Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T01:48:33.121Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Democratization of Higher Education in America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Martin Trow
Get access

Extract

American higher education is currently undergoing an enormous and rapid expansion. Between 1939 and 1961 the number of students enrolled in colleges and universities and earning credits toward degrees rose from about 1.3 million to over 3.9 million (1). This three-fold increase has resulted almost completely from increasing rates of enrollment, since the population of college age—that is, the 18 to 21 year olds—was almost exactly as large in 1939 as in 1960 (2). The difference is that in 1939 college and university enrollments comprised about 14% of the 18–21 year old population, while by 1961 that figure was about 38%. This rate has been increasing at an average of 1% a year since the end of World War II.

Type
Universität im Umbau: Anpassung oder Widerstand? Zweiter Teil
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , December 1962 , pp. 231 - 262
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1962

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

(1) A Fact Book on Higher Education (Washington, D.C.: American Council on Education), p. 10.Google Scholar

(2) Huddleston, Edith M., “Opening (Fall) Enrollment in Higher Education, 1960”: Analytic Report (Washington, United States Government Printing Office, 1961), Table 8, p. 12.Google Scholar

(3) This paper will deal primarily with the expansion of undergraduate education in the United States. In the total enrollment in American colleges and universities of about 3.6 million in 1960, graduate students working for. Master's or doctoral degrees numbered about 280,000, a little under 8% (Berelson, Bernard, Graduate Education in the United States. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1960, p. 129)Google Scholar. Graduate education exerts an influence on the character of American undergraduate education in the universities where it is offered, in the top undergraduate colleges where substantial numbers of students prepare for graduate school, and in all the institutions of higher education where its products teach, quite out of proportion to its numbers, lint graduate education has as yet had little bearing on the growth of college enrollments. The large increases in graduate enrollments are still to come.

(4) Analytic Report, op. cit. p. 12, Table 8.

(5) U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, Series P-25, No. 232, 06 22, 1961Google Scholar, “Illustrative Projections to 1980 of School and College Enrollments in the United States”, p. 2, Table B.Google Scholar

(6) Bogue, Donald J., The Population of the United States (Glencoe, The Free Press, 1959), Pp. 776–778Google Scholar, and Table 26–10.

(7) The size of the American effort is suggested by a comparison of the number of students in institutions of higher education per ten thousand population in selected countries:

Sources: United Kingdom: Lord Simon of Wythenshawe, “Student Numbers”, Universities Quarterly, Vol. X, No. 2, 1956Google Scholar, includes students at universities and university colleges only. Western European countries: Yates, P. L., “Education”Google Scholar, in Dewhurst, J. F. et al. , Europe's Needs and Resources (New York, Twentieth Century Fund, 1961), p. 333Google Scholar, Table 10–11. The French figure is for universities only and excludes foreigners. The German and Swiss figures are for universities and technical and business Hochschulen. The Swedish figure is for universities and colleges. Soviet Union: DeWitt, Nicholas, Education and Projessional Employment in the U.S.S.R. (Washington, The National Science Foundation, 1961), pp. 638–639Google Scholar, Table IV-A-1-E. The figures arc for enrollment in higher educational institutions including evening students; the higher figure includes extension-correspondence students. United Startes: Fact Book, op. cit. p. 10.

These figures should be compared with caution in light of differences in the educational systems and in the categories of institutions and students included.

(8) For an illuminating comparative analysis, see Halsey, A. H., “The Changing Functions of Universities in Advanced Industrial Societies”, Harvard Educational Review, XXX (1960), 118–127Google Scholar, and his “British Universities and Intellectual Life”, Universities Quarterly, XII (1958), 141–152Google Scholar; also his article in the first part of the present symposium, Arch. europ. sociol., III (1962), 85–101.Google Scholar

(9) Between 1947 and 1960 enrollments in publicly supported colleges and universities increased by 85%, as compared with an increase in private institutions of only 25%. Computed from data in Fact Book, op. cit. p. 12.

(9 a) Analytic Report, op. cit., Tables 1 and 4.

(10) On the extent of diversity in student aptitude, see McConnell, T. R., “Differential Selectivity of American Higher Education”, in Anderson, K. E. (ed.), The Coming Crisis in the Selection of Students for College Entrance (Washington, American Educational Research Association, 1960)Google Scholar, and Heist, Paul, “Diversity in College Student Characteristics”, Journal of Educational Sociology, XXXIII (1960), 279–291CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the extent of diversity in the quality of the institutions, see Lazarsfeld, Paul F. and Thielens, Wagner Jr., The Academic Mind (Glencoe, The Free Press, 1958), pp. 411–414Google Scholar, and Rogoff, Natalie, “Board Member Colleges: A Comparative Analysis” (Columbia University, Bureau of Applied Social Research, 05, 1957), mimeo.Google Scholar

(11) Or nearly everybody. Shortly after World War II (1947), when the accumulated demand for college admission was at its height, a study of a national cross-section of white students graduating from high school in that year found that some 87% of those who had applied for college admission had been accepted somewhere. The proportions ranged from 96% of children whose fathers had gone beyond the bacheor's degree, down to 72% of the seniors rated in the fifth (lowest) academic quintile in their high schools. American Council on Education, On Getting Into College Washington, 1949), p. 55Google Scholar.

But compare with the College Entrance Examination Board's recent report on the admissions practice of some of their member colleges (Manual of Freshman Class Profiles, CEEB, 1961)Google Scholar. Some of the more selective colleges report that in 1961 they accepted only one out of every four applicants, in the process rejecting many who were in the highest decile on the national aptitude examination administered by the College Entrance Examination Board.

While American higher education as a system has very nearly a wide open door, it includes asizeable group of highly selective institutions.

(12) The first Morrill Act of 1862, which created the Land-Grant colleges, was designed explicitly to extend to the common man broad opportunities for gaining a higher education in the useful arts and sciences. In a significant passage, the Act states that funds will be provided to each state for “the endowment, support, and maintenance of at least one college where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such a manner as the legislatures of the states may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life”. Hofstadter, Richard and Smith, Wilson, American Higher Education: A Documentary History (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1961), vol. II, p. 568Google Scholar. As the Land-Grant colleges and other state universities grew and became firmly established, “they came to stand in the American public mind for two dominant ideas. The first was the ‘all purpose’ curriculum; the second was faithful service to the needs of the community”. Brubacher, John S. and Rudy, Willis, Higher Education in Transition (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1958), p. 158Google Scholar. Those ideas have been a powerful force in American higher education for the expansion both of the curriculum and of enrollments down to the present.

(13) Nam, Charles B. and Cowhig, James D., “Factors Related to College Attendance of Farm and Nonfarm High School Graduates: 1960”, U. S. Bureau of the Census, Census Series ERS (P-27), No. 32 (1962)Google Scholar. For variations among states, see Beezer, Robert H. and Hjelm, H. F., “Factors Related to College Attendance”, Cooperative Research Monograph No. 8, U.S. Office of Education, 1961.Google Scholar

(14) Fact Book, op. cit. p. 253.

(15) Parents' College Plans Study, The Ford Foundation, New York, mimeo., n. d.

(16) On the earlier parallel development of mass secondary education, see Trow, Martin, “The Second Transformation of American Secondary Education”, The International Journal of Comparative Sociology, II (1961), 144–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(17) Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1960, p. 216.Google Scholar

(18) Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates, reported in Newell Brown, “The Manpower Outlook (or the 1960's: Its Implications for Higher Education”, Office of Education, U.S. Department of Education, Higher Education (12, 1959), pp. 3–6Google Scholar. It is also estimated that the number of engineers will double during this period.

(19) Bogue, , op. cit. Table 17–2, p. 475Google Scholar, and Fact Book, op. cit. p. 146.

(20) Kahl, Joseph, “Educational and Occupational Aspirations of ‘Common Man’ Boys”, Harvard Educational Review, XXIII (1953), 186–203.Google Scholar

(21) Whyte, William Foote, Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1943).Google Scholar

(22) Kahl, , op. cit. p. 193.Google Scholar

(23) A recent study of unemployment in the state of Michigan found it concentrated in two groups: semi-skilled and unskilled older workers who have been laid off in automotive and related industries, and inexperienced young people or school drop-outs with no special qualifications who find it difficult to get jobs in an area of substantial labor surplus. “Generally, the educational attainment of both these young and old unemployed workers is low, this limiting their job flexibility and militating against achievement of higher level jobs”. The New York Times, 03 18, 1962Google Scholar. In recent recessions unemployment has been markedly higher among the less well educated. “Close to three quarters of both the long-term unemployed and the economic part-time workers […] came from the half of the work force that had not completed high school”. Katz, Arnold, “Educational Attainment of Workers, 1959”, Monthly Labor Review, LXXXIII (1960), p. 117Google Scholar and Table 4. See also Meredith, Jane L., “Long Terra Unemployment in the United States”, Monthly Labor Review, LXXXVI (1961)Google Scholar, Table 7, which shows that the occupations requiring a college education have the lowest rates of unemployment. The connection between education and the prospects for steady work is public knowledge, and part of the spur for continuing in high school, and on to college, where it is inexpensive and available. I suspect that in some parts of California, even Whyte's “corner boys” would today be enrolled in the local junior college.

(24) See Trow, , op. cit.Google Scholar

(25) See below, Table 3, p. 256.

(26) See Havemann, and West, , op. cit.Google Scholar, Chapter xv, on income differentials by college attended; and Berelson, , op. cit. pp. 111–112Google Scholar, on the undergraduate origins of graduate students iu universities of varying quality, of the recent recipients of the doctorate degrees, and of the graduate faculties in those universities. These all show marked academic advantages accruing to the graduates of the undergraduate colleges of high quality, which are also the ones which tend to recruit from upper socioeconomic strata. Also see Knapp, Robert H. and Greenbaum, Joseph J., The Younger American Scholar: His Collegiate Origins (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1953).Google Scholar

(27) Schultz, Theodore W., “Education and Economic Growth”, in Henry, Nelson B., ed., Social Forces Influencing American Education (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1961), Table E., p. 88.Google Scholar

(28) Bogue, , op. cit. p. 343, Table 13–8.Google Scholar

(29) However, an ironical consequence of this development is that the American high schools, which were created by and large to provide a terminal education for most of the population, are now being asked increasingly to transform themselves into preparatory institutions. But this creates certain problems for American secondary education. See Trow, , op. cit.Google Scholar

(30) See, for example, Amis, Kingsley, “Lone Voices”, Encounter, 07 1960, pp. 6–11.Google Scholar

(31) Little, A. N., “Will More Mean Worse? An Inquiry into the Effects of University Expansion”, The British Jourrnal of Sociology, XII (1961), 351–362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(32) As by conservative critics of education like Jacques Barzun. See his The House of Intellect (New York, Harper, 1959), esp. ch. v.Google Scholar

(33) “Some Thoughts on English Education”, Encounter, 07 1961, p. 52.Google Scholar

(34) Fact Book, op. cit. p. 92.

(35) Havemann, and West, , op. cit. pp. 25–37Google Scholar, and Schultz, Theodore W., op. cit. p. 79Google Scholar, Table 17. Schultz estimates that the additional lifetime income of all males in the United States who had completed college as compared with those who had completed high school was something over ten times as great as the total cost of the additional instruction. Moreover, the college-educated not only earn a good deal more, but in recent years their incomes have been rising at a much faster rate than those of the less well-educated. Katz, Arnold, op. cit. p. 115Google Scholar, Table 3. See also Glick, Paul C. and Miller, Herman P., “Educational Level and Potential Income”, American Sociological Review, XXI (1956), 307–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(36) At some 20 of the leading private liberal arts and technical colleges, concentrated chiefly in the Northeast, capacities have expanded by only about 20% since 1940 while applications have tripled during the same period. Bloomgarden, L., “Our Changing Elite Colleges”, Commentary, 02 1960, 150–154.Google Scholar

(37) On the character and development of these junior colleges, see Clark, Burton R., The Open Door College: A Case Study (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1960)Google Scholar, and Medsker, Leland L., The Junior College: Progress and Prospect (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1960).Google Scholar

(38) Goldsen, Rose K., Rosenberg, Morris, Williams, Robin M. Jr. and Suchman, Edward A., What College Students Think (Princeton, Van Nostrand, 1960), Table 1–4, p. 12, and Appendix 2, p. 208Google Scholar. See also Barton, Allen, Studying the Effects of College Education (New Haven, The Edward W. Hazen Foundation, 1959), p. 57.Google Scholar

(39) For example, on the social recruitment of teachers as compared with other professionals, see Mason, Ward, The Beginning Teacher (Washington, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1961)Google Scholar. See also Rosenberg, Morris, Occupations and Values Glencoe, The Free Press, 1957), Table 31, p. 55.Google Scholar

(40) On the forces working to strengthen vocational orientation in American higher education, see Clark, Burton K. and Trow, Martin, “Determinants of College Student Subculture”, Newcomb, T. M. and Wilson, E. K. (eds.), The Study of College Peer Groups (Social Science Research Council, forthcoming).Google Scholar

(41) See Riesman, David, “The Academic Procession”, in his Constraint and Variety in American Education (Garden City, Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958), pp. 25–65.Google Scholar

(42) For a discussion of the California system of higher education, see below.

(43) This fact lies behind the difficulty of characterizing American higher education: an observer can find evidence within the policies and curriculum of most American colleges for whatever generalization he wishes to make about it by pointing, for example, to the courses in accounting and home economics, or to the work offered in French literature and nuclear physics. And what is true of most American colleges and universities is also true of American higher education as a whole: its diversity and hospitality to apparently incompatible values and programs is at once its dominant characteristic and the source of the difficulty in making other generalizations about it.

(44) California State Department of Education, A Master Plan for Higher Education in California, 1960–1975 (Sacramento, California, 1960), p. 51, Table 2.Google Scholar

(45) We can say little here about California's more than sixty private colleges and universities, which include one of the country's two leading centers of scientific and engineering instruction and research (California Institute of Technology), a leading private university (Stanford), and a newly federated group of private colleges and technical institutes which retain their identity while cooperating closely in a wide range of educational and administrative areas (The Associated Colleges at Claremont).

(46) Time Magazine, LXXIX, No. 13 (03 30, 1962), p. 56Google Scholar. This number is growing rapidly.

(47) Ibid. While figures vary for different junior colleges, overall the state provides about a third of the operating expenses of the junior colleges, though the local communities provide all their capital outlays.

(48) In 1958, California junior colleges enrolled a total of 300,079 students. Of these, 91,000 were classified as full time students, 54,000 as part time, and 155,000 were enrolled in classes for adults. Medsker, , op. cit. p. 210.Google Scholar

(49) Clark, , op. cit., esp. ch. 11, pp. 41–85.Google Scholar

(50) But only about 6% of students in the state colleges arc taking graduate work: they are basically undergraduate colleges.

(51) Senate bill No. 33, 1960.

(52) In recent years the proportions of newly appointed full-time faculty holding the doctorate degree varied from about 70% in the University, to 40% in the state colleges and 9% in the junior colleges. Master Plan, op. cit. p. 123. The bulk of University faculty who are appointed without a doctoral degree earn them shortly thereafter. The doctoral degree is evidence both of research training and inclinations.

(53) Only 20% of freshmen at the Berkeley campus of the university live at home with their families.

(54) In a sense, supply creates demand. A new state college in the Los Angeles area, created in 1958, had an enrollment of 3,500 before its first permanent building was completed. A year later it had 4,600 students. “There is no indication that the total enrollment of all the other institutions (in the area) has been reduced by a figure comparable to San Fernando's enrollment.” The Costs of Higher Education Education in California, 1960–1975 (Berkeley, The University of California Press, 1960).Google Scholar

(55) These data are drawn from a study of college attendance now underway at the Center for the Study of Higher Education in Berkeley, California. We are indebted to Leland L. Medsker for tabulations presented in Tables 1 and 2 which are to appear in a forthcoming report of the Center.

(56) The greater proportion of students from lower class origins in the junior colleges and state colleges flows not only from the lower costs and vocational emphases of these institutions, but also from their lower admissions requirements as compared with the University. There is a relationship between class origins and academic performance which is a result of many complex social and cultural forces affecting working class students which work against high academic performance. For some of these see Hyman, Herbert H., “The Value Systems of Different Classes”Google Scholar, in Bendix, Reinhard and Lipset, Seymour Martin, Class, Status and Power: A Reader in Social Stratification (Glencoe, The Free Press, 1953), pp. 426–442Google Scholar, Bernstein, Basil, “Social Class and Linguistic Development: A Theory of Social Learning”Google Scholar, in Halsey, A. H., Floud, Jean, and Anderson, C. Arnold (eds.), Education, Economy and Society (New York, The Free Press, 1961), pp. 228–314Google Scholar, and Wilson, Alan B., “Residential Segregation of Social Classes and Aspirations of High School Boys”, American Sociological Review, XXVI (1959), 836–845.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(57) Schultz, Theodore W., op. cit.Google Scholar Elsewhere Schultz has observed: “Students of economic history have been hard put to explain why the economy of Great Britain has been falling behind that of the United States in economic growth and in output per man-hour. May it not be that a basic underlying factor has been the relatively small investment on the part of Great Britain in its secondary schools and its colleges and universities.” “The Emerging Economic Scene and Its Relation to High-School Education”, in Chase, F. S. and Anderson, H. A. (eds.), The High School in a New Era (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 106.Google Scholar

(58) This in no way “justifies” liberal education on economic grounds; its ultimate justification lies in its contribution to the intellectual and cultural life of the individual. But the additional economic gains accruing from liberal education, both to the individual and to the larger society, help explain both the high level of support for education by the society and the current rapid expansion of higher education.

(59) On this, see Parsons, Talcott, “Certain Primary Sources and Patterns of Aggression in the Social Structure of the Western World”, in his Essays in Sociological Theory Pure and Applied (Glencoe, The Free Press, 1949;, pp. 251–274Google Scholar, and Lipset, Seymour Martin, Political Man, The Social Bases of Politics (Garden City, Doubleday, 1960), pp. 97–176Google Scholar. See also the essays in Bell, Daniel (ed.), The New American Right (New York, Criterion Books, 1955).Google Scholar

(60) See Stouffer, Samuel, Communism, Conformity, and Civil Liberties (Garden City, Doubleday, 1955)Google Scholar, Hyman, Herbert H. and Sheatsley, Paul B., “Attitudes Toward Desegregation”, Scientific American, CXCV 1956), 35–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Selvin, Hanan C. and Hagstrom, Warren O., “Determinants of Support for Civil Liberties”, British Journal of Sociology, XI (1960), 51–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Trow, Martin A., “Small Businessmen, Political Tolerance, and Support for McCarthy”, The American Journal of Sociology, LXIV (1958), 270–281CrossRefGoogle Scholar. But for a less optimistic view of the influence of education, see Stember, Charles H., Education and Attitude Change (New York, Institute of Human Relations Press, 1961)Google Scholar. It is difficult to assess the effect of education itself as distinct from the influence of associated characteristics, both social and psychological, of those who gain a higher education.

(61) See Jacob, Philip, Changing Values in College (New York, Harper, 1957)Google Scholar, Barton, , op. cit.Google Scholar, and the essays in Sanford, Nevitt (ed.), The American College (New York, Wiley, 1962).Google Scholar

(62) See, for example, the essays in Rosenberg, Bernard and White, David M. (eds.), Mass Culture: The Popular Arts in America (Glencoe, The Free Press, 1957)Google Scholar, especially those by Ernest van den Haag and T. W. Adorno.

* My thanks to Fred Templeton for his assistance and suggestions.

(63) Riesman, , op. cit. p. 64.Google Scholar