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Localism, Denominationalism, and Institutional Strategies in Urbanizing America: Three Pennsylvania Colleges, 1870–1915
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
Extract
Small colleges in the “Age of the University” have been neglected. For years, historians have dismissed the college with a wave of President Eliot's inaugural speech and ushered the university builders onto center stage. Few studies have gone beyond Laurence Veysey's generalization that “the only course of action” those in charge of colleges “could urge was to hold on, perhaps making minor concessions, and hope that their institution would be able to survive.” Implicitly colleges have been assumed to be uniform and passive institutions that only broke from antebellum practices in reluctant response to the universities. Although the new models of higher education had an important effect, the prevailing stereotype misses the extent to which colleges shaped their policies in terms of local, denominational and institutional circumstances. The resulting diversity suggests that colleges, like other traditional institutions facing modernization, participated in the shaping of their destinies and were not merely passive victims.
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References
Notes
The author wishes to thank Professors Ron Goodenow, John Ingham, Ken O'Brian, David Potts, Elizabeth Ross and George Woytanowitz for their generous assistance in writing this paper.Google Scholar
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