Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T13:11:16.206Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Professionalism, Higher Education, and American Culture: Burton J. Bledstein's The Culture of Professionalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Extract

Burton Bledstein classed his book The Culture of Professionalism with the work of the giants in American academic history. He suggested that his theory of the culture of professionalism ranked in significance with Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis, Charles A. Beard's industrialization theories, and Perry Miller's analysis of Puritanism. Bledstein's fresh historical perspective on higher education and his skepticism regarding professional authority no doubt were shaped by his experiences at elite public and private institutions, the University of California at Los Angeles (B.A., 1959) and Princeton (Ph.D., 1967). He has spent his whole professional life at one public institution, the University of Illinois at Chicago, with brief interludes provided by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1972–73) and the University of Chicago (1977–78), the latter in recognition of his book.

Type
Retrospective
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 by the History of Education Society 

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 Bledstein, Burton J., The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America (New York, 1976). The following book reviews and essays helped me to analyze the impact of Bledstein's book: Schudson, Michael, School Review 86 (Nov. 1977): 137–40; Kuklick, Henrika, Journal of American History 68 (June 1981): 152–53; Biebel, Charles D., “Higher Education and Old Professionalism,” History of Education Quarterly 17 (Fall 1977): 319–25; Scott, Donald M., “The Mystique of Professionalism,” Reviews in American History 6 (Sep. 1978): 299–305; Haskell, Thomas L., “Power to the Experts,” New York Review of Books, 13 Oct. 1977, 28–33; Veysey, Laurence, Academe 65 (Feb. 1979): 61–62; Blumin, Stuart M., “The Hypothesis of Middle-Class Formation in Nineteenth-Century America: A Critique and Some Proposals,” American Historical Review 90 (Apr. 1985): 299–338; and Melosh, Barbara, “‘Not Merely a Profession’: Nurses and Resistance to Professionalization,” American Behavioral Scientist 32 (July/Aug. 1989): 668–79.Google Scholar

2 Bledstein, , Culture, 105; Larson, Magali Sarfatti, The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis (Berkeley, Calif., 1977); Blumin, , “Hypothesis”; Haskell, Thomas L., ed., The Authority of Experts: Studies in History and Theory (Bloomington, Ind., 1984); Levine, David O., The American College and the Culture of Aspiration, 1915–40 (Ithaca N.Y., 1986).Google Scholar

3 Hofstadter, Richard and Metzger, Walter P., The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States (New York, 1955); Brubacher, John S. and Rudy, Willis, Higher Education in Transition: A History of American Colleges and Universities, 1636–1956 (New York, 1958); Veysey, Laurence R., The Emergence of the American University (Chicago, 1965); Rudolph, Frederick, The American College and University: A History (New York, 1962).Google Scholar

4 Potts, David B., “American Colleges in the Nineteenth Century: From Localism to Denominationalism,” History of Education Quarterly 11 (Winter 1971): 363–80; Allmendinger, David F. Jr., Paupers and Scholars: The Transformation of Student Life in Nineteenth-Century New England (New York, 1975); Sloan, Douglas, “Harmony, Chaos, and Consensus: The American College Curriculum,” Teachers College Record 73 (Dec. 1971): 221–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Bledstein, , Culture, 271.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., 289.Google Scholar

7 Burke, Colin B., American Collegiate Populations: A Test of the Traditional View (New York, 1982); Lagemann, Ellen Condliffe, Private Power for the Public Good: A History of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (Middletown, Conn., 1983); Jarausch, Konrad H., “Higher Education and Social Change: Some Comparative Perspectives,” in The Transformation of Higher Learning, 1860–1930: Expansion, Diversification, Social Opening, and Professionalization in England, Germany, Russia, and the United States , ed. Jarausch, Konrad H. (Chicago, 1983), 9–36. See also note 10, below.Google Scholar

8 Bledstein, , Culture, 8687; Calhoun, Daniel H., Professional Lives in America: Structure and Aspiration, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, Mass., 1965); Hughes, Everett et al., Education for the Professions of Medicine, Law, Theology, and Social Welfare (New York, 1973); Parsons, Talcott, “Professions,” in The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences , ed. Sills, David L., vol. 12 (New York, 1968), 536–47; Etzioni, Amitai, ed., The Semi-Professions and Their Organization: Teachers, Nurses, and Social Workers (New York, 1969).Google Scholar

9 See note 2, above.Google Scholar

10 Morantz-Sanchez, Regina Markell, Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine (New York, 1985); Walsh, Mary Roth, “Doctors Wanted, No Women Need Apply”: Sexual Barriers in the Medical Profession, 1835–1975 (New Haven, Conn., 1977); Ludmerer, Kenneth M., Learning to Heal: The Development of American Medical Education (New York, 1985); Auerbach, Jerold, Unequal Justice: Lawyers and Social Change in Modern America (New York, 1976); Stevens, Robert, Law School: Legal Education in America from the 1850s to the 1980s (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1983); Rossiter, Margaret W., Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 (Baltimore, 1982); Clifford, Geraldine Jonçich, ed., Lone Voyagers: Academic Women in Coeducational Universities, 1870–1937 (New York, 1989); Fitzpatrick, Ellen, Endless Crusade: Women Social Scientists and Progressive Reform (New York, 1990); Hatch, Nathan O., The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, Conn., 1989); Warren, Donald R., ed., American Teachers: Histories of a Profession at Work (New York, 1989); Herbst, Jurgen, And Sadly Teach: Teacher Education and Professionalization in American Culture (Madison, Wis., 1989); Melosh, Barbara, “The Physician's Hand”: Work, Culture, and Conflict in American Nursing (Philadelphia, 1982); Hine, Darlene Clark, Black Women in White: Racial Conflict and Cooperation in the Nursing Profession, 1890–1950 (Bloomington, Ind., 1989); Reverby, Susan, Ordered to Care: The Dilemma of American Nursing, 1850–1945 (Cambridge, Eng., 1987).Google Scholar

11 Bledstein, , Culture, 206–7.Google Scholar

12 Ryan, Mary P., Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790–1865 (Cambridge, Eng., 1981).Google Scholar

13 Fleming, Donald, William H. Welch and the Rise of Modern Medicine (Boston, 1954); Hawkins, Hugh, Between Harvard and America: The Educational Leadership of Charles W. Eliot (New York, 1972); Hawkins, Hugh, Pioneer: A History of the Johns Hopkins University, 1874–1889 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1960); Stevenson, Louise L., Scholarly Means to Evangelical Ends: The New Haven Scholars and the Transformation of Higher Learning in America, 1830–1890 (Baltimore, 1986).Google Scholar

14 Synnott, Marcia Graham, The Half-Opened Door: Discrimination and Admissions at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, 1900–1970 (Westport, Conn., 1979); Wechsler, Harold S., The Qualified Student: A History of Selective College Admission in America (New York, 1977); Oren, Dan A., Joining the Club: A History of Jews and Yale (New Haven, Conn., 1985); Levine, , The American College and the Culture of Aspiration; Gordon, Lynn D., Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era (New Haven, Conn., 1990).Google Scholar

15 Larson, , Rise of Professionalism; Freidson, Eliot, Professional Powers: A Study of the Institutionalization of Formal Knowledge (Chicago, 1986); Haskell, , ed., The Authority of Experts; Abbott, Andrew, The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor (Chicago, 1988).Google Scholar