second solution was a slow opening up of a few of the male-only enclaves to women. Oberlin College (OH) was the first college to formally admit women in 1837. A few institutions, like Franklin College (IN) followed suit in 1842.

 

During this period of history, the United States was deeply divided over the practices of slavery and segregation. Although slavery was prohibited in all Northern states by 1850, African Americans were routinely denied even basic education through institutionalized segregation.

This is a photograph of a 2-D work of art, entitled: Wilberforce University, Xenia, Ohio. (The colored peoples college.) It was drawn, lithographed and printed in oil colors by Middleton Wallace & Co. This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID pga.03979. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress and Wikimedia Commons.

 

By 1860  a few colleges were established for African-Americans. These institutions became known as the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU).  Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1854 was the first HBCU to offer college degrees to its graduates. The first HBCU to be owned and built by African-Americans, Wilberforce University in Ohio, soon followed in 1856. The Cheyney University of Pennsylvania (which was originally called the Institute for Colored Youth) was founded in 1837 and is currently recognized as the oldest HBCU in the United States. However, it did not offer college degrees until 1914. Oberlin College in Ohio is generally credited as the first of the historically white-only colleges to admit African-American students in 1835.

With the vast expansion of the educational enterprise in America, colleges began to engage in the first academic arms race. They began to look for prominent individuals that they could hire to be faculty or administrators, in order to attract a greater number of quality students. States and cities joined in their own version of the academic arms race. Every state, city or town had to have their own college, in order to outdo their neighbors.

All of these changes produced a drastic change in the number of colleges and students. From the ten schools that were really colleges in the colonial period, the number grew to more than 300 by the beginning of the Civil War. The number of college students in the United States is estimated to have grown from less than 2,000 in 1780 to approximately 50,000 students by 1860. This is indeed an era of expansion. Stay tuned for the next installment, the Post Civil War Expansion.

 

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KPI – Part IX: Higher Education in Colonial America

Photographic print of elevation perspective of Harvard College or “Old College” (1636 – 1670) used in an article by Samuel E. Morison, published in 1920. The image is in the public domain. Image is used by courtesy of Samuel E. Morison, Harvard University Archives and Wikimedia Commons.

There are five distinct periods in the history of American higher education. In this post, we will look at the initial stage, which we will call the Colonial Period. The beginning date is easy to set. It starts with the founding of the first American college, Harvard College, in 1636. The end date is much harder to define. We will arbitrarily set the ending date of this stage as 1776, the start of the Revolutionary War. As we shall see, using these dates makes the Colonial Period the longest and least active stage in the history of American higher education.

The academy is well known for its showy, even often ostentatious traditions and “pomp and circumstance.” By “pomp and circumstance” I don’t mean the Elgar military marches played at graduation or commencement ceremonies.

One long-standing tradition of the academy involves the ceremonial inauguration of new presidents or the opening of a new college. To celebrate this joyous occasion, other colleges are invited to send a representative to share in the festivities.

An image of part of the academic procession at the opening of the new University of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland with the historic Inverness Castle as a background feature. The event took place on August 25, 2011. The photograph is by David Watmough. The image is courtesy of Dreamstime (ID #208851111)

 

These visiting representatives are expected to wear appropriate academic garb (their caps and gowns) and march into the ceremonial arena following the representatives of the new college or institution installing its new president. These representatives include the governing board, the president, high ranking officers of the college and the college faculty.

The representatives of guest colleges are lined up according to the founding date of the particular institution, with oldest first. Thus it becomes a bragging point to be near the beginning of the line. Many institutions take this so seriously that they “may stretch the truth a little.”

My alma mater, the University of Delaware, could be accused of falling prey to this practice. It lists its date of origin as 1743, which is embossed on its seal. This date would make it the eighth oldest college in the United States. In reality, according to its website the University of Delaware:

One of the oldest universities in the U.S., the University of Delaware traces its roots to 1743 when a petition by the Presbytery of Lewes expressing the need for an educated clergy led the Rev. Dr. Francis Alison to open a school in New London, Pennsylvania.

Newark Academy Building on Main Street in Newark, DE. The photograph is by a photographer identified as “smallbones” and is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. Image courtesy of “smallbones” and Wikimedia Commons.

In 1765, Rev. Alison’s elementary and secondary school relocated to Newark, DE, as the Newark Academy. It wasn’t until 1834 when the name was changed to Newark College that the institution offered college degrees. In 1843, the name of the institution was changed to Delaware College. Throughout all of its earliest history, the institution was opened only to men. In 1914, a women’s college was opened in Newark. The two colleges merged in 1921 to become the University of Delaware. I’ll let you decide: What date should the University of Delaware use as its date of founding?

So as to not be accused of just jumping on the University of Delaware, of the 18 American colleges or universities that list a founding date prior to 1776, only ten were actually conferring college degrees in 1776. These ten colonial colleges with dates of their founding are:

  • Harvard University. MA (1636)
  • College of William and Mary, VA (1693)
  • Yale University, CT (1701)
  • University of Pennsylvania, PA (1740)
  • Princeton University, NJ (1746)
  • Columbia University, NY (1754)
  • Brown University, RI (1764)
  • Rutgers University, NJ (1766)
  • Dartmouth College, NH (1769)
  • Hampden-Syndey College, VA (1775)

The eight institutions which list a date of origin prior to 1776, but didn’t offer programs leading to college degrees until after 1776, are the following:

  • St. Johns’ College, MD (Est 1693/ College 1785)
  • Washington College, MD (Est 1723/ College 1782)
  • Moravian College, PA (Est 1742/ College 1863)
  • University of Delaware, DE (Est 1743/ College 1843)
  • Washington & Lee University, PA (Est 1749/ College 1813)
  • College of Charleston, SC (Est 1770/ College 1790)
  • Salem College, NC (Est 1772/ College 1890)
  • Dickinson College, PA (Est 1773/ College 1783)
A photograph of the doomers, gables, and spires of Salem College. The photograph was taken by Larry F. Lamb and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. The image is used by courtesy of Larry F. Lamb and Wikimedia Commons.

As a mathematician, I am always looking for patterns. In the case of these pre-revolutionary war colleges, several patterns are immediately obvious. All 18 institutions were founded by clergy or religious organizations for partially sectarian reasons. The primary religious reason was to provide an educated clergy for the churches. Since the pre-revolutionary war clergy was all male, it should not be surprising that 16 of the 18 colleges were strictly male institutions. The only two schools which enrolled women were the two Moravian institutions, Moravian College and Salem College.

Photograph of Randolph Hall, the main academic building of the College of Charleston. The photograph was taken by a photographer identified as Lkeadle who licensed its use under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Image courtesy of Lkeadle and Wikimedia Commons.

Interestingly those are only two that have maintained their religious affiliations. The other 16 either dropped their religious ties or had their support cut off by their founding denominations. Thirteen of these schools changed their classification to “private, non-profit“.  Two of the schools, Rutgers University (NJ) and the University of Delaware (DE) became public institutions supported by their respective states. The College of Charleston (SC) became the first college in the United States to be recognized as a municipally supported school.

Later, when the State of Delaware cut its monetary support of the University to less than 50% of the University’s budgeted income, it took a drastic step which defined a new status of educational institutions. The University of Delaware became the first college to become a private institution with limited state support. It was now known as a “state-supported institution.” Since that event, many other public schools have taken the same stance.

Another characteristic shared by all 18 pre-revolutionary war colleges is that they all began as exclusively residential or boarding schools. Most of the founding fathers of these schools were educated in England or Europe or were swayed by teachers or mentors who were trained in the “old-school” tradition.

William and Mary College 1898 postcard. The hand-written note says this main building was built in 1693 when the college opened. This image is available from the New York Public Library’s Digital Library under the digital ID 0ad0c090-c62c-012f-9c5a-58d385a7bc34: digitalgallery.nypl.org → digitalcollections.nypl.org. Image courtesy of New York Public Library and Wikimedia Commons.

The “old-school” traditions imparted two patterns into the fabric of these schools. The first was the idea that these schools were not about promoting or advocating social mobility. These schools were not founded to change society, but to maintain the social status of the day. After their religious ties were severed, their students were strictly the sons of the wealthy, politically connected, and social elite of the day.

These were the only families that could afford the cost of such an education. These families were also the most interested in preparing their sons to claim their birthright and seize their rightful place as leaders of the church, government, and business. It is interesting to read excerpts of early promotional pieces of these institutions and see how many advertised the alumni who were instrumental in the founding of America. They listed the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, as well as federal, state and municipal elected and appointed officials as their most distinguished graduates.

The second pattern inherently obvious among the colonial colleges is the emphasis of their curricula on the liberal arts. Many of these colleges evolved from institutions that were called “Free Academies.”  The term free definitely did not refer to the cost of attending the school. The term refers to the liberal arts or those subjects which humanize people and make them more human.

The curricula were heavily loaded with rhetoric, languages, religion, philosophy, history, music, mathematics and elementary science. In the colonial period, there were no professional schools. The professional disciplines were not taught at the colonial colleges.

Students who were interested in business, law, and medicine learned these “trades” by serving as interns to accomplished masters. The professional schools entered the American higher education scene in the next period of American higher education history, the Period of Post-Revolutionary War Expansion. That period will be the subject of my next blog post, due to be published, Tuesday, April 9th.