University of Florida Thesis Or Dissertation Formatting

COLLEGE FOR WHOM?: READER’S DIGEST AND HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES, 1945-1970

RACHEL MARIE MIRACOLO

A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN EDUCATION

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2015

To my supportive parents, Richard and Maria Miracolo, and all of my family and friends, without whom my sanity and success would not be possible

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank my family for all of their continued support and encouragement. I thank my advisor, Sevan Terzian, for his unwavering patience and guidance. I also thank Elizabeth Bondy for her wonderful feedback and support.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 4

ABSTRACT ...... 6

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 8

Historical Changes in American Higher Education ...... 9 College Enrollments ...... 10 G.I. Bill of Rights, 1944 ...... 13 The Red Scare, Communism, and The Cold War ...... 15 Popular Media Representations of Higher Education ...... 16 America’s Most Influential Mass Magazine: Reader’s Digest ...... 18 Scholarly Insight into the Digest ...... 21 A Subtle, Yet Clear Message: Investigating the Digest Images ...... 25

2 PATRIARCHAL DOMINANCE IN ACADEMIA AND WHAT COLLEGE WAS SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE ...... 31

It’s a Man’s World ...... 36 The Gaze of the White Male ...... 38 Women: A Token of Inclusion ...... 50 Qualifications for Success: There are None ...... 54 Defiance, Disobedience, and Divergence on College Campuses: Student Activism ...... 59 The Campus Landscape ...... 65 A Changing Environment: The Architecture of Academia ...... 67 Campus Under Construction ...... 71 Giving it the Ol’ College Try ...... 75

3 CONCLUSION...... 77

Advancing Scholarship ...... 83 Synonymous Struggles: American Higher Education Today ...... 85

LIST OF REFERENCES ...... 88

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 93

Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Education

COLLEGE FOR WHOM?: READER’S DIGEST AND HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES, 1945-1970

Rachel Marie Miracolo

May 2015

Chair: Sevan Terzian Major: Curriculum and Instruction

Mass media depictions of American higher education influence consumer attitudes toward college students, faculty, and the campus environment. The subject of visual images in mass magazines, however, potentially exposes inaccurate displays of student populations and the campus environment. Understanding the role of mass media images in articles discussing

American higher education is particularly important as potential students and the general

American public struggle to understand the utility of a college degree.

This thesis analyzes visual images of American higher education in the Reader’s Digest during the postwar era, 1945-1970. Two main categories found in the Digest sample of over 60 black and white drawings include academic men and women and the campus landscape (what college was supposed to look like). An examination of the illustrations related to American higher education exposes two levels of contradictions. First, a tension exists between the written text of an article and its accompanying image. The image did not directly correspond to the inclusive language used by the author, which portrayed a more exclusive institution dominated by white middle-class men. Second, a tension exists between the visual image and the historical events of the time, which exposed a more inclusive reality than what was portrayed in the illustrations.

The collegiate representations of America’s youth found in various editions of the

Reader’s Digest during the postwar era—1945 through 1970—illustrate a provocative ambivalence. Findings suggest that the Digest depicts American higher education as an unchanging entity—exclusive and mainly anachronistic. The Reader’s Digest images complicate rather than simplify notions of college. The Digest took a more subtle approach to a set of manipulations regarding who was worthy of attending college and who was not, what college was supposed to look like, and what American attitudes were toward post-secondary schooling.

Multiple meanings were extracted from a set of ordinary drawings that magnified the significance of higher education. This multi-media approach emphasizes how images interact with text and how these two elements together reveal greater assumptions concerning American higher education during the postwar-era. Ironically, the Digest’s images evoke a theme of exclusiveness even while American higher education was becoming more inclusive.

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

In 1948, Lyman T. Johnson, a forty-three year-old African American male, filed suit for admission to a graduate program at the University of Kentucky because he was denied admittance. In the landmark decision of March 1949, Federal Judge H. Church Ford ruled in

Johnson’s favor allowing nearly thirty African American students to participate in the University of Kentucky’s graduate and professional programs.1 Johnson’s perseverance and success is only one example of the restrictions African Americans had to overcome in the postwar era. The postwar period also experienced an explosion of college enrollment by women. In 1947, there were only 523,000 women enrolled in college. By 1988, however, that number was 13.7 times greater.2 American higher education was no longer an institution that admitted white middle-to- upper class males, but rather a more inclusive environment teeming with diversity—both in gender and race. Post-secondary schooling included the previously underserved, those who were traditionally written off because they did not fit the conventional idea of a college student.

However, Johnson’s story and the stories of many women remained underreported by mass media outlets. Popular mass magazines of the time—Life, Time, The Saturday Evening

Post, The New Yorker, American Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Newsweek, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Reader’s Digest—maintained a distinct rhetoric concerning the American college student.

They chose to represent a race-centered view of the world by selecting white middle-class males as the epitome of a college student in both print and visual media. While American higher education was experiencing rapid changes in curriculum, admissions, the construction of buildings, the expansion of dorms and classrooms, and the emergence of two-year institutions,

1 John R. Thelin, A History of American Higher Education (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2004), 304.

2 John H. Bishop, “The Explosion of Female College Attendance,” CAHRS Working Paper (1990): 1.

mass magazines portrayed college as an exclusive place. White supremacy was maintained.

White middle-class Americans received greater access and opportunity to a high quality post- secondary education, a historical trend that was often encouraged by mass magazines, even though historical trends may suggest otherwise. The university was no ivory tower—it was deeply affected by society.3

Historical Changes in American Higher Education

American higher education experienced a series of significant changes in the postwar-era.

The unimaginable acquisition of college degrees and more—automobiles, houses, and televisions—marked an era of unprecedented material consumption.4 Higher education institutions struggled to cope with political and economic uncertainties: threats to federal aid, declining state support, higher tuition rates, and increase competition for for-profit institutions, as well as preparing students for a global marketplace.5 While American higher education enjoyed a quarter century of “prosperity, prestige, and popularity” following World War II, the campus still experienced problems and a new set of pressures that transformed numerous institutions.6 The postwar-era was a transformative time, which shaped social policy issues, the status of various social groups, formal education and policy initiatives, national politics, and equity in education.7 Therefore, mass media outlets held a significant power in promoting dominant views concerning educational attainment, social mobility, and economic advancement.

3 Philip G. Altbach, “The Racial Dilemma in American Higher Education,” in Philip G. Altbach and Kofi Lomotey, Ed., The Racial Crisis in American Higher Education (New York: State University of New York Press, 1991): 3-10.

4 Linda Eisenmann, Higher Education for Women in Postwar America, 1945-1965 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2006), 2; John William Tebbel and Mary Ellen Zuckerman, The Magazine in America, 1741-1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 246.

5 Dianne Hayes, “Reinventing Higher Education,” Diverse: Issues in Higher Education 29 (2012): 12.

6 Thelin, American Higher Education, 260.

7 John L. Rury, Education and Social Change: Contours in the History of American Schooling. (New York: Routledge, 2013), 175.

College enrollments surged, and new public and federal policies directly influenced American higher education. Mass media representations of these changes, however, especially in one of the most popular periodicals of the time (Reader’s Digest), were not accurately depicted.8 Historical trends in post-secondary institutions help to distinguish the contradictions (between images and text, and images and historical events) found in this thesis by examining the Reader’s Digest magazine from 1945 to 1970.

College Enrollments

The first generation of white middle-class Americans to attend high schools and colleges in exceptionally large numbers emerged from the late 1940s through the 1960s. American post- secondary institutions enrolled approximately 1.5 million students from 1939 through 1940. By

1970, enrollments had nearly quadrupled to almost 8 million students.9 The percentage of 18 to

24-year-olds attending an American institution during 1946 was 12.5 percent, and 35.8 percent by 1970.10 Many young adults—baby boomers—believed in the possibilities of the American

8 I establish this claim based on a thorough examination of popular mass magazines (Life, Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, Fortune, the Reader’s Digest, and others), and college novels written during the postwar-era, which did not indicate an accurate representation of the college experience. Further information can be found by reading the following scholars. Gustavo E. Fischman, “Reflections about Images, Visual Culture, and Educational Research,” Educational Researcher 30 (2001): 29; John R. Thelin and Barbara K. Townsend, “Fiction to Fact: College Novels and the Study of Higher Education,” in J. C. Smart (Ed.) Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research (New York: Agathon Press, 1988), 209; Frances K. Barasch, “Faculty Images in Recent American Fiction,” College Literature 10 (1983): 33; Michael Bieze, Booker T. Washington and the Art of Self-Representation (New York: Peter Lang, 2008), 4-11; Richard C. Boys, “The American College in Fiction,” College English 7 (1946): 382-87; Daniel A. Clark, “The Two Joes Meet—Joe College, Joe Veteran”: The G.I. Bill, College Education, and Postwar American Culture, History of Education Quarterly, 38 (Summer 1998), 172; Daniel A. Clark, Creating the College Man: American Mass Magazines and Middle-Class Manhood 1890-1915 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010), 27-30; John Kramer, “College and University Presidents in Fiction,” The Journal of Higher Education 52 (1981): 84; Thomas Pendergast, Creating the Modern Man: American Magazines and Consumer Culture, 1900- 1950 (Columbia, University of Missouri Press, 2000), 55.

9 American Council on Education, “Enrollments by Levels of Study, Selected Years 1899-1900 to 1990,” Fact Book on Higher Education (1984): 57; Gale E. Thomas, Karl L. Alexander, and Bruce K. Eckland, “Access to Higher Education: The Importance of Race, Sex, Social Class, and Academic Credentials,” The School Review 87 (1979): 133.

10 Ross Gregory, Cold War America, 1946-1990 (New York: Facts on File, 2003), 381.

dream, seeking university degrees as a gateway to a more prosperous future.11 It was a new age on American campuses, marked by an emerging “counter culture,” and record numbers of youth wanting to go to college.12 Like any historically large group, the postwar generation included individuals of all kinds, including many who identified strongly with traditional values. This was the first generation of Americans to attend colleges in exceptionally large numbers. The massive size in enrollments influenced student perceptions of authority (mainly distrust) and the social landscape because students had been forced to mix with individuals of different races, genders, backgrounds, cultures, socioeconomic statuses, and languages.

However, inequities and injustices of discrimination in higher education on the basis of race, gender, and income prompted educational reforms by the federal government to support individuals traditionally excluded from the institution. Black colleges and universities were more than ninety percent African American in their student populations.13 The Civil Rights Movement influenced American higher education by challenging public laws and practices that excluded blacks and other minority groups from attending colleges and universities. In the two decades between 1948 and 1968, African American students endured isolation, sabotage, exclusion, shunning, and the opportunity to participate in college life.14 The Brown v. Board of Education of

Topeka, Kansas decision in May 1954 declared that separate public schools for black and white students was inherently unequal and unconstitutional.15 In a Gallup poll from July 1954,

American’s were asked if they approved or disapproved of the Supreme Court decision, which

11 James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 83.

12 Rury, Education and Social Change, 209.

13 Altbach, “The Racial Dilemma,” 5.

14 Thelin, American Higher Education, 304.

15 Patterson, Grand Expectations, 388; Thelin, American Higher Education, 269.

indicated a 54 percent approval and 41 percent disapproval rate.16 Regardless of the approval percentage, black students remained marginally underrepresented at almost all racially desegregated campuses in the United States.17

Women, too, had been gradually closing gender gaps in college enrollments, but struggled to exceed their male counterparts in the total degrees conferred by institutions of higher education. In 1945, bachelor degrees were awarded to 77,510 females and 58,664 males. By

1970, bachelor degrees were awarded to 3,641,360 females and 4,755,940 males.18 The experience of the Great Depression and World War II caused many to question prevailing ideas regarding social superiority, especially those based on race and social class, and educational equity.19 Even so, an analysis of mass media depictions in the Reader’s Digest of individuals in higher education during the postwar-era indicates that social superiority was maintained. In

1953, both men and women showed a preference for working under a man. About 18 percent of men believed that women were not capable or suited to be a boss, and about 27 percent of women believed that women were too emotional and would cause friction in business.20 Perhaps, as a result, white middle-to-upper class males were promoted as the ideal college student in most magazines.

The shape of American higher education was simultaneously altered in two contrasting ways due to the increase in enrollments. Higher education expanded to provide mass access to

16 William P. Hansen and Fred L. Israel, eds. The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935-1971 (New York, NY: Random House, 1972), 1249.

17 Thelin, American Higher Education, 304. Violence, hostility, and contentiousness plagued universities struggling to fully integrate African Americans. Ongoing conflict led to the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, which outlawed discrimination based on race in schools, public places, and employment, and also mandated equal opportunity for women.

18 Gregory, Cold War America, 394.

19 Rury, Education and Social Change, 188.

20 Hansen and Israel, The Gallup Poll, 1177.

education. The admissions process, for example, had prompted colleges and universities to alter the evaluation of student applicants based on the use of standardized testing for both admissions and placement decisions for degree programs.21 While 62 percent of Americans believed that colleges should not raise their entrance requirements, 49 percent of high school principals were in favor of this decision.22 At the same time, institutions showed increasing capacity to add advanced, academically selective programs from the undergraduate level to the doctoral programs.23 The spatial disparity between newly added students (from lower socioeconomic classes and different races and genders) and advanced students (white middle-to-upper class males) preserved the superiority of a white hegemonic system. This historical reality directly influences one’s reading of mass magazines, like the Reader’s Digest, because the extension of mass higher education in the postwar-era was perceived as both a possibility and a restricted opportunity.

G.I. Bill of Rights, 1944

As the American government supported various initiatives for higher education, post- secondary institutions participated in the formulation of new public policies.24 Most notably, the passage of the G.I. Bill of Rights in 1944 promoted an educational boom. Veterans were given financial assistance, which allowed millions of them to enroll in college.25 The G.I. influx jolted faculty and administrations to offer married housing, accelerate instruction, and provide a range

21 Thelin, American Higher Education, 265.

22 Hansen and Israel, The Gallup Poll, 1549.

23 Thelin, American Higher Education, 260.

24 Rury, Education and Social Change, 181; Thelin, American Higher Education, 261; Patterson, Grand Expectations, 68.

25 Clark, “’The Two Joes,” 167-69; Patterson, Grand Expectations, 68. Universities had been deliberate in creating new programs to accommodate GI’s, urging veterans to consider college.

of practical and career-oriented courses.26 Another consequence of the G.I. Bill was the masculinization of the postwar campus—both in the numbers of male students and in the distinctions made between male fields of study and those deemed appropriate for women.27 The desire to reestablish normalcy after the disruption of the war persuaded many individuals to turn to higher education for career preparation or to expand economic choices.28 Ultimately, colleges and universities adapted to dramatic increases in enrollments, which affected the ways in which the mass media portrayed these educational changes.

According to one historian, the G.I. Bill became the catalyst that reshaped the role of college education in American culture because it facilitated mass social mobility.29 Labels like

“Joe College” and “Betty Co-ed” embodied a common theme in undergraduate life as depicted by popular images in the mass media. Most notably, a Norman Rockwell painting of the soldier

Willie Gillis from The Saturday Evening Post became a symbol of masculinity and success in higher education.30 This image transformed the traditional “Joe College” into a serious academic student, even though he was a veteran. As a result, the G.I Bill was known for helping millions of Americans acquire skills and technical training to advance in life. The dramatic shift in the type of student valued by universities marked one of the most significant developments in the modern history of American education.31

26 Patterson, Grand Expectations, 68.

27 Clark, “Two Joes,” 168-72; Thelin, American Higher Education, 267.

28 Eisenmann, Higher Education for Women, 5.

29 Burton J. Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America (New York: Norton, 1976), 87 and 144; Clark, Creating the College Man, 16-18.

30 Clark, “Two Joes,” 165.

31 Patterson, Grand Expectations, 68-9.

The Red Scare, Communism, and The Cold War

The Red Scare, Communism, and The Cold War: these labels were commonplace in

American higher education. The Soviet launch of the man-made satellite Sputnik in 1957 heightened growing fears toward Communist China and Soviet Russia. According to James T.

Patterson, the Red Scare “soured…the otherwise optimistic, “can-do” mood of American life until 1954.”32 The significance of Sputnik was that it was influential in establishing the National

Defense Education Act (NDEA). Federal aid was given to American educational institutions as a result of NDEA. The federal government funded higher education in an attempt to diminish fear and anxiety at home, while promoting democracy abroad.33 Thus, education became an instrument of social change through which a more progressive and dominant nation could emerge. Representations of social changes in the mass media manifested themselves in different ways as most periodicals published stories that appealed to a white-centric audience.

Demographic trends, combined with the social activism of the 1960s, also created pressure for change. Colleges and universities became centers of protest, most famously against the Vietnam War, but also against all manner of social convention and custom. Questions of who should have access to college, and what role colleges and universities should play in confronting

32 Ibid, 165. Continuing changes in federal policy, in addition to changes in public expectations and attitudes, influenced higher education by the mid-to-late 1960s. The Great Depression and WWII caused many Americans to question the country’s social superiority. President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society extended need-based financial assistance to the general population with the passage of the Higher Education Act in 1965. The act guaranteed government loans for students and it substantially expanded work-study programs. As inclusion became more prominent, the Bilingual Education Act of 1968 offered federal aid to students with limited English-speaking abilities. Students from low-income families now had greater opportunities to attend college.

33 World War II was drawing to a close, but ever pressing threats from Communist China and Soviet Russia loomed. The death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in April 1945 fueled nervousness among the American public as Harry S. Truman succeeded him as the 33rd president. The Berlin Blockade in June 1948 marked one of the first major crises of the Cold War. The second red scare known as McCarthyism grew with heightened tensions of pro- Communist activity and influence in America. The Vietnam War, almost two decades in length, marked another instance of American involvement in suppressing Communist threats. The Bay of Pigs Invasion, a failed American attempt to defeat Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro in 1961, increased tensions with Cuba and Russia. Eventually, the Cuban Missile Crisis—a nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union—occurred.

and reducing inequalities in the larger society were fiercely debated. About 42 percent of

American college students believed that their biggest gripe with colleges and universities was not having enough say in the running of the college.34 Furthermore, the notion of open admissions— allowing high school graduates to pursue college degrees regardless of academic background— gained momentum at institutions across the country.35 Students were attending college—both in real terms and as a percentage of the population—and they were demographically more diverse

(in race and gender) than in previous years. Actions taken by the federal government clearly played a major role in these trends, though larger economic, demographic, and social forces were also influential.36 Finally, the growth of nonselective institutions like community colleges made it easier for people to attend college even if they lacked appropriate preparation and skill.37

Popular Media Representations of Higher Education

While American higher education continued to experience a plethora of changes, popular mass media representations of higher education either mirrored or counteracted the reality of college campuses. Viewing popular media representations of post-secondary institutions provides a valuable perspective on understanding the population demographic more likely to attend college and to be valued by universities. Images, such as cartoons or photographs, in

34 Hansen and Israel, The Gallup Poll, 2196.

35 Thelin, American Higher Education, 293-94.

36 Even in the midst of growing tensions, fears, and uncertainty, American society was flooded with optimism and progress. The Employment Act, establishing the Council of Economic Advisers in 1946, offered new stability among economic inflation and uncertainty. The Truman Doctrine on March 12, 1947 established a policy to support free people who resisted attempted subjugation. The Marshall Plan in 1947 brought American aid to foreign countries. President Truman signed Executive Order 9981, desegregating the United States Armed Forces. Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique in 1963, sparking a second-wave of feminism. President Johnson proposed the Great Society, a set of social reforms aimed at the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. As part of Johnson’s Great Society, the Higher Education Act of 1965 was signed into legislation. Lastly, Apollo 11 enabled the first astronauts to land on the moon in 1969. Opportunities for advancement were progressing during the postwar-era.

37 Brian Bourke, Claire H. Major, and Michael S. Harris, “Images of Fictional Community College Students,” Community College Journal of Research and Practice 30 (2008): 59-67.

magazines and images in fictional novels provide a basis for understanding how higher education is represented. Gustavo F. Fischman argues that scholars and intellectuals have often devalued images as tools for understanding phenomena in society because they produce distorted realities.38 Although some scholars note the illegitimacy of analyzing college novels as empirical research, others strongly advocate for their inclusion in scholarly examination because they believe that the images comprise, to some extent, the reality of the time in which they were made.39

Popular media representations of post-secondary institutions and community colleges and their students in fictional works of novels and short stories expose a certain attitude toward higher education as it relates to gender. Several scholars have researched the fictional portrayals of higher education over various decades, paying particular attention to the characterizations of students, teachers, and authority figures. A number of scholars conclude that men dominate the images related to higher education.40 For example, the professor is usually portrayed as eccentric, but likeable. 41 Helen Damon-Moore, meanwhile, argues that the commercialization of gender plays a significant role in who primarily consumes magazines. The Ladies’ Home Journal and

The Saturday Evening Post were prototypes that appealed to a targeted audience, which ultimately limited or expanded their sales.42 However, Thomas Pendergast acknowledges that the existing scholarship on masculinity in magazines concentrates nearly exclusively on white,

38 Fischman, “Reflections about Images,” 29.

39 Thelin and Townsend, “Fiction to Fact,” 209.

40 Barasch, “Faculty Images,” 33; Bieze, Booker T. Washington, 4-11; Boys, “College in Fiction,” 382-87; Clark, “Two Joes,” 172; Clark, Creating the College Man, 27-30; Kramer, “Presidents in Fiction,” 84; Pendergast, Creating the Modern Man, 55.

41 Boys, “College in Fiction,” 380.

42 Helen Damon-Moore, Magazines for the Millions: Gender and Commerce in the Ladies’ Home Journal and The Saturday Evening Post 1880-1910 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 3.

middle-class masculinity. He proposes that African American magazines offer a richer picture of what masculinity looks like across boundaries of race and class.43 Thus, Americans are more likely to receive a one-sided depiction of higher education based on the medium they choose to consume. Other avenues of academic life—like football or fraternities—are often satirically mentioned in fictional works like novels during the 1960s. College life is viewed as unimaginative and unrealistic, according to some researchers.44 The college novel, has indeed, succeeded in highlighting the limitations and faults of college. Therefore, a refashioning of the perceived value of a college education was influenced by American attitudes toward consumerism, a mass media, and corporations.45

America’s Most Influential Mass Magazine: Reader’s Digest

Popular media representations of post secondary institutions and students are included in

America’s most influential and widely circulated magazine known as a Digest for the masses.

The Reader’s Digest magazine, a monthly publication created in 1922 by husband and wife

DeWitt Wallace and Leila Bell Acheson Wallace, has the largest, most widely paid circulation in the world. Presently reaching more than 70 countries, with 49 editions in 21 languages, and a global circulation of 10.5 million, the Digest continues to expand its readership and influence across the globe.46 Following the Great Depression and World War II, the American economy

43 Pendergast, Creating the Modern Man, 15; Clark, “Two Joes,” 169.

44 Boys, “College in Fiction,” 379; Frederic I. Carpenter, “Fiction and the American College,” American Quarterly 12, (1960): 444; Kramer, “Presidents in Fiction,” 84.

45 Jackson Lears, “A Matter of Taste: Corporate Cultural Hegemony in a Mass Consumption Society,” in Lary May, Ed., Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of the Cold War (1989): 38-57.

46 Samuel Agnew Schreiner, The Condensed World of the Reader’s Digest. (New York: Stein and Day, 1977), 11; Joanne P. Sharp, Condensing the Cold War: Reader’s Digest and American Identity. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), xiv.

was expanding at unprecedented rates after 1945.47 The magazine market expanded with the economy and as the twentieth century unfolded the magazine industry entered “another Golden

Age,” all in spite of the growth of the television.48 Thus, DeWitt and Leila Wallace’s innovative new formula for creating a mass magazine—condensing articles from other popular magazines— forever transformed the literary landscape.49

Originating in Greenwich Village, New York, the Wallace’s generated a magazine where every article had “enduring value and interest” in a condensed, permanent booklet form.50

Wallace was described as a man of considerable energy and ambition.51 Leila Bell Wallace was the daughter of a Presbyterian minister. She graduated from the University of Oregon, was a teacher, and worked for the Young Women’s Christian Association. According to John William

Tebbel and Mary Ellen Zuckerman, the Wallace’s took “a very old notion, the eclectic magazine, improved it, and made it the most successful single magazine published until recent times.”52

Essentially, they made an art of preserving the basic meaning of each article, while discarding the nonessential aspects. According to Ellen Gruber Garvey, the magazine sold at a bargain

47 Patterson, Grand Expectations, 311.

48 John Tebbel, “Part Four: Magazines of the Twentieth Century (1905- ),” in John Tebbel, author, The American Magazine: A Compact History (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1969), 222.

49 Leila was often excluded from the scholarly conversation surrounding the Digest. Her husband was more likely to be credited with the success of the magazine. Leila’s exclusion, perhaps, signified the gender incongruities that existed among working-class individuals during the postwar-era.

50 John Heidenry, Theirs was the Kingdom: Lila and DeWitt Wallace and the Story of the Reader’s Digest (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1993), 56.

51 Born in St. Paul, Minnesota on November 12, 1889, Wallace was the son of the President of Macalester College, a Greek and Latin scholar and Presbyterian Minister. Upon graduating from Macalester and the University of California, Wallace briefly worked for Webb Publishing Company of St. Paul, Brown and Bigelow as a salesman, and later was fired from Westinghouse Company’s publicity department. Jumping from one menial job to another, Wallace felt unsettled. Having first created his own farmers digest and volunteered for the army out of boredom, Wallace sought something others had not conceived. He borrowed $600 from his family and created a magazine full of condensed articles.

52 Tebbel and Zuckerman, Magazine in America, 182.

price, containing large quantities of articles that had been shortened in a travel size print.53

Editors had always shortened pieces, but the Wallace’s sought a more condensed version of the final story, one that allowed busy Americans to obtain information in a simplified and accessible manner.

From 1945 to 1970, the Digest utilized drawings instead of photographs to amplify an article’s message. Other mass periodicals mixed photos and conventional illustrations, first, before embracing photography and advertisements. The concept of photojournalism—where the pictures themselves became the primary carriers of the story—became a prominent feature in many mass magazines.54 Like Booker T. Washington who used photographs to demonstrate for black America that hard work would be rewarded, the Digest editors understood that images such as drawings could be used as “marketing tools, keepsakes, propaganda, and fine art” all at the same time.55 Therefore, the Digest is often credited with helping to create an enemy-like rhetoric toward Communism, a propagandistic effort.56 Uniquely, though, the Digest, like The

New Yorker, favored cartoons instead of photographs, a stark contrast to magazines like Life or

Time. Various images of college students, college presidents, student GIs, elite academic figures,

53 Ellen Gruber Garvey, “Reader’s Digest,” Dictionary of American History 7 (2003): 51.

54 Thomas J. Schlereth, “Mirrors of the past: Historical photography and American history,” In T. J. Schlereth (Author) Artifacts and the American Past (Nashville: American Association for State and Local History, 1980): 15- 25; Tebbel and Zuckerman, Magazine in America, 227-29.

55 Bieze, Booker T. Washington, 109-11. According to Bieze’s argument, Booker T. Washington intended to “virtually demonstrate for black America, through his own home, campus, and illustrated publications, that hard work and economic empowerment would be materially, culturally, and socially rewarded.” Wallace intended to virtually demonstrate for working class America, through cartoon depictions, that “hard work and economic empowerment” would be feasible and available in the postwar era.

56 Sharp, Condensing the Cold War, x; Heidenry, Theirs was the Kingdom, 33. According to Heidenry, Wallace was a “strident anti-Communist, conservative” who “promoted divorce reform, one-worldism, birth control…the legalization of abortion, [and] seldom went to church.”

professors, and collegiate landscapes appear within the pages of the Digest. The lack of photographs in favor of illustrations, perhaps, emphasizes a more homely appeal.57

Scholarly Insight into the Digest

Joanne P. Sharp and Daniel A. Clark offer the most relevant scholarship related to the

Reader’s Digest and its images on higher education because they both express insight into the postwar era, analyze the Digest’s utility in American culture and higher education, and emphasize the significance of the Digest’s legacy. Sharp draws upon geopolitics and international relations scholarship to contextualize her work on the Reader’s Digest. Clark, on the other hand, draws upon the significance of the G.I. Bill on American manhood and masculinity in higher education to contextualize his work based on other mass magazines of the postwar-era. Both historians present distinct, yet purposeful arguments for analyzing the

Reader’s Digest.

Sharp’s analysis offers significant insight into understanding the construction of the

Reader’s Digest through a political lens and its effects on readership during the Cold War. As

Deborah Wadsworth concluded, moral ambiguity, economic anxiety, and institutional mistrust are popular themes in magazines during the 1950s and 1960s. Media reports expressed the fear of an illiterate population unable to face the challenge of an era of Sputnik and the emerging

57 The Reader’s Digest commissioned different artists to draw illustrations that accompanied a specific article. Since each article had been previously published in another magazine, the Digest editors chose to recreate their own visual imagery. I researched the original publications of each article and found that photographs were the most commonly used form of visual imagery. However, the Digest utilized unique drawings instead of borrowing the original photographs to accompany the condensed articles in each publication. While countless illustrators and photographers in other popular periodicals of the time romanticized the every-day occurrences of higher education, the Digest illustrators attempted to portray students as ordinary individuals. Some cartoonists for the Digest include Karl Godwin, Frank McCarthy, Lynd Ward, Robert H. Blattner, Noel Douglas Sickles, and Austin Briggs. Wallace commissioned cartoonists and illustrators to create images that accompanied condensed articles from other mass magazines.

space age, which, in turn, conveyed a fear for a threatened democracy.58 Sharp contends that

America’s changing representations of the communist threat produced a particular image of

“Americanness” for the Digest’s readers.59 Sharp, however, omits the significance of higher education in the Reader’s Digest as an element in need of advancing scholarship. In fact, the

American government often turned toward educational institutions to cultivate proper citizens during chaotic and fearful times. Sharp focuses on the integration of pro-democratic and anti- communist government opinions that inundated the primary and secondary schools in America.

Higher education, though, is an important aspect to examine because young adults may have been more vocal about approving or disapproving government actions during the postwar-era.

The portrayal of a booming generation, labeled by a new counter-culture, sex, violence, drugs, protest, and anti-establishment beliefs, is important to study in a mass magazine that depicts

Americans as optimistic and pro-democratic. The result of this study will illustrate the impact of promoting American values through the institution of universities and colleges, and the extent to which students, faculty, and the campus environment also promoted an anti-communist rhetoric.

Sharp also does not examine visual images in her analysis, which significantly undermines a discussion related to the construction of “Americanness,” nationhood, citizenship, and individualism. If one sought to conclude that the Digest constructed a model of what

Americans should do “as major players in this international political geography,” then one overlooked one of the most important aspects of the magazine—images.60 Her work does not

58 Deborah Wadsworth, “Do Media Shape Public Perceptions of America’s Schools,” in Gene I. Maeroff (Ed.) Imagining Education: The Media and Schools in America (New York: Teachers College Press, 1998), 60.

59 Sharp, Condensing the Cold War, x.

60 Ibid, xv. The rise of popular magazines is a significant force in American political culture in the early years of the twentieth century. Sharp also credits the Digest as helping to create the Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union. Sharp argues that American national citizenship centers on values related to gender, race, and class, which present a clear image of how good American citizens should act.

directly examine drawings in the Digest magazine. Images from the Digest are the main focus of this thesis. Thus, this thesis serves to extend Sharp’s line of investigation and expand upon her work by looking at visual images related to higher education in the Reader’s Digest and by examining the impact of the Digest’s construction of an inclusive America.

Daniel A. Clark offers the most likely comparison to a study of commissioned magazine illustrations by artists in the Reader’s Digest because he analyzes the impact of the G.I. Bill on depictions of the college man in The Saturday Evening Post and other mass magazines during the postwar era. He describes the symbolic transformation of an image—a Norman Rockwell painting of the soldier Willie Gillis from The Saturday Evening Post—as something that significantly changed perceptions toward higher education.61 He argues that even though college became more accessible for the every-man in a growing consumer culture, higher education still maintains its prestigious and elite status with American veterans becoming a participant in the sophisticated upper-middle class culture.62 According to Clark, the G.I. Bill became the catalyst that reshaped the role of college education in American culture because it facilitated mass social mobility for white middle-to-upper class men.63 He explains that mass magazines underscored the college experience, forever linking American manhood and a college education with corporate success. Even as American mass magazines perpetuated a “potent cultural barrier that privileged native-born, white American men,” Clark explains that the construction of a new narrative of authority “rendered it open to those implicitly excluded.”64 At the core, the

61 Clark, “Two Joes,” 165.

62 Ibid, 167-73.

63 Bledstein, Culture of Professionalism, 87 and 144; Clark, Creating the College Man, 16-18. Clark also argues that magazines played an integral role in shaping the immediate and long-term goals of a select group of men, most notably white-middle class males.

64 Clark, Creating the College Man, 25.

opportunity for others to attend post-secondary institutions was possible as inclusion became more prominent as the decades progressed.

Clark’s analysis of the white college man provides significant insight into understanding the construction of higher education in mass magazines as a result of the G.I. Bill. While Clark argues that the value of a college education, the markers of social class, and gender prescriptions shifted as a result of the G.I. Bill, he does not adequately explore the Reader’s Digest as a significant tool in understanding greater cultural values.65 In postwar America, individuals assumed that white-middle-class men dominated college because mass media depictions emphasized this particular population. But historical trends suggest that the white-middle class male demographic was shifting to include other genders and races. Thus, this thesis seeks to interpret the lack of minority representations in the Reader’s Digest.

Clark chooses to examine the most popular periodicals of the day, those with the widest readership and the most generic appeal; however, he overlooks the most prominent publication in the history of American magazines, the Reader’s Digest. Clark also focuses his work on veterans and college students, a distinct sample. This thesis seeks to extend the sample to include images depicting, not only veterans and college students, but college professors, elite academic figures, and post-secondary landscapes. Furthermore, Clark formulates his argument on an apparent shift in the representations of veterans and college students in print media over time. However, this thesis seeks to challenge Clark’s conclusions concerning the cultural reconstruction of college, a theme that, perhaps, remains static.

While Clark argues that American colleges experienced a transformation based on

American cultural shifts, which “may be found in the pages of mass magazines of those days,” the Reader’s Digest’s visual images portray the exact opposite, a stagnant view of American

65 Clark, “Two Joes,” 168.

colleges and culture.66 Clark believes in a story of progress; however, the Reader’s Digest showcases an unchanged collegiate life. Ironically, societal changes during the postwar era render the Digest’s visual images of higher education as obsolete, and yet, the magazine was the most powerful periodical in America. A growing divergence between societal trends in

American higher education and the images displayed in the Reader’s Digest highlights an alternative discussion worth exploring. Therefore, this thesis serves to extend Clark’s line of investigation and expand upon his work by looking at images related to higher education in the

Reader’s Digest.

A Subtle, Yet Clear Message: Investigating the Digest Images

In order to gain a comprehensive cross-section of American perceptions toward higher education and postwar America, the Reader’s Digest embodies the perfect candidate, providing the greatest readership and the greatest diversity—abridged articles from various sources. The following research questions dictate my investigation. How did visual illustrations of higher education in the Reader’s Digest from 1945-1970 represent college students and faculty, and the campus landscape? In what way(s) did these visual images reflect whom universities valued?

Who tended to be less represented in these illustrations? Did the Reader’s Digest images indicate a change over time in relation to college students and faculty and the campus environment? What does a change or lack thereof in the visual imagery suggest about American higher education?

What are the implications of the Reader’s Digest images on modern day interpretations of higher education?67

66 Clark, Creating the College Man, 184-85.

67 To conduct my research, I first scanned microfilm of popular mass magazines of the era—Life, Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, Fortune, the Reader’s Digest, and others to ascertain whether depictions of higher education had been utilized in periodicals. I quickly favored the Digest because of its breadth in readership and apparent utility of various sources, which could yield a better cross-section of analysis. Second, I read scholarly articles and books pertaining to the Digest, other mass magazines of the postwar era, and specifically the life of the Digest editors and

The Reader’s Digest is an especially appropriate source to examine because of its wide circulation and because of the presence of abridged articles from other mass periodicals. On the one hand, Digest coverage of higher education indicates a heightened public acceptance to college as a legitimate option for American youth.68 On the other hand, the most common collegiate images are of white males and they emphasize the sophisticated nature of the college male. During this era, Americans questioned the usefulness of a college degree; some advocated for it while others rejected its practicality. Various avenues of success—the self-made man, the

4-year college graduate, the 2-year graduate, the student GI, the married student, and others— emerged during the postwar era.69 Therefore, choices between marriage, career, and college formed constant themes in the late 1940s, the 1950s, and early 1960s.70 The Digest’s visual images offer an alternative view on American higher education. The Digest may have been a magazine for the masses, but it still portrays college as an exclusive place. The Digest illustrations—pieces of non-fiction—should be viewed as artistic vehicles meant to convey realism, but, at the same time, to embody a medium meant to depict certain attitudes toward higher education.71

founders. Third, I read all published works pertaining to an analysis of higher education through images in order to find evidence that directly related or answered my questions. Fourth, I sought any scholarly arguments pertaining to the use of images in historical research.

68 Schreiner, Condensed World, 18.

69 Patterson, Grand Expectations, 25.

70 Clark, “Two Joes,” 187.

71 The inability to truly understand the purposes of attending a four-year institution manifested itself through the Digest portrayals. Because this publication had the greatest readership, because this publication incorporated abridged versions of stories from other mass periodicals, and because this publication chose to maintain a static view of American higher education, the Reader’s Digest was the best determinant for understanding how every American perceived college.

The collegiate representations of America’s youth found in various editions of the

Reader’s Digest during the postwar era—1945 through 1970—illustrate a provocative ambivalence. An examination of over 60 drawings in the Digest related to American higher education exposes two levels of contradictions. First, a tension exists between the written text of an article and its accompanying image. The image did not directly correspond to the inclusive language used by the author, which portrayed a more exclusive institution dominated by white middle-class men. Second, a tension exists between the visual image and the historical events of the time, which expose a more inclusive reality than what was portrayed in the illustrations.

Ironically, the Digest’s images evoke a theme of exclusiveness even while American higher education was becoming more inclusive.72 On the one hand, images of white-middle class men highlight their masculinity by appearing dominant, secure, well dressed, and confident. And images of white middle class women highlight women’s subordination by appearing submissive, insecure, and anxious. The institution, itself, is drawn as an elite environment whose doors are only open to a select few. On the other hand, American colleges and universities were opening their doors to more people than ever before.73 The Reader’s Digest sought to promote inclusiveness—an ideal that proliferated throughout the country in all facets of American life, most significantly higher education.74 Even though the Digest advocated for inclusiveness, individuals deemed worthy of attending college were drawn as white male, businesslike academics.

72 Tebbel, “Part Four,” 223.

73 Patterson, Grand Expectations, 68.

74 Tebbel, “Part Four,” 224.

In this thesis, I examine the ways in which the illustrations presented of higher education in the Reader’s Digest remained stagnant over time.75 This façade of a fixed American culture, one that was open to the every-man, presents various contradictions especially in relation to higher education, authority figures, and the architecture of academia. 76 The medium is the message. According to Marshall McLuhan, “all media are active metaphors in their power to translate experience into new forms” and to “introduce into human affairs” that which leads to a change in societal opinions based on the external implications of the medium.77 Thus, the medium under discussion, Digest black and white drawings, brings along certain cultural and societal ramifications whether they are directly intended or not. Scholars have neglected to explore the formation of popular perceptions and expectations involving college, for higher education has become an essential ingredient in the pursuit of the American dream. Scholars have not adequately developed a succinct understanding of higher education during the postwar era deriving from mass media content. This thesis seeks to explore the extent to which mass media depictions of American higher education reflect broader historical trends of the postwar era by examining the Reader’s Digest during 1945-1970.78

75 The research included: 1) the history of higher education in America from 1945-1970; 2) the history of America— specifically WWII, race relations, foreign policy, class distinctions, the Cold War, gender discrepancies, class struggles, schools, military, marriage trends, economic, political, social, racial, and cultural trends—during the same time period; 3) the history of mass magazines in America—paying specific attention to the history of the Reader’s Digest, and also the Digest compared to other popular mass magazines of that era—; 4) the history of the Digest editors, Leila and DeWitt Wallace, and how they influenced the reader’s perceptions of education; 5) and the history of illustrations or visual representations in media—like photography, cartoons, illustrations, and advertisements.

76 Tebbel, “Part Four,” 223.

77 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1964), 57 and 8.

78 I hoped to study perceptions toward higher education across time and certain mediums, but the further I ventured, the more I realized that portraying changes in attitudes toward higher education required a particular span of time. Given the parameters, there was only one choice: magazines, particularly The Reader’s Digest. In an era increasing in inclusiveness in higher education, the Digest images may be perceived as anachronistic. As the decades progressed from the late 1940s to the 1970s, the images accompanying each article conveyed a social reality that contrasted with what was really happening in American higher education.

This analysis both confirms and in some ways challenges earlier interpretations of higher education in mass magazines during the postwar-era. This thesis confirms what other historians of higher education have already surmised about gender and class roles, mass media, and the use of images in historical research. This interpretation directly challenges other historians because it does not assume that the images lead to the belief that college could be beneficial and open to everyone. This analysis does not align with what other historians of higher education have researched because the narrative of the Digest suggests that the misrepresentation of college is, actually, grounded in truth.

The Reader’s Digest images complicate rather than simplify notions of college. Art is used in the Digest as a tool to promote certain societal and cultural values according to the editor’s own bias. Like advertising, art can enhance an existential and emotional aspect of a subject to promote certain ideologies. This is what makes images so powerful. However, the

Digest took a more subtle approach to a set of manipulations regarding who was worthy of attending college and who was not, what college was supposed to look like, and what American attitudes were toward post-secondary schooling. Multiple meanings were extracted from a set of ordinary drawings that magnified the significance of higher education. Above all, the subtlety in the visual imagery showed sensitivity toward the various racial, ethnic, gender, and structural issues that were present at the time in American higher education. In doing so, the editors were able to secure an acceptance of the images for millions of readers because they appeared to be representative of the entire population. The subtle ambiguities and sheer fogginess of the motivations behind the illustrations underscores the plethora of changes that American higher education endured. One-size certainly did not fit all in an era of rapid change and progress.

Because the Digest had the widest readership in America, reaching more rural communities than any other mass magazine, one may conclude that a significant number of

Americans had been formulating their ideas about higher education from the Digest. The illustrations had been both politically and culturally important because they did not show an awareness of the rapidly changing cultural, political, and social events of that era. The article authors explained the changes, but the illustrations remained homogenous and unchanging. The

Digest shaped attitudes toward higher education. In doing so, the Digest depicted American higher education as an institution that was homogenously drawn. Efforts to include greater diversity on college campuses fused with traditional conceptions of who should attend college and why one should attend college. Thus, the images both reflected and challenged American perceptions of post-secondary institutions.

CHAPTER 2 PATRIARCHAL DOMINANCE IN ACADEMIA AND WHAT COLLEGE WAS SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE

The Reader’s Digest editors placed a considerable amount of energy on producing a magazine that would appeal to the masses, the everyman. The Reader’s Digest mast header read,

“an article a day for enduring significance, in condensed permanent booklet form.” Editors and founders DeWitt and Leila Bell Acheson Wallace promoted the accessibility of the American

Dream1 Various features of the magazine support this premise. For example, every condensed article was chosen from prominent sources of news like Future, Collier’s, Life, New York

Herald, The Rotarian, The American Mercury, Today’s Living, Parade, Time, Harper’s

Magazine, and The Saturday Evening Post.2 By exaggerating what happened at “a small number of institutions and leaving the public with the impression that the stories reflected what occurred in all of higher education” the magazine could increase its sphere of influence.3 In doing so, the authenticity and applicability of each article was justified because it showcased a large cross- section of American news coverage from various sources. The magazine attempted to construct a visual culture of acceptance—that every American could and should attend college for the benefit of the individual and society as a whole. The ultimate success of this construction, however, is debatable.

1 John Tebbel, “Part Four: Magazines of the Twentieth Century (1905- ),” in John Tebbel, author, The American Magazine: A Compact History. (New York, NY: Hawthorn Books, 1969), 224.

2 A complete list of the original publications that pertain to higher education found in the Reader’s Digest magazine from 1945-1970 as condensed articles include Redbook, The Kiwanis Magazine, Presbyterian Life, Independent Woman, McCall’s, Banking, Guideposts, Holiday, Helmut Jaesrich, Mercury, National Parent-Teacher, Américas, Christian Herald, Television Age, Inside Russia Today, The Saturday Review, Ski, PTA Magazine, U.S. Lady, The Bride’s Magazine, El Tiempo, Future, Collier’s, Life, New York Herald, The Rotarian, The American Mercury, Today’s Living, Parade, Time, Harper’s Magazine, and The Saturday Evening Post.

3 Gene I. Maeroff, Imagining Education: The Media and Schools in America (New York: Teachers College Press, 1998), 7.

Reader’s Digest sought to educate, entertain, and connect audiences from all across

America by providing readers with ideas that would simplify and enrich their lives.4 Historical data suggested that traditional college age individuals—17 to 21—students, who were married, students with children, and veterans were marking an upward trend in college enrollees.5 John

Thelin described that numerous accounts in memoirs by students and faculty attested to a

“collision of cultures on campus and in classrooms” because there was an unprecedented type of student cohort.6 More women were turning to higher education, too, for career preparation or to expand their choices in life.7 Thus, diversity in American colleges was in fact increasing, if not in color, but in gender and social class. Article topics in the Digest ranged from health issues to politics, war to education, sex to Communism, new technologies to presidential messages.8 The very nature of the Digest, a little pocketbook, offered a considerable physical difference than any other mass magazine—something that could be easily transported and read in a shortened amount of time. Thus, Americans consumed a periodical that appeared to be written just for them—the working class man or woman, the married housewife, the college woman, the soldier, the struggling factory worker, and the African American.9

4 Samuel Agnew Schreiner, The Condensed World of the Reader’s Digest. (New York, NY: Stein and Day, 1977), 17.

5 James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press), 266.

6 Ibid, 266.

7 Linda Eisenmann, Higher Education for Women in Postwar America, 1945-1965. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 5.

8 Joanne P. Sharp, Condensing the Cold War: Reader’s Digest and American Identity. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 13; Tebbel, “Part Four,” 222; Tebbel and Zuckerman, Magazine in America, 1741-1990 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1991), 221; Ellen Gruber Garvey, “Reader’s Digest,” Dictionary of American History 7, no. 3 (2003): 51.

9 Schreiner, Condensed World, 17.

The Reader’s Digest, however, printed a contradictory message concerning higher education in America during the postwar era. The editors believed that reading material should be based on factual evidence, and not literary stories fabricated just to entertain the masses.

Progress, even within the framework of condensed non-fiction articles, emphasized an era of efficient consumption. However, DeWitt Wallace unequivocally embraced the vision of a

“simple, all-powerful America.”10 In doing so, the images this thesis analyzes from the Digest showcase the extent to which higher education in America remained unchanged during the postwar era. Embedded within the cartoons lie fragments of both truth and myth. The blended complexity between the text and image reveals an awareness of the changes occurring in higher education. Traditional values were still used as the standard for who should attend college as represented in visual images. However, the main text of every article suggested that traditions had been diminishing as the demographics shifted to include those traditionally excluded from universities—individuals of different races and genders.

The Digest editors chose each article and accompanying images for their monthly publications using criteria of “applicability, lasting interest, and constructiveness.”11 It was designed as editor Wallace himself put it, “’to promote a better America, with capital letters, with a fuller life for all, and with a place for the United States of increasing influence and respect in world affairs.’”12 Regardless, while the magazine advocated for the common-man, only an elite few were able to achieve this perceived status of greatness. Women could be empowered,

10 John Heidenry, Theirs was the Kingdom: Lila and DeWitt Wallace and the Story of the Reader’s Digest. (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1993), 33.

11 Tebbel, “Part Four,” 223.

12 Ibid, 223.

autonomous, and open to opportunities they had never received before.13 For example, an article from the Digest explained that one could be a “college president, wife, mother—and a success at all three.”14 However, in post-war America, not every woman had the capability to achieve or even want such personal and professional success. According to a majority of Americans in

1951, women were the most beautiful in their early twenties, about 25 years old.15 Thus, perceptions of beauty may have dictated women’s capacity to excel in the workplace. Although the percentage of women who worked increased throughout the postwar era, gender discrimination in hiring and the workplace proliferated.

In congruence with Helen Damon-Moore’s argument concerning the commercialization of gender in the Ladies’ Home Journal and The Saturday Evening Post, the Digest had commercialized American happiness and opportunity in order to increase consumption and circulation. The deliberate production of images used to convey the everyday life of Americans, especially in higher education, manipulated consumers into believing that the magazine had valued every economic, racial, religious, and ethnic group. Throughout the postwar era, the

Digest offered a discourse centered on conflicting messages and contradictions through colorless illustrations. Scholars argued that novels and magazines served as sources of information about the impact of college on students and how alumni perceived the college experience.16 These perceptions informed the public’s view on post-secondary customs, rituals, jargon, and fashions

13 Patterson, Grand Expectations, 32-4.

14 Ishbel Ross, “The Remarkable Mrs. Mac,” Reader’s Digest (January 1951): 109.

15 William P. Hansen and Fred L. Israel, eds. The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935-1971 (New York, NY: Random House, 1972), 975.

16 Daniel A. Clark, “The Two Joes Meet—Joe College, Joe Veteran”: The G.I. Bill, College Education, and Postwar American Culture, History of Education Quarterly, 38 (Summer 1998), 189.

within the American campus.17 Individuals reading magazines during the early 20th century rarely questioned the worldview of the subject matter, which resulted in the maintenance of the dominant ideals of society.18 Therefore, the Reader’s Digest like other mass magazines contributed to shaping American perceptions of higher education and shared values of culture.

Even with the apparent rhetoric that the United States had an optimistic future, the

Digest’s visual images suggest otherwise. In relation to American higher education, various historians continue to argue that a narrative of progress was possible even though the Digest and other popular periodicals of the time promoted a narrow conception of who was worthy of attending college.19 Higher education in the Digest is depicted as an unchanging entity— exclusive and anachronistic. Even so, the knowledge formulated by viewing black and white illustrations in the Digest serves three main functions. The Digest images challenge, reinforce, and influence one’s belief about American higher education.20 This analysis contends that the

Digest’s illustrations provoke the shared notion of accepting college as a compulsory requirement for a successful future. American higher education allowed individuals to expand their choices or prepare for a career. However, the types of individuals valued by the Digest remained largely white and middle class. The images maintain an elite public perception of who was worthy of attending college, while, at the same time, intensify who was continually excluded

17 John R. Thelin & Barbara K. Townsend, “Fiction to Fact College Novels and the Study of Higher Education,” In Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, 183-211. Edited by John C. Smart. (New York: Agathon Press, 1988): 183.

18 William DeGenaro, “Community Colleges, the media, and the rhetoric of inevitability,” Community College Journal of Research and Practice 30 (2006): 530.

19 Daniel A. Clark, Creating the College Man: American Mass Magazines and Middle-Class Manhood 1890-1915 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010), 25; Clark, “Two Joes,” 189; Thomas Pendergast, Creating the Modern Man: American Magazines and Consumer Culture, 1900-1950, (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 8-15. Schreiner, Condensed World, 11; Sharp, Condensing the Cold War, x.

20 Elliot W. Eisner, “The Promise and Perils of Alternative Forms of Data Representation,” Educational Researcher 26 (1997): 5.

from attending college. An examination of over 60 drawings in the Digest related to American higher education exposes two levels of contradictions. First, a tension exists between the written text of an article and its accompanying image. Second, a tension exists between the visual image and the historical events of the time, which expose a more inclusive reality than what was portrayed in the illustrations. Even though the Digest advocated for inclusiveness, individuals deemed worthy of attending college were drawn as white male, businesslike academics. Two main categories found in the Digest sample of illustrations emphasize this theory—portraits of academic men and women and the campus environment (what college was supposed to look like).

It’s a Man’s World

After a thorough examination of 21 portrait depictions of various individuals in the

Reader’s Digest from 1945-1970, a trend of uniformity and patriarchal dominance emerged.

Most mass magazines underrepresented people of different races and genders in visual media.

Regardless of the rapidly changing political, economic, social, or cultural realities during this time period, an unmistakable elite character was uniformly illustrated. Following the editor’s criteria for publication—applicability, lasting interest, and constructiveness—the portrait cartoons showed little change over time.21 Indeed, the clone-like resemblance of all men, even women, in the drawings highlighted the dominance of a patriarchal society. The Digest represented a race-centered view of the world by selecting white middle-class males as the epitome of male perfectibility.22 This showcased a direct tension between the male-dominated image and the inclusive tone of the article.

21 Tebbel, “Part Four,” 223.

22 Pendergast, Creating the Modern Man, 8-15.

A dignified white man, likened to the archetypal businessman, was shown to maintain his status in American society regardless of time and space. In stark contrast to the fictional portrayals of professors and college presidents in novels, the Digest illustrations showcased a determined, sophisticated, and well-learned man. College university presidents in fiction were often vain and driven by personal ambition leading to “vigorous displays of academic leadership” treating faculty poorly—such as tenure rejection.23 A common thematic element for fictional professors was to save their jobs. By contrast, a common theme among college presidents depicted in novel fiction was their ability to deal with crisis situations: more specifically, to deal with threats to academic freedom and student unrest. However, Digest portrayals of university presidents marked a divergent attitude toward academic leadership. Men were illustrated as individuals worthy of personal ambition with calm demeanors in the face of a crisis. In stark contrast to professors in novels likened to strange and eccentric individuals, the

Digest professors were depicted as common men: elite, but normal.24 Illustrating professors as approachable and ordinary diminishes the notion of a snobbish cohort, an elite institution.25

23 John Kramer, “College and University Presidents in Fiction,” The Journal of Higher Education 52, no. 1 (1981): 84. Indeed, college students are still influenced by traditional images of collegiate life in novels and other media. Images of schooling, in particular, shaped readers impressions in a way that produces a mélange of opinions about education. What made the Digest images so remarkable is that they were created in the midst of middle-class America’s most concentrated effort to establish an organic unity among the people.

24 Richard C. Boys, “The American College in Fiction,” College English 7, no. 7 (1946): 382. Popular media representations of post secondary institutions and community colleges and their students in the fictional works of novels, short stories, television programs, and film, exposed a certain attitude toward higher education. Fiction allowed for greater artistic creativity, especially in illustrating a true event. Thus, the freedoms to express certain aspects of higher education through the lens of an editor or a writer may have been produced under a narrow scope.

25 The use of images in magazines was a trend met with caution in its early developments. Mixing photos and conventional illustrations with the textual body of the magazine was viewed with uncertainty. Images did not appear within the pages of the Digest until 1945, almost twenty-three years after conception. Meanwhile, advertisers and newspapers were the first to take advantage of illustrations, knowing the public favored it.

The Gaze of the White Male

An overwhelming majority of the visual images found in the Reader’s Digest pertaining to higher education were portrait depictions of various academic figures, most notably men. The illustrations highlighted the epitome of a successful white male. Indeed, the most prominent gender represented through images in any mass medium of the time, especially magazines and novels, was male.26 This man, regardless of his personal characteristics or identity, was shown wearing professional attire—a suit and tie—and circle-shaped spectacles. His facial expression was often serious, focused, determined, confident, and authoritative. In a patriarchal society, the previously mentioned elements of the male facial expression seem ordinary and expected in a mass magazine. This man, too, gazed directly at the reader and his brow was slightly furrowed.

In the mid-to late 1940s, the Reader’s Digest published four articles pertaining to higher education, each including an illustrated black and white portrait of the main subject. Three of the four articles were depictions of men. Henry James Forman titled the first article “The Most

Unforgettable Character I’ve Met” about Le Baron Russell Briggs, a Dean and professor of

English at Harvard.27 Briggs was illustrated in a simple manner. He stared blankly at the reader, eyes gazing forward. His hair was slicked back and parted to the side. An elderly man, his face wore wrinkles and his hairline was severely receded. Circle-shaped glasses sat atop his lengthy nose. He bared no smile, but maintained a serious expression. Briggs was undoubtedly a white middle-class man. The maintenance of a white superior academic male promoted the idea that men had conquered the realm of higher education.

26 Frances K. Barasch, “Faculty Images in Recent American Fiction,” College Literature 10, no. 1 (1983): 28; Clark, “Two Joes,” 167; Clark, Creating the College Man, 27; DeGenaro, “Community Colleges,” 538; Kramer, “Presidents in Fiction,” 86.

27 Henry James Forman, “The Most Unforgettable Character I’ve Met.” Reader’s Digest 46 (January 1945): 45.

In 1946, the Reader’s Digest published an article titled “College at the Factory” condensed from St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which illustrated a portrait of factory owner, Fred

Willkie.28 Willkie was illustrated in a different way than the previous portrait of Dean Briggs.

Instead of a frontal view of his entire face, the Digest illustrator drew Willkie from the side. He had a thick head of hair, neatly slicked back. Circle-shaped glasses sat comfortably on his face.

A patterned tie rested neatly on his chest. Willkie exhibited a broad smile. He seemed vibrant, happy, and approachable.

In an article titled “Man with a Big Idea” condensed from Future in 1947, author Karl

Detzer discussed the evolution of success for Wabash college president Frank H. Sparks. He was depicted as a confident businessman.29 Sparks stared directly at the reader, with his mouth curled into a tight line, and eyebrows furrowed down in a pensive manner. Circle-shaped glasses magnified his glaring eyes. Wrinkles on his brow and face highlighted an experienced man. A suit and tie outlined his proper posture. He highlighted the expectation that a college president should be aged, experienced, and dignified.

An analysis of the textual support for each illustration from the 1940s emphasizes a fusion between the visual imagery in the Reader’s Digest and perceptions of higher education in

America. A direct tension between what was explained in the body of the article and what was showcased in the visual imagery underscores an ambivalent message. The cartoons comprised part of the reality. In the article by Forman, Briggs believed that every student counted in life.30

Following World War II, American higher education experienced an influx of students with

28 George Kent, “College at the Factory,” Reader’s Digest 49 (October 1946): 104.

29 Karl Detzer, “Man with a Big Idea,” Reader’s Digest 50 (April 1947): 42.

30 Forman, “Most Unforgettable,” 45.

enrollments of about 1.5 million students in 1939-1940 to almost 2.7 million students by 1949-

1950, an increase of about 80 percent in just one decade.31 The expansion of enrollments, perhaps, indicated that the institution had become viewed as a vehicle for opportunity, civic purpose, global expansion, economic empowerment, and self-distinction.32 As Dean, Briggs created “a kind of golden age of deanship, bringing a new humanity to the office,” developing the idea of an obligatory course in English writing in the freshman year.33 Forman explained that so successful was the plan that freshman English was a basic course in almost all college programs. Above all, Forman bluntly explained that Dean Briggs was “the absolute antithesis of fascism in education and in life.”34 Because university enrollments had been increasing, Briggs developed a change in the curriculum to accommodate every student with the English skills needed to be successful in the academy. A subtle message of inclusion is implied with the curriculum change, even though a white middle-class male is projected as the face of university improvements. An emphasis on the success of the program—adopted by almost all colleges— suggests that innovative curriculum changes stem from an elite male academic figure, which is more likely to be accepted by others.

A link between enrollment data and the creation of a new curriculum accentuates the growing need to make room for more students and a different kind of student. However, a “false sense of coherence and unity” was being imposed during an era when a number of “fractured,

31 American Council on Education, “Enrollments by Levels of Study, Selected Years 1899-1900 to 1990,” in 1984- 85 Fact Book on Higher Education (New York: Macmillan 1984), 57.

32 John R. Thelin, A History of American Higher Education. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 2004), 9.

33 Forman, “Most Unforgettable,” 47.

34 Ibid, 49.

uncertain ventures” were commonplace.35 The Digest portrayed men as the image of academic success and growth. University presidents, in particular, understood the importance of building a faculty that attracted talented scholars.36 The Digest did not portray the growing number of students that were the main reason for curriculum changes in the first place. The Digest, instead, showcased an elite academic administration that racially symbolized individuals who had held office since the beginning of American higher education. As a result, the Digest images maintained rhetoric of trust in a superior group, mainly the white male majority. Public perceptions toward post-secondary schools were maintained as individuals bought into the idea of trusting an elite male who had generated a course designed for all freshmen.37 In fact, the most admired university in the world by 1971, according to Americans, was Harvard.38 Because

Briggs had been a Dean at Harvard, it becomes unsurprising that his popularity was so well favored. While white male dominance maintained its presence, the actions taken by such individuals widened the doors for inclusion in higher education, a feat that Americans in a growing consumer culture accepted.

The combination of both text and visual imagery in the Digest emphasized an important partnership between what was written about an individual or institution and what the image suggested about higher education. The text in the Digest positively supported the genius of Dean

Briggs, portraying him as an innovative thinker and egalitarian. Above all, the professor’s portrayal in the visual imagery served to justify his elite status. Indeed, the Digest chose to discuss the success of an individual from an elite Ivy League school, Harvard. Had Dean Briggs

35 Thelin, American Higher Education, 262.

36 Ibid, 246.

37 Forman, “Most Unforgettable,” 45.

38 Hansen and Israel, The Gallup Poll, 2305.

been a professor of a lesser-known institution, the exclusive status of higher education may not have been as apparent.

Author George Kent explained that Fred Willkie offered his employees a college education because he believed that “full minds breed ideas.”39 For Willkie, the disciplinary subjects that the workers studied were irrelevant; what mattered were knowledge and an education. Greater efficiency, more innovations, and new methods could increase revenue, production, and success. Therefore, education for all employees, regardless of background, was used as a means to extend the factory system. Even though the factory owner advocated for post- secondary education for individuals who had often been left out of the elite institution (working class individuals), he was still depicted as the epitome of success. The voices of women, minority individuals, and factory workers were hidden, buried behind the image of the white businessman. As higher education continued to grow becoming all encompassing, the Digest illustrated a traditional stereotype regarding power and status.

Higher education gained sustained state government support along with federal commitment to advance research and access to higher education in the postwar decades. As a result, major foundations provided substantial grants for colleges and universities willing to participate in new tasks. These new tasks included, but were not limited to, outdoor learning, discipline-specific research, and the construction of new buildings, exploratory studies, and new curriculums geared toward practical and career-oriented courses. The persistence of work as a means for cultivating a better American citizen and a more knowledgeable individual suggested that a liberal arts education was no longer sufficient. As Clark argued, veterans influenced

39 Kent, “College at the Factory,”104.

colleges to develop a more practical curriculum to fit the every-man’s needs.40 The G.I. Bill facilitated mass social mobility and guided higher education curriculums toward more practical and vocational applications. Therefore, working in a factory and attending college was seen as an accessible opportunity. Indeed, persons having children of pre-college age were optimistic about the opportunities for their children to attend college with over 71 percent of Americans believing in the likelihood of college attendance.41 This allowed college to appear to be more accessible in the public imagination.

Lastly, Karl Detzer wrote that Wabash college president Frank H. Sparks started his educational journey from nothing and was able to achieve his dream of becoming a college president because of the opportunities available for advancement. Beginning as an undergraduate at Butler College and enrolling at the University of Southern California for his master’s degree,

Sparks worked and taught while obtaining his Ph.D.42 At the end of World War II, Sparks believed that students should study a specific subject connected with the world of trade, but devote their time to the liberal arts because men should be of “broad understanding.”43 The type of student typically selected to gain a liberal arts education was elite. Historian John Thelin explained that the shape of American higher education altered in a way that moved closer to providing mass access to higher education; however, American colleges and universities continued to remain academically selective.44 The Digest image of Sparks evoked a singular

40 Clark, “Two Joes,” 177.

41 Hansen and Israel, The Gallup Poll, 1714.

42 Detzer, “Man with a Big Idea,” 42.

43 Ibid, 43.

44 Thelin, American Higher Education, 260.

message: higher education was exclusive, but the dream of achieving one’s academic goals was probable.

The three portrait depictions of prominent academic figures in the Digest from 1945,

1946, and 1947, illustrated a common thematic element. Man was the epitome of success.

University presidents and administration were, in fact, white men. Thus, the Digest portrayed a true representation of the racial and gender demographic in higher education during the postwar era. A truly inclusive institution portrayed by a mass magazine was overshadowed by the white middle-class male image. The visual image was of an exclusive institution, reserved only for driven, ambitious, and white well-learned men. Men were the face of post-secondary success, guiding opportunities for others, and maintaining the traditional hegemonic and hierarchical structure. According to the popular media of the time, while post-secondary education positively benefited males, it appeared to leave out other ethnic, racial, and gender groups.

This ambivalent message—between the Digest image and the body of the article— undermines American attitudes toward universities. College students were asked, if they were

President, what specific things they would do on the domestic front. Their responses included improving race relations, providing equal opportunity, and improving or expanding education.45

Therefore, the public (specifically college students) was conscious of the selectivity of certain groups of people, an interesting revelation considering that the Digest illustrated an exclusive demographic.

By the 1950s, eight portrait illustrations of men and one African American woman perpetuated the ongoing stereotype of a dignified white middle-to-upper class man in the

45 Hansen and Israel, The Gallup Poll, 2228.

Digest.46 An illustration by Karl Godwin in 1950 of college president Dwight D. Eisenhower of

Columbia University showcased a smirking, but serious headmaster.47 His eyes faced forward, he wore a suit and tie, and his expression exuded a serious but playful demeanor. In the article,

Quentin Reynolds explained that Eisenhower insisted that the purpose of the university was to encourage citizens, to have a great respect for high academic standards, and to allow “every man and woman who enters the university” to “leave it a better American or we have failed in our main purpose.”48 However, Eisenhower, a white male, the college president, was used as the image of success, the image of academic achievement, and the image of male dominance in academia. In fact, Americans admired Dwight D. Eisenhower the most by 1952, according to a

Gallup poll.49 The Digest continued to perpetuate a male dominated image for university presidents and administrators, which was an accurate portrayal of the time.

An illustration of a male banker in a 1951 article titled “Banker Agnew Runs a School” by Karl Detzer, perpetuated the white-male stereotype.50 Agnew smiled broadly at the reader.

His hair was neatly managed and his attire was similar to the rest of the portraits of men—a suit and tie. While the Digest image was of a white middle class male, the body of the article exhibited an inclusive tone. Detzer explained that the Institute of Municipal Management,

46 A complete list of the eight black and white illustrations that accompanied articles related to American higher education during the 1950s include Quentin Reynolds, “Mr. President Eisenhower,” Reader’s Digest 57 (July 1950): 17; Karl Detzer, “Banker Agnew Runs a School,” Reader’s Digest (June 1951): 110; Dorothy Walworth, “An Unforgettable Character: Mary Bethune,” Reader’s Digest 60 (February 1952): 146; Deena Clark, “One-Man Rescue Squad,” Reader’s Digest 65 (May 1954): 143; Herbert Brean, “The Eight Lives of Marvin Hewitt,” Reader’s Digest 65 (July 1954): 108; Frances V. Rummell and C. Montgomery Johnson, “Bill Lane’s Students Win the Prizes,” Reader’s Digest (January 1955): 29; Cyril Eric Bryant, “What Mr. Baker Would Teach You,” Reader’s Digest (December 1958): 196; Dwight D. Eisenhower, “An Open Letter to America’s Students,” Reader’s Digest (October 1948): 193.

47 Reynolds, “Mr. President Eisenhower,” 17.

48 Ibid, 18.

49 Hansen and Israel, The Gallup Poll, 1111.

50 Detzer, “Banker Agnew,” 110.

sponsored by the First National Bank of Boston, opened a unique school at Northeastern

University.51 The school enrolled students ranging from 18 through 57 years old. The students were bank employees, lawyers, engineers, secretaries, state employees, and officials of cities and towns. Detzer emphasized that three out of the 96 students enrolled in classes in 1951 were women. The Agnew plan allowed students who were already college graduates or practical men and women in their own fields to continue their education. An obvious tone of progression and inclusion saturated the article. Again, a direct tension between the Digest image of a successful banker (a white male) and the story (an explanation of gender diversity in banking and a shift in the occupation of the typical college student) accentuated the inability of the Digest to accurately portray higher education.

A third article titled “One-Man Rescue Squad” by Deena Clark in 1954 depicted William

Sudduth.52 Godwin illustrated Sudduth in the same manner as the other portrait depictions.

Sudduth wore professional attire. His broad forehead accentuated a receding hairline and he smirked, evoking a pleased but serious demeanor. Sudduth was undoubtedly drawn with the same features as the other men in the Digest illustrations. In fact, he seemed like a clone to the other images. The maintenance of a superior white male demographic proliferated the Digest portrait sample. However, the text of the article offered a different perspective for understanding the changes occurring in American higher education.

Sudduth was described by Clark as having helped over 45 displaced people (DP’s) get to

America by arranging college scholarships and part-time jobs for them to become productive

51 Ibid, 110.

52 Clark, “One-Man Rescue Squad,” 143.

U.S. citizens.53 Having been appointed Director of Foreign Students at the University of

Heidelberg, Sudduth was able to convince trustees and students at various institutions to contribute scholarships that would allow international students admission into American colleges and universities.54 Sudduth firmly believed that “intelligent, worth-while people abroad” had something to add to the American campus landscape.55 He believed that most of them wanted a chance to prove that they would make trustworthy American citizens. Because of the changes in immigration laws with the passing of the Emergency Immigration Act, which lifted barriers for over 220,000 individuals, a sponsor at a university or a college would deeply impact the students attending the university and those around them. As a result, Sudduth’s story offered a contrast between the commonly used portrait depiction of a white male and the inclusive language regarding American institutions. On the one hand, an exclusive white male figure was used as the catalyst to describe the growing historical changes occurring in universities and colleges. On the other hand, these inclusive changes were overshadowed by a homogenous representation of progress.

By the 1960s, eight more portrait depictions showcased the common physical appearance of the academic male.56 In 1962, an article titled “He Searches for ‘Steeples’ of Talent”

53 Ibid, 143.

54 Ibid, 144. Clark explained that Sudduth was able to convince Dartmouth, Mississippi State College, the University of Texas, and over 30 U.S. colleges to pledge money or sponsor scholarships that would allow his students to prove their worth in America.

55 Ibid, 146.

56 A complete list of the remaining black and white illustrations that accompanied the articles related to higher education during the 1960s include “One Woman, Two Lives,” Reader’s Digest 80 (February 1962): 91; Frances V. Rummell and Adelaide Paine, “He Searches for ‘Steeples’ of Talent,” Reader’s Digest 81 (December 1962): 191; Frank J. Taylor, “The Three Lives of David Starr Jordan,” Reader’s Digest 82 (May 1963): 113; Frances V. Rummell, “Maryland U.’s Global Classrooms,” Reader’s Digest 86 (April 1965): 245; Tung Chi-Ping, “I Was a Student in Red China,” Reader’s Digest 89 (December 1966): 189; Otho Ross, “My Most Unforgettable Character,” Reader’s Digest 92 (June 1968): 103; George F. Kennan, “The Students Left—Rebels Without a Program,

condensed from Future illustrated Dr. Frederick E. Terman the Vice President of Stanford

University.57 Terman exhibited the same physical features as the previous men in the 1940s and the 1950s. He wore business attire and circle-shaped spectacles. His glance was directed toward the reader. His mouth remained closed exuding a Mona Lisa-like smile, and the creases and wrinkles drawn across his face magnified his age. An image of Dean Ray Ehrensberger from

“Maryland U.’s Global Classrooms” condensed from U.S. Lady continued to perpetuate this stereotype in 1965.58 His expression was serious and focused. A determination radiated from the image. By the late 1960s, the same image maintained its status with a drawing of philosophy professor Dr. Horace Williams at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.59 Williams rested his hand on his chin. His body language suggested that he was deep in thought like artist’s

Auguste Rodin’s famous statue of The Thinker. His eyes blared through his circle-shaped glasses. The professor appeared intellectual and thoughtful.

The portrait pictures from the Digest revealed a stagnant portrayal of men over time, even as higher education was becoming more accepting of other races and genders. However, men in positions of leadership maintained their status in American higher education. As civil disobedience flourished on college campuses and in society at large, especially in the wake of the

Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, the men illustrated in the Digest displayed a relentless model for congruity and tradition. As the absolute epitome of success, the editors chose to maintain the idea that only white middle-to-upper class men could obtain the American dream and diploma.

“Reader’s Digest 93 (January 1969): 79; Scott Seegers and Kathleen Seegers, “The Biggest Little Man in Columbia,” Reader’s Digest 95 (January 1970): 1959.

57 Rummell and Paine, “He Searches,” 191.

58 Rummell, “Maryland U.’s.,” 245.

59 Ross, “Unforgettable Character,” 103.

As a reader viewing the monthly publication, the every-man would want to aspire to embody the white male because the articles themselves advocated for the American dream, a notion millions of Americans believed was possible. However, the visual images evoked a perfunctory message: only white middle-to-upper class men were allowed to succeed in

America’s educational institutions and beyond. A contrast between the Digest’s propagandistic efforts and the social realities of the time yielded a better understanding of why the magazine was so popular. The middle-class American student attended college for a variety of reasons including “self-improvement, career advancement, financial accessibility, skill-development, and transfer to a four-year institution.”60 Similarly, the absence of economic pressures in college life, especially in the portrayals of college professors, served to exaggerate what happened at a number of small institutions and leave the public with the impression that the story reflected what occurred in all of higher education.61

Even though the Digest images distorted the everyday happenings of American higher education, they also reinforced a conscious truth concerning American values. American perceptions toward the importance of education and schools had been growing overtime with about 76 percent of the population believing education to be extremely important by 1973.62 The public perception toward higher education had been feeding the Digest’s portrayals whether they were distorted or not. University presidents had been mostly white middle-to-upper class men.

In college novels, the authors credited college administrators for their leadership

60 Brian Bourke, Claire H. Major, and Michael S. Harris, “Images of Fictional Community College Students,” Community College Journal of Research and Practice 30 (2008): 67.

61 Maeroff, Imaging Education, 7.

62 Phi Delta Kappa, The Gallop Polls of Attitudes Toward Education 1969-1988, (Indiana: Phi Delta Kappa, Inc, 1990), 66.

accomplishments, while honoring their subordinates.63 The Digest had been crediting university leadership, while honoring the growing masses. The images, thus, communicated broader assumptions about social values. The illustrators of the Digest images had biases that did not completely coincide with those of the audiences; however, they had a way of integrating a common language shared by “an otherwise diverse audience.”64 The illustrations demonstrated a superiority that seemed commonplace.65 College was no longer the domain of white men.

Therefore, public perceptions toward American higher education were convoluted. Ingrained in the images were fragments of misrepresentation and truth.

Women: A Token of Inclusion

Only three portrait illustrations included in the Digest during the 1940s through the 1960s pertaining to higher education in America were of women. The first visual image was of a woman teacher who advocated for the importance of teaching after the destruction of Pearl

Harbor, an event that caused many women to leave the profession out of fear, according to the

Digest.66 The woman portrayed sat erect, her head tilted to the side, and she smiled broadly. She wore professional attire and a pearl necklace. Her short hair curled upward exhibiting a popular hairstyle of the time. She wore circle-shaped glasses and her gaze was directed away from the reader. The lack of a direct gaze suggested that only a male had full authority to be direct and straightforward, while the female had to shy away. The implications of a simple, yet important element of the image—the gaze—implied that women’s subordination remained intact even in higher education.

63 Kramer, “Presidents in Fiction,” 86.

64 Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), xix.

65 Ibid, 115.

66 Loula Grace Erdman, “I’m Going to Stick to Teaching,” Reader’s Digest 51 (October 1947): 54.

The other two female portraits were of African American Mary MacLeod Bethune, the founder of Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida, and Mary I. Bunting, the president of Radcliffe College.67 Bethune’s and Bunting’s portrait illustrations provided a stark contrast to the 1947 image of the subordinate woman. They both gazed directly at the reader, a physical statement of dominance usually reserved for the male. Bethune’s posture was tilted to the side, offering only a side-visual of her face and upper body. Even so, Bunting’s posture was remarkably similar to Bethune’s. The striking similarity between an African American woman and a white woman in the 1952 and 1962 images suggested a growing transformation in the ethnic and gender equality of women in American higher education and society. However, these two women were the only ones chosen as representatives for a larger social phenomenon (the continued inclusion of women in higher education). The Digest portraits implied that the equalization of gender in academia was still not accepted.

Gender disparity reinforced societal expectations for men and women. With only three of the 21 portrait illustrations in the Digest depicting women, the magazine highlighted the female role as exclusively domestic. If she were to have penetrated the realm of higher education, she had done so in an exceptional way, an isolated case from other women at the time. In college fiction, women remained present but appeared as “faculty wives in search of adventure or as brainless coeds whose nubile attractions might be traded for a grade.”68 The depictions in the

Digest accentuated the white male archetype, but provided a different means of understanding the status of women. The Digest women had been proactive, diligent, and smart about achieving their status. They had not been portrayed in the same manner as women in college fiction.

Therefore, women in the Digest had been somewhat liberated, but they were portrayed in a way

67 Walworth, “An Unforgettable Character,” 146; “One Woman,” 91.

68 Barasch, “Faculty Images,” 33.

that hindered their ultimate success. The stigma of fulfilling the social obligation as a domestic housewife proliferated the mass magazine. The women had been drawn to look like the men. As a result, the Digest subtly promoted the notion that everyone—both male and female—should want to aspire to the male image.

Indeed, the depictions of women in the Reader’s Digest showcased a subtle acknowledgment that gender discrepancies had been closing in higher education. However, individuals in power were male, not female. The Digest published relatively few articles about female professors and leaders; however, the editors made it clear to the public that they sought greater gender equality in post-secondary institutions. Despite efforts to include women in the images, the illustrations of females presented a challenge to young women. A woman not only had to hold a degree, but she must have been a mother, a businesswoman, and wife all at the same time. According to Sevan G. Terzian in reference to female scientists, “she was required to devote endless hours to research and rigorous intellectual thought, but she also had to be physically attractive and nurturing as a wife and mother.”69 The Digest represented gender equality in higher education as an incongruent reality. The Digest’s attempt to entice women into enrolling at a university intersected with “powerful cultural currents assuming the primacy of women’s domestic obligations to produce ambivalent messages.”70

The masculinization of higher education flourished across the country as an influx of veterans attended colleges. Research in women’s history and gender studies suggests that the postwar “feminine mystique” construct that Joanne Meyerowitz labels was a “persistent

69 Sevan G. Terzian, “’Science World,’ High School Girls and the Prospect of Scientific Careers, 1957-1963,” History of Education Quarterly 46 (2006): 75.

70 Ibid, 75.

stereotype of domestic, quiescent, sub-urban womanhood.”71 According to Linda Eisenmann, the history of women’s education during the postwar period forgets to acknowledge how women perceived their own efforts to expand educational opportunities for American college-aged women, while also addressing larger social and cultural issues.72 In particular, there was a growing need for educated manpower, the cultural demands for safe and well-tended domestic spaces in the home, and the political concerns about gender roles and national security during the

Cold War. Thus, a direct focus on education, in contrast to domesticity, suggests that women were actively participating in education, work, and politics throughout the postwar period. The

Reader’s Digest, however, perpetuated the stereotype of domesticity and subordination in its visual imagery.

As the only representations of women, the 1947, 1952, and 1962 portrait depictions showcased women in a manner similar to the men. Her demeanor, physical attributes, and attire directly matched the male figure. However, the off-casted stare of the 1947 female teacher maintained her subordination.73 Unable to fully glaze at the reader, she cast her eyes downward and away. In the 1940s, gender specialization remained high. There was a negative relationship between education and marriage in that women were less likely to be married if they held a college degree.74 Between 1940 and 1960, marriage rates increased along with fertility rates. It was not until the 1960s that marriage rates began to decrease as rates of “divorce, cohabitation,

71 Joanne Meyerowitz, “Introduction,” in Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960, ed. Meyerowitz (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 11.

72 Eisenmann, Women in Postwar America, 5.

73 Erdman, “Stick to Teaching,” 51.

74 Berna M. Torr, “The Changing Relationship Between Education and Marriage in the United States, 1940-2000,” Journal of Family History 36 (2011): 483.

living alone, and non-marital childbearing…rose.”75 Therefore, significant changes in gender roles and women’s economic status were only beginning to materialize by the late 1940s, the same time the Digest chose to include the portrait of a woman.

Furthermore, college completion was significantly lower for women than men. Women represented 41.3% of college graduates in 1940, decreasing to 23.9% in 1950, and rebounding somewhat to 35.0% in 1960. However, according to Jerry A. Jacobs, for the entire twentieth century in the United States, women had comprised a large portion of students completing an education, but the G.I. Bill enabled men to surpass women in college completion.76 This discrepancy in college enrollments and completions by women in the 1940s paralleled the urgency of portraying a woman in the Digest. The editors, perhaps, sought to exhibit an all- inclusive America, one where every individual could identify with the knowledge presented in the periodical. Thus, a woman portrait, even if only one were included, would establish a front of gender equality, when in reality, gender discrepancies and stereotypes in American society remained apparent.

Qualifications for Success: There are None

In symbolic terms, the direct gaze of the male through the circle-shaped spectacles indicated that a confident gentleman was in full control of his life. In an article titled “The Eight

Lives of Marvin Hewitt” by Herbert Brean condensed from Life in July 1954, the title character assumed the identity of over eight academic professors throughout the course of his dishonest career. Marvin Hewitt never finished high school, but had a doctor of philosophy in physics and successfully taught a plethora of courses at several universities. He often lied to get jobs by identifying himself as various academic elites. He was quoted as saying, “If they’d only let me

75 Ibid, 483.

76 Jerry A. Jacobs, “Gender Inequality and Higher Education,” Annual Review of Sociology 22 (1996): 155.

be a professor…I lied only to get those jobs…I’ve never really hurt anyone.”77 The illustration accompanying the article showed Hewitt as a sophisticated and dignified individual, which was similar to an illustration of American President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The only difference was that Hewitt’s mouth was open as if he was speaking, ready to lie about his professional credentials in order to advance himself in society. The image of masculinity, in many ways, was a critique on the notion of manhood. As one historian explained, “Illusory, ungrounded, free- floating”: these qualities challenged the historical conceptions of manhood because the standards of success or belonging were constantly stable.78

With more optimistic voices dominating public discussion about education during the postwar years, individuals came to believe in the academic process. Yet, there was ongoing anxiety about schools in the postwar era. As Americans enjoyed recent economic prosperity with home-ownership, and an ever-better-educated middle class citizenship, the belief in progress was proven effective. In this instance, moral ambiguity overshadowed the opportunistic incentives of being able to consume knowledge in a manner that fostered one’s own personal gain—a reality achievable by men. According to Gerald P. Burns, college trustees were pressured into hiring

“college and university persons who are unqualified in experience and unsuited in temperament to the demands of the presidency.”79 Hewitt advocated for the promise of success without obtaining a formal education. The symbol of professional authority as shown in the illustration of

Marvin Hewitt in the Digest instilled a sense of self-interest and self-assertion for the male.80

Therefore, a contradiction between obtaining a formal education and the self-made man

77 Brean, “Eight Lives,” 108-112.

78 Pendergast, Creating the Modern Man, 266.

79 Gerald P. Burns, “Higher Education Today,” Current History 41 (1961): 29.

80 Burton J. Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America, (New York, NY: Norton, 1976), 19.

reinforced the notion that higher education was something Americans could never quite understand. The way in which one achieved success ultimately depended on the individual.

Furthermore, an elite figure, the college president, was credited with the idea of solving the housing problem on a college campus. One subheading read, “a college president with an original idea solve[d] the housing problem.”81 In another article, Bob Lollar, a pledge trainer at

Indiana University, proposed that Alpha Tau Omega transform traditional fraternity initiation ceremonies into something more constructive like “repair[ing] roofs, paint[ing], [and] deliver[ing] stove wood.”82 In both cases, a hierarchical structure signified that while many viewed college as a place of autonomous self-discovery, student progress was still directed by an elite figure. The male was pictured in the Digest as the initiator of positive changes on campus.

The visual imagery did not document the individuals that lead to wide campus improvements— those of different races, genders, occupations, and ages. By excluding those individuals through an artistic representation, the Digest could continue to sell a magazine that promoted a homogenous America in images, but an inclusive America in the written word.

Illustrating the man by making direct eye contact with the reader suggested a personal connection between the depiction and the individual gazing at the image. Exhibiting a likeness to

Uncle Sam, the man was illustrated in a manner as if he was speaking to you and only you.

Samuel A. Schreiner explained that the voice of the Digest magazine was unchanging. He proposed that by examining any table of contents of the Reader’s Digest for any month of the year in any country, the titles would inevitably speak to one’s most pressing personal problems.83

The portraits of college professors and college presidents evoked the same message. The male

81 Stanley High, “Do it Themselves? Impossible!” Reader’s Digest 54 (May 1949): 79.

82 Karl Detzer, “The Metamorphosis of Hell Week,” Reader’s Digest 59 (September 1951): 93.

83 Schreiner, Condensed World, 17.

depictions appealed to the individual American by instilling a sense of exceptionality. In doing so, the image alone advocated for credibility and trustworthiness in the mind of the reader. Even so, the portraits still illustrated societal exclusions because only one type of race and gender was valued, the white male.

A direct gaze conveyed intimidation, authoritativeness, and prestige. These pictured emotions and qualities belittled the reader. The maintenance of an elite and privileged character assumed that man’s status in American society had unmistakably remained unchanged from

1945 through 1970.84 Indeed, the Digest illustrations portrayed each person almost identically.

With the exception of five portraits (three women, one African American, and one Asian), each portrait illustration was synonymous in physical appearance—circle-shaped glasses, business attire, physical posture, a semi-smile, and well-groomed hair. In an era of growing commercialism, Americans desired more, but according to the Digest, only some could truly obtain a comfortable standard of success. Americans wanted wealth, material advancement, and a better way of life.85 These portraits highlighted those desires because they showcased an image of what one could become if one obtained a degree. An individual could earn enough money to buy professional attire and keep well-groomed hair because of the job opportunities allocated to someone with a university degree. An individual would feel confident enough to stand tall and smile because life’s hardships had been diminished with an education. And yet, the drawings indicated that man was superior and the white male was the quintessence of success.

This analysis challenges the notion that misrepresentations in visual imagery in the

Digest were completely exclusive and anachronistic. In fact, the convergence of what the image depicted and what the body of the article explained convinced the reader to embrace the

84 Thelin, American Higher Education, 260.

85 Patterson, Grand Expectations, 13.

illustrations of men published by the editors. The magazine gave the appearance that it fully represented all Americans in every topic. The portrait depictions, however, challenge this idea because a homogenous group of men, with the same features and appearance, were utilized as the best representation of authority figures in higher education.

Regardless of the year of publication, each portrait illustration emphasized the same message: man was elite and American higher education was complex. Specifically, white men were capable of success. In fact, ambition was known to be related to “styles of consumption for the classes.” 86 For nearly two-thirds of American men from the ages 18-34 in the armed forces in 1945 returning to civilian life after the war, adjusting to American life was stressful and filled with hardship.87 Thus, magazines, especially the Digest, jubilantly reported success stories.

Young and numerous, males in a male-dominated culture were eager to make up for the time lost during the war. Digest depictions reinforced the male capacity for achievement, especially the role of authority figures in helping one through uncertainty. Digest articles with accompanying male portrait images included various messages about academic opportunity. For example, professors were one’s best advocates for student scholarship funding.88 A factory owner could offer his employees the opportunity to obtain a college education.89 Even the former President of

Columbia University, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who would eventually become President of the

United States, reinforced the message that high academic standards of the university would produce useful American citizens.90 Embedded within each illustration was the belief that higher

86 Bledstein, Culture of Professionalism, 41.

87 Patterson, Grand Expectations, 13.

88 Clark, "One-Man," 143-46.

89 Kent, “College at the Factory,” 104.

90 Reynolds, “Mr. President Eisenhower,” 17-21.

education was attainable, consumable, and enjoyable. The white male demonstrated for America what empowerment and materiality truly looked like—uniqueness confined to the male, but open to the masses.

Defiance, Disobedience, and Divergence on College Campuses: Student Activism

A series of social crises including the Civil Rights Movement, the Feminist Movement, the student movement, and the peace movement confronted the nation during the postwar era, especially in higher education. While the Digest images portrayed mostly male figures, social, civil, and racial unhappiness highlighted an ambivalent message concerning gender and racial popularity in academia. With racial segregation persisting in the South, the Civil Rights

Movement increased in momentum leading to various urban riots, sit-ins, teach-ins, and exhibitions of discontent. Meanwhile, an era of student activism, perhaps influenced by the Civil

Rights Movement, began at various colleges and universities. In 1960, a small group of students formed the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). By 1968, around 100,000 students across

America joined the organization, heavily influenced by the Free Speech Movement at the

University of California Berkeley. While higher education allowed citizens to move socially upward, the radical idea of the independent democrat, a “liberated person seeking to free the power of nature within every worldly sphere” and a “self-governing individual exercising his trained judgment in an open society” emerged.91

A major social change movement, mainly led by white college students, was known as the student movement and worked primarily to fight racism and poverty, increase student rights, and end the Vietnam War. At the core, this movement advocated for a participatory democracy.

By 1969, 81 percent of students and 92 percent of demonstrators believed that college students

91 Bledstein, Culture of Professionalism, 87.

should have a greater say concerning the academic side of colleges.92 Many of these student activists firmly believed that all Americans, not just a small elite, should decide the major economic, social, and political issues plaguing the nation. The students wanted others to fight for their own rights and help shape new political or economic changes. Thus, an outright refusal of the decisions made by the American government and school administration ensued.93 At

Berkeley, students questioned the relevance of the curriculum and their individual agency in shaping it. Moreover, they complained about their alienation from faculty and administrators, demanding that they have the capacity to govern their lives outside of the classroom.94

According to a Gallup poll in 1969, college students were asked: why do you think students in many schools around the country are demonstrating. The result was that students believed they did not have enough say in the running of college, and there are current inadequacies of society that need adjusting.95 Therefore, violence threatened to disrupt campus life. Strikes paused collegiate learning, and police forces attempted to maintain order.

However, this social movement, which advocated for universal student rights regardless or race, class, or gender, was not socially inclusive. According to Guy Aitchison and Jeremy

Gilbert, the campaign was mostly middle-class in character. The university populations that were represented within the campaign were “entirely hegemonised” and had no “grassroots support amongst the wider student population.”96 Therefore, it seemed that the historically middle-class

92 Hansen and Israel, The Gallup Poll, 2196.

93 Guy Aitchison and Jeremy Gilbert, “Reflecting on the Student Movement,” Soundings 50 (2012): 32-44.

94 Gerald Rosenfield, "Generational Revolt and the Free Speech Movement [University of California at Berkeley]," Liberation 10 (1965): 13-7.

95 Hansen and Israel, The Gallup Poll, 2196.

96 Aitchison and Gilbert, “Reflecting,” 33.

campaign defended a middle-class privilege. William Watts and David Whittaker explain that the students had parents who were more “academically elite (in terms of Ph.D. and M.A. degrees held), and comprised a larger proportion of females.”97

While the Berkeley case may seem isolated, the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley was significant because the same issues were being raised at colleges and universities across the nation. Universities exercised parental-like authority over the social lives of undergraduates, which led to student displeasure. Above all, students demanded that faculty and administrators pause any and all research and activities that contributed to the Vietnam War. Students complained that they were treated like numbers, not people, with many campuses also suffering from overcrowding.

Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that the portrait depictions in the Reader’s Digest conveyed authority, stability, and assurance in American life. Each portrait of the male, identical in nature, dictated that the student movement was not a threat to higher education. Indeed, the cartoons offered a reassuring display of control in the wake of discontent. Some students lost their faith in democracy. Some of the most radical students believed that Communist leaders, like

Cuba’s Fidel Castro and China’s Mao Zedong, offered better visions for bringing justice and equality to the people. While no articles in the Digest directly related to student radicalism, one article pertained to a student who had left Communist China.98 A similar narrative concerning the student movement and the chaos of China’s higher education system suggested an indirect commentary by the Digest on collegiate turmoil. Media reports during the 1950s and 1960s continued to “express fear of the possibility of an illiterate population unable to face the

97 William A. Watts, and David Whittaker, “Free Speech Advocated at Berkeley.” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 2 (1966), 41.

98 Chi-Ping, “Student in Red China,” 189.

challenge of an era of Sputnik and the emerging space age.”99 Concern was expressed for a threatened democracy.

In an article titled “I was a Student in Red China” in December 1966, Tung Chi-Ping recounted his experience as a first generation Chinese student educated entirely under the communist regime.100 The accompanying portrait, too, identified Chi-Ping as yet another clone to the white male archetype. Translator Humphrey Evans explained, “a rare, firsthand glimpse into the nightmare of education behind the Bamboo curtain, where the three R’s are Revolution,

Repression—and Red.”101 Chi-Ping’s years in Communist China’s higher education system from

1959-1963 were marked by insecurity, turmoil, hunger, fear—and a minimum of real education.

A direct correlation between the “propaganda smoke screen” and the “fear of intellectuals” in

China, perhaps, related to the student movement of higher education in the United States.102

While the Digest reinforced negative attitudes regarding Communist China in the article—an original article that had not been condensed from any other source—the portrait evoked the message that a Chinese student was lucky to be away from China, quickly assimilating into the

American mold. Even so, the student displeasure concerning governmental authority in higher education was synonymous in China as it was in America. America’s population of 139.9 million in 1945 included nearly 11 million foreign-born and 23.5 million people of foreign-born or mixed parentage. African Americans numbered nearly 14 million or 10 percent of the

99 Deborah Wadsworth, “Do Media Shape Public Perceptions of America’s Schools,” in Gene I. Maeroff (Ed.) Imagining Education: The Media and Schools in America, (New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 1998), 60.

100 Chi-Ping, “Student in Red China,” 189.

101 Ibid, 189.

102 Ibid, 190.

population.103 The Digest provided a visual imagery that both confirmed and contradicted the importance of post-secondary authority.

Like the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the gaze of the white male in all 21 of the Digest portraits emphasized the spiritual values of America, that is, the American Dream. The notion that a person who came from humble origins could ultimately achieve his or her dream if he or she was willing to work hard and take advantage of the opportunities was prominent. Digest editors, Leila and DeWitt Wallace, instilled an unrelenting sense of optimism in the magazine. As Samuel Agnew Schreiner expresses, “it would be hard to imagine a life that more amply fulfills in the flesh all these optimistic, individualistic, patriotic, philanthropic and practical ideas expressed within the pages of the little magazine Wallace invented.”104 Unlike the decayed portrayal of the American dream in

Fitzgerald’s novel, the stagnant representation of these men highlighted the eternal and attainable quest for success and advancement. An unchanging tone of success was used as a tool for persuading the reader in identifying with and acknowledging, that even with the underlying cultural, social, and political unrest, a successful future was obtainable. The success of the university as an institution paralleled the success of the university president as a public spokesman for the educational interest of the middle class.105 Individuality, while desperately sought by students, was not the goal for America’s maintenance of international dominance.

Magazines sought to portray a college education as an equalizing mechanism, yet they often

103 Patterson, Grand Expectations, 15.

104 Schreiner, Condensed World, 31.

105 Bledstein, Culture of Professionalism, 144.

denied the individual agency of the student.106 The goal was to project a unified and cohesive

America.

The Digest portraits from 1945-1970 illustrated that American higher education was a confusing institution. The visual images of white males emphasized the attractiveness and power of a select group of men in academia. The immediate and long-term goals for post-secondary education rested on the shoulders of traditionally excluded individuals. By portraying the white male as the dominant face of American higher education, the Digest could successfully advocate for an educated citizenry, a progressive and innovative nation, a prosperous economy, and a cohesive society. This was possible because Americans had traditionally looked toward the head of the household to make important decisions. The patriarchal structure of America had not been fully dismantled by the postwar period. As a result, choosing to not attend college would have denied the nation a well-educated individual unable to compete in a growing economy.

Economic prosperity demanded a global and highly competitive new-knowledge-based economy. However, not every American had the funds available to attend a university.

Therefore, the alternative routes toward higher education grew in importance for the common- man and woman.

The contradictory, but complementary messages highlighted in the Digest portraits ultimately yielded an understanding that the mass magazine had utilized illustrations reflective of the public consciousness. The Digest was the most popular mass magazine of the time. One would have assumed that the Digest would have portrayed innovative and new material to mirror the ever-changing postwar society. However, the Digest’s visual images, although anachronistic

(with the exception of the university presidents and administration), perpetuated the contesting images of male dominance in academia. The portraits in the Digest were created by a multiplicity

106 DeGenaro, “Community Colleges,” 538.

of forces: by editors eager to construct an idealized America, by illustrators with a vision of who should attend college in a changing social environment, by social forces such as racism and sexism, and by readers who shaped the content of magazines by applauding or contesting the images they valued or detested.107 The mass media were products of the same set of discourses they helped to reproduce.108 As John Tebbel explained, magazines present a point of view. They offer an “opportunity to examine in depth” American higher education.109 Therefore, reader rapport was strengthened. The Reader’s Digest images of postwar portraits of men and women in higher education emphasized a respect for the traditions of post-secondary life, as well as a desire for new ideas.

The Campus Landscape

Reader’s Digest illustrations of higher education from 1945-1970 also prominently featured the architecture of college. Full of ornate, traditional architecture, these buildings evoked a feeling of grandeur and exclusion. Behind the gates, archways, and columns lay an academic realm that opened its doors to the every-student. Ranging from traditional to conventional styles, the environment of higher education in the Digest was portrayed as a place within reach.

Two common themes emerged from studying the Digest images related to the campus landscape. First, a handful of drawings showcased academic buildings as the main focus of each illustration. Individuals were drawn as blurred outlines and the building itself (whether modern or old) was drawn as the subject of the piece. In doing so, the artistic representation of a strong, but inviting campus environment appealed to the masses. Second, depictions of students

107 Pendergast, Creating the Modern Man, 260.

108 Sharp, Condensing the Cold War, 5.

109 Tebbel, “Part Four,” 265.

constructing the college in some manner—building dorms or classrooms—showed a unification of the college campus as students worked together for a common goal. These illustrations challenged notions of exclusivity in higher education because they clearly showed students working together to build a new foundation for the institution. Even so, the students drawn (both male and female) appeared to be of white middle-to-upper class status.

Knowing that the Digest’s targeted audience was ordinary individuals, not intellectuals, the landscape drawings of colleges and universities showcased a theme of participatory exclusiveness. The term participatory exclusiveness, in a figurative sense, means alluding to an inclusive institution where students from any background believed that they could participate in an establishment that traditionally excluded them. Students hoped to become participants in an exclusive place that could offer them opportunities for advancement and a better life, according to the Digest portrayals of American higher education. As Sharp articulated, the magazine

“sensed a new danger” during the postwar period, “a threat from within in the shape of those who had given up on the American Dream.”110 As tensions rose within the country, especially during the 1950s and 1960s, the Digest editors sought to diminish fears by perpetuating the notion of the American Dream. As they had done so with the portrait portrayals of men, the maintenance of a prestigious university landscape in the Digest expressed the subjective nature of the mass magazine. Various depictions of students building the college and landscape portrayals of the college itself, showcased an ambivalent message regarding American higher education. Once again, the Digest offered a conflicting view, inclusion and exclusion synonymously radiated through the visual images.

110 Sharp, Condensing the Cold War, xv.

A Changing Environment: The Architecture of Academia

In a 1957 article titled “What You Need Nowadays to Get into College” by Leland

Stowe, the accompanying illustration depicted a large university building with many students waiting to get inside.111 Tall trees lined the foreground in front of the enormous college building.

Over 50 unidentifiable men and women walked hastily toward the structure. The college edifice emitted a feeling of grandeur, lined with numerous windows and adorned with ornate stucco. The perspective of the black and white illustration is significant because it presented an inclusive view of the entire building. Details in the drawing are blurred and one is left with the impression of magnitude and unity.

The article described overcrowded campuses, the competition to get in, and the desire for well-rounded students. Stowe offered advice to students and parents for gaining acceptance. The subheading read, “here is a list of the personal qualities colleges are looking for, and suggestions for youngsters and their parents on how to develop them.”112 The institution portrayed in the visual image was maintaining an aesthetic of excellence by increasing the standards of admission. However, not every student had the capacity to be admitted into a university of this status. Indeed, by 1958, over 62 percent of parents believed that colleges should not raise their entrance requirements, making it harder for high school graduates to enter.113 It seemed that the

American perception toward higher education was exclusive, making admittance a challenge for

111 Leland Stowe, “What You Need Nowadays to Get Into College,” Reader’s Digest 71 (July 1957): 40. Other images in the Digest illustrate the college campus. These include: Lawrence Lader, “Cornell University’s Unique Hotel,” Reader’s Digest (March 1951): 102; Emily Kimbrough, “My Life as a Bryn Mawrter,” Reader’s Digest (October 1952): 138; Cecil Cofley, “College with a Built-in Pocketbook,” Reader’s Digest 68 (March 1956): 123; D. Elton Trueblood, “Why I Chose a Small College,” Reader’s Digest (September 1956): 38; Howard Whitman, “Living Memorials Instead of Flowers,” Reader’s Digest (October 1956): 162; Elizabeth Fagg, “With a Barnful of Students and a Countyful of Faith,” Reader’s Digest (February 1959): 217; James Daniel, “Our Globetrotting Students,” Reader’s Digest (August 1964): 106.

112 Stowe, “What You Need Nowadays,” 40.

113 Hansen and Israel, The Gallup Poll, 1549.

every student. But, rather than defining the culture of higher education in terms of the “literary, artistic, and philosophical heritage of the Protestant middle and upper classes and emphasizing the boundary between this culture and various threats from the masses,” the Digest presented an image of vitality that “depended on a blurring of this boundary.”114 The Digest offered tips for students and parents on how to increase their chances of gaining admission. In fact, about 90 percent of Americans were in favor of the study of trades, professions, and businesses to help students decide their careers.115 As a result, a tension existed between the exclusive image of an academic building and the textual explanation of multiple opportunities available for advancement. The Digest continued to promote ambivalent messages toward post-secondary schooling by remaining firm in illustrating a traditional perspective of the campus environment, and also including rhetoric of inclusiveness in the body of the article.

The visual image projected a plethora of students walking inside the doors of the institution. Millions of Americans sought admission into the once exclusive arena. Therefore, the

Digest image provoked the possibility of a truly inclusive university environment. While both men and women were drawn walking toward the collegiate structure, singular details in the image suggested that the white racial majority was dominant. Specifically, on the left-hand side of the image, three women are shown walking toward the building, while on the right-hand side of the image, over 20 men are shown walking toward the building. Again, the Digest showcased an exclusive institution reserved for a few, but open for everyone. The Digest wanted new ideas,

114 Matthew Schneirov, The Dream of a New Social Order (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 2.

115 Phi Delta Kappa, The Gallop Polls of Attitudes Toward Education 1969-1973, (Indiana: Phi Delta Kappa, Inc, 1973), 163.

but had an abiding respect for the old.116 The image blurred the boundary between who should attend a university and who should not.

Furthermore, an illustration accompanying the 1959 article “With a Barnful of Students and a Countyful of Faith” showcased a two-year community college that had once been a 40- room mansion.117 On the 16-acre estate, the community college architecture may have been non- traditional as it was adopted from someone’s home, but the inclusive grandeur remained the same. The illustration depicted a close-up of the Victorian style building. Rounded bay windows, carefully trimmed hedges, and ornate molding evoked a traditional, but unique college environment. In the foreground, a man and woman held each other’s hands as they gazed at the structure. Five other individuals walked up the steps. The silhouettes of students were subtly drawn through the large windows. The three-story structure stood tall, outlined by trees on either side of the image.

With over 652 junior colleges supplementing senior institutions across the country since

WWII (1945-1959), a total enrollment of nearly a million students had allowed for students with a “hunger for higher education” and a “short pocketbook” to become participants in the system that guided the editor’s vision of a progressive America.118 The article stressed the significance of “offering an educational chance to thousands who might otherwise never get to college,”

“practical vocational courses,” and the ability for students to “study at four-year colleges.”119

116 Tebbel and Zuckerman, Magazine in America, 161.

117 Fagg, “Barnful of Students,” 217.

118 Ibid, 218.

119 Ibid, 218.

More importantly, the author stressed that the applicants admitted were honor students to

“bottom man on the totem pole.”120

Without having read the accompanying article, one would assume the image to be an Ivy

League institution. The two individuals standing in the foreground represented the act of dreaming. The man and woman gazed at the large ornate structure, their backs to the reader.

Thus, the visual image invited the ordinary reader to identify with the couple. The every-

American sought advancement into the college environment like the two individuals standing before it. However, they remained on the outside, subjected to popular misconceptions of who was worthy of attending college and who was not. Excluded from the illustration were individuals of African American, Asian, Hispanic, American Indian, or minority descent.

Therefore, the Digest maintained its elite view of the college student.121

President Harry Truman’s Commission on Higher Education on July 13, 1946 emphasized the task of examining the functions of higher education and the means by which they could be best performed. Particularly, this was a preemptive attempt at increasing college choices and affordability for an entire generation of American citizens, including those of other races. Included was a rationale that higher education was integral to the national interest of

American society at home and abroad.122 The relative continuance of inequities and injustices marred the ultimate success of the Digest images, which advocated for comradery. Comradery and tolerance existed only within the realm of those who had previously benefited from it— white middle-to-upper class individuals.

120 Ibid, 218.

121 Thelin A History of American Higher Education, 261.

122 Patterson, Grand Expectations, 149-50; Rury, Education and Social Change, 217; Thelin A History of American Higher Education, 268-70.

Campus Under Construction

The physical construction of new buildings on campus also emphasized the growing need for more students, new laboratories, and new classrooms. The Reader’s Digest portrayed the college campus not only as a traditional structure, but also as a campus under construction. Some institutions allowed students to work menial jobs in order to pay for their college tuition, easing their financial burden.123 Federal aid to education had been occurring since 1950. About 74 percent of Americans were in favor of the government spending $300 million in federal aid for the schools of the nation.124 Therefore, as work came to include a vocational focus, artistically liberal depictions came to symbolize the growing trend of higher education—the reconstruction of academia.

Representations of students physically constructing new buildings on campuses in the

Digest signified a contradiction concerning whom the university valued and whom they did not.

Articles titled “Do it Themselves? Impossible!” condensed from The Kiwanis Magazine in May

1949, “Apron-and-Overalls College” condensed from Presbyterian Life in July 1950, and “The

Metamorphosis of Hell Week” condensed from Guideposts in September 1951 justified the ethic of work and practicality by showing college students physically producing structures that enhanced the university landscape.125 Due to a swelling of postwar enrollments there was an intense “need for massive construction of laboratories, classroom buildings, and dormitories.”126

On the surface, the increase in college enrollments necessitated the need for the construction, which was adequately illustrated in the Digest. However, directly or indirectly, these depictions

123 Lader, “Cornell University’s,” 102-104.

124 Hansen and Israel, The Gallup Poll, 862.

125 High, “Do It Themselves?,” 79; William F. McDermott, “Aprons-and-Overalls College,” Reader’s Digest 57 (July 1950): 89; Detzer, “Metamorphosis,” 92.

126 Thelin, American Higher Education, 265.

symbolized more than just a response to the increase in academic enrollment. They maintained the hierarchy of post-secondary schools.

The every-student had the capacity to work toward achieving a degree. However, Ivy

League institutions were not used as examples of environments where students performed manual labor. For them, the status quo had been maintained. This discrete, but enduring contradiction undermined the true belief in capturing the American Dream. Equal access to knowledge and status continued to be easier for some and, still, harder for others.127

Students in each illustration pertaining to the construction of a college campus were shown happily constructing the foundation of new buildings, mixing cement, hammering nails, and painting buildings.128 Boys and girls worked together to build the dormitory, and in a more widened sense, to build the nation. College President Dr. Sam Marble from Wilmington College in Ohio chose to “test how much life [was] left in the principles which build the college—and build America.”129 Instead of raising money to construct a new men’s dormitory, he had students build one themselves. An aesthetic of originality and problem solving generated a theme of a progressive America. In doing so, the significance of physical labor and collaboration for the betterment of the institution and the individual self-instilled a vision of a unified nation.

However, the unification of a collective consciousness regarding a progressive America was just an illusion. Opportunities for self-advancement were not race or gender inclusive. In the

127 The physical construction of buildings, a way to aid higher education institutions and gain knowledge at the same time, served as a symbol of normality and unification among the nation’s youth. After all, the future generations would inherit the previous generations struggles and triumphs. However, the Digest depictions of undergraduate life and work seemed slanted toward the white majority. Although racially dominated by a white majority, these illustrations advocated for a hardworking America. Fed unrealistic propaganda, these images articulated to every American (regardless of race, gender, or class) that they should want to rebuild the nation because a stronger nation was a better one.

128 McDermott, “Aprons-and-Overalls,” 89; Detzer, “Metamorphosis,” 92.

129 High, “Do It Themselves?,” 79.

article titled “Apron-and-Overalls College,” William F. McDermott explained that students paid

73 percent of the college budget by working.130 The significance of the type of program enacted at the school introduced the idea of self-discipline and resourcefulness. Every student was graded on his or her work as well as academic studies. While girls manned washing machines and boys cut wood for fireplaces—an obvious maintenance of gender stereotypes—the students together showed “competence in spirit” in their work of building and renovating the college.131 While higher education came to be understood as an equalizing mechanism, the illustrations concerning the construction of university buildings exhibited only white and mostly male students. The absence of racial minorities in the construction of the college campus in the Digest implied that equality had not been achieved in the realm of higher education in the late 1940s and early

1950s. The Digest depictions of undergraduate life and work seemed slanted toward the white majority and maintained gender stereotypes. Those privileged enough to attend were utilized as the symbolic representatives of collegiate progress.

Americans increasingly sought new opportunities for advancement, paths that could best be achieved by acquiring an education that instilled both the significance of physical labor and an educated mind. However, white students were shown in the Digest advancing previous ideologies concerning the appropriateness of class choice in college attendance regardless of the reality that class distinctions were now more permeable. In doing so, the Digest could advance progressive ideology concerning the growing acceptance of collegiate participants in the text of the article, while subduing such open-minded ideals through the maintenance of social class in the illustrations. In his 1950 article, “Apron-and-Overalls College” author McDermott explained

130 McDermott, “Aprons-and-Overalls,” 89.

131 Ibid, 91.

that young “people [had] come to feel that the government owed them an education…”132 The

Digest implied that young people, regardless of class or gender or race should have the opportunity for advancement. However, opportunities existed only within the framework of a white middle-to-upper class status according to the illustrations.

In “College with a Built-in Pocketbook,” condensed from Christian Herald in March

1956, Cecil Cofley described how a small liberal arts school in Chattanooga, Tennessee accepted worthy students regardless of ability to pay for their education.133 The school often paid the students through work-study programs. This signified yet another growing emphasis on student- labor achievements and the significance of working while gaining an education. More importantly, the illustration showed a college building surrounded by items like chickens, a desk, clothes, a broom, and a barrel as if to symbolize the different types of work a student could perform while in school. These items floated above a very plain, one-story building. Floating above the institution, various symbols of work represented a multiplicity of opportunities within the reach of some, but higher than the reach of many. Again, college was depicted as a place of opportunity. Each vocational trade was within reach, but only for a select few. However, the opportunity to achieve one’s own standard of success, as the Digest propagandized, was obtainable.134

The federal role in American higher education expanded in other ways, too, fueling growth on college and university campuses. By 1963, the federal government launched a major

132 Ibid, 89.

133 Cofley, “Built-in Pocketbook,” 123.

134 College and universities were no longer places for bookwork. They were also environments where one could learn a trade or work toward an individual goal for the betterment of the self and society. As a result, major foundations provided substantial grants for colleges and universities willing to participate in new tasks. Some Americans sought new opportunities for advancement, a path that could best be achieved by acquiring an education that instilled both the significance of physical labor and an educated mind. The inherent connection between citizenship and knowledge proposed the idea that progress was only attainable through higher education.

program for facilities construction by targeting developing institutions like community colleges and historically black colleges and universities. For example, the expansion of two-year institutions more than doubled in a ten-year period with about 168,043 institutions in 1950 to about 393,553 by 1960. By 1970, almost 2.1 million community colleges existed in America.135

The continued growth of non-traditional pathways toward a college degree challenged the value of four-year private or public institutions. The postwar-era marked the beginning of an ongoing struggle to determine the relative worth of an individual’s degree based on the institution attended.

Giving it the Ol’ College Try

Ultimately, each depiction offered a common thematic element. Even though an intellectual social elite no longer dominated higher education, the landscape of what college was supposed to look like remained the same. Cheaper, vocational, and two-year colleges allowed more people to gain a degree. While some viewed this phenomenon as belittling the traditions of higher education, the increase in enrollments allowed for greater access to school and a more educated citizenry. The architecture in the Digest was portrayed as inviting, pleasant, and grand.

From traditional buildings and a mansion to the physical construction of the college campus, the aesthetic message was that higher education could still look prestigious even if it did not have the funds. By demonstrating university landscapes as prestigious, an audience could buy into the notion that a common man or someone from a lower socioeconomic class could afford to learn alongside a wealthy counterpart. Individuals could believe that giving it the “old college try” was a saying worth embodying.

The Reader’s Digest’s visual imagery pertaining to the college environment challenges the assumption of a collective consciousness regarding equal opportunity. While some would

135 Thelin, American Higher Education, 300.

argue that these depictions solidified the optimistic nature of how Americans perceived a college degree, this thesis presented an opposing perspective because the images showcased an exclusive institution backed by an inclusive tone in the body of the article. What college was supposed to look like according to the Digest was contradictory in the sense that there was no one best representation of the university landscape. The different environments emphasized a sense of confusion regarding the purpose of higher education. The Digest did not include a commentary on how well graduates performed after graduation, how many jobs students were able to obtain, or any other evidence of success because it did not matter. The aesthetic of prestige was all that counted. However, the college environment was shown in a myriad of ways: finished traditional buildings, semi-completed buildings, dorm rooms, libraries, an old mansion converted into a college, and hotels.

Teaching and learning in higher education seemed largely invisible as subjects of news and features in the Reader’s Digest. The Digest’s preoccupation with the grandeur of the campus landscape and the student construction of new buildings advertised just a narrow slice of higher education. This type of coverage leaned toward a hyperbolic exaggeration. The Digest left one with the impression that the stories reflected in the mass magazine had occurred in all of higher education.136 Individuals reading magazines during the early 20th century rarely questioned the worldview of the subject matter, which resulted in the maintenance of the dominant ideals of society.137 Therefore, the Reader’s Digest like other mass magazines contributed to shaping

American perceptions of higher education and shared values of culture.

136 Maeroff, Imaging Education, 7.

137 DeGenaro, “Community Colleges,” 530.

CHAPTER 3 CONCLUSION

This thesis analyzes visual images of American higher education in the Reader’s Digest during the postwar era, 1945-1970. It explores the ways in which these drawings reflected whom universities valued and whom they did not, and any indication of a change over time in relation to college students and faculty and the campus environment. Two main categories found in the

Digest sample of black and white illustrations include academic men and women and the campus landscape (what college was supposed to look like). The Digest depicts American higher education in visual images as an unchanging entity. A growing divergence between societal trends in American higher education and the images displayed in the Digest suggest higher education is something the editors never quite understood, a complex system that promoted only the perceived benefits of a college education for a select demographic.

The Reader’s Digest like other mass magazines contributed to shaping American perceptions of higher education and shared cultural values. The public sought, and bought, publications that portrayed college as an exclusive institution. Efforts to include greater diversity on college campuses fused with traditional conceptions of who should attend college and why one should attend college. The Digest’s attempt to entice the common American into enrolling at a university intersected with powerful cultural currents (gender and racial inequalities) that maintained an ambivalent message. This multi-media approach emphasized how images interact with text and how these two elements together reveal greater assumptions concerning American higher education during the postwar-era.

Various historians continue to argue that a narrative of progress was possible even though the Digest and other popular periodicals of the time promoted a narrow conception of who was

worthy of attending college.1 Higher education in the Digest is depicted as an unchanging entity—exclusive and anachronistic. The Digest images challenge, reinforce, and influence one’s belief about American higher education.2 This analysis contends that the Digest images provoke the shared notion of accepting college as a compulsory requirement for a successful future.

American higher education allowed individuals to expand their choices or prepare for a career.

However, the types of individuals valued by the Digest remained largely white and middle class.

The images maintain an elite public perception of who was worthy of attending college, while, at the same time, intensify who was continually excluded from attending college. An examination of over 60 drawings in the Digest related to American higher education exposes two levels of contradictions. First, a tension exists between the written text of an article and its accompanying image. Second, a tension exists between the visual image and the historical events of the time, which expose a more inclusive reality than what was portrayed in the illustrations. Even though the Digest advocated for inclusiveness, individuals deemed worthy of attending college were drawn as white male academics.

The Digest depictions of both men and women demonstrate an inclusive institution— teeming with diversity—that also respects academic tradition and elitism. White middle-to-upper class men are illustrated in a sophisticated, dominant, and intellectual manner.3 Their physical

1 Daniel A. Clark, Creating the College Man: American Mass Magazines and Middle-Class Manhood 1890-1915 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010), 25; Daniel A Clark, “’The Two Joes Meet—Joe College, Joe Veteran’: The G.I. Bill, College Education, and Postwar American Culture,” History of Education Quarterly 38 (1998): 189; Thomas Pendergast, Creating the Modern Man: American Magazines and Consumer Culture, 1900- 1950, (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 8-15. Samuel Agnew Schreiner, The Condensed World of the Reader’s Digest. (New York: Stein and Day, 1977), 11; Joanne P. Sharp, Condensing the Cold War: Reader’s Digest and American Identity. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), x.

2 Elliot W. Eisner, “The Promise and Perils of Alternative Forms of Data Representation,” Educational Researcher 26 (1997): 5.

3 Henry James Forman, “The Most Unforgettable Character I’ve Met.” Reader’s Digest 46 (January 1945): 45; George Kent, “College at the Factory,” Reader’s Digest 49 (October 1946): 104; Karl Detzer, “Man with a Big

posture, eye contact, business attire, and glasses contribute to the characterization of the

American campus leaders. While men were more likely to hold positions as university presidents or deans, the illustrations provide a complex depiction of who was valued at the university and what the public perception may have been toward university membership. The Digest represented white middle-class male images as the epitome of male dominance in academia.4

Women, on the other hand, were depicted as domestic intellectuals.5 Even though only three of the 21 portrait illustrations included women, the Digest images challenged the inclusion of women in academia. While women had the capacity to become educated, they also had to remain in the domestic sphere.6 These women accentuated the white male archetype. She was proactive, diligent, and smart about achieving her status, but she was also physically attractive, motherly, and nurturing.

Indeed, the depictions of women in the Reader’s Digest represented an era uncomfortable with feminism, especially in higher education. Greater gender equality had boomed in post- secondary institutions across the country, a reality that the three images of women highlighted.

Yet, despite efforts to include women in the images, the drawings of females challenged the social values of young women. The rigor of studying, holding a degree, being a mother, and a

Idea,” Reader’s Digest 50 (April 1947): 42; Otho Ross, “My Most Unforgettable Character,” Reader’s Digest 92 (June 1968): 103.

4 Frances K. Barasch, “Faculty Images in Recent American Fiction,” College Literature 10 (1983): 33; Michael Bieze, Booker T. Washington and the Art of Self-Representation (New York: Peter Lang, 2008), 4-11; Richard C. Boys, “The American College in Fiction,” College English 7 (1946): 382-87; Clark, “Two Joes,” 172; Clark, Creating the College Man, 27-30; John Kramer, “College and University Presidents in Fiction,” The Journal of Higher Education 52 (1981): 84; Pendergast, Creating the Modern Man, 55.

5 Linda Eisenmann, Higher Education for Women in Postwar America, 1945-1965 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2006), 2.

6 Sevan G. Terzian, “’Science World,’ High School Girls and the Prospect of Scientific Careers, 1957-1963,” History of Education Quarterly 46 (2006): 75; Joanne Meyerowitz, “Introduction,” in Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960, ed. Meyerowitz (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 11; Eisenmann, Women in Postwar America, 5.

businesswoman complicated the expectations of the female in postwar America. The result was an ambivalent message. Women could and should participate in higher education for the improvement of the nation, but they should also be reminded of their position in the social hierarchy.

Regardless, Digest reader’s may have been conscious of the gender and racial discrepancies portrayed in the Digest because of the historical movements occurring in the postwar-era like the Civil Rights Movement, the Feminist Movement, and student activism.7 In a

Gallup poll taken in 1969, college students were asked what they believed to be the biggest gripe fueling student activism and demonstrations. Their responses included: not having enough say in the running of colleges (42 percent), the current inadequacies of society (22 percent), adult and governmental authority (16 percent), the Vietnam War (11 percent), and civil rights (7 percent).8

As a result, the images in the Digest showcased a select demographic (white middle-class individuals), even though the public was conscious of the inequalities and inequities in American higher education and society. One may surmise that there had been a shared cultural awareness among the American population consuming the Digest. American higher education was an institution that was favorable toward some, but unfavorable toward others.

The growing convergence between societal trends in racism and sexism during the postwar era manifested itself through the images because they were overly white male dominated. The lack of minority representation and only a select group of women in the magazine suggested to the public that higher education in the United States was an institution grounded in tradition, elitism, and prestige. Even so, inclusion was growing, diversity was

7 James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 388; John R. Thelin, A History of American Higher Education (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2004), 269.

8 William P. Hansen and Fred L. Israel, eds. The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935-1971 (New York, NY: Random House, 1972), 2196.

expanding, the curriculum was transforming, and the campus landscape was improving on college campus across the United States.9 While male and white dominance remained on college campuses, the actions taken by the Digest writers widened the doors for inclusion in higher education, a feat that many Americans would have accepted in a growing consumer culture.10

The body of the articles advocated for an inclusionary environment.

The Digest’s portrayal of what college was supposed to look like also showed a conscious fusion between old traditions and new transformations on the college campus. The institutions portrayed in the visual images maintained an aesthetic of excellence for every student. The architecture in the Digest was portrayed as inviting, pleasant, and grand.11 By demonstrating university landscapes as prestigious, an audience would, perhaps, believe that individuals from a low socio-economic class would have been forbidden from learning alongside a wealthy counterpart.12

The Digest blurred the boundaries between exclusion and inclusion. They did so by providing a tension between the written text and the image used to illustrate the article. Even though an intellectual social elite no longer dominated higher education, the landscape of what college was supposed to look like remained the same in every Digest image—an elite environment. Whether it was a 2-year institution or a 4-year college, or whether the college campus was newly renovated or maintained its traditional architecture, the college campus was

9 Patterson, Grand Expectations, 388; Thelin, American Higher Education, 269.

10 Pendergast, Creating the Modern Man, 15.

11 Leland Stowe, “What You Need Nowadays to Get Into College,” Reader’s Digest Magazine 71 (July 1957): 40; Elizabeth Fagg, “With a Barnful of Students and a Countyful of Faith,” Reader’s Digest 74 (February 1959): 217; Lawrence Lader, “Cornell University’s Unique Hotel,” Reader’s Digest 58 (March 1951): 102; Stanley High, “Do it Themselves? Impossible!” Reader’s Digest 54 (May 1949): 79; William F. McDermott, “Aprons-and-Overalls College,” Reader’s Digest 57 (July 1950): 89; Karl Detzer, “The Metamorphosis of Hell Week,” Reader’s Digest 59 (September 1951): 92.

12 Clark, “Two Joes,” 167-73.

diverse.13 How college was supposed to look according to the Digest was contradictory in the sense that there was no one best representation of the university landscape. The different environments depicted in the mass magazine emphasized maintenance of old traditions, which fused with new improvements in the type of student admitted into a university during the postwar-era.

The public’s perceptions toward higher education had been feeding the Digest’s portrayals. The traditionally conservative nature of higher education in the United States is reflective of the biases of the larger culture. The images communicated broader assumptions about social values. Particularly, the images instilled a white male dominated cohort in academia.14 The American public had been more comfortable viewing a male dominated image than in viewing women or African Americans. Therefore, the illustrators of the Digest images integrated a common language shared by “an otherwise diverse audience” by utilizing imagery as a means of promoting a subjective societal assumption about higher education.15

Ingrained in the images were fragments of misrepresentation and truth. The illustrations demonstrated a superiority that seemed commonplace.16 Therefore, public perceptions toward

American higher education were complex. On the one hand, individuals consumed a mass magazine that promoted traditional conceptions of who should attend college in drawings (white middle-class men). On the other hand, individuals consumed a mass magazine that promoted non-traditional conceptions of who should attend college in the written text (women, African

13 Thelin, American Higher Education, 300.

14 Hansen and Israel, The Gallup Poll, 1177. In 1953, both men and women showed a preference for working under a man. About 18 percent of men believed that women were not capable or suited to be a boss, and about 27 percent of women believed that women were too emotional and would cause friction in business.

15 Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), xix.

16 Ibid, 115.

Americans, and individuals from lower socioeconomic statuses). Social values, in effect, impacted the duality that existed between the written word and the illustrations.

Advancing Scholarship

The findings in this thesis qualify what other historians have researched about higher education in postwar America. Four historians offered the most relevant scholarship related to a thesis centered on mass media portrayals of higher education, the Reader’s Digest, the history of

American higher education, and women during the postwar-era. John Thelin’s comprehensive history of American higher education advances the conclusion that inclusiveness was expanding in colleges and universities across the country.17 Thelin’s examination of the history of American higher education serves as an important reference to demographic shifts, political changes, economic and social progress, curricular modifications, course expansions, mass media representations of college, and changes in the purpose of college and universities over time.18

Joanne Sharp’s historical study of the Reader’s Digest expands on the notion that because the

Cold War had provoked American hysteria toward Communism, the Digest illustrations subdued fears of an illiterate population by promoting stability and order in higher education through male dominated imagery.19 Likewise, Linda Eisenmann’s research serves as a significant reference to understanding the women’s movement in higher education and the priorities placed on women in the domestic sphere.20 Eisenmann’s history of women in American higher education in the postwar-era illuminates the impact of including women in the Digest

17 Thelin, American Higher Education, 260-316.

18 Ibid, 260-316.

19 Sharp, Condensing the Cold War, x.

20 Eisenmann, Women in Postwar America, 2-37.

illustrations as not only domestic or subjugated individuals, but also as professional and responsible women.21

Daniel Clark’s historical research on printed mass media portrayals of higher education supports the value of analyzing imagery in magazines, the impact of political, social, and economic values on American perceptions toward higher education, and the significance of the symbolic messages that can be derived from mass media content. Clark’s analysis of the G.I. Bill and its impact on mass media representations of colleges and universities and the creation of the college man emphasizes how an illustration could symbolize more than just an aesthetic device meant to supplement a text.22 Clark’s work offers a cultural history of several middle-class

American magazines that explains why college became so popular to the American middle class.

The linkage between college, masculinity, and business culture parallels the Digest’s elite portrayal of university presidents, professors, and the college environment.

Because the Digest had the greatest readership of any mass magazine in the postwar-era, expectations of the male could be more easily promoted. Elitism in academia fueled an elite business culture. Therefore, America could be perceived as an intelligent, sophisticated, and innovative nation compared to other countries. The image that manifested itself on the world- stage, in effect, mattered. Higher education became the vehicle through which one could cultivate the next generation of progressive individuals. Therefore, the link between college, masculinity, and business culture, and the Digest’s elite portrayal of students, faculty, and the campus environment promotes the elite ideals of society.

The historical findings in this thesis challenge the American conception of higher education in the U.S., especially as it is represented in popular culture. For decades, the prospect

21 Eisenmann, Women in Postwar America, 2-37.

22 Clark, “Two Joes,” 165-189; Clark, Creating the College Man, 3.

and affordances of obtaining a university degree had been contained to a select demographic.

During the postwar-era, American higher education transitioned from a once exclusive environment to a more inclusive setting. The Reader’s Digest, the most popular mass magazine in the history of America, presented ambivalent and contradictory messages about higher education. In doing so, the reader was left to draw conclusions about the utility of a college degree. The public’s power to accept or reject the Digest’s visual images as true representations of American higher education guided the periodical’s sales and success. Popular media representations of higher education in the U.S. should be viewed as attempts to dismantle academic exclusivity, while maintaining institutional prestige. Whether a college is publically or privately supported, the ultimate support comes from the people. As portrayed in the Digest, the

American public had been genuinely interested in education. Criticism directed toward educators for not being able to make changes fast enough “to keep up with the shrinking globe, the jet age, or the era of the atom” enhanced what was good about higher education and what areas remained deficient.23

Synonymous Struggles: American Higher Education Today

Higher education in the U.S. is currently perceived as right for some, but not for everyone. According to a Gallup study on U.S. college and university presidents, which tracked their opinions on important topics and issues facing higher education, college presidents were evenly split in indicating whether the number of non-traditional students will increase (48 percent) or stay the same (43 percent) over the next decade.24 Phrases such as “diploma mills” parallel the industrial-machine-like institutions produced in the postwar-era as millions of

23 Gerald P. Burns, “Higher Education Today,” Current History 41 (1961): 28.

24 Gallup, "Gallup and Inside Higher Ed College and University Presidents Study," (Gallup, Inc, 2015), 5.

graduates continue to earn degrees across the nation.25 More than any other industrial sector,

Barbara Vacarr argues, higher education needs to rethink itself as the population ages. In a 2009 report from The Chronicle of Higher Education, the vast majority of traditional four-year private colleges were “heading down the path to extinction unless they shifted demographic gears.”26

Dwindling numbers of affluent white high-school students now match the growing number of financially stressed teens from diverse ethnic backgrounds. The most vulnerable are the institutions that fall between elites like Harvard and Stanford and the community colleges and for-profit schools “focused on students who lack the time, money, or inclination for a traditional four-year college experience.27 Above all, higher education institutions struggle to cope with

“political and economic uncertainties, threats to federal aid, declining state support, higher tuition rates, and increase competition from for-profit institutions,” as well as keeping up with technological demands, online courses, and “preparing students for a global marketplace.”28

While the system had served its purpose during the postwar decades, higher education in the U.S. no longer holds the same air of exclusivity.

People attended universities because they viewed an education as an obligation to the nation, a civic duty.29 By selling the school in all of its facets—a hierarchical structure manned by a trustworthy male, work related opportunities with diversity in choice, and prestigious aesthetics—the Digest evoked a provocative message: higher education was essential for

25 John L. Rury, Education and Social Change: Contours in the History of American Schooling. (New York: Routledge, 2013), 181.

26 Barbara Vacarr, “An Aging America: Higher Education’s New Frontier,” The Chronicle of Higher Education 61 (2014): 1.

27 Ibid, 1.

28 Dianne Hayes, “Reinventing Higher Education,” Diverse: Issues in Higher Education 29 (2012): 12.

29 Quentin Reynolds, “Mr. President Eisenhower,” Reader’s Digest 57 (July 1950): 17-21; Patterson, Grand Expectations, 15; Thelin, American Higher Education, 265.

America’s potential and future. Scholars of higher education, the history of American education, or anyone curious about learning how popular media portrayals of college influence one’s understanding of a specific time period, would benefit from learning that images can shed light on popular perceptions of college in media.

While learning about the history of Reader’s Digest portrayals of college may seem trivial, it offers one of the most justifiable commentaries on American higher education today.

According to Wallace, higher education in the U.S. was the great equalizer and an institution worthy of protecting. In modern times, we find ourselves struggling to preserve or dismantle a liberal arts education. We struggle to understand the value of a degree that could be worthless or meaningful. We continue to undermine vocational trades, while valuing them at the same time.

We are unsure whether attending college is a good choice, while others maintain that a degree is the only way to be successful. These complex enigmas were as relevant to the Digest, to

Americans, to the mass media, and to the editors in postwar America as they are today. If the

Digest’s images are any indicator of future trends, Americans may continue to struggle with understanding whom college is for and the usefulness of a college degree.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Rachel Miracolo graduated with a Master of Arts in Education in the spring of 2015. Her major was curriculum and instruction where she specialized in social foundations of education.

Prior to attending the University of Florida, Rachel graduated summa cum laude from Stetson

University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in the fall of 2012. At the University of Florida, she taught the undergraduate course the History of Education in the United States in the fall of 2014 and she was a language assistant at the University of Florida’s English Language Institute. She is currently an English teacher at Oviedo High School in Oviedo, Florida.