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The Changing Profile of College Access: The Truman Commission and Enrollment Patterns in the Postwar Era

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Dongbin Kim  and
John L. Rury
Dongbin Kim
Affiliation:
Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Kansas
John L. Rury
Affiliation:
Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Kansas
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The 1947 President's Commission on Higher Education, popularly known as the Truman Commission, offered a remarkable vision, one of an expansive, inclusive and diverse system of postsecondary education in the United States. It appeared just as hundreds of thousands of former GIs poured onto the nation's campuses, taking advantage of a little heralded program to provide tuition and other benefits to veterans of the recently concluded World War II. As it turned out, both of these events signaled the beginning of a remarkable period of expansion in higher education. The postwar years have been described as the third great period of growth in the history of American education, a development that took decades to unfold. While the Commission suggested that nearly half of the nation's youth could benefit from collegiate education, it limited its projections to just thirteen years (to 1960). In fact, it took more than twice as long to approach such high levels of popular participation in higher education, and the most dramatic growth occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. In other respects, however, the President's commissioners' projections for change in enrollment patterns look remarkably prescient in retrospect. Even if they missed the timing of college growth and the significant role women played in it, their report still managed to anticipate a very broad process of change. By 1980 the collegiate student population had come to embody much of the inclusiveness and diversity that they had envisaged some thirty-three years earlier.

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History of Education Quarterly , Volume 47 , Issue 3: Special Issue on the History of Access to American Higher Education Commemorating the Sixtieth Anniversary of Higher Education for American Democracy—The Report of the President's Commission on Higher Education , August 2007 , pp. 302 - 327
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Copyright © 2007 History of Education Society 

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References

1 Goldin, Claudia and Katz, Lawrence F., “The Shaping of Higher Education: The Formative Years in the United States,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 13, no. 1 (Winter 1999): 37-38. On growth in the postwar era, see Marvin Lazerson, “The Disappointments of Success: Higher Education after World War II,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 559 (September 1998): 66; Robert D. Mare, “Trends in Schooling: Demography, Performance and Organization,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 453 (January 1981): 99-100; and Alice M. Rivlin and June O'Neill, “Growth and Change in Higher Education,” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science 30, no. 1 (May 1970): 66-74.Google Scholar

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3 The most important new source of information is a large sample of individuals aged nineteen and twenty years old drawn from census manuscript schedules for the years 1940, 1960, and 1980. These data were acquired through the Population Research Center at the University of Minnesota, Integrated Public Use Microdata Samples (IPUMS). Numbering more than 150,000 individuals (more than fifty thousand per census year), this data set provides insight into a number of issues that cannot be addressed with other sources. IPUMS data for these years feature elaborate educational attainment variables, identifying individuals who are enrolled in college, for various years of matriculation. In addition to such individual characteristics as race, gender, and age, these data also include information on whether an individual was employed, the type of residence they inhabited, and whether they moved in previous five years. While the broad outline of growing access to postsecondary education can be identified for the years following the 1947 Commission Report, the IPUMS data permit a more detailed and nuanced examination of the changing profile of college students across the postwar period. Specifically, they make it possible to examine rates of attendance for high school graduates, to determine if students lived on campus or at home, whether they has moved recently, and to compare regional differences in these and a host of other variables. The ages of nineteen and twenty have been selected because they represent the time when most people started college in this period. Analysis of IPUMS data in all three of the years analyzed for this study indicated that the peak age of postsecondary enrollment was twenty-one. The two years prior to this point, when rates are climbing, can be thought of representing the point of initial access. For additional information on IPUMS, see the Web site at http://www.ipums.umn.edu/usa/. We are grateful to the University of Minnesota Population Center, and the IPUMS program in particular, for making these data available.Google Scholar

4 Statistical summaries drawn from National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Digest of Educational Statistics, 1995 (Washington, DC, 1996), Table 166: Historical Summary of Faculty, Students, Degrees and Finances in Institutions of Higher Learning, 1869-70 to 1992-93. For racial and ethnic patterns of college enrollment, see NCES, Youth Indicators, 1996 (Washington, DC, 1996), Table 27, p. 76.Google Scholar

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7 While the bulge in attendance produced by veterans was short-lived, veterans may have wielded more influence after they left college. As historians have noted, the GI's appearance on campus helped to raise public awareness of higher education and the benefits it promised. See Daniel A Clark, “The Two Joe's Meet. Joe College and Joe Veteran: The GI Bill, College Education and American Culture,” History of Education Quarterly 38, no. 2 (Summer 1998): 165-189. In addition, the GI Bill may have had intergenerational effects. Many of the baby boomers who surged onto campuses after the mid-sixties, after all, were the children of these veterans, or perhaps nieces and nephews. Because of the GI Bill, going to college was familiar to many more families than it would have otherwise been. The GI Bill's impact lasted beyond the enrollment of its beneficiaries. As Mettler notes in Soldiers to Citizens, the impact of the GI Bill was evident in many spheres of life; see chapters 4-8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 These figures are from NCES, Digest of Educational Statistics, 1995, Table 166: Historical Summary of Faculty, Students, Degrees and Finances in Institutions of Higher Learning, 1869-70 to 1992-93.Google Scholar

9 NCES, Digest of Educational Statistics, 2000 (Washington, DC, 2000), Figure 4: Years of School Completed by Person 25 to 29 Years of Age, 1940-99, p. 9. IPUMS data for nineteen- and twenty-year-olds show similar trends, with overall rates of secondary graduation rising from 44 percent in 1940 to 78 percent in 1980.Google Scholar

10 Using data from IPUMS, we have calculated the impact of each of these developments. Over forty years, the near doubling of high school graduation rates would have increased the size of the college-entry population (ages nineteen and twenty) more than three times (319 percent), even if college enrollment rates remained the same. On the other hand, if the rate of high school graduation remained the same, the size of college-entry enrollment would have more than quadrupled (486 percent) due to increased college enrollment rates. It thus appears that growing secondary graduation rates had a somewhat smaller impact on the number of college-entry students than the increased the enrollment rate of high school graduates. Added to the effects of rising secondary graduation levels, however, the impact of higher enrollment rates was magnified considerably. Both calculations reflect rising fertility rates associated with the baby boom.Google Scholar

11 Macunovich, Diane J., Birth Quake: The Baby Boom and Its Aftershocks (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 1-35; Landon Y. Jones, Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation (New York: Coward Mc Cann, 1980), passim; Thomas Hine, Rise and Fall of the American Teenager (New York: Bard, 1999), chap. 13.Google Scholar

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14 Despite all of the controversy over the war, it appears that it caused only a temporary boost in college attendance, perhaps something like a GI Bill in reverse, only smaller in magnitude. See David Card and Thomas Lemieux, “Going to College to Avoid the Draft: The Unintended Legacy of the Vietnam War,” American Economic Review 91, no. 2 (2001): 97-102.Google Scholar

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16 Goldin, Claudia, Katz, Lawrence and Kuziemko, Ilyana, “The Homecoming of American College Women: The Closing of the College Gender Gap,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 20, no. 4 (2006): 1-24. The authors argue that women began to recognize that their employment horizons were widening in the 1960s, and that the advent of legal and widespread birth control helped to delay the age of marriage, making higher college enrollments and graduation rates possible. Also see Barbara Miller Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), chap. 12; Solomon attributes the climate of change to the emerging feminist movement and anti-discrimination legislation that affected women. Also see Jerry Jacobs, “Gender Inequality and Higher Education,” Annual Review of Sociology 22 (1996): 154-156; and Pamela Barnhouse Walters, “Sex and Institutional Differences in Labor Market Effects on the Expansion of Higher Education, 1952 to 1980,” Sociology of Education 59, no. 4 (October 1986): 199-211.Google Scholar

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19 This was a familiar characterization at the time; see Jencks and Riesman, The Academic Revolution, 486-487. On the limitations of commuter higher education, see Alexander W. Astin, “Contradictions in American Higher Education,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 126, no. 1 (February 1982): 6-10; Kevin Dougherty, “The Effects of Community Colleges: Aid or Hindrance to Socioeconomic Attainment,” Sociology of Education 60, no. 2 (April 1987): 86-103; and Jerome Karabel, “Community Colleges and Social Stratification,” Harvard Educational Review 42, no. 1 (February 1972): 12-18.Google Scholar

20 President's Commission, Higher Education for American Democracy, 29-32.Google Scholar

21 On regional differences in an earlier period, see Rury, John L., “American School Enrollment in the Progressive Era: An Interpretive Inquiry,” History of Education 14, no. 1 (March 1985): 49-67.Google Scholar

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23 The figures in this paragraph are drawn from analysis of nineteen- and twenty-four-year-olds in the IPUMS data cited earlier, and should be interpreted with caution. Southern secondary graduation rates were lower both for Whites and Blacks in this period, but especially so for the latter (less than 10 percent in 1940). Some of the secondary graduates reported attending college in the South probably migrated there to pursue their collegiate education. In particular, it appears that this may have been especially true in the case of Black students (this is discussed in greater detail below). A national study of student migration indicated that the South was a net importer of students at this time. See Charles S. Gossman, Charles E. Nobbe, Theresa J. Patricelli, Calvin F. Schmid, and Thomas E. Steahr, Migration of College and University Students in the United States (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968), 127. The lines in Chart 1, like other chart below, should be interpreted as representing broad trends based on decennial U.S. Census data. Indeed, they depict changes as registered at twenty-year intervals. If annual data were used, the timing of changes would be somewhat different, but overall patterns would be similar.Google Scholar

24 In an analysis of state level differences in enrollment levels across the 1970s, two other researchers found that the single best predictor was the overall level of education, which is consistent with the view that secondary graduation rates are an important determinant of college access. See Kathy L. Stafford, Sven B. Lundstedt and Arthur D. Lynn, “Social and Economic Factors Affecting Participation in Higher Education,” The Journal of Higher Education 55, no. 5 (September 1984): 602-606. On the earlier period, see Goldin and Katz, 307-308; and Claudia Goldin, “America's Graduation from High School: The Evolution and Spread of Secondary Schooling in the Twentieth Century,” The Journal of Economic History 58, no. 2 (June 1998): 345-374.Google Scholar

25 On the migration of students in the years leading up to and including the early 1960s, see Gossman, et al., Migration of College and University Students in the United States, chap. 9. In general, this study confirms the patterns noted in the IPUMS data: in 1960 New England had the nation's highest proportion of migrant students, especially for private institutions, and the far West had the least. One limitation of the IPUMS data is that it is impossible to determine overall college enrollment rates for students from a particular region, as a certain number of students migrated out, and the data do not indicate where residential students came from. Thus we cannot calculate the enrollment rate of students from New England, or any other region, net of those who migrated there. For discussion of migration during the seventies, including the influence of new commuter institutions, see Fenske, Robert H., Scott, Craig G. and Carmody, James F., “Recent Trends in Studies of Student Migration,” The Journal of Higher Education 45, no. 1 (January 1974): 61-74; also see T.E. Steahr and C.F. Schmid, “College Student Migration in the United States,” The Journal of Higher Education 43, no. 6 (November 1972): 441-463. On a slightly later period, see R. McHugh and J.N. Morgan, “The Determinants of Interstate Student Migration: A Place to Place Analysis,” Economics of Education Review 3, no. 4 (October 1984): 269-278. Of course, the principal West Coast state, California, had a very well developed system of community colleges and regional state four-year institutions, while New England states such as Massachusetts had many fewer such institutions. For an overview of the development of community colleges, see Brint and Karabel, The Diverted Dream, chaps. 3 and 4.Google Scholar

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28 For discussion of developments in women's higher education at this time, see Linda Eisenmann, Higher Education for Women in Postwar America, 1945-1965 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), chap. 2. Male enrollment rates for secondary graduates basically doubled between 1940 and 1960, while women's enrollment rates increased by 95 percent. Because men started at a higher point, moreover, their advantage increased proportionally.Google Scholar

29 A statistical account of this process can be found in Touchton, Judith G. and Davis, Lynne, Fact Book on Women in Higher Education (New York: ACE and Macmillan Publishing Co., 1991), 49. On overall enrollment rates, see Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Edition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), Figure Bc-E. For an overview of literature on the growth of access for women at this time, see Jacobs, “Gender Inequality and Higher Education,” 152-156. For a comprehensive discussion of changes in women's lives during this era, see William H. Chafe, The Paradox of Change: American Women in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), Part 4; and Blanche Linden-Ward and Carol Hurd Green, American Women in the 1960s: Changing the Future (New York: Twayne, 1993), passim.Google Scholar

30 Information on the gender composition of two- and four-year institutions from 1950 through the latter 1980s can be found in Touchton and Davis, Fact Book on Women in Higher Education, 167-168. Interestingly, analyses of IPUMS data indicate that the proportion of men and women college students living on campus in these years was generally the same. There were some regional variations, such as greater male likelihood to live on campus in New England in 1960, but overall rates were quite similar. If more women attended junior and community colleges, in that case, there must have been a somewhat higher number of men than women at other schools who lived off campus or commuted from home.Google Scholar

31 For interpretation of recent historical trends and the future prospects of women in higher education, see Austin, Helen S., “Educating Women: A Promise and a Vision for the Future,” American Journal of Education 98, no. 4 (August 1990): 479-493. On the Truman Commission, see Eisenmann, Higher Education for Women in the Postwar Era, 51-54.Google Scholar

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33 An overview of these issues can be found in Alexander Astin, Minorities in American Higher Education: Recent Trends, Current Prospects and Recommendations (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1982), chap. 7.Google Scholar

34 This is a historical issue that has received relatively little attention. For mention of the underdevelopment of Black secondary education at this time, see Anderson, James D., The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 236-237; and Margo, Robert A., Race and Schooling in the South 1880-1950: An Economic History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 71. Even less attention has been devoted to secondary schooling for Hispanic students at the time. See M. Beatriz Arias, “The Context of Education for Hispanic Students: An Overview,” American Journal of Education 95, no. 1 (November 1986): 26-57. Individuals with Hispanic surnames in the IPUMS data are used for these analyses.Google Scholar

35 On educational opportunities for the Black population at this time, see Levitan, Sar A.; Johnston, William B.; Taggart, Robert, Still A Dream: The Changing Status of Blacks Since 1960 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), chap. 4. Figures for the Hispanic population in the 1960 and 1980 IPUMS data are for the Southwest region and California, where the largest numbers of Hispanics lived at the time.Google Scholar

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49 In many respects, the Commission's Report's discussion of democracy was quite expansive, much in the tradition of John Dewey. Going beyond conventionally political definitions of the term, and placing it in new context of America as a world leader, the Commission's Report (vol. 1, p, 8) called for “a fuller realization of democracy in every phase of life.” In Dewey's words, democracy is “primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicative experience,” for which education is vital. A society embracing such an ideal “must see to it that its members are educated to personal initiative and adaptability,” or risk “confusion” and misdirection. John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: Macmillan Company, 1916), 87-88.Google Scholar