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Students and the Social History of American Higher Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

David B. Potts
David B. Potts*
Affiliation:
Union College
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Abstract

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Type
Essay Review I
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , Fall 1975 , pp. 317 - 327
Copyright
Copyright © 1975 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. Herbst, Jurgen, “American College History: Re-Examination Underway,” History of Education Quarterly [hereafter cited as HEQ] 14 (Summer 1974): 259–66. For other helpful reviews on this topic see: Allmendinger, David F., “Strong Men of the Academic Revolution,” HEQ 13 (Winter 1973): 415–25, and Beach, Mark, “President's-Eye-View of the History of Higher Education,” HEQ 12 (Winter 1972): 575–87.Google Scholar

2. For population counts see [Barnard, F.A.P.], Analysis of Some Statistics of Collegiate Education (n.p., 1870); Comey, Arthur M., “Growth of the Colleges of the United States,” Educational Review 3 (1892): 120–31; Eells, Walter C., Baccalaureate Degrees Conferred by American Colleges in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Wash. D.C., 1958). On career choices see Burritt, Bailey B., “Professional Distribution of College and University Graduates,” U.S. Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 19(1912); Bailey, David W., “The Sons of Harvard: Who, Where, and When,” Harvard Alumni Bulletin 36 (May 18, 1934): 898–905; Bailey, James B., “A Statistical Study of the Yale Graduates, 1701–92,” Yale Review 16 (Feb. 1908): 400–26. The Yale study develops many other dimensions beyond that of occupation. Examples from institutional histories include Morison, Samuel Eliot, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century, 2 vols., (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), chs. 5, 21; Fletcher, Robert S., A History of Oberlin College from its Foundation Through the Civil War, 2 vols,. (Oberlin, Ohio, 1943), chs. 32–33; Rudolph, Frederick, Mark Hopkins and the Log: Williams College, 1836–1872 (New Haven, Conn., 1956), ch. 4; Storr, Richard J., Harper's University: The Beginnings (Chicago, 1966), pp. 109–112.Google Scholar

3. Rudolph, Frederick, “Neglect of Students as a Historical Tradition,” The College and the Student, eds. Dennis, Lawrence E. and Kauffman, Joseph F. (Washington, D.C., 1966), pp. 47–58.Google Scholar

4. Schneider, Donald O., “Education in Colonial American Colleges, 1750–1770, and the Occupations and Political Offices of Their Alumni” (Ph.D. diss., George Peabody College for Teachers, 1965); pp. 164–222; Potts, David B., “Baptist Colleges in the Development of American Society, 1812–1861” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1967), pp. 171, 232–35, 322–23; Allmendinger, David F. Jr., “Indigent Students and Their Institutions, 1800–1860” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1968), pp. 54–57; Humphrey, David C., “King's College in the City of New York, 1754–1776” (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1968), chs. 3, 4, and 6. Humphrey's work is scheduled for publication next year by Columbia University Press. Harris, P.M.G., “The Social Origins of American Leaders: The Demographic Foundations,” Perspectives in American History 3 (1969): 159–364. For a critique of Harris' approach and techniques see Smith, Daniel S., “Cyclical, Secular, and Structural Change in American Elite Composition,” ibid. 4 (1970): 351–74. For Harris' reply see “A Further Note on the Statistics of Historical Change,” ibid. 6 (1972): 423–33. Gettleman, Marvin E., “College President on the Prairie: John H. Finley and Knox College in the 1890's,” HEQ 9 (Summer 1969): 149; Wilkinson, Rupert “The Employment of Wesleyan Alumni: Trends and Comparisons' (mimeographed report, Alumni Office, Wesleyan University, Jan. 1971); Potts, David B., “Liberal Arts Colleges, Private” The Encyclopedia of Education 5 New York, 1971): 500–501; Burke, Colin B., “The Quiet Influence: The American Colleges and Their Students, 1800–1860” (Ph.D. diss., Washington University, 1973), ch. 2; Harris, Seymour E., A Statistical Portrait of Higher Education (New York, 1972), pp. 411–20, 923–63; The Great Awakening at Yale College , ed. Nissenbaum, Stephen (Belmont, Cal., 1972), pp. 254–58; Warch, Richard, School of the Prophets: Yale College, 1701–1740 (New Haven, 1973), ch. 10; Erenberg, Phyllis Vine, “Change and Continuity: Values in American Higher Education, 1750–1800” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1974), ch. 5; McLachlan, James, “The Choice of Hercules: American Student Societies in the Early 19th Century, The University in Society ed. Stone, Lawrence, 2 (Princeton, N. J., 1974), p. 473, and “American Colleges and the Transmission of Culture: The Case of the Mugwumps,” The Hofstadter Aegis: A Memorial , eds. Elkins, Stanley and McKitrick, Eric (New York, 1974), p. 191; Wein, Roberta A., “Women's Colleges and Domesticity, 1875–1918,” HEQ 14 (Spring 1974): 38–39, 44–45. For a more complete presentation of data see Wein, Roberta A., “Educated Women and the Limits of Domesticity, 1830–1918” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1974); Gordon, Sarah H., “Smith College Students: The First Ten Classes, 1879–1888,” HEQ 15 (Summer 1975): 147–167; Miller, Howard, “Evangelical Religion and Colonial Princeton,” Schooling and Society , ed. Stone, Lawrence (Baltimore, 1976).Google Scholar

5. Works in progress include: Allmendinger, David (University of Delaware), family origins of students at Eastern colleges for women, 1870–1900; Burke, Colin B. (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), a biographical file on approximately 15,000 students in higher education, 1800–1860, and enrollment estimates for the entire nineteenth century; P.M.G. Harris (Temple University), college students and social mobility up to the early 1760's; James McLachlan, (Princeton University), biographical essays on Princeton students in the eighteenth century (the first of four volumes is scheduled for publication in the summer of 1976). McLachlan has also collected data on a sizable majority of students attending Princeton in the nineteenth century. Potts, David (Union College), a comprehensive census of college students in the United States, 1800–1910; Stameshkin, David (Waterville, Maine), detailed profile of students attending Middlebury College throughout its history; Phyllis Vine (Sarah Lawrence), student demography of late eighteenth-century colleges; Wein, Roberta (Brooklyn College), career data for graduates of Bryn Mawr and Wellesley, 1875–1918; Wilkinson, Rupert (University of Sussex), employment distributions for alumni of Harvard, Yale, and Wesleyan from World War I to the present.Google Scholar

6. Allmendinger, David F., “The Strangeness of the American Education Society: Indigent Students and the New Charity: 1815–1840,” HEQ 11 (Spring 1971): 3–22; “New England Students and the Revolution in Higher Education, 1800–1900,” HEQ 11 (Winter 1971): 381–89; “Ages and Origins of New England College Students, 1800–1860” (mimeographed paper, Davis Seminar, Princeton University, September 29, 1972); “The Dangers of Ante-Bellum Student Life,” Journal of Social History 7 (Fall 1973): 75–85.Google Scholar

7. For the most prominent works investigating and/or commenting on the bureaucratization of education see: Veysey, Laurence R., The Emergence of the American University (Chicago, 1965), pp. 311–17, 429–33, et passim ; Tyack, David, “Bureaucracy and the Common School: The Example of Portland, Oregon, 1851–1913,” American Quarterly 19 (Fall 1967): 475–98; Katz, Michael B., Class, Bureaucracy, and Schools: The Illusion of Educational Change in America (New York, 1971); Lazerson, Marvin, Origins of Urban Education: Public Education in Massachusetts, 1870–1915 (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), pp. 3–4 et passim ; Spring, Joel, Education and the Rise of the Corporate State (Boston, 1972), pp. 87–90; Kaestle, Carl F., The Evolution of an Urban System: New York City, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), ch. 6; Schultz, Stanley K., The Culture Factory: Boston Public Schools, 1789–1860 (New York, 1973), ch. 6; Tyack, David B., The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), Part II et passim ; Troen, Selwyn K., The Public and the Schools: Shaping the St Louis System (Columbia, Mo., 1975), chs. 7 and 10.Google Scholar

8. For a regional approach see: Peterson, George E., The New England College in the Age of the University (Amherst, Mass., 1974); Leslie, Bruce W., “A Comparative Study of Four Middle Atlantic Colleges, 1870–1915: Bucknell University, Franklin and Marshall College, Princeton University, and Swarthmore College” (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University 1971); David Hoevler, J. Jr., “Higher Education in the Midwest: Community and Culture,” HEQ 14 (Fall 1974): 391–402. Findlay, James Jr. (University of Rhode Island) is currently engaged in a study of seven nineteenth-century colleges in Illinois and Indiana. Studies at the statewide level include: Dunbar, Willis F., The Michigan Record in Higher Education (Detroit, 1963); Sack, Saul, History of Higher Education in Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, Pa., 1963); Drake, William E. Higher Education in North Carolina Before 1860 (New York, 1964); McGiffert, Michael, The Higher Learning in Colorado: An Historical Study, 1860–1940 (Denver, 1964); Granade, Samuel R., “Higher Education in Antebellum Alabama” (Ph.D. diss., Florida State University, 1972); Jarchow, Merrill E., Private Liberal Arts Colleges in Minnesota: Their History and Contributions (St Paul, Minn., 1973). Studies by denominational affiliation can be found in: Gleason, Philip, “American Catholic Higher Education: A Historical Perspective,” The Shape of Catholic Higher Education , ed. Hassenger, Robert (Chicago, 1967), pp. 15–53; Potts, , “Baptist Colleges”; Miller, Guy Howard, “A Contracting Community: American Presbyterians, Social conflict. and Higher Education, 1730–1820” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1970) [a revised version of this is scheduled for publication next year by New York University Press]; Power, Edward J., Catholic Higner Education in America: A History (New York, 1972); Gleason, Philip, “From an Indefinite Homogeneity: The Beginnings of Catholic Higher Education in the United States” (unpublished paper prepared for the Catholic History Seminar, University of Notre Dame, March 15, 1975). For studies of institutional groups by other categories of affinity, see: Veysey, , The Emergence ; Schneider, , “Education”; Askew, Thomas A. Jr., “The Liberal Arts College Encounters Intellectual Change: A Comparative Study of Education at Knox and Wheaton Colleges, 1837–1925” (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1969); Ringenberg, William C., “The Protestant College on the Michigan Frontier” (Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, 1970); Masson, Margaret W., “The Premises and Purposes of Higher Education in American Society, 1745–1770” (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1971); Thelin, John R., “The Collegiate Ideal and the Education of Elites in American Culture” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1973); Whitehead, John S., The Separation of College and State: Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Yale, 1776–1876 (New Haven, Conn., 1973); Herbst, Jurgen, “The First Three American Colleges: Schools of the Reformation,” Perspectives in American History 7 (1974): 7–52; Erenberg, , “Change and Continuity”; Wein, , “Women's Colleges”; Robson, David W., “Higher Education in the Emerging American Republic, 1750–1800” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1974).Google Scholar

9. For efforts to go beyond the long-dominant and simple model of colleges as passive responders to public needs and demands, see Storr, Richard J., The Beginnings of Graduate Education in America (Chicago, 1953); Potts, , “Baptist Colleges”; Veysey, Laurence R., “Toward a New Direction in Educational History: Prospect and Retrospect,” HEQ 9 (Fall 1969): 343–59; Hawkins, Hugh, Between Harvard and America: The Educational Leadership of Charles W. Eliot (New York, 1972); Thelin, , “The Collegiate Ideal.” Some thoughts relevant to constructing a more dynamic and complex model can be found in Scott, Donald M., “The Social History of Education: Three Alternatives,” HEQ 10 (Summer 1970): 242–54.Google Scholar

10. Moore, Kathryn M., “Freedom and Constraint in Eighteenth-Century Harvard” (unpublished paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Washington, D.C., April 3, 1975); Smith, Wilson, “Apologia pro Alma Matre: The College as Community in Ante-Bellum America,” The Hofstader Aegis: A Memorial , eds. Elkins, Stanley and McKitrick, Eric (New York, 1974), pp. 145–51.Google Scholar

11. Quoted by Allmendinger, , p. 106, from a circular letter sent by the Amherst College faculty to parents in 1845.Google Scholar

12. Rudolph, Frederick, Mark Hopkins and The Log: Williams College, 1836–1872 (New Haven, Conn., 1956), p. 68.Google Scholar

13. Ibid. ch. 4.Google Scholar

14. For similar correctives to this traditional historiographical tendency see: McCaughey, Robert A., “The Transformation of American Academic Life: Harvard University, 1821–1892,” Perspectives in American History 8 (1974): 239–332, regarding origins of faculty professionalism; Potts, David B., “American Colleges in the Nineteenth Century: From Localism to Denominationalism,” HEQ 11 (Winter 1971): 363–80, with reference to the development of secularism.Google Scholar

15. Smith, Wilson, “Apologia pro Alma Matre.” Google Scholar

16. Storr, Richard J., “Academic Culture and the History of American Higher Education,” Journal of General Education 5 (October 1950): 6–16.Google Scholar

17. Smith, Wilson, Professors and Public Ethics: Studies of Northern Moral Philosophers Before the Civil War (Ithaca, New York, 1956); McLachlan, , “American Colleges.” Google Scholar