Transformation Era
1870-1944
Transformation Era
• Role of Federal Government and Financing
• Era begins w/Morrill Act and ends with Servicemen Readjustment Act
• In between years for higher education funding
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Hatch Act 1887: Federal funding to conduct agricultural research
Smith Lever Act 1914: created university extensions/experimental stations
Smith Hughes Act 1917: Train vocational teachers
Depression Programs
• Public Works Administration: residence halls
• National Youth Administration: 1935-1943 ($93 million project)
• 1930: Federal govt. spent $23 m on HE
• 1997- Fed govt. spent $7.9 billion in student grants & work study, 33 b in
loans; & 20 b in research grants
• 2003 59.7 b to HE plus 29.2 b to research conducted at IHE
Transformation Era
• Era of Considerable Growth
• Cohen – starting point of the end of small college/small HE in the US
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Enrollment grew from 63,000 to 1.5 million
Faculty increased from 5,500 to 150,000
Degrees from 9,000 to 135,000; doctorates 3,300
Endowments $50m to 1.75 b
Expenditures 900m year to 144b
• Period of Philanthropy
– WWI 20,000 millionaires
– Technology appeals to industry
– Strings attached/ independence
Rockefeller Foundation-dept chairs/PhD
– Beginnings of connections between business and HE
– Role of alumni
– Stakeholders/constituencies
Helping hands
Transformation Era
•
Rise of Professional Schools
– By 1820s pressure require bachelor’s degree for admission to
professional school; end of era of apprenticeship??
– Eliot (Harvard) requires bachelor’s for admission to professional
schools
– By 1900 10% law, medicine, clergy, college teachers had professional
or graduate level preparation
– 1930s demand for entrance to professional school outstrips seats;
increase requirements/standards
• Pressure to up grade quality of education
– State licensure exams
– Professional associations/professional schools
– Accreditation
• Medical Training: 1910
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If you could afford it
Apprenticeship: If you could impress a physician sponsor
No undergraduate degree required
No national standards
• U.S. in the year 1910
– Growth of Mass Public Education
– Philanthropy – Wealthy Industrialists
– Separate but Equal
• Blacks – limited access to white schools
– 275 Meharry, TN
– 205 Howard, DC
– 125 Leonard, NC
– 40 National, KY
– 40 U of West Tenn.
– 24 Flint, LA
– 23 Knoxville, TN
Flexner Report
• Abraham Flexner: 1910 report Carnegie Foundation for the
• Flexner’s task: Visit and rank each (115) med school (20 schools
closed rather than have the visit)
– School entrance requirements
– Size and training of faculty
– Sum of available endowment and fees and budget
– Quality and adequacy of labs and qualifications and training of
lab teachers
– The relationship between the school and its associated hospitals
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Results:
– Recommended many schools be closed
– 52 medical schools closed by not meeting standards set by the report
– 5 of the 7 African American schools closed leaving only Meharry and Howard
Flexner Report
• Criticisms of report
– Flexner was part of the bureaucracy
• Worked for the Mellon’s and Rockefeller’s
• Evidence of racial bias: Ch. 14 “ The Medical Education of
the Negro”
– “A well-taught Negro sanitarian will be immensely useful;
an essentially untrained Negro wearing an M.D. degree
is dangerous.”
• AMA motives
– Accompanied visits
• Long-term implications
– Decreased number of physicians
– Improved quality and reputation of physicians
– Introduction of standards as quality measures
• Similar study w/law
What is Accreditation?
• Definition
– “Accreditation can be viewed as a loose
federation of institutions, associations, and
public representatives… all with an enduring
commitment to the concept of accreditation as
a voluntary, nongovernmental process of selfregulation focused on evaluating and
improving educational quality.”
-Young, 1983
Effort to Achieve Standards
• Regional accreditation associations
– NEASC
– MSACS
– NCACS
– SACS
(1885)
(1887)
(1895)
(1895)
• National Associations
– NASU
– AAU
(1897)
(1900)
First list of standards (NCAS; 1913)
1. Student admission required completion of 14
units of high school credit
2. Baccalaureate degrees would require 120
collegiate credits
3. Any course of studies would have to include
credits from eight departments
4. Faculty members must have obtained M.A. or
Ph.D.
5. Faculty could not instruct more than 15-18
credit hours per semester
ACE Requirements (1921)
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Require the completion of an accredited four-year
secondary school program for admission
Require at least 120 semester hours for a
baccalaureate
Maintain at least 100 students and 8 department
heads
Professors teach no more than 16 hours per week
Average no more than 30 students in each class
Have an annual operating income of at least $50,000
Maintain a library containing at least 8,000 volumes
Accreditation or Governance??
• Accrediting associations had extended
their influence by controlling:
– Faculty-student ratios
– Faculty teaching loads
– Laboratory and classroom sizes
– Library holdings
– Degree and program requirements
– Staff qualifications in specific programs
Transformation Era
• Problems in Professional Education/Similar to Land Grants
– Schools of Education: Development of normal schools, pedagogy links w/other
disciplines
– Part of undergraduate curriculum (Leading universities develop grad programs)
– Graduate and professional education struggles to find place
• Role of Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
• Finding faculty
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Faculty apprenticeship/learn by doing
Charles Eliot @ Harvard – among 1st
Germany; PhD as a symbol of preparation
20th C: David Starr Jordan, Stanford “Worst teaching
anywhere was done to freshman in colleges.”
– Faculty too specialized to teach core courses/teaching-research conflict
Transformation Era
• Finding Faculty Cont.
– Scholars who teach are not unlike tutors during colonial times who
waited for calls to the pulpit…..teachers by accident
• Early 1900 PhD required for appointment; form of academic
snobbery. Rise of the academic man
– PhD as symbol of knowledge/competition for knowledge
– Concept of faculty as mentor/friend changing---Mr Chips replaced by
PhD scholar
increasingly dehumanized IHEs……
Academic Ranks .. ….Harper Chicago 1891
– Lowest: 5 levels of 1 year appointments
– Associates: 2 yr appointments
– Instructors: 3 yr appointments
– Assistant Professors : 4 year appointments
– Permanent Appointments: Assoc. Profs., Profs., Head Profs.
Transformation Era
• Academic Organization
– Specialization of knowledge
– 1893: Dept of Biology at Chicago splits into: zoology, botany,
anatomy, neurology, physiology, and biology
– Ramifications: resources/power/politics
• PhD as a research degree, expected to publish results
– Rewards tied to productivity/business model (sweat shop of
academia)
– Begins at Johns Hopkins & Chicago/quality of faculty determined
by quality of publications (peer review/acceptance rates)
– Sources of research funding-external/restricted/unrestricted
– Does research inform teaching? Are researchers also teachers
(advancing knowledge or communication knowledge)
Issue: Should university researchers show disinterested in the
products of their research, following it where ever it leads; or should
universities pursue applied research, take on project on behalf of
other entities….?
Fundamental issue: Pure research leads to the atomic bomb (Univ of
Chicago); research conducted at universities contributes to victory in
WWII: is that a good thing?
Research & publication becomes an industry
University Press (Hopkins 1891)
1916 Univ of Chicago Press—850 titles
Sabbatical leaves (1890s)
Transformation Era
• Role of the President
– Early role: teacher
• 1890 Ohio State ad “ We are looking for a man of fine appearance,
of commanding presence, one who will impress the public; he must
be a fine speaker at public assemblies, he must be a great scholar
and great teacher, he must be a preacher, also as some think; he
must be a man of winning manners, he must have tact so that he
can along with and govern the faculty; he must be popular with the
students, he must also be a man of business training, a man of
affairs, he must also be a great administrator.”
• Clergyman president was gone or going
• Businessmen, politicians, scholars, military men - - leaders
University of Connecticut 2007
Candidates should possess proven leadership skills, an appropriate
terminal degree, and a demonstrated ability to build and cultivate
financial support for the University and its programs. The successful
candidate will have the ability to provide responsible financial
stewardship of the University, as well as the facility to effectively
focus administrative functions on serving the University’s
educational mission; demonstrated capability to effectively guide the
operations of large, complex public organization; the capacity to
build consensus on and articulate a clear vision of the University
mission among its constituencies; demonstrated ability to create a
climate of community, understanding, integrity, and mutual respect;
demonstrated support for the principles of shared governance and
academic freedom; the talent to establish and maintain constructive,
collaborative relationships with faculty, students, trustees, alumni,
unions, community, and legislative constituencies, and to foster
diversity reflective of our global environment.
Harper at Chicago
Began a meeting by saying he had 40 points to
discuss.
In the last 18 months of his life he published 5 books
(1906)
President as;
Academic leader
Fund raiser
Interface w/ federal govt
Internal-external constituencies/publics & politics
Athletics
Complex organizations