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The Death of the Liberal Arts College

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

James Axtell
James Axtell*
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

To every thing, said the Preacher, there is a season, a time to be born and a time to die. But sometimes the students of Life misread its signs and prematurely bury one whose time has yet to come. Historians no less than journalists sometimes write obituaries when they should be appraising the tenacity of age. Over the past twenty years historians of American higher education have fallen deeply into the trap of prematurity; the obituary they wrote reads something like this:

Washington, D.C., 2 July 1862. The American Liberal Arts College died today after a prolonged illness. It was 226 years old.

Type
The Liberal Arts College in the Age of the University
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , Winter 1971 , pp. 339 - 352
Copyright
Copyright © 1971 History of Education Quarterly 

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References

Notes

1. Hofstadter, Richard, The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States (New York, 1955), pp. 209, 223; Hofstadter, , The Development and Scope of Higher Education in the United States (New York, 1952), pp. 20–21; Ernest Earnest, “Death and Transfiguration,” Academic Procession (Indianapolis, 1953), ch. 5.Google Scholar

2. Schmidt, George P., The Liberal Arts College (New Brunswick, 1957), p. 146; Brickman, William and Lehrer, Stanley, eds., A Century of Higher Education (New York, 1962), ch. 3; Hofstadter, , Development and Scope, p. 48; Peterson, George E., The New England College in the Age of the University (Amherst, 1964), p. 3.Google Scholar

3. Hofstadter, , Development of Academic Freedom pp. 222–38; Hofstadter, and Smith, Wilson, eds., American Higher Education: A Documentary History 1 (Chicago, 1961) : 251–391; Hofstadter, , “The Revolution in Higher Education,” in Paths of American Thought, ed. Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr. and White, Morton (Boston, 1963), pp. 270–71 (italics added).Google Scholar

4. Ibid. (italics added).Google Scholar

5. Boorstin, Daniel, The Americans: The National Experience (New York, 1965), pp. 152–61.Google Scholar

6. Hofstadter, , Development and Scope p. 11; Storr, Richard, “Academic Culture and the History of American Higher Education,” Journal of General Education 5 (October 1950) : 12; Stone, Lawrence, “ The Ninneversity,”' The New York Review of Books, January 28, 1971, p. 24. John Talbott makes a similar point in “The History of Education,” Daedalus (Winter 1971), pp. 142–43.Google Scholar

7. Rudolph, Frederick, “Neglect of Students as a Historical Tradition,” in The College and the Student, ed. Dennis, Lawrence E. and Kauffman, Joseph F. (Washington, 1966), p. 53.Google Scholar

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11. A study in 1913 established that thirty-two of sixty “representative” colleges, including large state and private universities, maintained compulsory chapel (Claus, Henry T., “The Problem of College Chapel,” Educational Review [September 1913], pp. 177–87). Of Wisconsin's three presidents after the Civil War, one was a minister and two had studied theology without entering the ministry. At Minnesota, Cyrus Northrup “sanctified” the “godless institution” left to him by his predecessor with a nonsectarian but effective “evangelical religion” (Merle Curti and Vernon Carstensen, The University of Wisconsin, 1848–1925 1 [Madison, 1949]; Gray, James, The University of Minnesota, 1851–1951 [Minneapolis, 1951], pp. 83–85).Google Scholar

12. Waldo Emerson, Ralph, An Oration, Delivered Before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837 (Boston, 1837).Google Scholar

13. Thwing, Charles F., “College Men First Among Successful Citizens,” The Forum (June 1893), pp. 494–503. See George, W. Pierson's recent study of The Education of American Leaders (New York, 1969) for a comparison.Google Scholar

14. A study of the career choices of seven Yale classes between 1860 and 1920 reveals that significant numbers of sons of fathers in lower status occupations, such as farming and the ministry, chose and were able to choose professions at graduation one or two levels higher on the current status scale, especially law and business (Sam Scovil, unpublished seminar paper, Yale University, 1970).Google Scholar

15. Thwing, Charles F., American Colleges: Their Students and Work 2d ed. (New York, 1883), pp. 202–10.Google Scholar

16. Perry Bingham, Albert, “Present Status of the Elective System in American Colleges,” Educational Review (November 1897), pp. 360–69.Google Scholar

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18. Nisbet, , Social Change and History; Bagby, Philip, Culture and History (London, 1958); Kroeber, A. L., Anthropology (New York, 1948); Kneller, George F., Educational Anthropology: An Introduction (New York, 1965).Google Scholar

19. Rudolph, , “Neglect of Students as a Historical Tradition,” pp. 47–58.Google Scholar

20. Oscar, and Handlin, Mary F., The American College and American Culture (New York, 1970).Google Scholar

21. Fletcher, Robert, History of Oberlin College (Oberlin, 1943).Google Scholar

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23. Ernest Earnest, Academic Procession, ch. 6.Google Scholar