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COLLEGE FOR WHOM?: READER’S DIGEST AND HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES, 1945-1970 By 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 © 2015 Rachel Marie Miracolo 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. 4 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 5 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 By 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. 6 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. 7 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. 8 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,

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