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PARTISAN REVIEW
The spirit of the Morrill Act combined with another major develop–
ment of the late nineteenth century, best represented by the importation
of the Humboldtean research university. The idea that any and all subjects
could be best pursued by a version of scientific procedure licensed higher
education to attempt systematic research and instruction in fields which
have no place in the core curriculum and really no good reason to be in
the university at all. Is it really necessary to send people to college to teach
them how to cook, how to wri te advertising copy, how to keep books and
so on?
The land grant university became, in many states, the founding insti–
tution of the state university system. Thus from the outset, in most states,
public higher education grew up in the cornfields, wheel ruts, and smoke
stacks of practical training for farmers and engineers. It was
this
base, not
the liberal arts colleges, the sectarian institutions, or the private universi–
ties, that was most transformed by the Servicemen Readjustment Act of
1944, better known as the G.I. Bill, which sent enrollment spiraling
upward. A glance at the historical record makes it clear that the G.I. Bill
was only the beginning of the college degree explosion.
In 1910,2.7 percent of the college population, that is the population over
age 24, had attended four or more years of college; by 1996 that was 23.6 per–
cent. Counting those who finished college tells only part of the story.
As
of
1996, 59 percent of Americans who had completed high school had pursued
college programs, and upwards of 65 percent of new high school graduates
were matriculating to college. The latest numbers are 67 percent. President
Clinton has called in his speech earlier this year for 100 percent.
The contemporary American system of mass higher education grew out
of the Morrill Act and the G.I. Bill, but it really became established with the
Higher Education Act of 1965 and its five subsequent reauthorizations, abet–
ted by state legislatures and by colleges and universities themselves, which
developed a voracious appetite for federal and state largesse.
Enrollments under these policies have ballooned, and any worthwhile
diagnosis of what's wrong in American education has to come to grips
with the problem of scale. Total enrollment in American colleges rose
from about 62,000 in 1870 to 355,000 in 1910, by 1950 to 2.3 million.
The most recent figures are about 14.1 million.
I have no desire to close educational opportunities to anyone who has
the aptitude, the preparation, and the serious aspiration to make good use of
these opportunities. My ideal would be a free public school system in every
city and town and rural district, no matter the wealth and income of the
residents,sufliciendy competent to recognize aptitude for higher education and
to prepare those students by teaching them history, composition, geography,
English literature, foreign languages, mathematics, music, chemistry, biology,
