Clark Kerr's World of Higher Education Reaches the 21St Century
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Clark Kerr’s World of Higher Education Reaches the 21st Century HIGHER EDUCATION DYNAMICS VOLUME 38 Series Editor Peter Maassen, University of Oslo, Norway, and University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands Johan Müller, Graduate School of Humanities, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, South Africa Editorial Board Alberto Amaral, CIPES and Universidade do Porto, Portugal Akira Arimoto, Hiroshima University, Japan Nico Cloete, CHET, Pretoria, South Africa David Dill, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA Jürgen Enders, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands Patricia Gumport, Stanford University, USA Mary Henkel, Brunel University, Uxbridge, United Kingdom Glen Jones, University of Toronto, Canada SCOPE OF THE SERIES Higher Education Dynamics is a bookseries intending to study adaptation processes and their outcomes in higher education at all relevant levels. In addition it wants to examine the way interactions between these levels affect adaptation processes. It aims at applying general social science concepts and theories as well as testing theories in the fi eld of higher education research. It wants to do so in a manner that is of relevance to all those professionally involved in higher education, be it as ministers, policy-makers, politicians, institutional leaders or administrators, higher education researchers, members of the academic staff of universities and colleges, or students. It will include both mature and developing systems of higher education, covering public as well as private institutions. For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/6037 Sheldon Rothblatt Editor Clark Kerr’s World of Higher Education Reaches the 21st Century Chapters in a Special History Editor Sheldon Rothblatt Department of History University of California Berkeley, CA, USA ISSN 1571-0378 ISBN 978-94-007-4257-4 ISBN 978-94-007-4258-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-4258-1 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg New York London Library of Congress Control Number: 2012941831 © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, speci fi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on micro fi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Exempted from this legal reservation are brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis or material supplied speci fi cally for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the Copyright Law of the Publisher’s location, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Permissions for use may be obtained through RightsLink at the Copyright Clearance Center. Violations are liable to prosecution under the respective Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a speci fi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Foreword It is fi tting that this volume of essays honoring Clark Kerr’s contributions to the strength, excellence, resilience and potential of US higher education is being pub- lished as we prepare to celebrate the 150th anniversaries of the Land Grant College Act of 1862 and the establishment of the National Academy of Sciences in 1863. Endorsed by President Abraham Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War, the Land Grant College Act, also known as the fi rst Morrill Act (named for Justin Smith Morrill, Congressional Representative of Vermont, who sponsored the bill), provided federal funding to establish at least one college in every state. A landmark piece of legislation, it laid the groundwork for public higher education as we know it today. After the Civil War, when the Industrial Revolution was in full swing, the Morrill Act helped to pro- vide the research and the educated workforce that were desperately needed in agricul- ture, mining, manufacturing and the “mechanical arts.” Before this legislation was passed, higher education was available to only a small proportion of America’s popu- lation. The Morrill Act, in effect, put universities where the people were. It was hailed because it established colleges “for our Land and Time,” or “New Education for the New World.” Andrew D. White, president of Cornell, declared at the time, “In all the annals of Republics, there is no more signi fi cant utterance of con fi dence in national destiny out from the midst of national calamity” (Cornell University 1868, p. 6). The Act not only provided greater access to higher education, it also promoted specialized training and spurred the development of both theoretical knowledge and its practical applications. It is astonishing to note that Congress enacted this law while the country was embroiled in its bloodiest con fl ict, making it clear how strongly both the president and Congress believed in the role of public higher education as the cornerstone of our nation’s economy, as well as our nation’s democracy. In addition to the Morrill Act and the establishment of the National Academy of Sciences, there were three other important developments in the history of US higher education: the release of a groundbreaking 1945 report by Vannevar Bush, science adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the passage of the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (the GI Bill of Rights) and the creation of Pell Grants. All of these developments played a role in democratizing access to knowledge and to education. v vi Foreword The National Academy of Sciences (NAS), which was closely related in spirit and application to the Morrill Act, was founded in 1863, just 8 months and a day after the Act was signed into law. Established to advise Congress on “any subject of science or art,” NAS expanded in time to include the National Research Council, the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine. Election to membership in the Academy is one of the highest honors that can be accorded to a scientist. NAS enlists the nation’s foremost scientists, engineers, health profession- als and other experts to address the scienti fi c and technical aspects of some of society’s most pressing problems. Among the critical issues NAS has addressed in recent years is the relationship between higher education and our nation’s leader- ship in science, medicine and technology, as well as our global economic competi- tiveness, not to mention standards of science and math instruction in our K-12 institutions. In addition to the National Academy of Sciences, a major report commissioned by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and enacted by President Harry S. Truman had a tremendous impact on the future of science in the United Stations. I am refer- ring to, of course, the 1945 report by Professor Vannevar Bush, entitled Science – The Endless Frontier, which de fi ned the United States’ postwar policy in science. Bush noted that business and industry naturally took the lead in applied research but were deterred by marketplace considerations from conducting basic research. He argued that it was the federal government’s responsibility to provide adequate funds for basic research to push the boundaries of human knowledge for the bene fi t of society. He also wrote that the nation’s universities were, by their very nature, best suited to take the lead in conducting this work. Public funding, he said, would pro- mote competition among researchers, and projects could be selected based on merit through a peer-review process. Bush suggested that a federal agency oversee the program, and Congress, in 1950, created the National Science Foundation to carry out this mission. Giving universities a central role in basic research turned out to be a brilliant policy. Instead of being centralized in government laboratories – as science tended to be in other parts of the world – scienti fi c research became decentralized in American universities, spurring a tremendous diversity of investment. It also gave graduate students signi fi cant research opportunities and helped spread scienti fi c discoveries far and wide to the bene fi t of industry, medicine and society as a whole. The GI Bill was one of the most imaginative, creative acts of Congress, in that it opened the doors of higher education institutions to millions of veterans. Drafted by Harry W. Colmery, a former Republican National Chairman and national com- mander of the American Legion, the bill passed by only a single vote. But with its adoption in 1944, Congress prevented a major social and economic crisis; some even believed it averted another Depression. The bill allowed returning servicemen and women to receive a college education or technical training without charge. By 1947, according to Department of Veterans Affairs statistics, 49% of those admitted to college were veterans. Ultimately, 15 million second world war veterans took advantage of the GI Bill. This was another major step toward the democratization of education and opportunity. Foreword vii Another historic milestone in the history of access to higher education – and the one in which Clark Kerr played a crucial role – was the creation of what became known as the Federal Pell Grant Program (named for Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island).